An Ethnography of Adderall and Wolverines ILLUSTRATION BY TAMRA TURNER PAGE LAYOUT BY SARAH CHUNG 2 — Wednesday, March 30, 2022 // The Statement Content warning: Mentions of substance abuse Becoming a university student means experi- encing many ‘firsts,’ one of which being the first time you might try stimulants — caffeine, nico- tine, cocaine, the list goes on. For me, Adderall arrived months too late, but it changed my life nonetheless. Had I known the achievement-obsessed lion’s den I was walking into when I arrived in Ann Arbor my first time, I probably would have left that same night. It’s hard to see this environment when you’re sitting on the Diag, watching people bounce a basketball around, friends walking side by side, smiles on faces and block ‘M’s embla- zoned on shirts. What does it mean to be a Michigan Wolverine? How many tour groups have to walk by me before I get the sudden urge to let it all out, to scream in their face and warn them that Ann Arbor is bru- tal, that it’s eat or be eaten on a daily basis. Dur- ing those hallowed ‘Campus Days,’ what they don’t tell you about being a Michigan Wolverine is the number of hours you’ll spend ruining your eyesight staring at a computer screen, nearly sob- bing because you can’t figure out how to calculate an integral. To hear roommates screaming down the hall and witness strangers wiping away tears in the UGLi, afraid to admit defeat. How many more nights can I handle looking up from my screen and seeing the sun rise in the distance? How many more eyes can I look into, drained of their color and plump, before I finally say something? There is a communal suffering we all bear wit- ness to, sometimes falling into the very trap our- selves, and yet this is something many of us refuse to talk about. It’s time we change that. *** My story with my ADHD diagnosis began dur- ing my very first semester on campus. It was fall semester and COVID-19 was at its peak, reducing me to Zoom lectures that I couldn’t bear to attend and homework groups I couldn’t bother to meet with. I had all the time in the world it seemed, just like during quarantine, but something was differ- ent. My mind was persistently aware of the school- work slowly piling up, but I could do absolutely nothing to induce movement in my body to change anything about it. Sitting behind the worn down desks of South Quad dormitories made me feel queasy, a constant reminder of all the things I had promised to complete and never did. Then winter semester came around, and I was still wasting hours of my time working on Canvas discussion posts and applications to internships I knew I wouldn’t get, and still falling behind my peers. It was a rat race, and I was losing. Eventually, I got my slice of heaven: I was diag- nosed with ADHD my sophomore year of college, and I could finally silence my frenzied thoughts with a little pill each day. Then, as more and more people learned of my treatment plan, and I began to ask those around me what they think of stimu- lants like Adderall, I quickly realized that my medication was a valuable commodity — phar- maceutical gold to certain Michigan students. When you’re a Wolverine, you’re either buying or selling, trading or spotting — like at any other American university, Adderall is a precious com- modity in our collegiate climate. You hook friends up with people who know people, facilitate silent exchanges on Venmo with cryptic descriptions, an illegal trade we’ve almost normalized. But these are symptoms, not the cause, of the increas- ing dependence on stimulants among college stu- dents. I set out to follow the breadcrumb trail, tracing the origins of the campus-wide Adderall abuse by seeking out students and asking them about their stories with this coveted little pill. In some sort of twisted way, I desperately sought a solution from the words of those affected most, the people who sit next to you in lecture as you both ignore each other’s despair — a silent recognition that needs to be vocalized. Everyone remembers their first time Like most things, drugs often sneak into your life quietly and unexpectedly, but they leave a big impact. It’s not exactly a secret that college stu- dents are twice as likely to use stimulants than other non-students at their age, and that 5 to 35% of students have tried Adderall without a pre- scription, but numbers don’t always tell the entire story. Data can illustrate trends and correlations, but it says nothing about the real motive behind campus-wide Adderall use. Sometimes, uphold- ing the notion of ‘leaders and best’ pushes us to a breaking point, a point that can be remedied by a productivity pill. Here’s what my peers had to say about their first time with Adderall. A sophomore majoring in philosophy in LSA, like many others, happened to stumble upon access to Adderall through pure luck. “I think I tried Adderall for the first time in my sopho- more year of high school — a friend had it. And they’re like, ‘yo, you should try this. It’s crazy, it helps you focus and it makes you feel good.’ And I was like, ‘oh, sounds good.’ I’m like, it goes with the ADHD thing, but I’m very impul- sive and have no willpower. So, if something’s in front of me, I’m gonna take it. … So that was it and I loved it.” For those with ADHD, Adderall can give us a breath of fresh air, as the winding and persistent overlapping conversations in our minds die down to mere whispers. An LSA sophomore majoring in sociology reflected on when they first became lovestruck by the pill’s effect. “I was 15 or 16. I bought it from my drug dealer who I used to (buy) these THC pills from. He kind of skipped out on me a couple times, he’s just so unreliable because that’s how drug dealers are. But he felt bad. And I think he just threw one (Adderall) in for free. … I took it and … I sat down and drew pictures, which is very strange for me, because I don’t like to focus. I don’t like to pay attention to one thing, but I did it. I spent two hours on it. And afterwards I really liked (Adderall).” A computer science student in the college of LSA reflected on their first couple of experiences with Adderall. “The first time I ever got Adderall, I bought it off a friend. It was actually Vyvanse, but same shit different name. The first time I took it was actually at the Union at 6 p.m. to do work, or it was to go to Necto. …That’s how I got it the first time, because someone offered to give it to me.” Like many students, this particular individual found Adderall by way of a friend who had it, rath- er than intently seeking it out themselves. Thus, an informal but meticulously-cultivated network of Adderall users and dealers begins to take form on campus. Additionally, they mentioned the first time they took Adderall in conjunction with another drug, an extreme dose of caffeine. “There was a period of time where I was staying up every night for quite a while. That’s happened quite a bit in computer science. And one of my friends who has an Adderall prescription, she opened up one of the capsules of her Adderall and poured it into a Bang energy (drink). And I thought, this is a good idea and I need this right now. And so I drank it.” According to fellow students, finding Adderall also seems to involve being at the right place at the right time. The computer science student continued, and our conversation quickly turned to the cyclical nature of Adderall usage on campus: “Anytime I mentioned that I have (Adderall) someone will be like, yo, where’d you get that? Literally everyone, like if you say the word Adderall on this campus everyone goes like, where’d you get it from? Okay, you pay five? I pay 10. Where’d you get that bro?” Successfully acquiring Adderall on campus is indeed a game of knowing people who know people. It’s not a sin if you’re not a sinner. How do we define the ends justifying the means? “Drug abuse is bad” is quite an archaic notion, almost too black and white for our genera- tion. Researchers cherish categories and numbers and correlations, but I find them to be a detached approach to complex anthropological questions. Humans are smart, adaptable and first and fore- most, curious. And curiosity, it seems, is a major factor of first-time Adderall use. BY VALERIJA MALASHEVICH, STATEMENT COLUMNIST Read more at MichiganDaily.com