I Had to Stop Taking Adderall Because of the Pandemic

When Los Angeles was formally placed under lockdown in mid-March, I was taking my Adderall like I had done since I was in middle school – but was now noticing side effects I never had before. I was listless, antsy, and constantly anxious on the same medication that had provided me peace of mind and focus for over half a decade.

I realized I was taking Adderall every day to sit at home, and while everyone else that was jobless was watching movies and baking banana bread, I was re-organizing my friend’s apartment and re-editing papers from freshman year of a college I had already graduated from.

About a week in I realized this would be the perfect time for me to take a break from Adderall. I successfully withdrew from the medication, but it definitely wasn’t easy. The first week was filled with headaches and brain fog. I was constantly tired and unable to get out of bed but every time I fell asleep it was poor quality and I woke up groggy and exhausted.

By week two my appetite had come back with a vengeance, I was irritable, experiencing mood swings that had me crying one second and elated the next, and the poor-quality sleep was replaced with sleeping most of the day away. All of these symptoms were paired with a constant anxiety that I had somehow contracted Coronavirus, since several of the withdrawal side-effects I experienced overlapped with symptoms of the virus.

Three months later, with the start of my graduate school, I was confronted with the same focus issues in my Zoom classes that had landed me on my Adderall prescription in the first place. I felt woefully underprepared for graduate level courses. I was having that same difficulty concentrating in class and finishing assignments.

The fast pace of the course also had me in a complete tailspin. Although I was remiss to give up three months of progress being Adderall-free, I was drowning. I was also sure that the anxiety and unease I felt taking the Adderall at the beginning of quarantine was due to having nothing to focus on, not the pandemic itself. So, I started taking it again, positive that the new addition of school in my life was the missing piece in achieving the relationship with Adderall I had before. I was very, very wrong.

Why Adderall Use Works Differently in Zoom University

I didn’t realize how much being out and about on both my high school and college campus quelled the negative side effects of the drug. Sitting at home all day, even if I was now engaging with Zoom classes and a steady workload, was still miserable. I found it nearly impossible to sit in front of the same monitor all day, and regularly turned my camera off during class to pace around my apartment or re-organize my kitchen.

ADHD symptoms I thought I’d grown out of resurfaced. In middle school I was aware of my tendency to call out in class or interrupt, and after a few comments from my teachers I trained myself to write all of my questions and thoughts down until I could speak with the teacher privately after class. This sense of urgency to ask questions at the wrong times returned in my Zoom classes. I also noticed how impatient I became with technological glitches on my professor’s end, as well as my classmates’ and my own. I remember my WiFi dropped one day out of nowhere and I had a full breakdown feeling like I was missing things and would be entirely unprepared for our next Zoom class.

The uneasiness of the pandemic and spending so much time alone also caused me to fixate on that anxiety, even during class, and I felt even more unable to focus than during my three-months without the drug. I spent my class times frantically googling COVID-19 data, death rates, speculations on what would happen next, vaccine trials, and more. I quickly realized that I might have reached a real impasse in my relationship with Adderall, and upon speaking to some of my college friends I began noticing a bigger problem.

Luis Jaramillo, a former classmate of mine from The George Washington University, also stopped taking Adderall during the pandemic.

"I would take it and I would have this surge of energy and literally nothing to do with it, which would make me feel anxious and alone and frustrated,“ he said. ”It made everything worse."

Jaramillo said he misses Adderall.

"It’s kind of shocking to see the level of work I used to be able to get done as opposed to now,” he said. “I have to reteach myself how to engage with work, my social life, even my eating schedule. You don’t realize how much of your life is changed by Adderall until you stop taking it."

A college friend, who asked me not to use her name, is still finishing her degree and taking Zoom classes. She told me that she had to restructure the entire way she approached schoolwork when the pandemic hit. She was never diagnosed with ADHD but was always able to find Adderall from friends when she really needed. She told me that after a few weeks of trying to see if friends could ship it to her or if she could get diagnosed herself over the phone, she realized that she would have to start accepting her new reality of completing work without the help of stimulants.

"Adderall is just everywhere in college. As someone who’s not prescribed, you don’t think about how much it affects your life because you’re just taking it here and there, for a big paper, or finals, or a tight deadline,” she said. “But I definitely feel the difference."

I was curious to know what difference she was feeling, especially because she doesn’t experience the same ADHD symptoms that face Jaramillo and me.

"I really just used it to do more work in a shorter timeframe," she said. "I could get the same work done in literally half the time. Who wouldn’t want that? Now it’s definitely different. I have to spend days on assignments I used to finish in a night."

"One plus side of this time without Adderall is that I feel like I’ve learned a lot more from doing work in my classes since I haven’t been able to rely on a substance to do it for me."

She, like me, had to find new ways to concentrate, restructure her time-management skills now that she was no longer able to finish papers in a matter of hours, and become accustomed to her work not always being at as high of a level as it was when she had the help of Adderall.

A Brief History of Adderall

The chemical compound of amphetamine salts that would later be branded as the Adderall most know of today was first synthesized in 1887 by Romanian chemist, Lazar Edeleanu.

Researchers found the drug to have virtually no real use, and it was shelved for the next 40 years when American chemist Gordon Alles, trying to develop a new treatment for asthma, dosed himself with the drug, Alles recorded feeling euphoria, heart palpitations and insomnia. Although Alles quickly surmised that this substance would not be a suitable cure for asthma, the stimulant effects he discovered put Adderall on the map as a treatment for weight loss and depression.

Source: Gifer

A mere 10 years after Alles’ discovery in 1929, college students were already taking the drugs to boost their academic performance. During World War II, soldiers received doses of the drug to improve their focus. By the end of the war in 1945 more than 500,000 people reported using Adderall for weight loss.

The artists and creatives of the Beatnik generation used Adderall to get their work done. Jack Kerouac reportedly typed his infamous piece “On the Road” in under 3 weeks thanks to the then-popular combination of coffee and Benzedrine, the first commercial release of the amphetamine mixture known today as Adderall. In the 1960’s Benzedrine use became most popular with housewives and Vietnam war veterans.

The drug became popular with women primarily for its weight loss and antidepressant properties but also as a way to keep up with wifely and motherly duties. Vietnam soldiers were given amphetamines for focus, but upon returning home they no longer needed the drugs, and their families noticed both withdrawal effects and addiction, two side effects that were not mainstream knowledge before this time.

It was around this time that people began noticing the health consequences and addictive properties of stimulant abuse. In 1965, Johnny Cash was famously arrested and later charged for possession of amphetamines. A few years later, congress enacted legislation to move Adderall into the restrictive category of Schedule II substances, and the FDA barred the drug as a treatment for weight loss and depression.

Sales of the drug nose-dived until the 1980’s, when doctors changed the terminology for an obscure illness, they believed only effected children, referred to then as hyperkinetic disorder of childhood, now as attention deficit disorder (ADD). In the early 90’s Adderall skyrocketed once again after studies discovered that the ADD they had diagnosed as a childhood issue affected adults as well.

This re-classification of hyperkinetic disorder of childhood into ADD paired with the realization that it can affect adults as well, lead to a boom of Adderall prescriptions in the 2000s. The Adderall we know today was introduced into the market in 1996, with additional extended release variations such as Adderall XR and Vyvanse following suit in the early 2000s. Similarly, to the Beatnik artists of the 50s and the housewives of the 60s, today’s primary Adderall abusers are students in both high school and college, as well as professionals looking to improve their workflow.

What Now?

I see this era of quarantine and working from home as the latest chapter in the over 100-year history of stimulant use in America. There is virtually no way to know right now how many people are either withdrawing from Adderall, adjusting their dosages or finding alternative methods to acquiring the drug to fit the new off-campus education landscape.

I’m now nearly three months into my program without Adderall, and I have been both discouraged and astounded by the realizations I’ve made. The severity of ADHD is on a spectrum but seeing how I’ve been able to restructure my relationship with schoolwork does lead me to believe that there are alternatives to treating ADHD.

Although withdrawing was one of the most uniquely difficult experiences of my life, it has been far more challenging learning how to re-engage with academic life without any help. It takes me far longer to complete tasks, I have to follow a strict work schedule I’ve made for myself to ensure I don’t miss deadlines, I find myself missing instructions constantly due to the chaos of everything being online, and my brain feels completely jumbled more often than not.

Despite this I have somehow made nearly every deadline, received A-grades in the two classes I have completed so far, and have seen a major decrease in both my restlessness and the anxiety I felt at the start of my program.

The pandemic forced me to confront my own relationship with stimulants and gave me the free time I needed to do the proper research into more sustainable alternatives to managing my ADHD. I’d be lying if I said there were times, I don’t get completely discouraged by this new reality, but overall, I am managing pretty well.

Adderall is a personal choice for everyone, and I would never tell someone diagnosed with ADHD to stop taking it, as everyone’s experience with the illness is completely different, but for anyone tired of taking stimulants and the symptoms that come with Adderall and other study drugs, I would cautiously say that there is a way to do it – especially in this new normal of COVID-19 living.