IF you heard there was a prescription drug that turned you into a brainier, more hard-working version of yourself, wouldn’t you be tempted?
Louise was, and soon she was taking Adderall - an illegal Class-B "study drug" -instead of breakfast every day before work.
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“About half an hour after taking it I would get this incredible feeling of sharpness and focus,” says Louise, 28, who was manager of a clothes shop at the time.
“I could concentrate all day without noticing time. I’d spend hours methodically re-arranging every hanger in the shop so they were exactly a finger’s width apart, just as the rules said.
"It sounds comical now, but I felt I was invincible like Bruce Wayne - saving the world, rather than managing a shop in Hertfordshire.
"Once I read a 630-page book about the history of Western civilisation in two hours and really felt I had absorbed every word.”
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If it sounds too good to be true, that's because it is.
Adderall, along with other prescription stimulants Louise was taking every day, very nearly destroyed her life.
The drugs turned her into an anti-social introvert, as she poured all her concentration and energy into whatever task she was doing after popping the stimulant.
“You think because this pill is a medicine and comes in a blister pack it must be safe – but it’s basically just speed, and there’s always a pay-back,” she says.
Adderall's shocking side-effects
- Loss of appetite
- Sweating
- Tremors
- Insomnia
- Anxiety
- Paranoia
- Increased blood pressure
- Increased heart rate
- Psychosis
- Potentially fatal heartbeat abnormalities
Louise is one of a growing number of people worldwide who’ve got into trouble with Adderall, an amphetamine-based medicine prescribed in America to ADHD sufferers to help them concentrate.
While it's legal to possess the drug in the states, it's a Class-B substance over here, meaning you can't legally sell or possess it - unless you have a prescription.
The drug is increasingly used along with another ADHD medicine, Ritalin, as a "smart drug" by students, executives and endurance athletes to give them that extra edge.
These prescription stimulants are now endemic in American universities, in Silicon Valley and in high-stress jobs and among shift workers, according to a shocking new documentary, Take Your Pills, launching on Netflix next week.
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And Adderall is also on the rise in the UK, according to addiction specialists, despite the fact it’s not even licensed for prescription here.
"We’re seeing an increasing number of patients arriving who have bought Adderall on the streets,” says Professor Jonathan Chick, medical director of Castle Craig Hospital in Scotland.
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Eytan Alexander, founder of UK Addiction Treatment Centreswhich treated Louise, says admissions for prescription medicine abuse have shot up 22 per cent in just two years.
Many will have started off thinking Adderall is a pretty harmless way to stay awake and boost concentration, without realising how terrible the side-effects can be.
“Perhaps they took Adderall for a couple of days so they could get some work done, but then liked that feeling of energy and power these drugs give you,” says Professor Chick.
“Then they take more and more, and suddenly they’ve become dependent. It’s quite common.”
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Sean, 21, a third year business student at Edinburgh University, took his first Adderall the day before a big deadline, his friend having ordered the drugs from an online pharmacy.
He said: “I worked for 12 hours straight. I didn’t eat, didn’t look up, I was totally focused and got through work like some kind of machine or like Bradley Cooper’s character in the film Limitless.
“The next time I had to hand in work I took it every day for a week. By the end [of that week] my whole body was twitching, and my head had this weird itching feeling like my hair was crawling with insects.
"I spent half my time on the loo and was massively dehydrated and I couldn’t eat or get to sleep. I was a wreck, basically."
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Other users report that after taking Adderall you feel compelled to concentrate on whatever you’re doing the moment the drug kicks in: if you’re unlucky it might be manically organising your underwear drawer.
Louise once spent three hours sorting out her coins by date order, and Professor Chick recalls one student on stimulants who simply wrote their name 1,000 times on the exam paper yet thought they’d aced it.
“That feeling of intense focus and invincibility is a bit of a delusion, actually,” he says.
The side effects are very real though.
Amphetamine-based stimulants destroy appetite (which is why they’re a favourite of those with eating disorders), increase blood pressure and heart rate and can cause heartbeat abnormalities which can prove fatal, says Roz Gittins, director of pharmacy at addiction charity Addaction.
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They can also cause tremors, sweating, anxiety, paranoia and sometimes full-blown psychosis, especially in those who already have mental health problems.
“When it's bought illegally, there’s also no guarantee the product is what you believe you’re buying," says Gittins.
"It could have contaminants in it, but it could also be the wrong strength.
Adderall can also be a gateway to street drugs like cocaine, and abuse of other prescription meds like sedatives.
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A survey by Oxford University’s student newspaper, Cherwell, showed as many as 15 per cent of students had taken "smart drugs" at some point during their studies.
American author Casey Schwartz googled ADHD symptoms and within an hour she had an Adderall prescription from a psychologist in Los Angeles – and had her monthly supply shipped to the UK while she was a postgraduate student in London.
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She’s written about her many desperate attempts to get off the drug, which she finally managed to do aged 30, nearly ten years after first taking it to help her through an essay deadline.
“The cravings were a force of their own: if someone said so much as said ‘Adderall’ in my presence, I would instantly begin to scheme about how to get just one more pill. Or maybe two.
"I was anxious, terrified I had done something irreversible to my brain, terrified that I was going to discover that I couldn’t write at all without my special pills,” she said.
It’s this psychological addiction that so difficult with Adderall, says Louise.
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She believes it’s so dangerous because, even though it has no impact on your actual intelligence, it makes you feel clever – which is pretty seductive for most people.
Adderall was only one drug of many for her: she used benzodiazepines to get to sleep, diet drugs to lose weight plus Ritalin and recreational drugs like MDMA and cocaine.
She finally gave them all up and joined a 12-step addiction programme at the age of 20 after her GP said she would die if she didn’t stop abusing her body.
She said: “I’d had an eating disorder since my teenage years and I was down to six stone; I could actually feel my body dying, my organs wanting to give up. That fear was enough to get help.
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“I’m now a qualified drug counsellor, and I have a client who’s a student and popping Adderall like sweets.
"He says to me, ‘my grades are really good – but will I still be as good without my Adderall?’
"I understand that fear, but if I’ve learned one thing it’s that nobody gets a free ride with this drug.”
Some names have been changed.
