Ever had one of those days when you're feeling not so perky? Can't focus? Your mind seems scattered? Maybe you have ADD! But come on, everyone you know has ADD, and what's the point of going to doctors when your friends are more than willing to share a pill or two if it will help you study or party? But for kids all across the city, there's an easier way of getting these and other medications than calling up your doctor or pill-head friend. And it's the same place where millions of Americans are going to find love, buy furniture, or get a job. It's as simple as booting up your computer and signing on to Craigslist. But buyer beware! Besides the chance of being scammed or arrested while scoring drugs on the Internet, there's an even worse possibility. You might not be.

The Score

Jessica* doesn't look like your typical drug dealer. She has blond hair in a ponytail, wears classy but understated jewelry and opens the door to her Murray Hill apartment looking something between your favorite babysitter and your favorite aunt. "Hiiii," she says, smiling, "You're not a cop, are you?"

For more people than you think in New York (I can't speak for how often these transactions go on in other states), this has become an almost typical greeting. Jessica never lets you into her apartment, so no one can say exactly what the place looks like, if it does resemble a Baltimore drug den from The Wire. Maybe it's completely normal, like Jessica herself seems. Once you're inside the hallway of her building, she pulls out a prescription bottle and you pull out $300. Without even counting, Jessica shoves the money into her pants or jacket, hands you the pill bottle, and you say your goodbyes. The whole transaction takes less than five minutes, give or take travel time. And you've just bought yourself a month's prescription of Adderall, the addictive but commonly used "speed drug" of the ADD generation.

While our parents may have had rogue NYC docs to give them amphetamine shots and brown bottles of Dexadrine back in the Warhol days, now nothing can be bought for less than a health care plan, three months of therapist bills and a history of acting up in class. While most articles warn about the over-prescription of these Attention Deficit meds, in reality they are harder to score through the legal routes than buying a bundle of heroin, and often times more expensive. Ever since the Ritalin craze in the 90s, there have been tons of non-amphetamine drugs used to treat ADD and ADHD: Concerta, Strattera, even Wellbutrin all have been shown to increase concentration, without that side effect of making you all hopped-up.

So what's a good druggie to do? Go to the web of course, where these drugs are floating around by the score—if you know where to look. It's a common problem for high school and college students that those who are prescribed these drugs don't like the way they make them feel, and those who aren't would do anything to get their hands on them. So trade and barter markets abound on Craigslist, which basically acts as your college dining hall, give or plus a couple crazies.

The Clientele

Now, I'm not going to give you a step-by-step to how to buy drugs on Craigslist, but rest assured that any day of the week pharmaceuticals are being sold on a dealer-to-client basis. Unlike the cases for weed, cocaine, or marijuana, the "Are you a cop?" question is a basic formality because a) that's just something people picked up from TV shows and b) no precinct is going to waste its time setting up a sting for white, middle-class teenagers buying and selling in such low quantities of a drug.

Why do I say "all white"? Am I stereotyping the type of people who deal in pills instead of weight? Not according to Luke, who has been in the business of selling his multiple 'scripts for the past two years. "Not once have I ever been contacted online by anything other than white girls," he says, but then quickly corrects himself, "No, wait. I once sold Oxycotin to an older guy who wanted to meet in Century 21 to do the trade. And that was the most scared I had ever been that I was being set up." If this seems like a quick and easy way to make cash, perhaps it is. But with any story of excessive drug use, there is a downside. And for at least one girl, that side came in the form of a Requiem for a Dream-style descent into hell.

"A Drug Is a Drug"

After college, where Mary had been used to buying pills from her trusted friends, she hesitantly started buying drugs on Craigslist. She had been burned by one of those online pharmacies promising her that she wouldn't need a prescription and wasn't going to be wiring money to anyone she didn't know again. Originally, she was just planning to use the drugs to help out at her job. But one week, after not being able to find anyone to sell her pills (which go for a way marked up price: anywhere from $10-20 per pill) she found someone selling Hydrocodone, a painkiller.

"A drug is a drug, and it was the weekend coming up," said Mary, adding, "and when I met up with the woman, I couldn't believe what I saw." Instead of the typical bouncy college student, Mary was face to face with a stooped woman in her 50s, with a thick Long Island accent. "She could have been my grandma, and she was so nice," says Mary. "She was selling the pills, which were her husband's, to pay for her chemotherapy." Of course, that could have been a line, but Mary believed her and after rationalizing to herself that she was doing a good deed helping the woman out, she started to call her every week. "I didn't know her name, just her cell-phone number. But we always chatted like we were friends. I called her Grandma Pills."

Mary quickly learned the downside of taking 10 pills of Vicodin every day. Her head would hurt in the mornings, and she always felt like she was going to vomit. Still, the symptoms were controllable and weren't affecting her work. Then came the fateful day when it went too far.

"I was looking through Craigslist, and I saw an ad that said, 'In pain? Need help? $1.'" Intrigued, she responded to the ad and was quickly on the phone with a young-sounding man who told her to meet him at Coney Island if she wanted Fentanyl patches. "That was so far from my house, and I really had no idea what Fentanyl patches were, but I was willing to try anything once, so I Googled it." Fentanyl, for the uninformed, is a synthetic opiate that is 80 times stronger than morphine. Heroin is only 3 times stronger than morphine. It's really only given to those in extreme back pain or terminally ill cancer patients. It is worn transdermally, as a patch, releasing the drug into your system over a 72-hour period. Typically, the effects won't be felt until 12-13 hours after putting on the patch, but then the effect is akin to shooting heroin directly into your eyeball. At least, that's how Mary describes it.

Waiting for the bus after arriving to Coney Island (the young man warned her not to walk to his house, since it was a bad neighborhood), Mary couldn't help but felt like she had made a huge mistake, "Like, this was the point of no return. Like I knew this was a bad idea, because I had just wanted some quick study drugs and now I was dealing in high grade narcotics." But there were no cops waiting for Mary when she left the bus and stood merely 100 yards or so away from the boardwalk and pier where Jared Leto and Jennifer Connelly suffered the fallout of their own opiate habits. Instead she was greeted by a pockmarked face looking up at her from a wheelchair, where a young quadriplegic sat, a little dog in his lap.

"He was really nice, a little thug, but he kept telling me to be careful, and giving me specific instructions on how to use the drug. He told me not to cut it up into strips, because these weren't the type of patches that keep the Fentanyl gel self-contained, and if I cut it, it would leak everywhere onto my skin and I'd probably overdose." Still, it didn't take Mary too long to realize that she wanted a quick-fix, not something that was going to take half a day to feel, and then would hit her so hard she wouldn't be able to work or function. "I started cutting the patches open and sucking the gel," Mary said, "I read how to do it online, how to only suck the amount that could fit on the head of a needle. That way I got high immediately, and wouldn't worry about overdosing." Becoming a synthetic junkie though? That was something Mary hadn't planned for.

"I started going to this guy's place once a month, to pick up four patches for $250 dollars. After awhile I was eating more and more of the gel, and that's when things got bad." Mary lost her job, found another one, lost that one as well. She couldn't stop nodding off at work, or taking frequent trips to the bathroom to vomit. "One time I threw up so hard I gave myself a nosebleed. My boss saw me and fired me, thinking I was doing coke during work. I wanted to tell her she had the completely wrong idea. I was on this experimental heroin-substance, not cocaine!"

"Safe Enough for Me"

Eventually, Mary had enough when her friends held an intervention and told her that eating the gel, as opposed to wearing it regular, could cause quick and fatal liver failure. She detoxed herself after four months on the drug, and entered a drug rehabilitation program.

"I never expected it to get this bad, though that sounds stupid," Mary said. "I always thought I was smarter for not smoking weed, for not drinking heavily, for just taking pills once in awhile. It all started with wanting to have more energy, more pep with the Adderall. And then it turned into the exact opposite. I was a zombie."

Mary is not alone. At least not in her stumble into the drug trade via the Internet. Surprisingly, during no point of "The War on Drugs" does anyone remember prescription pills being a major battle. "You can get [Adderall] from any overeager therapist," said Luke, "so what's the harm if I don't want them and someone else does? It's not like I'm selling heroin or crack on a street corner. All these kids seem nice, and they are trust-worthy." Asked if he considers himself a drug-dealer, Luke laughs, "Not anymore so than the parents who get their kids hooked on this stuff when they're10 years old. If it's safe enough for a kid to take, it's safe enough for me."

* (Names changed, obviously)