WOND DRUG
Cramming students turn to study-inducing stimulants
bv Kelsie Smith
Sarah's mouth was dry. She was constantly thirsty. The Concerta she took did its job. She finished her paper hours ago. Now, she just had to keep busy.
had to keep busy.
She cleaned her room and organized the books on her shelf by color and by size. She lay in bed writing letters she would never send to friends she hadn't talked to in years. She had a lot to say, but no one was awake to listen.
Things would be like this methodical, obsessive until the stimulant wore off.
SIDE EFFECTS OF ADDERALL
Adderall to increase focus and stave off sleep.
Twenty percent of college students have used Adderall or
- Loss of appetite
- Weight loss
- Insomnia
- Headache
- Dizziness
- Nervousness
- Irritability
- Dry mouth
- Nausea
Feelings suspicion and paranola Source: www.add-adhd-help-center.com
The thing is, Sarah doesn't have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD. She's never had a prescription. But her freshman-year roommate did.
"I took it pretty much before every single test," the Leawood sophomore says. "Any time I needed to concentrate and get something done. I'm a really big procrastinator, so it was really easy when I took it because I could just knock something out in an hour."
Sarah's freshman-year habits are not uncommon. Today, college students across the country rely on stimulants like Concerta and
without a prescription, a 2002 University of Wisconsin study said. In a 2004 study, the Partnership for a Drug-Free America found that one in 10 teenagers had taken stimulants (Ritalin and/or Adderall) without a prescription.
Sarah's use of Concerta has not resulted in any serious side effects, but, if
abused, prescription stimulants can cause hallucinations and psychotic behavior. And as students report increasingly lax ADHD testing standards, doctors like Stephen Hinshaw, chairman of the psychology department at the University of California-Berkeley, worry that this trend is getting out of hand.
Adderall, Concerta and Ritalin, oh my
Stimulant medications are most often prescribed to treat ADHD. Common ADHD medications include Adderall, Concerta, Ritalin,
Strattera and Dexedrine. Adderall, however, is the most commonly prescribed ADHD medication on the market. More than 40 million Adderall prescriptions have been written since 1996.
But as the popularity of stimulants rises on college campuses across the country,some psychologists such as Hinshaw, who specializes in childhood and adolescent ADHD,say the dangers increase as well.
"I think it's a huge issue," Hinshaw says. "At colleges where students know that [stimulants] can be performance enhancers and that there are brief assessments [to acquire a prescription], and many people with ADHD ... don't like to take the medication everyday, then there becomes a market for it."
Shire Pharmaceuticals, maker of Adderall, maintains that studies show the drug, which comes in two forms, Adderall and a time-released version called Adderall XR, is safe and does not have addictive capabilities. Adderall is thought to work by "restoring the balance of certain neurotransmitters, or chemicals in the brain that send messages between the nerve cells and affect how we function," says Shire Pharmaceutical's Adderall XR Web site, www.adderalXR.com.
The site goes on to say that scientists believe two of those neurotransmitters, dopamine and
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