She had no idea she had a popular party drug on hand.

To her, the vial of prescription pills she’d once been given to treat attention deficit disorder were just leftovers, until a friend from New York called to ask if she’d mail out a few–just for fun.

The woman, a 29-year-old San Diego resident, didn’t do it. But she and her friends were intrigued.

“We said, ‘We should just try it. It could be fun,'” says the woman who, on the condition that she not be named, told how they partied on the drug once this summer and again in September.

In this case, the stimulant of choice was Adderall, an amphetamine. Others use methylphenidate, another attention-deficit drug more widely known by one of its brand names: Ritalin.

Whatever the type, authorities are concerned about ADD drug abuse.

Some unprescribed users are adults. But experts say many are young people–some of them grade schoolers, who get the drugs from peers being treated for ADD.

“They’ve got pretty easy access to it,” says Steve Walton, a detective with the Calgary Police Service in Canada.

Users often crush the pills and snort them to get a cocaine-like rush. Walton says he’s also found youth who frequent the rave party scene “stacking” the drug Ecstasy with Ritalin to prolong their high.

Reports of ADD stimulant abuse continue to surface in this country, too. They include the case of two rural teens arrested for stealing $9,700 worth of drugs, including Ritalin, from a pharmacy in tiny Downstate Lacon.

One survey, published in this month’s Psychology in the Schools journal, focused on 651 students, ages 11 to 18, from Wisconsin and Minnesota. Researchers found that more than a third of students who took attention-deficit medication said they’d been asked to sell or trade their drugs.

© The Sun-Times Company

Written by Marthan Irvine in the Chicago Sun-Times (AP), and published on DrKelley.info, November 27, 2001. Embedded links (if any) may no longer be active. (Ed. 12.31.10)

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