Is it just me, or do they look a lot like Percocet Tylenol? Credit: Novartis
Is it just me, or do they look a lot like Percocet Aspirin?
  • Novartis
  • Is it just me, or do they look a lot like Percocet Aspirin?

This past Saturday, a 15-year-old New Zealand boy was rushed to the hospital by his father. Local news reports claim the boy was “was having a panic attack, hyperventilating and had turned white.” He survived and was eventually released, but hospital staff say he was still “on edge” and fatigued.

The cause? Snorting Ritalin. According to the boy’s father, he had been routinely getting high to complement marathon videogame sessions. When questioned about his drug abuse, the boy (unnamed for fear of reprisals) justified his actions by claiming the drug is non-addictive.

“Being such a traumatic, emotional experience of thinking my boy was dying, to `he is snorting drugs’, put me in shock. I had a hundred questions but was too shocked and drained to address them,” the father said, before warning other parents to lock up their prescription drugs lest their children develop a taste for the high life.

I’m doing my best to sound uncharacteristically sincere here, but admittedly, this piece was inspired by a pressing question I have for you all: Is this really a thing now?

I mean, I know Ritalin abuse is nothing new, and maybe I’m just not of that subculture, but is this a widespread issue? Do any of you spend your nights huffing faux amphetamines and writing thesis papers, or stuffing little baggies of ADHD pills in your pockets before heading out to a show?

11 replies on “Ritalin Is Bad For You”

  3. It’s definitely a thing. When I was in college, kids would snort adderall or ritalin before going out dancing. That was over a decade ago. It’s kind of surprising that you don’t hear about this more often.

  4. This has been a thing for a long time – no need to ask how I know that.

    And it’s a thing for young adults, who are determined and reckless enough to crush and snort whatever comes into their field of view until something works.

    Adults generally have the money/inclination to buy real drugs or alcohol.

  7. #4:

    Totally agree.

    Also, yeah, snorting Ritalin has been “a thing” for a long time. I graduated high school in 1996, and during my sophomore, junior, and senior years both regularly witnessed my peers snorting Ritalin, as well as did it myself a few times.

    The basic line of thinking at that time for bored kids my age was that if we couldn’t get pot (which is expensive [on a teenager’s budget] and illegal), then we’d have to get something else, and Ritalin was pretty high up on the list of other things to get high with, and it was easy to obtain.

    All things considered, this kind of story isn’t a terribly shocking revelation.

  8. Yeah, I knew a few kids in high school that snorted the stuff in the mid-90s. One friend of mine was prone to Rit Rage – not fun to be around. And my brother’s roommate at a state school in the south had to buy a safe to keep people from stealing his Adderall. Kids down there would use it as a study aid. I’d say that makes their degrees about as valid as Barry Bonds’ home run record, but hey, I’m a traditionalist, I guess.

  9. i have heard of it being used countless times by college class mates as a way of being able to cram for tests. I once read an editoral piece on how these drugs are like steroids for body builders when it comes to preparing for examines and that the potential for abuse could lead to an epidemic of high school and college kids using the drugs to just stay competitive.

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