“There was nothing else on my mind except for the work that was right in front of me,” said “Mia,” an anonymous junior.

Mia is among many Redwood students who have taken Adderall, a drug commonly used to treat Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder [ADHD], to increase productivity and improve test scores. Although Mia doesn’t suffer from ADHD and doesn’t have a prescription, she said that taking the drug helped her maintain her focus and get her work done more quickly during the long hours of finals week.

The number of students who abuse ADHD drugs is high compared to national standards. According to a November Bark survey, 20.6% of Redwood students answered “yes” when asked if they have ever taken an ADHD medication without a prescription. This compares to a similar 2011 national survey by the University of Michigan, in which 12.2% of high school seniors answered “yes,” and a 2008 New York Times study in which 20% of college students answered “yes.”

Mia said she and many of her friends took Adderall during finals week in the fall semester of her sophomore year.

“I didn’t go into the week of finals planning on taking it, but then I started talking with some of my friends who said they were doing it, so I thought, if everyone else was taking it, why not give it a try?” Mia said.

Mia took Adderall twice during finals week—one pill to study the night before the test, and another pill on the morning before the test.

“That night, I did my entire science study guide, and I knew that if I wasn’t on [Adderall] I just wouldn’t have gotten it done,” Mia said.

Mia said that although she can’t remember the exact dose she took, it was low enough where she didn’t experience a huge difference in performance.

“It didn’t feel incredibly different, but the idea of it made me feel like I was performing better and more efficiently,” Mia said. “It was enough to get the job done—and that’s what I was looking for.”

“Peter,” an anonymous senior, said that he has taken Adderall six or seven times since the start of the school year, mainly for physics tests and the SAT subject tests.

“It helps me on tests, it helps me stay awake, and it gives me that energy that I don’t have for the rest of the day.” Peter said. “It keeps me in focus and alert, and I don’t doze off as much or lose focus easily.”

Peter said that while he was on Adderall, he saw his test questions in a new light.

“The answers became a lot clearer. You can connect things that you wouldn’t have been able to connect if you were just too tired. That’s one reason why I take it—I’m always really tired, and it keeps me more awake and gives me more focus than I would have had. The ability to connect those dots really helps me a lot,” he said.

While Mia and Peter occasionally use Adderall for specific tests, “Kelly,” an anonymous sophomore, took the drug every day of her freshman spring semester finals.

“I was straight on it for the whole week,” Kelly said. “I was never really scared. I didn’t think about the bad things that could happen or the risk that I was putting myself at. I didn’t even take it into consideration. I just thought, ‘I’m going to do this, and it’s going to be fine.’ And it was fine, nothing bad happened to me.”

Kelly said she created her own dosages. While most of her friends took one 30 mg pill a day, Kelly decided to take three: one pill at night to study and two pills in the morning to last her through both of her tests, adding up to 90 mg every day for a week. The average prescribed starting dose for teenagers with ADHD is 10 mg per day.

“No one really told me how much to take—I kind of just decided,” Kelly said. “I didn’t really tell anyone that I was taking that much. I just thought that the more I take, the more it would help me focus.”

Corte Madera psychiatrist Michael Freeman said it is very dangerous for people to take ADHD drugs if they don’t have a prescription, and it’s even more dangerous to take higher than the prescribed dose.

“It’s a medication, and it should only be used for the treatment of a medical condition as prescribed by a physician with medication monitoring by a physician,” Freeman said.

Kelly said that she wasn’t worried about taking a high dose because she read anonymous comments in a forum on the Internet that told her the more you take, the more you focus.

“I had the two pills in my hand, thinking, ‘Maybe I should just take one today.’ But then I remembered all of the hard tests that I had, so I decided to just go for it,” she said.

Kelly said an older boy in her math class first introduced her to the drug.

“He asked me and my friends if we were taking any Adderall for finals week, and we didn’t really know what to say but we wanted to play it cool, so we told him we were thinking about it,” Kelly said. “He told us that he could get us some if we wanted any, and that he didn’t charge a lot.”

After hearing how the drug helped the boy in her math class focus on his finals and get high scores, Kelly decided to give it a try.

“It’s not like I had anything to lose, and maybe it could get me really good grades like him, too,” Kelly said. “So my friends and I decided to get some.”

Kelly said that the next day, the boy in her math class left a bag of Adderall under a Redwood trash can.

“It was in a little plastic bag,” Kelly said. “I kind of just looked at it for a moment, I was curious to see what the pills looked like. After I inspected it, I put the bag in my jacket and walked away. It was a good feeling knowing that I had it— it was going to help me study and get good grades on my finals.”

Freeman said he thinks that teenagers routinely underestimate the risk they put themselves at.

“High school students are kind of asleep at the wheel and significantly underestimating and minimizing how much risk they’re taking, whether they get loaded at a party or they score some Adderall and take it for a test,” Freeman said. “The risk is just not worth taking.”

Kelly said she kept the Adderall in a sock in the bottom of her sock drawer to hide it from her parents.

“It’s kind of contradictory when you think about it,” she said. “You’re doing this stuff to get good grades and make your parents happy, but at the same time, if they found out to what extents you’re going to make them happy, they’d probably be upset with you.”

Mia said that she also kept the drugs a secret from her parents.

Mia got the Adderall from a friend who has ADHD, who wrapped the pills in a tissue and gave them to her in the front parking lot for free.

“It was kind of sketchy,” Mia said. “I know that I wasn’t prescribed to it, so it felt a little wrong. But then again, it was a one-time thing, so I didn’t stress over it.”

Mia added that she felt safer because she knew a lot of people who were taking Adderall as well.

“It wasn’t even just my friends—almost everyone I talked to was going to do it for finals, which made me feel safer about taking it. I knew that it wasn’t going to kill me,” Mia said.

Peter said that his parents knew about his Adderall usage, and were supportive of his decision.

“My parents support me. They think it’s a good thing—I mean, if it helps, why not?” he said.

Peter said that although some people may consider it to be cheating, he does not.

“Lots of people take it. People with ADHD, they take it for focus. I want to focus more, too,” Peter said. “It’s not like I have any more added brain function. I’m not smarter, I don’t know anything more just because I’m on it. It’s more like a helper. It’s like having a tutor that’s always there.”

According to a recent Bark survey, 52.5% of students said it would be fairly or very easy to get ADHD drugs without a prescription, if they wanted some.

Mia said she attributes the popularity of the drug to Redwood’s academically competitive environment.

“Redwood is completely a competitive environment,” Mia said. “If other people are getting good grades because they’re taking Adderall, then I might as well take it, too.”

Kelly said that the harder school gets, the more likely kids are to turn to drugs like Adderall.

“Especially here at Redwood, everyone’s parents are pressuring them a lot to do well on tests,” Kelly said. “Adderall is just another tool to help them get the grades they need.”

Kelly said she plans on taking Adderall again for future finals and SATs.

“I don’t think my parents are ever going to find out,” Kelly said, “but if they did, they’d probably be disappointed—they’d think I was cheating, like I was being dishonest or something like that.”

Contrary to their parents’ preconceptions, neither Kelly nor Mia consider taking Adderall to be academically dishonest.

“It’s not like you’re writing answers on your hand or anything. You’re not adding or bringing in extra information with you. It’s just making it so you can stay really focused and hopefully remember everything that you studied,” Kelly said.

Mia said that taking Adderall doesn’t guarantee an A on a test, and that knowing the material is still a crucial part of the process.

“It’s not a pill that makes you instantly smarter—it just helps your focus,” Mia said. “A lot of people think that popping an Adderall means not having to study as much, but they’re wrong. It completely depends on how much you prepare before. The pill is just kind of something that will help you best demonstrate how much you know.”

Mia also said that although she isn’t planning on taking it again, she would be open to the idea if the opportunity presented itself.

“It was kind of a one-time thing,” Mia said, “but if I have another really hard or long or boring final again, I wouldn’t be opposed to taking it again.”

Peter said that he plans on taking Adderall again on tests and quizzes because so far, nothing bad has come out of it.

“It increased my physics grade by like, a letter, and it increased my SAT score by multiple points,” he said. “Nothing that I’ve done while I was on it has gotten any worse, so I don’t really have a reason for not taking it—yet. There might be one eventually, but for now,

there’s no reason why I would stop taking it.”