Over The Counter Adderall Alternative Raises Eyebrows

The stress of achieving better grades in college drives many students to go to extreme lengths to gain any advantage they can on their peers.  The difference between a 3.4 and 3.6 GPA could mean getting into or missing out on grad school for a student.  Amphetamines like Adderall are routinely used by college students to help them focus and stay up all night to study before exams.  Adderall is an addictive substance and always requires a prescription from a doctor to acquire.  This causes students to fake symptoms of ADHD or sleeping problems in order to scam doctors into writing prescriptions.  Some individuals abuse the drug and have to go to inpatient drug rehab for drug abuse treatment. Recently, doctors have been more strict with the prescriptions to avoid having their patients abuse the drug.  The new scare is that a form of adderall has been designed and is available over the counter for a low price.

AddTabz is a new drug designed to mimic the effects of adderall and has been approved as an over the counter substance.  Students who have been turned down by doctors for adderall can now purchase addtabz online and avoid dealing with doctors all together.  The drug is also relatively inexpensive and can be purchased in bottles of twenty, forty or sixty pills at a time.  The pill advertises that it produces all the positive effects people look for in adderall such as increased energy and focus, without the negative side effects including insomnia and dependency.

The pressure to succeed at Harvard is arguably much more intense than any other university in America.  Students at Harvard are highly competitive and will do whatever it takes to gain an advantage over their peers.  In the spring 2012 semester over half of a 279 student class was found to have cheated on a final exam.  The pressures of succeeding at Harvard make drugs like adderall or addtabz very appealing.  The Harvard Crimson Newspaper’s website started showing banner ads of Addtabz a few weeks ago and has recently removed them after news of addtabz controversial content leaked on the internet.  Many have called the product “counterfeit adderall” and that the FDA should shut down the company for selling prescription drugs without prescriptions.

Since the product is so new to the market, the consequences of using it are still unclear.  The drug claims to not produce any of the negative side effects of adderall, but is likely still dangerous.  Some people have claimed that after only one week of using AddTabz, their tolerance of the pill had increased.