Your roommate, your friend, or the person sitting next to you in your Monday/Wednesday/Friday 8 AM class has done this. It happens all around college, and even high school, campuses everywhere. They think it is safe, but they do not know the dangers. They say, “just this once,” and they think it is okay. One in four college aged students has misused prescription drugs (2008 National Survey on Drug Use and Health). Prescription drugs are defined as controlled substances that are illegal without a prescription from a doctor. Non-medical use of these pills has been a rapidly spreading issue on college campuses in the past ten years and is growing to be as serious as alcohol abuse. Using these medications has risks including chances of addiction, overdosing, or death. People who have misused prescription drugs are also linked to other high-risk behavior like binge drinking, marijuana, cocaine, tranquilizers, and prescription pain relievers. For many, this abuse begins in high school with a category known as "smart drugs" or “study aids.” These pills are called stimulants and are used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, but for a lot of students they are used as a tool for academic performance enhancement, or sometimes just plain recreational use. They are readily available just about anywhere and are used a lot. Especially if the drug boasts benefits like being able to focus and earn higher grades, students will absolutely not think twice about the long list of dangers that inevitably follow the abuse of addicting prescription drugs. Personally, I have several friends who have taken Adderall before important standardized tests during their high school careers. My friends who are prescribed ADHD medication, sell their extra pills to peers who are looking to use them for non-medical use. A mutual friend of mine has ruined some close relationships because of her addiction to Vyvanse. (National Council on Patient Information and Education). The students who use such drugs are either unaware or simply do not worry about their gambles. The misuse and abuse of stimulants is a real, dangerous, and growing problem for students everywhere who more than likely do not believe it is an issue affecting mental and physical health.

Why do students feel the sad need to use drugs to enhance their academic performance? Why is their natural intelligence not enough? College students misuse stimulants in order to improve grades, concentrate, reduce stress, and forget about problems. Students take them to perform better, comparable to an athlete who uses steroids. Common justifications for taking these “study aids” include using them to stay awake and to concentrate while doing schoolwork. The truth of the matter is that some students fall under the pressure to be the best and the brightest and they think that they cannot be this without the aid of illicit drugs not prescribed to them. An article published on CNN claims “students say they take these stimulants for the ‘right reasons,’ to be more productive in classes and to stay afloat in the sea of intense competition” (Yanes), about the anxieties students face. In order to keep up with students’ busy lives they will take medications typically prescribed for ADHD like Adderall, Ritalin, or Vyvanse to pull all-nighters or cram studies in. Elite Daily brags about the use of Adderall in an article, “if you've slept through every single philosophy lecture of the entire semester, and you're 18 hours away from taking the cumulative final, Adderall can be your saving grace” (Strickler). Students either receive pressure from parents, try to compete with friends or peers, or self-inflict stress on themselves to be perfect or excel in academics in order to have a successful future. However, there are healthy ways to put pressure on yourself and unhealthy amounts. Similarly, there are also healthy methods of motivation and unhealthy methods. Taking drugs in order to be self-satisfied is absolutely unhealthy both emotionally and physically.

All medications have risks. When prescribed, they come with warnings, but what happens when the users are not the ones being prescribed to these medications? 81% of 1,800 college students (DeSantis 2008) thought illicit use of ADHD medication was either "not dangerous at all" or "slightly dangerous." It is easy for users to believe that taking prescription drugs is safe because the primary source has to be a doctor and they are of course approved by the Federal Drug Administration, but once abuse and misuse come into play, so does a long list of hazards and consequences. The abuse of prescription pain medications can lead to many problems including increases in blood pressure or heart rate, organ damage, addiction, difficulty breathing, seizures, heart attack, stroke, or death. (National Council on Patient Information and Education). ADHD stimulants increase neurotransmitters like dopamine, epinephrine, and norepinephrine, which is obviously not natural. The National Institute on Drug Abuse recognizes the prescription drug problem in America and warns, “Using stimulants like Adderall or Ritalin can make you feel paranoid (feeling like someone is going to harm you even though they aren’t). It also can cause your body temperature to get dangerously high and make your heart beat too fast. This is especially likely if stimulants are taken in large doses or in ways other than swallowing a pill.”

When people start using a substance, no one believes they are going to develop a problem. There is never an intention to become addicted. Using Adderall as an example, it is the second most common form of illicit drug use on college campuses, behind marijuana (Schwartz). Especially since the popularity of these pills has just risen in the past ten years, the long-term risks cannot even be fully studied. There is no telling what the effects will be after years of Adderall misuse, so this generation of young people using Adderall are essentially the guinea pigs, making it potentially even more dangerous. A study was conducted using social media to track and collect data about Adderall abuse, “The vast majority of tweets discussed Adderall use in a joking, sarcastic, or casual manner. Observed tweets [included:] ‘I need adderall. Can't focus on studying or finishing these reviews’, ‘this whole no adderall for the past 3 days is really getting to me #StillDoingWork #DontKnoHowTho’, ‘Does anyone have adderall? #desperate’, ‘adderall + school = winning’, ‘wish i had adderall to get my room cleaned faster’, ‘Adderall stockpile for finals’, ‘We would all graduate with a 4.0 if adderall was sold over the counter’, ‘Running on coffee and Adderall’, ‘yay for adderall-induced optimism #givemeaprescription’, and ‘Adderall, Coffee, Red Bull. Epic focus. Or a heart attack’” (Sarker), providing specific evidence about the lack of seriousness surrounding misuse of prescription pills for non-medical reasons. The number of tweets mentioning Adderall peaked during the traditional time of final exams for universities, showing that students use these pills to cram in their studying. Young people publish these tweets are all to see shedding an almost glorifying light on Adderall misuse. They could not be more wrong.

Two blue pills were all it took in her sophomore year of college at Brown University. Casey Schwartz was offered the “study aids” by a friend who was trying to get rid of the medication. She stayed awake all night and that was the beginning of her long, painful struggle with abuse. In a New York Times article, the serious addiction she faced is described as her life spiraled completely out of control as she lost weight, sleep, and her willpower. She shares the story of a scary experience about a specific week where she was using a lot of pills to compensate for her lack of sleep and started to feel dizzy, shake, and struggled to breathe. An ambulance brought her to the nearest hospital where she was diagnosed with an amphetamine induced anxiety panic attack after taking too much Adderall. The rest of Schwartz’s article is both eye-opening and disturbing because of the way she addresses addiction. She turned to message boards after not being able to quit the drug on her own, “One post, in particular, has stayed with me, a mother writing on QuittingAdderall.com: I started taking Adderall in OCT 2010. And my story isn’t much different than most. ... The honeymoon period, then all downhill. I feel like I cannot remember who I was, or how it felt, to go one minute of the day not on Adderall. I look back at pictures of myself from before this began and I wonder how I was ever “happy” without it because now I am a nervous wreck if I even come close to not having my pills for the day. There have been nights I have cried laying my daughter down to sleep because I was so ashamed that the time she spent with her mommy that day wasn’t real” (Schwartz). Addiction is a very real danger that no one really associates with abusing stimulants, especially when taking a pill just to perform better in school. It is not a thought that crosses one’s mind because they have good intentions to do well on an exam or a paper, but it should be. These drugs lead to dependence and can cause addiction because they affect the way the brain’s reward system works. The brain and the body adapt to drugs in their systems leading to tolerance and when use stops, withdrawal occurs. Addiction becomes existent when a person uses the drug regardless of negative consequences and the drug becomes one of the most important things in life. 

The only way for users and potential users to realize the dangerous game being played with prescription drugs is for awareness to be raised. It is a serious issue that needs to be treated like one by all, including doctors. Students should be educated about the side effects and possibilities of the worst case scenario by their high schools and universities since this is where it is most popular. Before the abuse continues to grow even more than it already has, students need to know that “study drugs” are not the answer and how negatively stimulants can affect them.
