DOSE:

20 mg

oral

Amphetamines

(daily)

BODY WEIGHT:

150 lb

My intimate relationship with Adderall XR began near the end of my first semester of my senior year of high school. I had not done any other drugs except pot and alcohol occasionally, and I'd always had an awe-struck curiosity and a healthy bit of fear for this 'jet fuel' of a pill that people spoke of in the back row of classrooms and outside the doors of exam rooms. Recently, one of my friends had gotten prescribed for 20mg capsules that he did not like taking because he said all they did for him was make him jittery and completely suppress his appetite, and he offered me a couple to try out for the next time I was in need of a boost. I happily accepted and he gave me 4 of them.

About 3:00 pm one day after school I was in need of such a boost. I had 400 some pages left in a Fitzgerald book to read for a test the next day and a project due several days later. With a basically empty stomach I threw down one of the capsules and chased it with a half liter of water. I had no idea what to expect and was quite honestly fairly scared of what was going to happen to me. The nearest stimulant I’d ever had to this was chugging multiple Red Bulls and crap like that.

[Erowid Note: Driving while intoxicated, tripping, or extremely sleep deprived is dangerous and irresponsible because it endangers other people. Don't do it!]

At 3:30, my dad asked me to run some errands for him around town, and what I think was some combination of the drugs real effects and a placebo began to take hold. I was driving his car, an Acura 3.2 TL with pretty good pick-up. As I was driving, I quit analyzing and anticipating the drugs effects and just paid attention to the road and changing radio stations and getting ready to make a few discomforting phone calls (to my boss, a fried I’d had a disagreement with, things like that) . After a few minutes, I realized that I was hearing and seeing everything around me with razor blade precision. Traffic was also not irritating me, I attested this to instead of traveling with it at its normal pace, I was going 75mph in a 45 and flawlessly weaving through the other cars on the road like a professional driver while making diplomatic conversation on the phone and finding my favorite radio station!

Now realize that I am not a reckless driver, and these aren’t things that I do while I’m driving on a regular basis at all. On this day however in my very special condition, it wasn’t even an option to me. Driving the speed limit and only operating the vehicle was so hopelessly boring that I felt like I was going to destroy something, or at least have my brain ejected from my skull, if I didn’t engage in additional tasks at the same time. While this sounds like a terrible feeling, it was nothing short of glorious, and it was all I could do to grin ear to ear while yelling obscenities to express my excitement (it’s good nobody else was in the car with me, as they would have probably scheduled me an appointment with a shrink).

By 4:00, I had committed well over 30 moderately severe traffic violations and not come close to an accident once, with several incidents where I was almost pulled over, but I spotted the police car and reacted accordingly before being spotted myself (-: An hour and a half’s worth of errands had been run [in a half hour]. I’d made my intended phone calls as well as several others I had planned to put off for another day, and couldn’t have possibly asked for them to go better. I got home, entered the junk-cramped garage space at a downright dangerous ~15mph and stopped perfectly (the hanging tennis ball we have to help us gauge was just barely swaying from tapping my wind shield: though this did not calm my father’s panic attack he had upon seeing me do this).

I went in the house and was greeted by the usual atmosphere of my mother trying to settle my younger brother and sister picking at each other over whose turn it was to play video games or something. It took me all of 30 seconds to come up with some magical solution that satisfied both of their demands and relieved my mother of listening to it. I tossed my dad his keys and the mail that I’d picked up on the way home and strutted up the stairs to my room with perfect posture and a quick gate. I got a bottle of water out of my mini fridge (for some reason throughout my entire experience cold water was very appealing) and sat down with my book. I was reading about 25% faster than my normal speed with double or triple the retention. I didn’t stop reading except for bathroom and getting more water until dinner.

At 6:30 we had deli sandwiches for dinner. I finished in 10 minutes or so… about half the time of everyone else. A lot of people I’ve talked to, my friend who gave these to me included, say that it suppresses their appetite something terrible. I didn’t experience this at all, and was appropriately hungry by this time, ate my food at a good pace, and then returned to my room to keep reading. Before dinner I’d been reading about 25% faster than I usually do with easily double the comprehension and info retention, but then things changed.

Around 7:00 is when the transition occurred. While it was all in my head, it was akin to down shifting a muscle car and putting the pedal all the way to the floor. My heart rate, which had been about 105 (my resting/sitting rate is usually around 70), increased to 115 or so. The “superman” feeling receded, and it became more of just a constant surge of energy and unnatural urge to absorb information. My reading speed increased another 25-30%, and I soaked up every single word and detail I read like they were going into my brain through a straw. Nothing else in the world mattered at all except for finishing the last 200 some pages of that book. And again, aside from bathroom breaks and getting more water, that’s all I did for another ~3.5 hours.

Around 10:30 I finished up the book, and leaned back in my chair, expecting to breathe the sigh of relief we all often have once we’ve finished such a task. This sigh never came though. I just found myself very bored in my attempted moment of relaxation. The small part left of my brain still creating natural thought said there was something wrong here with the fact that I was not satisfied after reading 400 some pages. There just had to be, I knew there was. But the rest of me just said “keep going” so I got out my Shakespeare book and the study guide over it that was due a few days later and finished that. Then I got out my physics packet and did the assignments in it for the next 4 class periods. Then I did my calculus assignments for the next week.


By around 2:30 in the morning I still wasn’t the least bit tired physically or of schoolwork, but I forced myself to lie down in bed and turn the lights off anyway so I wouldn’t just feel like hell the next day. This is when I started to realize that taking this pill at 3:00 in the afternoon when the instructions for a legitimate patient say take it in the morning was a terrible idea. There was no way I was going to get any actual sleep. I relaxed the best I could, which wasn’t much considering my mind was constantly running through the equations and concepts of my math and physics homework and all sorts of possible designs and improvements I could make to different “do it yourself” projects I’d had in mind for winter break.

I think it was around 6:30-7:00 am that I found myself getting about 45 minutes or so of sleep, but that was it. My alarm beeped at 7:15, and I literally jumped/bounced out of bed to turn it off and go get ready for school. Throughout most of the day, I had the “Superman” effect again. I’m usually pretty quiet in school, but today, despite only getting 45 minutes of sleep, nothing anybody said or did could get me down. Any typical high school crap I got from anyone I could instantly turn into something witty and far more demeaning for them, and usually in a way that everyone around thought was very humorous. I always had something interesting or intelligent to add to conversations. I did a lot of little “good deed” type stuff for people, like opening doors or offering advice if I had knowledge on the topic at hand.

During classes that day I ignored most of my teachers, as their pace was way to slow and bugged me. I just read ahead in the book on my own and did all the upcoming work while they went over the single daily lesson. When I got home I continued doing school work until I didn’t have anything else left that had really been assigned and explained in detail enough to do correctly. I cleaned my room and my closet and the bathroom in the hallway next to my room. I begin to get suspicious looks from both parents. I tell them I have a strict agenda that I’m behind on. They seem to accept this.

About 7:00 pm the effects started to diminish. I was still plenty awake and feeling perky and, but I didn’t have the huge focus edge I’d had the past 28 hours. I go downstairs and spend a few hours with the family just visiting and watching TV. Finally, around 10:00 pm, I start to feel drowsy. Knowing it’s not really healthy to be up for 31 drug assisted hours plus the 9 hours I’d been up before taking the pill, I head to bed. I sleep like a baby until 6:30 the next day and feel surprisingly rested. This was probably a combination of a good long sleep and some lingering effects of the drug.

This is basically the tale of my first Adderall experience. During parts of it, like the rush I got after dinner, I sometimes got tired of it and wished I could get some peace and just relax. However, looking back on it nearly a year later, it was probably the most real, the most alive, the most euphoric, and the most super-human ~24 hours of my life these 18 years. It was a big eye opener for me about the wonders of the human mind and the miracles that the worlds of medicine and chemistry have brought about.


After this memorable event, I occasionally bought a few here and there from my friend for similar situations with similar results. The very next time I took it was for the 3rd time I was taking the ACT test. I scored 3 points higher on it as a result, and I believe I could have done even better if I’d gotten to bed earlier the night before. It was still very powerful, but it didn’t give the huge “zero tolerance” rush. In weeks following for the rest of the semester, I would usually take one each Sunday or every other Sunday to get caught up on anything I hadn’t finished during the week.

I continued this as well for a month or so during the next semester, and finally decided that I should pursue getting a prescription. I went to the psychiatrist that my brother sees for mild anxiety and gave him honest answers regarding my attentiveness in school, at work, and at home. He prescribed me 15mg capsules first, with the expectancy of moving to 20’s. I did in fact move to the 20’s shortly after, and have been on them ever since. I believe that I have indeed been helped in my school work by taking them on a regular basis, but I often regret the heavy tolerance to the “Superman” effect that this inevitably builds.

Someone online advised taking “chelated magnesium” supplements, available at organic food stores, to help combat tolerance. This has helped, but it only does to a certain extent. It has now been 6 months or so of taking it pretty much daily, and the tolerance factor isn’t as bad as some things. I’ve taken prescription opiate drugs a few times for the experience and to relax on the weekends, and my tolerance to that has gone up easily 3 or 4 times as quickly as to adderall, even with taking them much less often (once every 3 weeks tops). Taking double the dosage on a rare occasion for big tests and such sufficed for a good 3 months, and I now take 3 on said rare occasion. I still get a somewhat euphoric feeling from 2, but not nearly what it used to be. 3 currently does what I’d still consider “adequate”, but I may be doing 4 a couple of days here, as finals for my first semester at college are coming up.

I have recently been found to be fairly diabetic, and I’ll be starting on insulin within a few months. The more I think about it, the more I think that my glucose has been causing my lack of attention, as opposed to regular ADD. I’m hoping very much that this is the case, as I’ll be able to cut back heavily on how often I take it daily, allowing my tolerance to go down, and giving me more capsules on reserve for times I really do need a boost.

This experience report is being written while under the influence of the very drug that I am writing about. My punctuation and grammar and thoroughness would not be nearly what it is if I wasn’t. As such, please excuse how long it is, but I feel it would be a real injustice to the drug to say any less. In conclusion, thank you for reading.


For now, this pretty much concludes my story and my relationship with time release amphetamine. It’s a wonderful drug. I have gone weeks before without taking it and never suffered withdrawal symptoms beyond being a bit sleepier than usual. Thanks for reading.

Exp Year: 2006	ExpID: 57884
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Jun 27, 2007	Views: 9,716
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Amphetamines (6) : Various (28), Retrospective / Summary (11)