First of all, are we in the 90's? Adderall is what we use now. Dickishness aside I'm going to give you my own experience since we're the same age.

It should be fine if you use it very very rarely. My friend relies on it as well (although he's always been absentminded and actually has a prescription) and the problem is that once you take it you never want to stop taking it. It truly is like Limitless; coming down will leave you feeling very foggy.

There's not really a risk if you have no current medical conditions as long as you stay in the small 10-20mg range. Don't take for 6 hours before bedtime. Don't be a dumbass and start taking upwards of 40, 50, 60 mg. I saw a post in a forum about how someone thought mixing it with marijuana was bad because they had heart palpitations; an important point is that they took 130 mg. At that point you should be dead. Remember that this a controlled drug for a reason; it's very potent stuff.

My advice is to treat it as a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency type thing. I only survived my finals' week push last semester because of it. Like I said, you will be foggy afterwards so plan for that. If you use it as a crutch it won't affect you when you really need it. So for example, I'd advise only using it during quals or defense when you need superhuman focus. And only after you've used it enough times that you know how to control yourself on it.

It also (like most amphetamines) will make you feel superhuman and push yourself more than is advisable at times. It's very easy to start skipping sleep and get sick, leading to missed work and exactly what you want to avoid.

My advice is to develop a more sustainable attitude and discipline towards school by visiting both /r/getdisciplined and /r/getstudying . I've found that even on Adderall I can get distracted by Reddit and make very finely nuanced posts that take up a lot of time. You'll plow through whatever is put in front of you so if you think it's a magic silver bullet to your flaws you'll be disappointed. Distractions can still happen.