A Pre-Med's favorite drug.

Ever fell into that trap of studying before and exam but you can't seem to focus? Constantly switching from tab to tab, half of them being YouTube, Reddit, Instagram etc. but just cant keep your attention on your assignment? Well that is were Adderall and its derivatives come in. An amphetamine that is commonly referred to as a "study drug" and while it is extremely popular on campuses (Both for diagnosed ADHD as well as general abuse of the drug) it has come to my attention that alot of people don't really know how the drug itself works and why it causes people to focus so heavily on one specific task.

The way the drug works is that once you take it and it gets into your system it acts as an analog for the following neurotransmitters: Epinephrine, Norepinephrine and Dopamine. For each of those, there is a different effect that causes you to maintain focus on a task. When it mimics epinephrine it causes the brain to trigger the fight or flight response which causes you to be generally more alert and focused. The dopamine effect is that once you do anything that you either enjoy or feel accomplished with (such as completing a portion of an assignment) it makes you feel good. What adderall does is it mimics that effect and puts it on steroids. So if you do anything that would cause your brain to produce dopamine you subconsciously feel the need to keep doing it far more than you would in a sober state. And finally the norepinephrine effect works to help control the aforementioned effects to facilitate communication between neurons and this is what ultimately causes them to last longer and keep you focused and alert for long periods of time.

Now unfortunately, the drug is one of the most heavily abused in academia and becomes a crutch to lean on for students that have heavy workloads and cant seem to get all their work done. The drug was meant to treat those with ADHD, but as with any prescription drug it can easily get into the kids hands that don't really need it. Not to mention, along with heavy usage means a tolerance for the drug so students end up taking more and more each time to maintain their level of focus.  With this comes some hefty side-effects such as irregular heart rate, anxiety, paranoia, depression, reduced sex drive and decreased hunger. When coming down people experience the body in a full state of exhaustion due to how much energy it spends powering your brain.

The interesting part of all this is that I find it very interesting that we can produce a drug that changes something like focus, which is so hard to quantify. In other words, if you were to take an anti-inflammatory you can physically see it's effects and quantify that but with something like adderall it is hard to wrap your mind around it. Partly because when we think of someone procrastinating we just think of laziness and would hope you could just bunker down and work through it. However with the drug you can literally take an anti-laziness pill which is likely why it is so abused and becomes a major crutch for students to lean on.