Focus on the Adderall generation
By Colleen Sinsky
What a boring way to abuse drugs. Forget tasting smells, waving walls or seeing bugs crawling on your skin. The hottest narcotics trend on college campuses is Adderall -- the study drug.
When used properly, Adderall stimulates the central nervous system to reduce hyperactivity and increase concentration in patients with Attention Deficit Disorder or Attention Deficit/Hyperactive Disorder. Adderall is prescribed in doses ranging from 5 to 30 milligrams, and through a combination of slow-releasing amphetamine salts, it essentially acts as a low-dose stimulant.
Nationally, one in five college students admits to using the drug without a prescription. The rate of abuse is nearly twice as high in college students as it is in non-students of the same age. The best friend of all-night crammers, Adderall is not intelligence in a pill. Dr. Laurence Greenhill, a clinical psychiatrist at Colombia University, says that the idea of Adderall being a performance enhancer is a myth. "It won't increase your intelligence, it just increases your diligence," he said in a New York Times interview from 2005.
The number of Adderall abusers is growing because the hundreds of thousands of kids put on Ritalin in the 1990s are bringing focus drugs with them to college. In the last several years, the number of prescriptions of Adderall has more than doubled.
Today, Adderall is becoming more popular at Santa Clara. It's a safe bet that virtually every student here will know of at least one person who abuses Adderall come finals week. In contrast, I spoke with a 2004 graduate who said that the strongest study drugs she ever heard of while in school were No-Doz and Red Bull.
Another former student I interviewed sold leftover Adderall from his prescription to desperate students looking not only for a study boost, but also to get a cocaine-like high from snorting the crushed pills. While he enjoyed the income boost, he didn't realize the dangers that came with Adderall until he overdosed on caffeine and Adderall during finals week.
What does the growing popularity of Adderall mean for the future of academics? Can Adderall be called an academic steroid, giving those who abuse it without a prescription an unfair advantage?
Adderall and other drugs like it were created to level the playing field for legitimate sufferers of ADD and ADHD. If students with a normally-functioning brain take the drug, they experience heightened motivation, concentration and focus. But getting an extra leg up on that exam you procrastinated studying for carries with it a number of costs, ranging from insomnia to an emergency room visit.
Dr. Lauren Salaices, Santa Clara campus physician, said that without a prescription for drugs to treat ADD or ADHD, there are more negative side affects than benefits to abusing Adderall. Each year several students go to Cowell Health Center with heavy heart palpitations after taking a friend's Adderall.
It is also a felony to distribute or take another person's prescription. Salaices pointed out that only after thorough evaluation is a specific dose calibrated to an individual's need and, after years of slowly increasing the milligrams, the pills are too strong for a one-time pill popper.
Santa Clara students are intelligent and certainly capable of handling a tough workload. We should therefore be smart enough to understand the risks associated with illegally taking amphetamines as a study aid.
Colleen Sinsky is a junior economics major.