Getting diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder couldn't have happened at a better time for me. The Friday before spring finals week my freshman year, I walked from the English/Counceling Services building to Lafene Health Center with a psychiatrist's prescription for Adderall folded in my sweaty pocket.
    I integrated Adderall, which is like a 2.0 version of Rittalin, into my schedule and passed my finals with flying colors. Instead of wasting all my time on Facebook, the little blue pill, which is no longer exclusive to Viagra, motivated me to design PowerPoint Presentations, scrawl out stacks of note cards, clean my room and fight off sleep.
    Fast forward a few months and I was working a 40-hour-a-week job, and found it impossible to make it through the day. My mood would nosedive,  and people became intolerable until I took an Adderall, whether I needed to focus on anything or not. Within 45 minutes, my issues were resolved.
    Over the next year, my dosage increased and so did my addiction. I couldn't conceive going to class without taking a pill. I slept half as much and lost 20 pounds because food revolted me. It helps to know the generic name of Adderall is Amphetamine — I made it to every class, but I was a speed freak.
    It took "hitting rock bottom" as alcoholics would describe it, for me to see the light. I was addicted to a drug prescribed and dispensed by a legitimate doctor for legitimate symptoms, but admitting to myself that I knew better in the first place was a hard pill to swallow.
    Eventually I started needing more than was prescribed to keep up with my rattled lifestyle, and nurses at Lafene would notice a spike in my blood pressure every time I came in for a refill.
    My doctor was my drug dealer, but he wasn't my enemy. I could only blame myself for taking Big Pharma for a whirl and encouraging a convenient diagnosis.
    I withdrew from school, I went home to think, and I spent the next semester learning how to wake up naturally, eat normally and focus on the task at hand.
    I realized I had come full circle when interviewing a campus drug counselor for an addiction story last January. His experience led him to ask a few pointed questions of my history with Adderall, and by the end of the interview he gave me his professional opinion, and I couldn't argue.
    I don't have Attention Deficit Disorder. I was just having what they call a typical freshman year.