Bianca was able to quit Adderall after her stay in the hospital, but when college applications hit during her senior year she felt it was “really urgent” to finish everything in time. She returned to her doctor for a refill and was surprised by how easy it was to get the pills, given her history of abuse.

“He didn’t verify anything,” she says. “He gave me a ton of Adderall—over 90 capsules at a time. It was a really ridiculous amount, and I saved them all up.”

Soon Bianca found herself in a dangerous cycle: a pill in the morning would prevent her from sleeping at night, and she found the only way to avoid being tired the day after was to take more Adderall. When she came to Harvard, she brought a stash of more than 100 pills with her.

She stopped taking them after her boyfriend threatened to end their relationship if she continued.

“There are days when taking Adderall would be a smart choice for that day, when it really would make me so much more productive, but I think for me it has been a really good decision not to take it,” she says now.

Bianca sold her remaining pills for $250 to a fellow freshman—Jessica.

“It’s not something I use all the time, but it’s there for me to fall back on,” Jessica says.

SIDE EFFECTS MAY INCLUDE

“There is a prevailing notion that since doctors prescribe medications such as Adderall, that they must be safe,” University Health Services spokesperson Nanci Martin writes in an e-mailed statement. But despite this perception, Martin writes that stimulants like Adderall can cause cardiac problems.

Harvard Drug and Alcohol Peer Advisors outline further risks of stimulants like Adderall on their website—including addiction, stroke, psychosis, and schizophrenia.

But labels and doctor warnings fail to prevent some students from popping pills. Though statistics on Adderall misuse vary widely, studies show that prescription drug abuse occurs on campuses across the country.

The 2009 National Survey on Drug Use and Health found that 6.4 percent of full-time college students age 18 to 22 misused Adderall that year. The number did not include students diagnosed with an attention deficit disorder, even though experts claim that some students fake symptoms in order to get study pills.

Closer to home, a 2011 survey by the Boston Globe found that among an “informal sampling” of students at four Boston-area colleges, 15 percent admitted to taking prescription drugs, most frequently Adderall, for stress relief, increased focus, and other unintended purposes.

Peter, a junior whose name has been changed, worries that doctors might discover long-term effects in the future, even though his occasional use of Adderall has not produced any immediate side effects.

“There is no way you can take a drug to make your brain work at twice the speed and intensity as normal without having some consequences,” he says.