Courtesy girlstyle, Flickr
As midterms roll around once again, I’ve become more aware of an issue that has persisted throughout my college career. Student reliance on a range of prescription drugs, from anti-anxiety meds to stimulant study aids, is rampant. On college campuses across the country students use prescription ADD drugs to increase academic performance, both with and without a prescription.
A 2005 New York Times article focuses on the illegal trading of prescription study aids during midterms. The author describes a scene at Columbia University, where students cluster outside the library chain smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee and exchanging pills during study breaks. The scene could have easily taken place at any university across the country and in fact seems reminiscent of the collection of students the chat on the concrete wall in front of the electric sliding doors of the DuBois library at all hours of the night.
The article cites the fact that 20% of college students have used Ritalin or Adderall as a study aid. Both drugs are also commonly used as an appetite suppressant or for recreational purposes. While from 1992-2003 the number of members of the general population who admit to abusing prescription drugs doubled, the number of teenagers who admit to abusing prescription medications across the same time span has tripled.
Students on college campuses can get pills from other students who have been prescribed the drugs and don’t take the full dose, and therein lies the true danger. When these strong drugs are taken without the supervision of a medical doctor, users don’t abide by dosing tables or take precautions to use them safely. Many illegal users may crush and snort the pills. Illegal users may also be more likely to use them on a binge-like basis, taking high doses for days at a time to handle large academic work loads leaving them vulnerable to a number of health risks.
Adderall can lead to a number of health complications including cardiac strain, drug dependance, nausea, decreased appetite, headache, insomnia, anxiety or depression and sudden death. In response to 20 instances of sudden death among Adderall users, the Canadian government suspended sales of the drug. The FDA issued a statement denying any serious risk associated with the use of the medication.
