It's a law student's steroid.

Adderall, the drug of choice for most law students who admit to using prescription medication without a doctor's approval, is attributed with intensifying focus, stimulating thought and eliminating the need for breaks or sleep.

In the cutthroat environment of legal education, where a handful of exams can determine their fate, students use it as a performance enhancer in hopes of gaining a competitive edge, especially when they think other students are taking it, too.

“It's become so normed,” said John Delony, associate academic dean for student life at Texas Tech University College of Law.

Obtained through friends, friends of friends or family, Adderall taken without a prescription—and law schools' disinclination to address the problem—has created a dirty little secret on campuses across the country, where students, ironically, are breaking the law in order to become lawyers.

But whether the use of Adderall, generally viewed as a harmless study drug by those who take it without a prescription, actually improves performance is doubtful. Worse, mental health professionals and educators say that students' reliance on it imperils their health and makes them ill-prepared to handle life's challenges once they graduate.

A survey with responses from 3,400 law students published in August showed that 14 percent said they had taken a prescribed drug without a prescription within the last 12 months, and 79 percent of the students who had taken a prescribed stimulant without a prescription identified Adderall as the drug they took.

The study, “Suffering in Silence: The Survey of Law Student Well-Being” published in the Journal of Legal Education, was conducted by Jerome Organ, professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law; David Jaffe, associate dean for student affairs at American University Washington College of Law; and Katherine Bender, a professor in the education counseling department at Bridgewater State University

The reasons students gave for taking Adderall and drugs like it included enhancing academic performance, concentrating better, studying longer and increasing alertness.

The percentage of law students taking unprescribed Adderall probably is higher, Delony said, because they are reluctant to share information about drug use for fear of jeopardizing graduation or admission to the bar.

“They're hiding it,” Delony said.

Adderall, prescribed to treat Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, is a blend of amphetamine salts created in 1996 by Richwood Pharmaceuticals, which later merged with Shire PLC. In 2014, there were 63 million prescriptions for ADHD drugs, according to data compiled by Shire.

For one Brooklyn Law School graduate, sharing his prescription of Adderall while in school was a way to help his friends compete. The student, who is 26 and graduated in May, requested anonymity to speak openly about unprescribed Adderall use on campus.

“I'd say it's prevalent,” said the student, who was diagnosed with ADHD in second grade. He added that “a fair number of people did not take it.”

He shared his prescription “a few times” he said. “I knew the rigors and the stress,” he said. “It's almost kind of helping a friend out. 'Hey, you have a lot of work to do, I have a couple extra.' ”

Brooklyn Law School, in a statement through a spokesman, said that it could not comment on the student's remarks because it had no information verifying they were true.

The statement continued: “The Law School is a drug-free zone where there is zero tolerance for any illegal drug activity. We offer a comprehensive and confidential mental health program for students in need of assistance.”

The drug has become popular among students because of the intense focus it can provide, said Will Meyerhofer, a New York University School of Law graduate and former Sullivan & Cromwell associate who is now a psychotherapist in New York. The majority of his patients are attorneys, he said.

“They are pretty magical pills,” Meyerhofer said. “But you take enough and you'll be cleaning the bathroom with a toothbrush.”

Law school, with its heavy coursework demands, make-or-break final exams and class rankings, is an ideal environment for Adderall abuse, he said.

“It's extremely competitive, you're paying all this money for law school, and if you can get a little advantage, it's a recipe for Adderall,” he said.

And for students who rely on unprescribed Adderall in law school, there's a good chance that they will keep using it when they begin practicing.

“It continues in the firms,” Meyerhofer said.

Troublesome for Erin Flynn, an attorney at the Law Offices of Eric Franz in New York and chairwoman of the New York State Bar Association's Young Lawyers Division, is the effect Adderall abuse may have on a student's self-confidence in law school and later in practice.

“I feel sad for these students,” Flynn said. “They're depriving themselves of knowing if their achievements are their own or because of a performance-enhancing drug.”

While the number of prescriptions for Adderall has remained unchanged among young adults, misuse and emergency room visits related to the drug have risen dramatically, according to a study by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health published in February in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. The study also found that the main driver of misuse and emergency room visits related to the drug was the result of diversion—people taking medication that was legitimately prescribed to someone else.

The study, which noted that there is little research about the long-term effects of Adderall use, identified serious cardiovascular side effects, such as high blood pressure and stroke. It also found that the drug increases the risk for mental health problems, including depression, bipolar disorder and unusual behaviors including aggressive or hostile behavior.

Whether all the pill popping is actually improving cognitive performance for law students is unlikely. Adderall taken by people without ADHD makes them believe they're doing better than they actually are, according research by Dr. Martha Farah at the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania. Lower-performing individuals may show some improvement, Farah's research shows, but higher performers show no improvement or worse performance.

The misuse of Adderall and drugs like it prompted Alex LaCroix, an attorney in Phoenix, to incorporate a limited liability company in 2013 to market Mental Mojo, a “brain-boosting” powder designed to increase alertness.

LaCroix, who graduated from Arizona State University Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law in 2012, said that he and his business partners wanted to give students a competitive advantage that was legal and healthy.

LaCroix declined to comment directly about Adderall abuse at his law school. “What I'll say is this,” he said. “In undergrad, it was a rampant. Based upon that premise, in any elite of academic environment, people will use Adderall.”

Arizona State University Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law did not respond to requests for an interview about Adderall use at the school.

Posts on blogs and message boards highlight the pervasiveness of the drug's misuse. Last year, a question reposted on Reddit about Adderall's presence in law schools prompted a string of comments, including, “It's prevalent, it's also hilariously obvious to anyone who has taken it when others are on it,” and “It seemed like everyone and their brother was taking them at my school,” and “I was surprised come finals-time how many people were taking Adderall or something similar.”

Law.com repeatedly contacted Yale Law School, Harvard Law School and Stanford Law School, and their deans' offices, seeking comment about the misuse of Adderall and similar drugs among law students. These schools, generally considered the top in the country, were asked whether they were addressing any Adderall abuse problems.

A Yale spokeswoman said no one was available to comment. A Harvard spokeswoman said the school had nothing to contribute to the story.

A Stanford spokeswoman emailed a statement that said the school was concerned about the well-being of its students but that it was “not aware of any students here with this issue” and did not have “anything to add” to the story.

Confronting the Problem

Although students' abuse of Adderall has occurred to varying degrees for nearly two decades, schools generally have not specifically addressed the long-running problem, in part, because they don't want to admit that illegal drug use occurs on their campuses, said Jaffe, one of the authors of “Suffering in Silence.”

“It's a dean's or faculty's role to say 'we understand it's a problem that exists nationally, which we need to address locally,' ” Jaffe said.

Law schools, in theory, could address the problem through their honor code systems. The use of Adderall without a prescription runs afoul of honor codes that, in general, prohibit violations of school rules and state and federal laws, and require students who witness violations to report them to school administrators. Taking Adderall without a prescription also could constitute cheating by giving the user an unfair advantage (although proving it would be extremely difficult).

Stopping the misuse of Adderall through honor code enforcement would be cumbersome and basically ineffective, said Michael Frisch, ethics counsel and adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center. First, proving that an unfair advantage or even a crime occurred would be costly and time-consuming, and even if a case got that far, it would do little to solve the underlying problem of abuse and addiction, he said.

Even a simple warning message during first-year orientation at law schools about the illegality of taking Adderall without a prescription could make matters worse, Jaffe said.

“We're trying to communicate that we care about you as a student,” he said. “If the message comes out we're headhunting, then we're definitely driving the students underground. You risk turning students off from getting help.”

For the Brooklyn Law School student, the honor-code approach would not have deterred students from taking Adderall without a prescription, he said. “I really don't think it would have much of an effect, to be honest,” he said.

But there is another approach. “Soft messaging” is the way the University of Miami School of Law is addressing the problem, said Janet Stearns, dean of students at the school.

“If I put together a panel and call it an 'Adderall abuse information session,' no one will show up—no matter what I'm serving for lunch,” Stearns said.

Through its mindfulness programs, which include seminars, student activities and for-credit classes, the school's faculty, staff and guest speakers—including successful attorneys and prominent judges—convey the do's and don'ts of healthy living and work-life balance.

“The 'don'ts' include 'you don't want to be taking Adderall, you don't want to stay up all night, and you don't want to drink Red Bull,' ” Stearns said.

Mindfulness programs in recent years have caught on at many law schools, including University of California, Berkeley, School of Law; Harvard Law School; University of Virginia School of Law, University of Florida Levin College of Law; and University of San Francisco School of Law.

Such programs, Stearns said, provide a good way to drive home the point, even indirectly, that using Adderall without prescription is not a viable strategy.

“Students are looking for how they can be successful in the classroom, on the bar exam and in getting a job,” Stearns said. “We can show them firm leaders who take a yoga break or a federal judge who meditates. The students may or may not be aware that we're giving an Adderall message.”

Contact Leigh Jones at [email protected]. On Twitter: @LeighJones711