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This Issue 11/08/2007

Also in this issue

• Where to get waxed in Philly
• Ego of the Week: BMOC Edition
• Street Beats
• In the lion's den

"adderall? im selling. second floor at a back table"

"a doctor or street pharmacist"

"i'm on the second floor what you wearing?"

"where the hell are you? i will suck you right now for 60 mg of adderall"

-Anonymous conversation, boredatvanpelt.com

For Paul*, an otherwise average Penn student, an Adderall deal almost always started with a text message.

He'd get a text - from a friend of a friend, say, a quick missive asking for the stuff, anything he or she could get her hands on - and he'd move quickly, arrange to meet the person within hours at an agreed upon location. Maybe they'd meet near an unoccupied table at Van Pelt Library, or maybe the fellow student would come knocking at the door of his cozy apartment on a quiet, tree-lined West Philadelphia street: regardless, caution was key. Many times, Paul didn't know the names of the people who would show up at his door.

Paul, a Penn student with a shy smile and a Type B personality rare to overachieving Quakerland, is an ex-dealer of Adderall, which students use to focus on homework: a study drug. Unlike the archetypal dealer, Paul didn't go outside the campus limits for study drugs - his stash came from fellow Penn students.

Adderall, a prescription amphetamine used to treat ADD or ADHD, helps those without either disorder focus for hours, rendering the study drug irresistible to your average cram-happy college student. (Stimulants like Ritalin and Effexor are used similarly, although Paul dealt Adderall exclusively.) According to Martha Farah, a Penn Psychology professor who is currently researching study drug ethics, stimulants like Adderall work by increasing the dopamine activity in the brain, particularly in the pre-frontal cortex, the part of the brain most involved in focusing the mind and dealing with distraction. While Farah says it's not "super dangerous," Adderall has "abuse potential" - dopamine strongly affects our brain's pleasure centers, making it tempting to use again and again.

Yet despite our medical knowledge of Adderall, questions about the extent and scope of study drug use on campus remain. How do Penn students get study drugs? Who's buying? Where?

Enter Paul.

"I'm really more in-the-know about the whole Adderall experience overall," Paul says, eschewing the dealer label, although he supplemented his income selling for an entire semester last spring. He agreed, on the condition of anonymity, to sit down with 34th Street and answer our questions about Penn's study drug market. We wanted to know everything.

"ne1 wanna sell some adderall?"

"yes. $15 a pill. strong stuff"

-Anonymous conversation, boredatvanpelt.com