Confessions Of An On-Campus Adderall Dealer
By NYU Local Staff
The phrase “drug dealer” sounds dirty. It’s a guy in a trench coat skulking in the shadows of an alleyway. It belongs in a sentence somewhere nestled between “prostitute,” “gun violence,” and “a briefcase full of unmarked one-hundred dollar bills.”
The stereotypes are entertaining, but do they translate into real life? Not really. Most likely, you wouldn’t be able to pin point me in a crowd. I’m normal looking. I’m academically successful — I’ve never not been on the Dean’s List. I’m just another twenty-something with bills to pay and student debt to pay off. And although I hesitate to identify myself as such in a more overt environment, it wouldn’t be wrong to call me a full-time student and a part-time drug dealer.
I didn’t come to NYU with aspirations of selling drugs. In real life, just the mere idea of breaking the law sends my blood pressure through the roof; I still occasionally feel pangs of guilt over the walnut I “borrowed” from a grocery store bulk bin when I was five-years-old. It all just fell into place piece by piece, and suddenly I found myself the go-to person during exams season when friends-of-a-friend-of-a-friend were looking to score Adderall to save their GPA.
In high school, having Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder wasn’t that big of a deal. I was diagnosed and properly medicated (I’ve been taking the legal maximum dose of Adderall for over half a decade) at age 14, after a freshman year marked by poor grades, little-to-no executive functioning ability, and so many bouts of tears, frustration, and self-loathing. When I got to college, however, I found that having ADHD made me very, very popular.
It’s hard to “just say no!” when one of your pills — just half of the daily dose of Adderall necessary to keep your brain on track — can easily sell for anywhere from $10–15 dollars, maybe even more during exam season. For reference, the entirety of my sixty pill prescription costs less than $15 at the pharmacy.
Currently, the US government classifies medications like Adderall, Ritalin, and Vyvanse as Schedule II controlled substances, meaning that — although there are medically accepted benefits from their use, there is a high potential for abuse and dependency.
However, if you’re reading this, I’m sure you know someone who knows someone who could sell you some study drugs if you were so inclined. I’m sure many, if not all of you have done so at least once in your college career. That’s what makes it so easy to sell your prescription stimulants: the demand is incredibly high and, unlike street drugs, there’s very little stigma attached. If you are incredibly careful, you can make a significant amount of money with very little risk involved.
Despite its controlled distribution, I found myself with two times my monthly dose subsequent to a prescribing error last year. In the span of two-and-a-half weeks and with very little effort, I was $450 richer after selling off just a small fraction of my stash. That was a unique, serendipitous occurrence most likely to never again be repeated; however, I do tend to end up with 10 or so extra pills at the end of the month, nearly all of which I used to sell.
Ultimately, I did stop selling drugs. There was no significant catalyst to end my felonious behavior — never once did I get caught or run into any trouble. In fact, I really only stopped selling because I was too lazy to put in the effort drug dealing requires, and because I was growing increasingly annoyed with my buyers. I can completely understand a person without ADHD’s incentive to occasionally abuse study drugs when under academic pressure; however, I didn’t like the way Adderall’s popularity has skewed ADHD to seem like something neat and useful to have, rather than what it is: a frustrating, hellish learning disability. It’s always easy to come up with an excuse for your behavior, but I finally took a look at myself and realized that I was ultimately adding to the problem.
Although I’d prefer not to, I can’t say with 100% certainty that I won’t ever sell Adderall again; New York is expensive, and sometimes you have to do what you have to do to get by.
