SWIM's Positive Experience with Adderall Prescription, Use and "Abuse"

[IntrepidTraveler]

Entering SWIM's second year of high school, SWIM was a lazy stoner with few academic aspirations. SWIM made mediocre grades and it seemed his academic future was doomed to normality. Enter Adderall.

SWIM began purchasing adderall from friends halfway through his Sophomore year of high school, and his grades skyrocketed. His cumulative GPA at the time was an underwhelming 2.9 on a 4 point scale, but, with the motivating and performance-enhancing effects of adderall, he began consistently knotching 4.1s and 4.2s (A+ was rewarded with a 4.33), and his entire future prospects began to change.

SWIM used adderall constantly. 10 mgs quickly turned into 30 and 40, and "only using it once in a while" turned to literally everyday usage. SWIM was weary of the supposedly dangerous side effects of adderall abuse, but the benefits of using the drug were overwhelming. With the aide of the motivating and impowering effects of amphetamine salts, SWIM got off his lazy ass, founded two student run organizations, became captain of his school's varsity basketball team, and moved his cumulative GPA into the A range just in time for college admissions. His college prospects changed dramatically after his turnaround. According to his school's councilors, had he kept up his lackluster early high school academic and extracurriular trends, he would have been lucky to get accepted into a top 100 (US News) University. Instead, he was admitted by three different top 20 American universities. SWIM worked hard to achieve his goals, but he knows how much help adderal leant him in trying times.

Now, for the past several years, SWIM has attended college and continued his use and abuse of adderall in his pursuit of math and philosophy degrees. SWIM now recognizes that he is, in the legal and medical sense, a long term abuser of stimulants like adderall. He has now used them constantly for over six years. SWIM has never shied away from using it recreationally, as he finds that adderall's synergetic properties with the other drugs he indulges in are quite desirable. He has even extended his abuse to taking the drug constantly to stay awake and party for entire weekends. Accordingly, he goes through periods of marked tolerance. During final exams, it is not uncommon for him to exceed 160 miligrams (the quick release, not the XR) in a 24 hour period. With the majority of college behind him, SWIM's cumulative GPA is a 4.0 out of 4.0, tied with one other student for class valedictorian (yea, he goes to a pretty small private college for them to give out awards like "valedictorian").

Like an athlete cyclying on and off anabolic steroids, SWIM keeps his tolerance from spiraling out of control by taking a week or two off when his workload isn't especially demanding. The only physical withdrawl symptoms he has ever exhibited, even after month long binges on adderall followed by an abrupt stop in usage, are headaches and all around sleeplessness. When not on adderall, his psychological addiction to the substance does make him feel lazy and unmotivated, but more often than not he finds his time off with adderall is marked by a plesantly relaxed attitude and healthy lifestyle. In short, he thinks the side effects of long term "abuse" are significantly overstated.

Has he lost ungodly amounts of weight? Is he still sexually potent? No and Yes. It seems that the weightloss and impotency SWIM noticed at the very beginning of his usage 6 years ago gradually dissipated the more he used the substance. As a pleasant surprise, the short term side effects of abuse seemed to only diminish as his tolerance increased. The more he used the drug, the more effective it became at integrating itself seemlessly into his life.

Unless any great unforseen difficulties confront SWIM in the near future, he adamantly believes that adderall is a miracle drug with negligible side effects, even in instances of long term overuse and abuse. Granted, SWIM has made a point of being level headed in his abuse of the drug. He never shoots it, and rarely rails it (he finds that the chalk present in his adderall tablets are unpleasant for snorting). Sure, he's taken the drug to its limit by abusing it to stay awake for 72 hours, but he counters such perilous rides with spells of good nutrition, sleep and abstinence from the drug. Indeed, such precautions seem to integrate themselves seemlessly into his life--he does not have to make marked efforts to take a break from the drug. He just simply stops taking it while his mind and body recover, and in a week or two he feels as good as new. He feels that as long as he distances himself from society's biased, stereotypical conception of drug addicts, he can keep his use in perspective. He may depend on adderall to support his lifestyle, but he never loses faith in his self-control. He resists society's assertion that he is "Powerless" and "Helpless" to control his "Disease."

SWIM decided to write this up and have me post it because he remembers another member recently asking if anyone has any success stories about how drug use has improved their lives, and he feels that his story qualifies. SWIM is affectionally known amongst his peers as a "walking contradiction." Yes, his sheltered, upper-middle class bookworm friends look at his drug habits in ignorant awe, amazed that a drug user can perform at a higher level in every aspect of his life than they can. What a bunch of unmitigated ignorance. He thinks people should know that drug users functioning normally in society--or even performing exceedingly well in society--is NOT a contradiction (besides adderall, SWIM smokes marijuana everyday, loves LSD and mushrooms, and uses cocaine and perscription pain killers frequently--using adderall helps him keep his priorities straight while also living the fun, exciting and educational "drug lifestyle"). If those free, inebriated souls who consume mind expanding and altering drugs choose to "play the game" in society they can usually do it just as well if not better than everyone else. It's all a matter of how much they're willing to conform.

Note: SWIM apologizes for the length of this anecdote. He hopes that reading about his first hand experience will educate or enlighten at least a few readers.

And P.S.-SWIM considers adderall his area of expertise (uses for several years, both parents are pharmacists), so if anyone has any question about it I'm sure I could get an answer from him.

Reputation Comments on this post:

Good contribution!

[4chanspy]

i used to think ADD was made up by greedy doctors. but i know now for sure i have it and its not all in my head ither. im getting Adderall soon (i have used ritalin, and it turned my life around when i was younger. but its not helping like it used to so im getting Adderall)

[Jiggles]

What are SWIYs thoughts on depression? Has SWIY ever been depressed, suceptible to it, etc. SWIM is asking because this is one of the major drawbacks of longterm usage to him

[IntrepidTraveler]

Like every sane person, SWIM deals with bouts of depression from time to time. Undoubtedly, being constantly high makes it that much more difficult psychologically to not be high, but SWIM finds solace by putting everything into perspective. As the old adage goes, SWIY can't have the highs withought the lows. It might be depressing that giving up adderall for a week or two makes SWIM sluggish, unable to concentrate for long periods of time and just not very thoughtful and euphoric in general, but taking these effects with a grain of salt allows SWIM to look on the bright side, fully realizing that better days lay just around the corner. The less SWIM stresses over these so-called "side effects," the more they seem to miraculously dissipate, leaving SWIM fully capable of functioning at an even and efficient level. In other words, it's all in SWIY's head.

This reminds me of a great song lyric from a band he loves called Circa Survive. Infact, these lyrics really remind me of SWIM.

"They say what doesn't kill the soul
Will make it harder
But you can't be a stone hearted man

This isn't just a waste of time
Addiction's made me stronger
But you cant be high all the time

Do you realize that you apologize
When it's not your fault?
We're all fucked up
Do you really think that it's worth it
To be all worried about time?"

Ah what wisdom.

[4chanspy]

swiy sounds tweaked out

[IntrepidTraveler]

Originally Posted by 4chanspy

swiy sounds tweaked out

SWIM can't get anything past SWIY!

[hh339]

^^ IntrepidTraveler: Great post! SWiM can relate to a great deal of this, though he never felt some of those negative things. It is somewhat addictive yes, but that doesn't bother SWiM as he never planned on quitting the stuff anyway. Nice!

[IntrepidTraveler]

Thanks SWIM never plans on quitting, either. Why should he when he has a permanent script?

[TheFonz]

"Work hard, live fast, and leave a good looking corpse..."

In SWIM's mind, Adderall is a very Capitalist-minded, 21+ century drug.......Does one choose to live a shorter yet more exciting life or Does one choose to always play it conservative and live longer?

Adderall is the weapon that is fighting a failing educational system......

Reputation Comments on this post:

Good, quote worthy post. Captures the true essence of study drug use.

[IntrepidTraveler]

Originally Posted by TheFonz

"Work hard, live fast, and leave a good looking corpse..."

In SWIM's mind, Adderall is a very Capitalist-minded, 21+ century drug.......Does one choose to live a shorter yet more exciting life or Does one choose to always play it conservative and live longer?

Adderall is the weapon that is fighting a failing educational system......

That's a good short and sweet way of putting it, good post.

[ziddy]

It's utterly amazing that the person referred to by the topic creator is so functional at such a high level of amphetamine and cannabis intake. Does that person engage in any harm-reduction techniques besides cycling? Magnesium? L-tyrosine? Excellent diet/exercise?

[IntrepidTraveler]

Originally Posted by ziddy

It's utterly amazing that the person referred to by the topic creator is so functional at such a high level of amphetamine and cannabis intake. Does that person engage in any harm-reduction techniques besides cycling? Magnesium? L-tyrosine? Excellent diet/exercise?

SWIM generally tries to eat well and exercise regularly, but he is far from perfect. He also tries to time his cannabis intake during the day so that he's not so stoned when he's doing the really hard, important stuff.

Oh, he also takes vitamins! lol.

[smoothnmelo]

Aside from Swims positive attitude regarding his controlled druguse and his various time-tested careful strategies to avoid falling into any of the drug-abuse related traps, as there are extreme tolerance buildup (160mg daily? yet only during college crunch time???) and withdrawals, I have only one question for this Swim: How does he manage to pay for all this? Nowhere in Swim's testimony aside from the headliner does he mention a prescription for the Adderal he takes. He says, he's been buying them starting in 10th grade. That can be quite costly! Nowhere does he mention work, only that he has now finally finished his four year college degree at an astonishing 4.0 grade average. Congratulations!!! The Adderal apparently has benefitted this Swim's focus while studying over the years. So far he has managed to stay afloat in spite of some of his more erratic behaviors vis a vis binges and drug use. It seems, he is somewhat of an exception to the rule? A walking stereotype? Well, in many ways so is this Swim, although he finds himself in a completely different circumstance. Self-knowledge, self-reliance and a strong will, that cannot be compromised, these are always positive qualities. This Swim also does not subscribe to the quasi-religious one-fits-all recovery credos along the lines of "Submit your Will to a Higher Power", the addiction/recovery course-study Bible rule book. Any individual Swim's experience with drugs, and therefore also the recovery from drug-related pitfalls is bound to be different. As stereotyping in general, mandated, "miracle cures" based on the averaging of statistical drug-use and recovery data is largely useless to any individual. We must all know ourselves first in order to cure ourselves. Yet, beware and behold, any Swims strength will really be put to the test, once the perpetual funding runs out... Maybe this lucky four-year-college-degree Swim right-out-of-highschool at a major, therefore expensive American college, is in a position so that his never will. Be that as it may, Good Luck either way...!!!

[IntrepidTraveler]

SWIM is in no way immune to addiction; he has already faced pretty bad alcohol dependency and opiate addiction at a relatively young age. These issues were more or less unrelated to his adderall use--I think SWIM just really loves partying and doing drugs. The point of my original post is that, provided one uses the proper harm-reduction techniques and doesn't go completely overboard, SWIM thinks he is a living example that regular adderall use with the semi-regular binge (during exams or other periods with big workloads, for example), can actually have a POSITIVE effect on peoples' lives.

Also, SWIM does have a huge perscription to adderall (in the original post I did mention that he eventually got perscribed). It's changed over the years, but he is currently perscribed to 3 20 mg XRs a day, which accumulate during periods where he doesn't take any.

[TestPattern]

Originally Posted by IntrepidTraveler

SWIM is in no way immune to addiction; he has already faced pretty bad alcohol dependency and opiate addiction at a relatively young age. These issues were more or less unrelated to his adderall use--I think SWIM just really loves partying and doing drugs. The point of my original post is that, provided one uses the proper harm-reduction techniques and doesn't go completely overboard, SWIM thinks he is a living example that regular adderall use with the semi-regular binge (during exams or other periods with big workloads, for example), can actually have a POSITIVE effect on peoples' lives.

Also, SWIM does have a huge perscription to adderall (in the original post I did mention that he eventually got perscribed). It's changed over the years, but he is currently perscribed to 3 20 mg XRs a day, which accumulate during periods where he doesn't take any.

Can SWIY recall the varying amounts prescribed to him as hid prescription changed....a sort of timeline for the script? SWIM is in a very similar situation as SWIY was in 10th grade....unfortunately, he's falling into this success as a sophomore in college and has some severe catching up to do...but he does have high ambitions and has embraced this new life of success with the help of his little blue mountains.

[karpedeem13]

SWIM has also recently discovered the beneficial effects of "abusing" Adderall; it is very reassuring to hear such a concerting story such as SWIY own. How refreshing to hear how a drug may be used for something other than recreation, however fun recreational activities really are! Very inspirational.