get high on grades not on drugs essay

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Students used to take drugs to get high. Now they take them to get higher grades

The use of so-called ‘smart drugs’, bought on the internet, to boost mental performance is rife in British universities. So can we all benefit from ‘having an edge’, or is it just a form of cheating that should be banned?

I t’s still more than three months until finals, but there’s a whiff of panic in the air of the Edinburgh student flat where I’m having dinner. “Everybody’s feeling it,” says Suzy. Feeling what? “The pressure. There’s just so much pressure.” About what? Your exams? Or what to do next?

“Everything. I shouldn’t even be here. I didn’t even want to go to university but everyone said I should. And the work! It’s just… there’s so much of it! I feel like I wouldn’t even have a chance if it wasn’t for modafinil.”

Modafinil: a prescription-only medication for narcolepsy that the NHS’s website describes as “a central nervous system stimulant” that prevents “excessive sleepiness during daytime hours”. Or, used off-label, bought via some off-shore pharmaceutical retailer, it’s what’s known as a “smart drug”. I hadn’t even heard of it a week ago, but it turns out they’re all on it, the students. They’ve all taken it on at least a couple of occasions, all five of the female final-year students who live in this particular flat, and all five of the male final-year students they’ve invited over to dinner.

“It’s not that it makes you more intelligent,” says Phoebe, a history student. “It’s just that it helps you work. You can study for longer. You don’t get distracted. You’re actually happy to go to the library and you don’t even want to stop for lunch. And then it’s like 7pm, and you’re still, ‘Actually, you know what? I could do another hour.’”

But isn’t it cheating? Or like doping in cycling? If lots of people are doing it, it’s too much of a disadvantage not to join in?

“My ex-girlfriend used to say that to me,” says Johnny, another history student. “She was like, ‘I don’t agree with it. It’s unfair.’ And then when the pressure was on, she was like, ‘Can you give me some?’”

Everyone’s taking it, they say. What do you mean everyone? “Everyone!” says Phoebe. “Everyone I know, anyway. It’s rife.”

You do have to be to be careful though, says Johnny. “It gives you this amazing concentration but you have to make sure you’re actually in front of your books. I spent five hours in my room rearranging my iTunes library on it once.”

The talk moves on, but later when I ask them what they’re going to do next year, they tense up. The ones who do know what they want to do next year worry about how they’re going to get there. And the ones who don’t know just go into a state of mild panic and ask questions like, “How did you know what you wanted to do?”

“My parents don’t have a clue what it’s like these days,” says Daniel. “My dad is really successful. And he got to where he is today with a 2:2 from Hull University. You wouldn’t get a look in the door with most jobs with that these days.”

Student life has changed. But it’s not that it’s changed from what it was like when I was a student a generation ago, it’s that it’s changed from what it was even five years ago. Jack Rivlin, who’s the founder and editor of the Tab , a national network of student news sites, says it’s obvious from the traffic stats on his website.

“We can track it from the change in stories that interest students these days. It’s stories about CVs, jobs, fees… much more so than it used to be. We can see it. Students are much more career-conscious than they were even five years ago when I was a student. They’re much more conscious of getting value out of their degree. The atmosphere is definitely careerist and competitive and getting more so.”

And, this is where modafinil, and the other smart drugs that have become increasingly common in universities across Britain – Ritalin (methylphenidate), Adderall (mixed amphetamine salts), Dexedrine (dextroamphetamine), all of which are attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) medications – start to look like a symptom rather than a cause.

Because this year’s final students are the first to graduate into a brave new world of massive debt. They’re the first cohort to come through who will experience the full force of the impact of the coalition’s decision to introduce tuition fees: they’ll owe an average of £44,000 a head by the time they leave in just a few months. This is at a time when stories about graduate unemployment and exploited interns are never far from the news pages – last week a media group admitted that it was charging students to write for it , and before that it was a thinktank making its unpaid interns pay £300 for a reference .

And in this scenario, if you were offered a small white pill that held the promise of enhanced productivity, greater focus, more hours in the library, and, ultimately, the potential of a better degree, well… it’s not hard to see the attraction.

Though, it’s not quite as simple as that. Everyone’s brain chemistry is different. Everyone reacts in a different way. There are no medical checks when you click a button on the internet. And no controls over what you’re actually sent. I hear story after story about essay deadlines achieved against all odds and then when I’m leaving, one of the quieter women says to me: “It’s awful. I just got… very anxious. Depressed.”

There have always been drugs, of course. Every generation has had its narcotic of choice. LSD provided the mind-expanding backdrop to the 60s and the appearance of ecstasy in the late 80s kickstarted rave culture and another summer of love. But this use of drugs to work harder, to gain a competitive advantage, to produce more – this is new, at least in Britain. Anjan Chatterjee, a professor of neurology at the University of Pennsylvania, who has published several influential papers on the ethics of smart drugs, tells me that he sometimes makes jokes about it. “When I was young, students would use drugs to check out. Now they’re using them to check in.”

He’s witnessed the rise, in the last 10 years, of a generation of American students doping themselves up on various medications they believe will give them a competitive edge. “It’s even in high schools now, especially in the more affluent suburbs. Students call them ‘study aids’; they don’t even think of them as drugs. There’s an entire grey market on campuses. But then, the current estimate is that a third of all students have a prescription for some sort of psychoactive medication anyway: antidepressants, or medication for ADHD, or for anxiety, so the availability is quite high. Often, they’ll just sell on the medication in the library.”

He believes that cognitive enhancement – or cosmetic neurology, as he calls it – is likely to become viewed as normal over time, in much the same way as cosmetic surgery has been. If it’s available, people will avail themselves of it. And his intuition “is that this use of drugs is not the cause of this sense of competition. It’s a phenomenon of it.” Smart drugs are part of a “parcel of broader cultural trends” that tap into something that is already within our culture. “And this is what does give me pause. It’s this relentless pursuit of productivity, and material productivity in particular that seems to be at the root of this. Going after drugs is a symptom of that underlying impulse.”

His account of the pattern of use of these drugs tallies with what the students in Edinburgh tell me too. I meet with a smaller group of them the day after our dinner: Phoebe and Johnny from the night before and Annie, who’s studying English, and they talk me through how and when they started taking them. What’s noticeable is that they’re all high performers, all on target for high 2:1s or firsts, academically bright but also articulate and sociable and trying to fit everything in. They’re all working hard while maintaining fairly full-on social lives: a large network of friends, nights out clubbing, nights in having people around for dinner.

“I didn’t know anything about it in my first year,” says Phoebe. “It’s all coming from the international students. It was the American students that we discovered it from. They’re all medicated and they’ve got prescriptions and they sell them on.”

Johnny describes his first experience with Adderall, which he bought off an American student. “It made you feel weird. I remember sitting in an exam and thinking, ‘This is awful.’ And, ‘Oh my God, I feel like I’m going to faint.’ But at that same time I was remembering stuff… I could remember whole paragraphs, word for word. It was amazing.”

It enhanced your memory? “It did. But the whole thing was so unpleasant. And then, last year someone had a prescription for modafinil and started selling them and then we started buying them from a website in Singapore.”

Annie has only taken it when she’s at what she calls “crisis point”. “I had two major essays to deliver within four days of each other and it was such a huge amount of work that I just needed something. And it got me through. I did it. But I have to say my work wasn’t as good as it could have been. It was just quite… shallow. It makes you focus very narrowly and I really zoned in on something which turned out to be quite minor.”

Phoebe has taken such drugs intermittently and lists the plus points: “You take it on an empty stomach first thing in the morning and then you work really hard all day and it kills your appetite and then if you go to the gym, you do a really good workout. So you lose weight, nail your exams, and go hard at the gym all at once.”

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Phoebe gave them up because she didn’t like the side effects. “My stomach,” she says, holding her waist. “It wasn’t good.” Johnny describes how he was taking them every day for several months. “And then over Christmas I realised I was definitely dependent on them. And it wasn’t even that beneficial for my work. It’s just kind of like a feeling inside that I need to take some so I can perform.”

He’s cut down but then he reveals that he’s taken one that morning. “Have you?” asks Phoebe, surprised. There’s no burning deadline for any of them today. They’re happy to sit and chat over lunch. “Just a half,” he says. “It just… you know how the first few hours of the day, you struggle to wake up and get going? You take a modafinil and you’re singing R&B in the kitchen half an hour later. You’re just on it.”

You don’t know what’s actually in those pills you’re ordering over the internet from Singapore, though, do you? “No…” says Johnny slowly. “They’re in blister packs though. You know, they look real.”

Modafinil, which is prescribed in the UK and the US as Provigil, was created in a French laboratory in the late 70s and was licensed for use in the UK as a narcolepsy medication in 2002. In the US, that was extended to include excessive daytime sleepiness and shift work sleep disorder. It apes some of the effects of classic stimulants such as amphetamines but without the classic stimulant side-effects: jitters, anxiety and so on. It’s not considered addictive, but some studies have shown that it appears to increase dopamine in the brain’s reward centre, which has been correlated with addictive behaviours.

And while the side effects of modafinil are considered relatively minor – a headache, most frequently, or stomach upset, or relatively rare, serious skin reactions have occurred in a handful of patients – perhaps the biggest issue is that there simply haven’t been any long-term studies into its effects.

Barbara Sahakian is a leading authority on the effects of smart drugs on the brain and she’s continually making just this point. She’s a professor of clinical neuropsychology at Cambridge University and she was one of the first people to realise that the drugs she was studying in her laboratory, drugs to ameliorate the effects of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, or to enhance the cognition of stroke sufferers, were being used for very different reasons.

“I was over in Florida where I was due to speak on my research and I hadn’t been scheduled until late in the day and I turned to my colleague and said, ‘It’s such a shame I’m so jetlagged.’ And he said, ‘Would you like some of my modafinil?’ It was a drug we used in the lab but I’d never thought of it in any other context and I was totally shocked. And then at the break I started asking other colleagues if they took any of these drugs and one said, ‘Yes, I use Adderall.’ And another was using modafinil and somebody else was taking Ritalin. I was quite amazed. At least half the people around the table were using them.”

She wrote about it for Nature magazine. “And they conducted an online survey and out of 1,400 people who responded, one in five was using something. I mean this is people who are [choosing] to fill in a survey on it, but it was still very surprising.”

There are ways that the drug is useful and could be even more useful, she believes. It’s been shown to improve surgeons’ performances. “They’re like shift workers essentially. They work late into the night and they mainly use caffeine and you get serious tremor with that, which is not ideal. It’s been shown to reduce impulsivity in the sleep-deprived, to improve problem-solving ability. If it reduces accidents in the workplace or bus drivers who fall asleep at the wheel, this has to be a good thing.”

What’s more, some of her most recent work has shown that it increases “task motivation. It motivates you to do the things you’ve been putting off. They become more pleasurable. It makes boring things more interesting. It’s the tax return drug.”

But she’s worried about the increasing number of students who come up to her after she gives talks. “Some of them are quite angry – they don’t want to use the drug but they feel they’ll be at a disadvantage.” More than that though is the lack of proper research into the effects over time.

“We just don’t have any long-term studies. That’s why it’s so inadvisable to use them until that’s done and that’s why I’ve been pushing the government to work with the pharmaceutical industry to do that. The other thing with young people is that their brains are still in development. If you have severe ADHD then you need a treatment like Ritalin to be able to function, but if you are a healthy young person… and you are putting these drugs into a developing brain. Well, we just don’t know enough about what this does.”

In the absence of hard facts, there are stories. I email back and forth with a young woman in New York called Kate Miller, who wrote a gripping account of her life on, and coming off, Adderall for the New York Times . Of how she discovered it in her final year at university and continued to use it as she started in a junior position at a law firm doing 60-hour weeks, until she finally realised she had become dependent and quit. Her withdrawal was long and difficult: “I slept through appointments and was unable to stay up to meet deadlines. The drug had curbed my appetite and… without it I was ravenous.” She found she was “sensitive and emotional from the new chemical imbalance” and “gaining weight and falling behind at work” only exacerbated it.

But the person I most want to speak to about his experience of taking smart drugs won’t talk to me about it: Johann Hari . He was a prolific and well-regarded columnist for the Independent until his career was consumed by a media firestorm in 2011. It was revealed that he’d written interviews with people that contained quotes he’d lifted from other sources and that he’d made malevolent remarks, pseudonymously, on other journalists’ Wikipedia pages.

Before that though, in 2008, he’d written an article about modafinil that extolled its unique and wondrous properties.

“Normally, one day out of seven I have a day when I’m working at my best – I’ve slept really well and everything comes easily and fast. Provigil makes every day into that kind of day,” he wrote. It enabled him to “glide into a state of concentration – deep, cool, effortless concentration”. And the upshot is that he “inhales books” and “exhales articles” effortlessly.

Eventually, though, he concludes that “taking narcolepsy drugs when you don’t have narcolepsy is just stupid”. And he cuts a deal with himself. He’ll put away the “gorgeous temptress” Provigil and only take it when “I’m really knackered” and not “more than two or three a month”.

Except that wasn’t it. He didn’t throw off the gorgeous temptress. He was still taking the pills when he lifted the quotes and when he anonymously took to Wikipedia to make his feelings known about his fellow journalists. He gave them up the week his disgrace came to light (along with the antidepressants he was also taking) as he explained to the Guardian in an interview he gave last month to promote his first post-scandal work: a book on drugs called Chasing the Scream .

“I had been swallowing fistfuls of white narcolepsy pills for years… I had read that if you take them you can write in long, manic weeks without pause and without rest and it worked – I was wired,” he writes in the foreword to the book. But he found he had begun to wonder “if I was becoming an addict myself. My long drugged writing binges would stop only when I collapsed with exhaustion and I wouldn’t be able to wake for days.”

Hari’s special subject is drugs. Chasing the Scream is the result of extensive research and has garnered serious critical attention. But he won’t talk about them with me. “It was a terribly painful period of my life and I find it too distressing to discuss in detail in public,” he emails. And he still won’t talk to me when I email back and point out that his article on the joys of Provigil is still all over the internet and is quoted on multiple sites by people who have used it as a reason to try it themselves, so it might be useful for them to know what he thinks of it now. And anyway, I’m interested in the cultural landscape in which these drugs exist, but he won’t be drawn.

He’s made it clear in various interviews that he doesn’t want to blame his behaviour on drugs or to invite sympathy for himself. And correlation is not causation and he, more than anyone, perhaps, is aware of the politics that make any discussion of drugs so fraught and open to misinterpretation. But still. In the absence of proper studies, personal experience, stories, are all that anyone has to go on and he obviously has an interesting one about modafinil that he’s simply not telling.

In the US, surveys have shown the highest levels of usage are at elite universities in the north-east, where academic pressure is at its most acute; where students are most competitive; where intelligence, and all the things that supposedly come from it, jobs, money, success, are perhaps most highly valued, most highly desired.

Sahakian also makes a comparison with cosmetic surgery. “We are already enhancing ourselves in all sorts of ways. I was shocked when those problems with those French breast implants came to light and the number of women who had to have them removed by the NHS. But it just all depends what you’re valuing. And if you go to a good university and expect a high salary, it’s likely you are going to be valuing certain things and if you can enhance these things that’s going to be attractive.”

And in Britain, informal surveys, such as one carried out by student website the Tab, have suggested the highest levels of usage are in the more academic universities – Oxford came top of its poll – and students of subjects with the highest workloads tended to show the highest usage. Rivlin, the editor of the Tab, was studying at Cambridge in 2010 when he first heard about modafinil and started using it. “It was my third year and it suddenly appeared and people were like, ‘It’s amazing. It allows you to concentrate.’ And, you know, there’s a lot of pressure to perform and it was very useful for mechanical academic work when you’re just trying to do a lot of notes or something.

“It probably says a lot about Oxbridge that it seemed to take off there. I remember my friends at other unis hadn’t really heard about it at the time but it’s now certainly bigger everywhere.”

Not that any university I get in touch with wishes to acknowledge this. It’s partly because there is a danger that articles like this, even with all the caveats, might encourage more people to try these drugs. Partly because there’s no good research being done into the numbers of students taking them, though there are all sorts of indices. In October, a record haul of smart drugs being traded over the internet was seized by the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Authority.

And Sahakian points to the increasing lifestyle use of cognitive enhancing drugs, or smart drugs, by healthy people. Published figures suggest a large discrepancy between the number of diagnosed narcoleptics and the amount of anti-narcoleptic drugs sold (Cephalon, makers of Provigil, made $1.2bn in worldwide sales in 2012), and the ever increasing amounts of ADHD medications being prescribed (Dexamphetamine is the second most privately prescribed drug in Britain).

But, more than this, it’s a can of worms. Duke University in North Carolina has amended its academic honesty policy to include “unauthorised use of a prescription medication” and Sue Wasiolek, the dean of students, tells me that it was students themselves who lobbied for this. They “wanted it noted for the student community that using drugs to enhance academic performance constitutes cheating”. It’s only gone as far as noting it, though. Without drug testing, it’s hard to see how it could be enforced, though several academics have started calling for that too.

In Britain, the official policy of most universities seems to be to pretend it isn’t happening. When I email Oxford University in search of somebody in student services to talk to about whether they’d encountered any students struggling with these drugs, I get varying sorts of brush-offs before an official statement is issued. But then, it is a tangled, morally difficult subject with no easy answers. Even if you ban it in exams, what’s to stop students using it for revision? And there are cognitive enhancers that have been around for hundreds of years that no one considers “cheating”. Caffeine is one; nicotine another.

But we may all have to consider these ethical questions one day. Because cognitive enhancement isn’t going away. Which is good news for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s sufferers. And possibly for the rest of us too. “We live in a global society that is very competitive and where there’s a lot of pressure and stress,” says Sahakian. “And there are lots of difficult questions. If you’re older and your pension is not performing and you have to compete against younger colleagues, what’s the pressure there? If you take one of these drugs, are you enhancing yourself? Or restoring yourself to what you were?”

The Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University was set up to consider just this sort of question and Anders Sandberg, a computational neuroscientist there, tells me how they look at the biggest threats humanity is facing, as well as opportunities; what emergent technologies may offer us as humans.

And cognitive enhancement, whether it’s a drug, or an electric current across the brain, or a form of brain training on computers, is absolutely part of our future, he says. The difficulty is doing research. “Ethics committees shy away from it. They get nervous. Part of the problem is the word ‘pill’. If you said it was a herb that gave you a better memory, rather than little white pills, people wouldn’t be so scared.”

But, he’s upbeat about their democratising potential. “University is a cognitive enhancement but it’s rather an expensive one. Smart drugs are relatively inexpensive and if they help people increase their opportunities then I think this is a good outcome. The smart people get more competition but a cognitively enhanced society would help us all.”

When I talk to Sandberg, he’s at a conference in Florida, due to deliver the keynote lecture the next day. “So I will take a modafinil after breakfast just to give me that extra edge.” He started taking it about 10 years ago and mostly uses it when “I am trying to solve really hard problems. I think it helps. Though quite often I find I’m not working on the right problem and I would actually probably really benefit from a good time-management course.”

He finds it suppresses divergent thinking, which is one part of intelligence, “but I think I’m too divergent. I never finish stuff. This helps me focus.” Mostly, though, he compares it to a “really good cup of coffee that lasts all day”.

What interests him too is what people say they want to enhance. People take smart drugs to get ahead in their career, or there’s enough of a placebo effect to make them believe that they are. Silicon Valley thrums with it. And Richard Kingdon, who runs a rehab clinic, City Beacon , in London’s Square Mile, tells me that people who come to him with addictions to cocaine and alcohol are often on it too.

“But we could be thinking about enhancements that make our lives happier and more fulfilled,” says Sandberg. “We asked people if they’d take a supplement that enhanced their kindness and empathy and only 9% wanted that.”

It isn’t the drugs. It’s us. We’re medicating ourselves against what used to be considered the problems of everyday life. Sadness, anxiety, overwork. “We really have to look at ourselves as a society,” says Sahakian. “We used to have a childhood. What is causing such stress? And it’s a problem with all types of drugs. If you look at the use of painkillers, it’s enormous. We all believe in the power of the little white pill.”

Danny Lee-Forest, head of operations in the enforcement division of the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, tells me that smart drugs are just one part of a huge online business. His team seized £11m worth of drugs last year “and it’s mostly stuff that either people don’t want to go to their doctor about or they do, and he tells them something they don’t want to hear, like go on a diet, or do some exercise. It’s slimming pills or erectile dysfunction pills or hair loss.” Or, increasingly, pills to block out the competing distractions of everyday life. Pills to get ahead.

Mike Power, the author of Drugs 2.0: The Online Revolution That’s Changing How the World Gets High , points out that ADHD drugs are amphetamines. “That’s what Adderall and Ritalin are. Those American students are all just speeding off their heads.” And while, it isn’t quite yet that bad here, we are living in a “more narcotised society generally. From the idea of celebrities ‘partying’ or people talking about ‘a big night out’, there is an unacknowledged ubiquity to drugs from the boardroom to the street, but we just don’t have the political or intellectual maturity to discuss it rationally. We just get various moral panics. For better or worse, the internet has opened up access to any number of drugs and we’re just not dealing with it.”

And it’s young people who are caught in the frame. “We have a generation of young people leaving university with mortgage-sized debts and the growth in prescription drugs and appetite for enhancement drugs mirrors that almost exactly.”

In the 60s, tranquillisers were known as mother’s little helpers. Smart drugs are capitalism’s little helpers. Just another symptom of the aching gap in equality that’s opened up: a product of scarcity, of the ever-increasing competition for resources, of a world in which everyone’s looking for an edge.

There’s something that I’ve so far failed to mention. And that is that I researched and wrote most of this article on modafinil. I ordered it from a UK website and received it the next day by Royal Mail special delivery, disguised inside a pouch for “rosehip supplements”. It’s not illegal to buy, only to sell on to others, and I took it in decreasing amounts over three days.

It was only going to be two, but I felt so out of sorts by the third day – dehydrated, headachy, poorly rested, a bit panicked – that I took some to feel halfway normal again. Which is pretty much the definition of dependency. I got a lot of work done. But I would have without modafinil: that’s why deadlines were invented.

And I can’t help thinking about Johann Hari. We’ve all done stupid things, made poor judgments. My suspicion, and it’s only a suspicion since he won’t talk to me about it, is that he doesn’t know what role modafinil played in his own cautionary tale. Did the small white pills have an effect on his behaviour? Did the gorgeous temptress play a role in his downfall? Or was it an accessory after the fact? It’s impossible to know. But I’m not tempted to continue my own experiment.

Young people, students, take it from the expert. Sahakian points out that one of the most effective, best documented and certainly safest cognitive enhancers is entirely free: exercise. Go for a walk, lift some weights, dance. The drugs may work. But they’re not the answer. It’s the world that needs changing, not your brain chemistry.

Some of the students’ details in this piece have been changed

Picture caption interviews by Jasmine Andersson and Shakeel Hashim

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Risky Rise of the Good-Grade Pill

By Alan Schwarz

• June 9, 2012

He steered into the high school parking lot, clicked off the ignition and scanned the scraps of his recent weeks. Crinkled chip bags on the dashboard. Soda cups at his feet. And on the passenger seat, a rumpled SAT practice book whose owner had been told since fourth grade he was headed to the Ivy League. Pencils up in 20 minutes.

The boy exhaled. Before opening the car door, he recalled recently, he twisted open a capsule of orange powder and arranged it in a neat line on the armrest. He leaned over, closed one nostril and snorted it.

Throughout the parking lot, he said, eight of his friends did the same thing.

The drug was not cocaine or heroin, but Adderall, an amphetamine prescribed for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder that the boy said he and his friends routinely shared to study late into the night, focus during tests and ultimately get the grades worthy of their prestigious high school in an affluent suburb of New York City. The drug did more than just jolt them awake for the 8 a.m. SAT; it gave them a tunnel focus tailor-made for the marathon of tests long known to make or break college applications.

“Everyone in school either has a prescription or has a friend who does,” the boy said.

At high schools across the United States, pressure over grades and competition for college admissions are encouraging students to abuse prescription stimulants, according to interviews with students, parents and doctors. Pills that have been a staple in some college and graduate school circles are going from rare to routine in many academically competitive high schools, where teenagers say they get them from friends, buy them from student dealers or fake symptoms to their parents and doctors to get prescriptions.

Of the more than 200 students, school officials, parents and others contacted for this article, about 40 agreed to share their experiences. Most students spoke on the condition that they be identified by only a first or middle name, or not at all, out of concern for their college prospects or their school systems’ reputations — and their own.

“It’s throughout all the private schools here,” said DeAnsin Parker, a New York psychologist who treats many adolescents from affluent neighborhoods like the Upper East Side. “It’s not as if there is one school where this is the culture. This is the culture.”

Observed Gary Boggs, a special agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration, “We’re seeing it all across the United States.”

The D.E.A. lists prescription stimulants like Adderall and Vyvanse (amphetamines) and Ritalin and Focalin (methylphenidates) as Class 2 controlled substances — the same as cocaine and morphine — because they rank among the most addictive substances that have a medical use. (By comparison, the long-abused anti-anxiety drug Valium is in the lower Class 4.) So they carry high legal risks, too, as few teenagers appreciate that merely giving a friend an Adderall or Vyvanse pill is the same as selling it and can be prosecuted as a felony.

While these medicines tend to calm people with A.D.H.D., those without the disorder find that just one pill can jolt them with the energy and focus to push through all-night homework binges and stay awake during exams afterward. “It’s like it does your work for you,” said William , a recent graduate of the Birch Wathen Lenox School on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

But abuse of prescription stimulants can lead to depression and mood swings (from sleep deprivation), heart irregularities and acute exhaustion or psychosis during withdrawal, doctors say. Little is known about the long-term effects of abuse of stimulants among the young. Drug counselors say that for some teenagers, the pills eventually become an entry to the abuse of painkillers and sleep aids.

“Once you break the seal on using pills, or any of that stuff, it’s not scary anymore — especially when you’re getting A’s,” said the boy who snorted Adderall in the parking lot. He spoke from the couch of his drug counselor, detailing how he later became addicted to the painkiller Percocet and eventually heroin.

Paul L. Hokemeyer, a family therapist at Caron Treatment Centers in Manhattan, said: “Children have prefrontal cortexes that are not fully developed, and we’re changing the chemistry of the brain. That’s what these drugs do. It’s one thing if you have a real deficiency — the medicine is really important to those people — but not if your deficiency is not getting into Brown.”

The number of prescriptions for A.D.H.D. medications dispensed for young people ages 10 to 19 has risen 26 percent since 2007, to almost 21 million yearly, according to IMS Health, a health care information company — a number that experts estimate corresponds to more than two million individuals. But there is no reliable research on how many high school students take stimulants as a study aid. Doctors and teenagers from more than 15 schools across the nation with high academic standards estimated that the portion of students who do so ranges from 15 percent to 40 percent.

“They’re the A students, sometimes the B students, who are trying to get good grades,” said one senior at Lower Merion High School in Ardmore, a Philadelphia suburb, who said he makes hundreds of dollars a week selling prescription drugs, usually priced at $5 to $20 per pill, to classmates as young as freshmen. “They’re the quote-unquote good kids, basically.”

The trend was driven home last month to Nan Radulovic, a social worker in Santa Monica, Calif. Within a few days, she said, an 11th grader, a ninth grader and an eighth grader asked for prescriptions for Adderall solely for better grades. From one girl, she recalled, it was not quite a request.

“If you don’t give me the prescription,” Ms. Radulovic said the girl told her, “I’ll just get it from kids at school.”

Keeping Everyone Happy

Madeleine surveyed her schedule of five Advanced Placement classes, field hockey and several other extracurricular activities and knew she could not handle it all. The first physics test of the year — inclines, friction, drag — loomed ominously over her college prospects. A star senior at her Roman Catholic school in Bethesda, Md., Madeleine knew a friend whose grades had gone from B’s to A’s after being prescribed Ritalin, so she asked her for a pill.

She got a 95. Thereafter, Madeleine recalled, she got Adderall and Vyvanse capsules the rest of the year from various classmates — not in exchange for money, she said, but for tutoring them in calculus or proofreading their English papers.

“Can I get a drink of water?” Madeleine said she would ask the teacher in one class, before excusing herself and heading to the water fountain. Making sure no one was watching, she would remove a 40-milligram Vyvanse capsule from her purse and swallow it. After 30 minutes, the buzz began, she said: laser focus, instant recall and the fortitude to crush any test in her path.

“People would have never looked at me and thought I used drugs like that — I wasn’t that kid,” said Madeleine, who has just completed her freshman year at an Ivy League college and continues to use stimulants occasionally. “It wasn’t that hard of a decision. Do I want only four hours of sleep and be a mess, and then underperform on the test and then in field hockey? Or make the teachers happy and the coach happy and get good grades, get into a good college and make my parents happy?”

Madeleine estimated that one-third of her classmates at her small school, most of whom she knew well, used stimulants without a prescription to boost their scholastic performance. Many students across the United States made similar estimates for their schools, all of them emphasizing that the drugs were used not to get high, but mostly by conscientious students to work harder and meet ever-rising academic expectations.

These estimates can be neither confirmed nor refuted because little data captures this specific type of drug misuse. A respected annual survey financed by the National Institute on Drug Abuse , “Monitoring the Future,” reports that abuse of prescription amphetamines by 10th and 12th graders nationally has actually dipped from the 1990s and is remaining relatively steady at about 10 percent.

However, some experts note that the survey does not focus on the demographic where they believe such abuse is rising steadily — students at high-pressure high schools — and also that many teenagers barely know that what they often call “study drugs” are in fact illegal amphetamines.

“Isn’t it just like a vitamin?” asked one high school junior from Eastchester, a suburb of New York.

Liz Jorgensen, a licensed addiction specialist who runs Insight Counseling in Ridgefield, Conn., said her small center had treated “at least 50 or 60” high school students from southern Connecticut this school year alone who had abused prescription stimulants for academics. Ms. Jorgensen said some of those teenagers landed in rehab directly from the stimulants or, more often, grew comfortable with prescription drugs in general and began abusing prescription painkillers like OxyContin.

A spokesman for Shire, which manufactures Vyvanse and Adderall’s extended-release capsules, said studies had shown no link between prescribed use of those drugs and later abuse.

Dr. Jeff Jonas, Shire’s senior vice president for research and development, said that the company was greatly concerned about the misuse of its stimulants but that the rate was very small. “I’m not aware of any systematic data that suggests there’s a widespread problem,” he said. “You can always find people who testify that it happens.”

Students who sell prescription stimulants to their classmates focus on their burdens and insecurities. One girl who sells to fellow students at Long Beach High School on Long Island said: “These kids would get in trouble if they don’t do well in school. When people take tests, it’s immediately, ‘Who am I getting Adderall from?’ They’re always looking for it.”

Every school identified in this article was contacted regarding statements by its students and stimulant abuse in general. Those that responded generally said that they were concerned about some teenagers turning to these drugs, but that their numbers were far smaller than the students said.

David Weiss, superintendent of Long Beach Public Schools, said the survey his district used to gauge student drug use asked about only prescription medications in general, not stimulants specifically.

“It has not been a surface issue for us — we’re much more conscious of alcohol or other drug use,” Mr. Weiss said in a telephone interview. “We haven’t had word that it’s a widespread issue.”

Douglas Young, a spokesman for the Lower Merion School District outside Philadelphia, said prescription stimulant abuse was covered in various student-wellness initiatives as well as in the 10th-grade health curriculum. Mr. Young expressed frustration that many parents seemed oblivious to the problem.

“It’s time for a serious wake-up call,” Mr. Young said. “Straight A’s and high SAT scores look great on paper, but they aren’t reflective measures of a student’s health and well-being. We need to better understand the pressures and temptations, and ultimately we need to embrace new definitions of student success. For many families and communities, that’s simply not happening.”

Fooling the Doctors

During an interview in March, the dealer at Lower Merion High reached into his pocket and pulled out the container for his daily stash of the prescription stimulants Concerta and Focalin: a hollowed-out bullet. Unlike his other products — marijuana and heroin, which come from higher-level dealers — his amphetamines came from a more trusted, and trusting, source, he said.

“I lie to my psychiatrist — I expressed feelings I didn’t really have, knowing the consequences of it,” he said, standing in a park a few miles from the high school. “I tell the doctor, ‘I find myself very distracted, and I feel this really deep pain inside, like I’m anxious all the time,’ or something like that.”

He coughed out a chuckle and added proudly, “Generally, if you keep playing the angsty-teen role, you’ll get something good.”

Christine, a junior sitting nearby, said she followed the well-known lines to get her drugs directly and legally, a script for scripts. “I’m not able to focus on schoolwork,” she said in a mockingly anxious voice. “I’m constantly looking out the window.” Although she often uses the drugs herself, snorting them for a faster and more intense effect, she said she preferred to save them for when her customers crave them most.

“Right before everybody took the PSATs, a bunch of kids went to the bathroom to snort their Addies,” she said.

This is one of the more vexing problems with stimulants in high schools, experts said — the drugs enter the schools via students who get them legally, if not legitimately.

Older A.D.H.D. drugs required low doses every few hours, and schools, not wanting students to carry the drugs themselves, had the school nurse hold and dispense the pills. Newer long-lasting versions like Adderall XR and Vyvanse allow parents to give children a single dose in the morning, often unaware that the pills can go down a pants pocket as easily as the throat. Some students said they took their pills only during the week and gave their weekend pills to friends.

The mother of one high school freshman in Westchester County said she would open the kitchen cabinet every morning and watch her son take his prescribed dose of Ritalin. She noticed one day that the capsule was strangely airy and held it up to the light. It was empty.

“There were a few times we were short in the month, and I couldn’t understand why,” recalled the woman, whose son was in eighth grade at the time. “It never dawned on me until I found those empty capsules, and then I started discovering the little packets of powder. He was selling it to other kids.”

A number of teenagers interviewed laughed at the ease with which they got some doctors to write prescriptions for A.D.H.D. The disorder’s definition requires inattentiveness, hyperactivity or impulse control to present “clinically significant impairment” in at least two settings (school and home, for example), according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Crucially, some of this impairment must have been in evidence by age 7; a proper diagnosis for a teenager claiming to have A.D.H.D., several doctors said, requires interviewing parents, teachers and others to confirm that the problems existed long before.

Many youngsters with prescriptions said their doctors merely listened to their stories and took out their prescription pads. Dr. Hilda R. Roque, a primary-care physician in West New York, N.J., said she never prescribed A.D.H.D. medicine but knew many doctors who did. She said many parents could push as hard for prescriptions as their children did, telling her: “My child is not doing well in school. I understand there are meds he can take to make him smarter.”

“To get a prescription for Adderall was the Golden Ticket — it really was,” said William, the recent graduate of Birch Wathen in Manhattan.

A high school senior in Connecticut who has used his friend’s Adderall for school said: “These are academic steroids. But usually, parents don’t get the steroids for you.”

As with the steroids taken by athletes, the downside of prescription stimulants appears after they provide the desired short-term competitive benefits. This was the case with a recent graduate of McLean High School in Virginia, one of the top public schools in the Washington area.

Late in his sophomore year, the boy wanted some help to raise his B average — far from what top colleges expected, especially from a McLean student. So he told his psychologist what she needed to hear for a diagnosis of A.D.H.D. — even gazing out the window during the appointment for effect — and was soon getting 30 pills of Adderall every month, 10 milligrams each. They worked. He focused late into the night studying, concentrated better during exams and got an A-minus average for his junior year.

“I wanted to do everything I could to get into the quote-unquote right school,” he recalled recently.

As senior year began, when another round of SATs and one last set of good grades could put him over the top, the boy said he still had trouble concentrating. The doctor prescribed 30 milligrams a day. When college applications hit, he bought extra pills for $5 apiece from a girl in French class who had fooled her psychiatrist, too, and began taking several on some days.

The boy said that as his A-minus average continued through senior year, no one suspected that “a kid who went to Bible camp” and had so improved his grades could be abusing drugs. By the time he was accepted and had enrolled at a good but not great college, he was up to 300 milligrams a day — constantly taking more to stave off the inevitable crash.

One night, after he had taken about 400 milligrams, his heart started beating wildly. He began hallucinating and then convulsing. He was rushed to the emergency room and wound up spending seven months at a drug rehabilitation center.

To his surprise, two of 20 fellow patients there had also landed in rehab solely from abusing stimulants in high school.

“No one seems to think that it’s a real thing — adults on the outside looking in,” the boy said. “The other kids in rehab thought we weren’t addicts because Adderall wasn’t a real drug. It’s so underestimated.”

‘No Way You’d Notice’

The Sklar family lives near the top of a daunting hill in Ardsley, a comfortable suburb north of New York City. Ardsley High School sends dozens of graduates every year to Ivy League-caliber colleges. When students there use Facebook, they all know that its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, once walked the same halls.

At their kitchen table after school last month, Dodi Sklar listened as her ninth-grade son, Jonathan, described how some classmates already abused stimulants — long before SATs and college applications. An accomplished student who said he would never join them, Jonathan described the ease with which he could.

“There’s no way you’d notice — that’s why so many kids are doing it,” he told his mother. “I could say I’m going for a run, call someone I know who does it, get some pills from them, take them, come home and work. Just do it. You’d be just glad that I was studying hard.”

His mother sighed. “As a parent you worry about driving, you worry about drinking, you worry about all kinds of health and mental issues, social issues,” she said. “Now I have to worry about this, too? Really? This shouldn’t be what they need to do to get where they want to.”

Asked if the improper use of stimulants was cheating, students were split. Some considered that the extra studying hours and the heightened focus during exams amounted to an unfair advantage. Many countered that the drugs “don’t give you the answers” and defended their use as a personal choice for test preparation, akin to tutoring.

One consensus was clear: users were becoming more common, they said, and some students who would rather not take the drugs would be compelled to join them because of the competition over class rank and colleges’ interest.

A current law student in Manhattan, who said he dealt Adderall regularly while at his high school in Sarasota, Fla., said that insecurity was a main part of his sales pitch: that those students “would feel at a huge disadvantage,” he said.

William, the recent Birch Wathen graduate, said prescription stimulants became a point of contention when a girl with otherwise middling grades suddenly improved her SAT score.

“There was an uproar among kids — some people were really proud of her, and some kids were really jealous and mad,” he recalled. “I don’t remember if she had a prescription, but she definitely took more than was prescribed. People would say, ‘You’re so smart,’ and she’d say, ‘It wasn’t all me.’ ”

One sophomore at Harvard-Westlake School in Studio City, Calif., is unsure what his future holds. Enrolled at one of the top high schools on the West Coast, he said he tried a friend’s Adderall this semester but disliked the sensation of his heart beating rapidly for hours. He vowed never to do it again.

But as he watches upperclassmen regularly abuse stimulants as they compete for top college slots, he is not quite sure.

“Junior and senior year is a whole new ballgame,” the boy said. “I promised myself I wouldn’t take it, but that can easily, easily change. I can be convinced.”

A chart last Sunday with an article about the abuse of prescription stimulants by high school students referred incorrectly to the availability of a generic equivalent of one drug, Concerta. A generic form of the drug has been available since 2011; it is not the case that it is not available and that therefore Concerta could be more expensive. The article also referred incorrectly to Nan Radulovic, a health care worker in Santa Monica, Calif., who said students had asked her for Adderall prescriptions. She is a social worker, not a Ph.D. and psychotherapist and therefore is not a “Dr.”

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Having High Grades Essay

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Why Teens Use Marijuana: Study Finds It's Not Just About Getting High

Medically reviewed by Carmen Pope, BPharm . Last updated on Dec 13, 2023.

By Dennis Thompson HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, Dec. 13, 2023 -- Teens who avidly use weed typically use it either for enjoyment or to cope, but both uses have a dark side to them, new research finds.

Teenagers who use marijuana for enjoyment or to forget their problems have more demand for it, meaning that they are willing to both consume more weed when it’s free and spend more money to obtain it, researchers said.

These same teens also tend to report negative consequences from cannabis use, including increased anxiety, decisions they later regretted, difficulty remembering things or concentrating, foolish or goofy behavior and trouble with school or an employer.

“We know that earlier onset of cannabis use is associated with the likelihood of developing a cannabis use disorder,” said lead researcher Nicole Schultz , an assistant professor with the University of California, Davis' department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences.

“It is important we understand what variables contribute to their use so that we can develop effective strategies to intervene early,” Schultz added in a university news release.

Weed is the drug most widely used among teens, with nearly 31% of 12 th graders using it within the past year and more than 6% using it in the past month, researchers said in background notes.

This has been at least partially driven by the marijuana legalization movement across the United States, with 24 states and the District of Columbia defying federal law to legalize cannabis for recreational use.

For this study, researchers recruited participants ages 15 to 18 to figure out why teens who use marijuana are drawn to the drug.

“The reasons often change over time. At the beginning, someone might use a substance for recreational reasons but have different motives later when the substance has become a problem for them,” Schultz said.

Three in five participants were high school students, while one in four were college students. All lived in the Seattle metropolitan area, where recreational cannabis use is legal at 21 years and older.

Participants completed an initial survey and follow-up surveys at three and six months.

Using weed for enjoyment was significantly associated with both its use and higher demand, researchers found.

The new study was published recently in the journal Psychology of Addictive Behaviors.

“This finding makes sense because using for enjoyment is typically related to the initiation of use versus problematic use,” Schultz said. “Given the age of the participants in this study, they may have short histories of use.”

Using weed to cope with feelings was tied to being willing to use more if it’s free, spending more on cannabis and accepting higher prices for marijuana.

“The current study suggests that encouraging substance-free activities that are fun for adolescents and help adolescents cope with negative feelings may help them use less cannabis and experience fewer negative consequences from use,” said senior researcher Jason Ramirez , an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Washington.

• University of California, Davis, news release, Dec. 13, 2023

Disclaimer: Statistical data in medical articles provide general trends and do not pertain to individuals. Individual factors can vary greatly. Always seek personalized medical advice for individual healthcare decisions.

© 2024 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Posted December 2023

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Essay on Impact of Drugs on Youth

Students are often asked to write an essay on Impact of Drugs on Youth in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Impact of Drugs on Youth

Introduction.

Drugs have a significant impact on youth, affecting their health, education, and social relationships.

Health Consequences

Drugs can damage a young person’s physical and mental health. They can lead to addiction, organ damage, and mental disorders.

Educational Impact

Drugs can impair a youth’s ability to concentrate and learn, leading to poor academic performance.

Social Effects

Drug use can lead to isolation from friends and family, and involvement in illegal activities.

The impact of drugs on youth is profound. It’s crucial to educate them about the dangers to prevent drug abuse.

250 Words Essay on Impact of Drugs on Youth

The impact of drugs on youth is a topic of significant concern, affecting individuals, families, and communities worldwide. The youth, being the most vulnerable demographic, are particularly susceptible to the harmful effects of drug use.

The Allure of Drugs

The allure of drugs for young people often stems from a desire to fit in, escape reality, or experiment. Peer pressure, social media influence, and the thrill of rebellion can all contribute to the initiation of drug use. This early exposure can lead to addiction, impacting their physical, mental, and social health.

Physical Impact

Drugs can have devastating physical effects on young bodies. They can hinder growth, affect brain development, and lead to long-term health problems like heart disease and cancer. Moreover, drug use can lead to risky behaviors, increasing the likelihood of accidents, violence, and sexually transmitted diseases.

Mental Impact

On the mental front, drug use can exacerbate or trigger mental health disorders such as depression, anxiety, and psychosis. It can also impair cognitive abilities, memory, and academic performance, limiting a young person’s potential for success.

Social Impact

Socially, drug use can lead to isolation, strained relationships, and a loss of interest in previously enjoyed activities. It can also lead to legal issues, reducing opportunities for future employment and education.

The impact of drugs on youth is profound and far-reaching, affecting all aspects of their lives. It is essential to educate and support our youth, providing them with the tools to resist the allure of drugs, and promoting healthy, drug-free lifestyles.

500 Words Essay on Impact of Drugs on Youth

The global landscape of drug abuse and addiction is a complex issue that has significant implications on the youth. The impact of drugs on youth is far-reaching, affecting not just their physical health, but also their mental well-being, academic performance, and future prospects.

The Physical Consequences

The first and most apparent impact of drugs on youth is the physical damage. Substance abuse can lead to a host of health problems, ranging from liver damage, cardiovascular diseases, to neurological issues. Furthermore, drugs can interfere with the normal growth and development processes, particularly during the critical adolescent years when the body undergoes significant changes.

Mental Health Implications

Drugs do not only harm the body, but also the mind. Regular drug use can lead to mental health disorders such as depression, anxiety, and psychosis. It can also exacerbate pre-existing mental health conditions. Moreover, substance abuse can impair cognitive functions, including memory, attention, and decision-making capabilities, which are vital for academic success and overall life management.

The social implications of drug use among youth are equally significant. Substance abuse can strain relationships with family and friends, leading to isolation and loneliness. It can also lead to delinquency, crime, and a general disregard for societal norms and values. This damage to their social fabric can have long-term consequences, affecting their ability to form meaningful relationships and contribute positively to society.

Educational and Career Impact

Substance abuse can severely impact a young person’s educational attainment and future career prospects. The cognitive impairments caused by drug use can lead to poor academic performance, lower grades, and increased likelihood of dropping out. This, in turn, can limit their career opportunities and earning potential, trapping them in a cycle of poverty and substance abuse.

Prevention and Intervention

Given the severe implications of drug abuse, it is crucial to invest in prevention and intervention strategies. These could include comprehensive drug education programs, early detection and intervention efforts, and providing access to counselling and rehabilitation services. A multi-faceted approach that involves parents, teachers, healthcare professionals, and policymakers can make a significant difference in mitigating the impact of drugs on youth.

In conclusion, the impact of drugs on youth is a multifaceted issue that extends beyond the individual to families, schools, and communities. It is a pressing problem that requires collective effort and commitment to address. By understanding the depth of its impact, we can better equip ourselves to combat this issue and pave the way for a healthier, more productive future for our youth.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

• Essay on Say No to Drugs
• Essay on Drug Addiction Among Students
• Essay on Effects of Drugs on Society

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

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Can your grades get high on drugs?

Do you ever find yourself struggling to find the motivation or mental energy to sit down and study? For university students this is all too common, and many of us turn to pharmaceuticals — especially ADHD medication like Adderall and Ritalin — whether or not we actually need them. But can so-called “study drugs” really help you get your grades up?

Ask the expert

Dr. Bruce McKay, a neuroscientist at Wilfrid Laurier University, noted an all-too-real and somewhat comical scenario that users of ADHD medication may encounter.

“I’m sure you have heard stories about — students tell me these stories — where they decided to take some Ritalin to study for a test, and then they took a break for a little bit, or even [that] someone told them to take half an hour to forty five minutes for the effects to kick in — so don’t start studying until that,” McKay said. “So they decide to do something else before that, they will start tidying up their room or something like that, and the next thing you know eight hours have gone by, and the apartment is cleaned top to bottom — absolutely flawless. Mom would be thrilled, but no studying has gotten done.”

If beautifully completed but totally irrelevant tasks were the only issue, then pharmaceutical drug use might not be such a problem. Unfortunately, according to McKay, the drug may not be very effective for users without attention deficits.

He claimed that the primary benefit of these ADHD medications for non-prescription is as a “stay-awake aid” with slight benefits to attention. Being that these drugs are stimulants, they can keep those who use them from getting the sort of exhaustion usually associated with long work or study sessions.

McKay pointed out that since different people have different neurological chemistries, when you interview a large group of people about these substances, you will get a wide range of differing experiences.

Student experiences

One University of Waterloo software engineering student stated that he not only found Adderall to be useful during times of overwhelming amounts of work, but that he even took up to 100 mg of the substance at once in the past.  This is a rather large dose, and he does not recall many negative side effects at all. This student did not have a prescription.

On the other hand, a Laurier student who does have a prescription reported discontinuing use after she suffered from an unhealthy lack of appetite resulting in unhealthy weight loss.

Another UW student with a prescription for Adderall noted that the primary benefit of using Adderall was the energy it provided, and not motivation to actually do the work. He also mentioned having discontinued use after his body was responding negatively after coming down from the drug, as well as having a negative effect on his sleep cycle.

A geomatics student at UW indicated that his experience had also been primarily positive. His experience had been with Concerta, and some Adderall. He noted that on Adderall, at the dose that he took, he had roughly a twenty-minute period of “jitters.” He also noted some discomfort in his stomach. With the wide variety of both doses and individual – dependent effects, one begins to question the use of these drugs, especially without a prescription, with the illicit nature of the activity and the increased likelihood that one may take an unsuitable dosage.

Giving a little Klarity

Laurier student and entrepreneur Andrew Stubbs has become concerned with the issue of pharmaceutical drug use on campus, and decided to make a business out of those concerns. His company is called studentXel and currently produces one product, called Klarit y . Klarity is a pill that combines caffeine, L-Tyrosine, L-Theanine, niacin, and vitamin b12. More information on the formula can be found on studentXel’s website. The product is sold at the International News at Laurier and UW, as well as online and in select stores.

When asked about his motivation for creating Klarity , Stubbs, having witnessed the use of ADHD medication by students, said, “I guess I just want students to have an alternative to the assumed status quo of doing well in school. I want a mainstream way for students to pragmatically, sort of, take something to help them, but know that there are not going to be long term adverse health effects.” Throughout the interview, they also spoke about the desired effect of the product, that is, the delivering of a stimulated and alert experience that is also calming and avoids jitters. Having spoken to McKay about Klarity, the effects of this product may not necessarily be reflective of mine for everyone.

McKay, however, voiced concern for Klarity and other natural product alternatives.

“There are always concerns when you put these things together in novel ways that you have emergent effects from the combination,” McKay said.

In other words, even natural ingredients can interact with each other in unexpected ways. McKay compared Klarity to energy drinks, pointing out that Red Bull works not only due to the effect of caffeine, but also through other components that caffeine interacts with. Compared to study drugs, however, natural products like Klarity could serve as a healthier alternative for students.

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Understanding Drug Use and Addiction DrugFacts

Many people don't understand why or how other people become addicted to drugs. They may mistakenly think that those who use drugs lack moral principles or willpower and that they could stop their drug use simply by choosing to. In reality, drug addiction is a complex disease, and quitting usually takes more than good intentions or a strong will. Drugs change the brain in ways that make quitting hard, even for those who want to. Fortunately, researchers know more than ever about how drugs affect the brain and have found treatments that can help people recover from drug addiction and lead productive lives.

What Is drug addiction?

Addiction is a chronic disease characterized by drug seeking and use that is compulsive, or difficult to control, despite harmful consequences. The initial decision to take drugs is voluntary for most people, but repeated drug use can lead to brain changes that challenge an addicted person’s self-control and interfere with their ability to resist intense urges to take drugs. These brain changes can be persistent, which is why drug addiction is considered a "relapsing" disease—people in recovery from drug use disorders are at increased risk for returning to drug use even after years of not taking the drug.

It's common for a person to relapse, but relapse doesn't mean that treatment doesn’t work. As with other chronic health conditions, treatment should be ongoing and should be adjusted based on how the patient responds. Treatment plans need to be reviewed often and modified to fit the patient’s changing needs.

Video: Why are Drugs So Hard to Quit?

What happens to the brain when a person takes drugs?

Most drugs affect the brain's "reward circuit," causing euphoria as well as flooding it with the chemical messenger dopamine. A properly functioning reward system motivates a person to repeat behaviors needed to thrive, such as eating and spending time with loved ones. Surges of dopamine in the reward circuit cause the reinforcement of pleasurable but unhealthy behaviors like taking drugs, leading people to repeat the behavior again and again.

As a person continues to use drugs, the brain adapts by reducing the ability of cells in the reward circuit to respond to it. This reduces the high that the person feels compared to the high they felt when first taking the drug—an effect known as tolerance. They might take more of the drug to try and achieve the same high. These brain adaptations often lead to the person becoming less and less able to derive pleasure from other things they once enjoyed, like food, sex, or social activities.

Long-term use also causes changes in other brain chemical systems and circuits as well, affecting functions that include:

• decision-making

Despite being aware of these harmful outcomes, many people who use drugs continue to take them, which is the nature of addiction.

Why do some people become addicted to drugs while others don't?

No one factor can predict if a person will become addicted to drugs. A combination of factors influences risk for addiction. The more risk factors a person has, the greater the chance that taking drugs can lead to addiction. For example:

• Biology . The genes that people are born with account for about half of a person's risk for addiction. Gender, ethnicity, and the presence of other mental disorders may also influence risk for drug use and addiction.
• Environment . A person’s environment includes many different influences, from family and friends to economic status and general quality of life. Factors such as peer pressure, physical and sexual abuse, early exposure to drugs, stress, and parental guidance can greatly affect a person’s likelihood of drug use and addiction.
• Development . Genetic and environmental factors interact with critical developmental stages in a person’s life to affect addiction risk. Although taking drugs at any age can lead to addiction, the earlier that drug use begins, the more likely it will progress to addiction. This is particularly problematic for teens. Because areas in their brains that control decision-making, judgment, and self-control are still developing, teens may be especially prone to risky behaviors, including trying drugs.

Can drug addiction be cured or prevented?

As with most other chronic diseases, such as diabetes, asthma, or heart disease, treatment for drug addiction generally isn’t a cure. However, addiction is treatable and can be successfully managed. People who are recovering from an addiction will be at risk for relapse for years and possibly for their whole lives. Research shows that combining addiction treatment medicines with behavioral therapy ensures the best chance of success for most patients. Treatment approaches tailored to each patient’s drug use patterns and any co-occurring medical, mental, and social problems can lead to continued recovery.

More good news is that drug use and addiction are preventable. Results from NIDA-funded research have shown that prevention programs involving families, schools, communities, and the media are effective for preventing or reducing drug use and addiction. Although personal events and cultural factors affect drug use trends, when young people view drug use as harmful, they tend to decrease their drug taking. Therefore, education and outreach are key in helping people understand the possible risks of drug use. Teachers, parents, and health care providers have crucial roles in educating young people and preventing drug use and addiction.

Points to Remember

• Drug addiction is a chronic disease characterized by drug seeking and use that is compulsive, or difficult to control, despite harmful consequences.
• Brain changes that occur over time with drug use challenge an addicted person’s self-control and interfere with their ability to resist intense urges to take drugs. This is why drug addiction is also a relapsing disease.
• Relapse is the return to drug use after an attempt to stop. Relapse indicates the need for more or different treatment.
• Most drugs affect the brain's reward circuit by flooding it with the chemical messenger dopamine. Surges of dopamine in the reward circuit cause the reinforcement of pleasurable but unhealthy activities, leading people to repeat the behavior again and again.
• Over time, the brain adjusts to the excess dopamine, which reduces the high that the person feels compared to the high they felt when first taking the drug—an effect known as tolerance. They might take more of the drug, trying to achieve the same dopamine high.
• No single factor can predict whether a person will become addicted to drugs. A combination of genetic, environmental, and developmental factors influences risk for addiction. The more risk factors a person has, the greater the chance that taking drugs can lead to addiction.
• Drug addiction is treatable and can be successfully managed.
• More good news is that drug use and addiction are preventable. Teachers, parents, and health care providers have crucial roles in educating young people and preventing drug use and addiction.

For information about understanding drug use and addiction, visit:

• www.nida.nih.gov/publications/drugs-brains-behavior-science-addiction/drug-abuse-addiction

For more information about the costs of drug abuse to the United States, visit:

• www.nida.nih.gov/related-topics/trends-statistics#costs

For more information about prevention, visit:

• www.nida.nih.gov/related-topics/prevention

For more information about treatment, visit:

• www.nida.nih.gov/related-topics/treatment

To find a publicly funded treatment center in your state, call 1-800-662-HELP or visit:

• https://findtreatment.samhsa.gov/

This publication is available for your use and may be reproduced in its entirety without permission from NIDA. Citation of the source is appreciated, using the following language: Source: National Institute on Drug Abuse; National Institutes of Health; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

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• J Educ Health Promot

A high school-based education concerning drug abuse prevention

Atoosa bonyani.

1 Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran

Leila Safaeian

2 Department of Research and Development, Vice Chancellery for Food and Drug, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran

Mojtaba Chehrazi

Alireza etedali, mahsa zaghian, farnaz mashhadian.

There is increasing evidence for declining the onset age of drug abuse worldwide. This study was conducted to investigate the effectiveness of four educational methods including lecture, presentation of poster and leaflet, presentation of video clip, and group/class discussion for life skills training and changing in knowledge and attitude of adolescents toward drug abuse.

MATERIALS AND METHODS:

In a pretest–posttest design, a sample of 897 girl and boy high school students from the first grade (14–15 years old) were involved in this cross-sectional study conducted in Isfahan, Iran. After collection of pretest questionnaires, each educational method was implemented separately for one class in one session (3 h) in each high school, and evaluation was carried out immediately after intervention through posttest questionnaires by the same students.

According to paired t -test, the video clip- and lecture-based methods were significantly efficient in changing the attitudes toward drug abuse in boy and girl students, respectively. Analysis of covariance showed significant differences between girls and boys in pretest–posttest attitude scores using group discussion-based and video clip-based methods.

CONCLUSION:

Life skills training program through lecture-based and video clip-based educational methods was considerably effective in changing the high school students’ attitude toward drug abuse and addiction.

Introduction

Drug abuse as a biological psychosocial problem threatens the human society all over the world. Opioids, alcohol, cocaine, cannabinoids, and amphetamines are the drugs which are most often abused by the people.[ 1 ] In recent years, there is an increasing rate of use for new substances such as ecstasy and some prescription drugs such as tramadol.[ 2 ] About 246 million people consumed illegal substances in 2013; among them, more than one out of 10 drug users had dependence and social problems. Drug abuse has also contributed to 0.5%–1.3% mortality among 15–64-year-old population.[ 3 ] Iran, due to vicinity with Afghanistan as the biggest drug-producing country, is at the greatest risk for drug abuse.[ 4 ] Knowledge and attitude toward substance abuse, availability of illicit drugs, and culture and society are some effective factors that have an impact on this international problem.[ 5 ] Recently, studies have noted that the onset age of drug abuse has decreased globally and teenagers are more likely vulnerable to using illegal drugs due to less information regarding serious complications of drug abuse.[ 2 ] Poor school performance, despair, cigarette-smoking parents, tension release, looking for pleasure, and modeling are some important factors associated with higher rates of drug abuse among adolescents.[ 6 ]

Therefore, there is an extensive concern to drug abuse in the societies and makes it as a priority in public health issues for governments. Different countries have taken trials and interventions at various school, family, and public level of information to change knowledge and attitude of the society toward illegal drugs and accordingly to reduce the rate of drug abuse.[ 7 ] Some effective interventions are included enhancing good decision-making ability and self-protection due to improving life skills and assertive training and also changing the knowledge and attitude by informing teenagers about abused drugs and their consequences.[ 8 ]

Various training tools including curriculum development, lecturing, large- and small-group discussion, simulation and role play, practice in using the technique, and video and film presentation have been used in the programs for drug abuse prevention education.[ 9 ] Lecture as a simple and inexpensive approach is commonly used in many training programs for increasing the students’ knowledge; however, this method has some disadvantages such as inactiveness of the learners and fast forgetting of the information.[ 10 ] Although some interactive methods such as problem-based learning and group discussion have been proposed as more beneficial approaches, the mean learning scores and retention rates in these methods have not always been more than the lecture-based method depending on the educational subject.[ 11 ]

Some new technology-based approaches such as video, computer, Internet, e-mail, and mobile phone have also been used for substance abuse prevention and treatment. However, feasibility of application, age, higher education, and income are some factors which affect the effectiveness of learning programs based on communication technology.[ 12 ]

The results of investigations have also shown that the efficiency of different interventional methods could be different according to the age, sex, developmental level, type of illegal substance, level of substance use, ethnicity, religion, and cultural, financial, and socioenvironmental context.[ 13 ] The implementation of preventive programs for drug abuse in each city may be related to the characteristics of managers, schools, and curriculum and not all preventive programs implemented in schools have been effective.[ 14 ] Moreover, most of the studies about interventional approaches in the field of drug abuse prevention in youth population have been done in high-income countries, and their effectiveness in other countries is unknown.[ 13 ]

In Iran, although there are some limited studies in young people, there is not any complete learning package and a comprehensive school-based drug abuse prevention program for high schools regarding the socioenvironmental context.[ 2 ]

Since there are limited studies about the assessment of different educational methods for substance abuse prevention in adolescents in Isfahan city and due to the influence of various factors on efficiency of different educational approaches, this study was aimed to measure and compare the effectiveness of different training tools including lecture, poster and brochure, movie, and group working in life skill training, promoting positive behavior change, reducing abuse harm, and changing the knowledge and attitude toward drug abuse in 14–15-year-old students in Isfahan.

Materials and Methods

This cross-sectional study was conducted in 10 high schools of Isfahan city in May 2016. The study population for the intervention was male and female high school students (14–15 years old). These high schools were randomly selected from a numbered list of high schools located in different geographical sites of Isfahan using the clustering method. The schools of adolescents with mental and physical disabilities were not included in this study. In each high school, 5 classes in first grade were randomly selected from the list of the classes, and all the adolescents from selected classes were included in this interventional study. The program was finally performed in a sample of 897 girl and boy students. Respondents comprised 445 girls and 452 boys aged 14–15 years. Before implementing the intervention, coordination with the school authorities was made.

This educational study was evaluated using a pretest–posttest design. The pretest measure was done before training intervention and posttest data were collected after that. Four educational methods were used for life skills training and changing in the knowledge and attitude toward drug abuse including lecture, presentation of poster and leaflet, presentation of video clip, and group/class discussion. One class was considered as control group without any intervention. Each educational method was administered separately for one of four other classes in each school, and all the students participated in the intervention program. One training session (3 h in the morning) was held for each method using school facilities. Life skills training regarding the drug abuse prevention included self-confident skills, decision-making skills, cognitive skills and self-control skills, strategies for relieving stress and anxiety, social resistance skills, and other skills which help the youth lower their risk for substance use. For change in the knowledge and attitude toward drug abuse, the educational approaches were used to create awareness among the students about misunderstandings and false information which may lead to drug abuse and to inform them about the risks and harms of using substances and their adverse consequences.

The educational materials for each method were prepared based on the international programs and national studies under supervision of some expert faculty members and also approved by the Committee of Rational Use of Drugs and also Poisoning Control Center, Vice Chancellery for Food and Drug, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran. The video clip contained the life stories of some user of drugs. This educational effort via drama was planned for changing attitudes toward substance abuse, encouraging the life skills training and activities regarding drug abuse prevention, and increasing awareness about the risk and protective factors associated with drug abuse. The play revealed sections directly related to the common substance abuse problems in our country. It depicted the risk factors that are associated with the development of drug abuse including copying parent's behavior and poor life skills. The play showed the negative consequences of drug abuse on activities of normal life, educations, job and relationships, and its other adverse effects including impairment of judgment, damages to many body organs, poor mental and physical health, and also criminal justice involvement. The posters and leaflets presented the similar contents through the text and images. In lecturing and group discussion, the above-mentioned goals were achieved by a presenter or interactive dialogs.

The instruction was made with senior pharmacy students, and in all high schools, the lecturer and group discussion manager were the same.

A short self-administered questionnaire comprising 32 closed-ended questions was used; and according to the final version of the questionnaire designed by Khodayari et al . for substance abuse attitude, the survey was conducted and validated in an initial pilot study among a random sample of 20 students. Its reliability was evaluated by Cronbach's alpha, and there was a suitable level of internal consistency of scales (Cronbach's alpha = 0.80). Khodayari et al . also reported the Cronbach's alpha coefficient to be 0.83.[ 15 ]

The questionnaire addressed the following issues: (1) attitudes toward the drug abuse, (2) attitudes toward the drug abuse reasons, (3) attitudes to the people abuse substances and their personality, and (4) attitudes toward consequences of drug abuse. The scoring for each question followed the Likert format, from 1 for “absolutely disagree” to 5 for “absolutely agree.” The mean score was calculated for the results, with higher scores indicating more negative attitudes toward drug abuse, and vice versa.

After gathering the pretest questionnaires, different educational methods were implemented in selected classes and evaluation of the intervention was carried out immediately after education through filling out the posttest questionnaires by the same students.

The average score in the pretest and posttest in each group was expressed as means ± standard deviation; statistical evaluation was done by paired t -test and analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) followed by Tukey post hoc test using the SPSS Software Version 18 (SPSS Ltd., Quarry Bay, Hong Kong). P < 0.05 was considered as the statistically significant levels.

Tables ​ Tables1 1 and ​ and2 2 show the comparison between the attitude toward various issues of drug abuse before and after training with four educational methods in male and female high school students, respectively. According to paired t -test, the lecture-based education resulted in significant changes in attitudes toward consequences of drug abuse in boy students ( P < 0.001) [ Table 1 ]. However, there was not significant effect on the mean score of total attitudes using lecture-based education in these students [ Table 3 ]. The video clip-based method also caused significant changes in attitudes toward consequences of drug abuse in girl students ( P < 0.001) [ Table 2 ], but significant difference on the mean score of total attitudes using video clip-based education was not observed in these students [ Table 3 ]. Evaluation of the impact of four methods on mean score of total attitudes toward drug abuse showed that video clip- and lecture-based education were efficient in changing the attitudes toward drug abuse in boys and girls, respectively ( P < 0.001 and P < 0.01) [ Table 3 ]. According to ANCOVA, there were significant differences between girl and boy students in pretest–posttest attitude scores using group discussion-based and video clip-based methods ( P < 0.05) [ Table 4 ].

Comparison of the pre- and post-test attitude scores toward drug abuse for different educational methods in male high school students

Comparison of the pre- and post-test attitude scores toward drug abuse for different educational methods in female high school students

The impact of the four educational methods on total attitude scores toward drug abuse in each gender and between male and female high school students

Analysis of covariance in attitude scores toward drug abuse for different educational methods between male and female high school students

Based on the findings of this study, the video clip- and lecture-based interventions for life skills training and preventing drug abuse were efficient in changing the attitudes toward drug abuse in boy and girl students. Comparison between girls and boys showed that among the four educational methods, the video clip-based method was more efficient in boy students and the group discussion-based method was more efficient in girl students on changing attitude toward drugs and addiction. Our results also showed that there was no significant difference at the baseline attitude between girl and boy students and they had a relatively negative attitude toward substances abuse.

In the context of the primary prevention from addiction disorder as a serious public health problem, policymakers have developed various school-, family-, and community-based approaches in different countries.[ 16 , 17 ] Life skills training is one of the most efficient interventional efforts for school- and family-based prevention.[ 8 ]

A decision for choosing the most suitable educational method depends on the aims of the preventive program or educational process, target group, and also resources available.[ 13 ] In Iran, several educational methods have been studied by the researchers for drug abuse prevention. In the study of Bahreini-Borujeni et al ., life skills training classes and education through video were more effective than training through poster and catalog and sending SMS through mobile phone in changing students’ attitude toward drug abuse.[ 18 ] Similar results have been reported by Taromiyan and Mehryar and Rabiei et al .[ 19 , 20 ] This finding contradicts the findings of Aghababae et al . because they considered the effect of sending SMS and education through catalogs and brochures on meaningful changing in attitudes of students in their study.[ 21 ] However, it seems that using multimedia materials and new educational technologies would be more effective than the text materials.[ 8 ] Small-group activities and discussion, storytelling, and role-playing scenarios are some evidence-based educational methods in life skills training programs.[ 8 , 22 ] However, the international protocols have suggested that each program should assess which interactive techniques and how often each technique could be used in substance use prevention programs.

Although focusing on lecturing the students about the hazards and adverse consequence of drug abuse may be an unsuccessful approach, an attractive and cordially lecture-based program for life skills training, especially in younger adolescents, would be an effective approach. In addition to teacher talent for faithful delivering of lessons, educational materials should be prepared based on the developmental and etiologic factors and social stimuli which are contributed in drug abuse in adolescent. Governmental intervention strategies and comprehensive efforts regarding school, family, and community should be developed for rising community awareness and achieving the effective drug abuse prevention.[ 23 ]

In the present study and also in many investigations only changes in attitudes and knowledge toward substances abuse were reported.[ 24 ] In general, life-skill training can meaningfully change some elements in drug abuse in short time, but sustainable changes in behavior and performance are needed more times and continuation of the educational programs and assessing the effectiveness of the outcome in the future.

The major limitations of this study were as follows: To attribute the differences observed merely to the difference in the implemented methods, a control group of students who did not receive the educational intervention should be considered. However, in most of the schools, there were not more than four classes in the same grade.

Sustained interventions should be implemented for gaining life skills and insight in students, but this aim requires comprehensive national planning and spending of energy and expense.

For measuring the educational impacts, it is suggested that reevaluations would be carried out at greater intervals. However, due to constraints in coordination with high schools and end of the school year, we had to hold the posttest immediately after training.

The life skills training and preventing drug abuse program through lecture-based and video clip-based educational methods were considerably effective in changing the high-school students’ attitude toward drug abuse and addiction. Among the four educational methods, the video clip-based method was more efficient in boy students and the group discussion-based method was more efficient in girl students on changing attitude toward drugs and addiction. The policymakers should determine the educational needs of different target groups and develop a consistent preventive drug abuse program through school curricula and innovative educational materials which adapted to the socioeconomic and cultural conditions in the country.

Financial support and sponsorship

This research project no. 294188 was financially supported by Vice Chancellery for Research and Technology, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran.

Conflicts of interest

There are no conflicts of interest.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the students, high school principals, and Vice Chancellery for Food and Drug, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran, who participated in this study.

"AIM HIGH!"

Change your life :).

“Get High on GRADES, Not on DRUGS”

Posted on August 16, 2015 by Advocacy

Drug usage is one of the leading causes of distraction of students especially during college where the level of peer pressure is a lot higher than what they might experienced during high school. It has a big impact on academic performance to every student who are using drugs by having mental illness, inability to attend classes, etc. In this advocacy, we are going to identify, analyze and solve this serious problem among fellow students. Students who are under drugs and affecting their school performance are identified and presented.

We will empower youth with factual info about drug so they can make informed decisions and live drug fee.

We will provide the essential student services to those with problem in drugs and as well as we consult them to appropriate person in charge about drug problems.

⇒  Who We Are  ⇐              ⇒ Contact Us ⇐

What We Do:

Check This Out 🙂 →  Get High on GRADES, not on DRUGS Video

And for our Presentation →  Advocacy Presentation

Cause To alert students that their use of drugs affects all the aspects in their lives.

Stand Instead of spending time in using drugs. Give priority on things that are important like studying, spend time with family and keeping yourself busy in doing good deeds.

->We are here to help, support, and encourage you to be part of our Advocacy. What are you waiting for? Join Us! 🙂

Like us on Facebook:  Get High on Grades not on Drugs

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Why Are Students Pressured to Get Good Grades?

Think back to the first day of high school. There has been years of buildup to this day, full of stories of Freshman Friday, the preparation of the academics which are told to be harder than ever, teams coming to the middle schools to recruit more members, class fairs, and all sorts of stories being passed down from friends, older siblings, and even parents. That build up has all led to this one day, this one day that is going to mark the new beginning. Only, for some, the new beginning is going to lead down a road of stress, drugs, cheating, peer pressure, and trying to live up to that expectation that has always been there: bring home those A’s. Students are pushed to extremes during their school years, often times resulting in breakdowns, cheating, use of study-enhancing drugs, however, the main causes for these extremes revolve around the parents of the students, their school, and the society they are exposed. College is an idea planted in their brains at a young age, often with a skewed vision of what it is because of the way it is presented to them while they grow up. Through books, music, movies, and television, children can learn all about the world they are designed to live in, and just how competitive it can be. Children are raised with their parent’s expectations following them, always reminding them to make their bed, brush their teeth, do not talk back, pay attention in class, say “excuse me”. From birth, those children are told that grades need to be high. They are told that those grades will make people happy, and will ensure their future. The desire to do whatever it takes to make those good grades is not created in the rough waters of middle school, but rather during the developmental years as a child. When family comes and visits, the grandparents gather around the table and always ask the embarrassing questions: “Have you got a boyfriend yet? Oh you’ll be snatching them all up in no time!” But then comes the questions that are not as embarrassing, but equally as necessary: “How are those grades of yours? Making your grandparents proud? What about the soccer that you did last year?” Who would want to upset their grandparents? Even at this young age, grades are associated with pride, and an occasional lollipop when family comes to visit. Not only are the grandparents and parents pressuring them, but the older siblings can have the same effect. Being compared to the older sister or brother is something that happens to every younger child. It can be harmless, with the lego city they built compared to the other one, or it can be damaging to the psyche as they progress through school, standing forever in the shadow of them. It is hard to be “yourself” in high school while all the teachers know them from previous grades with the older siblings (“Pressures to Get Good Grades”). Parents often raise their kids to make up for what they messed up on in their childhood. For example, a mother never made it onto the cheer team, so their daughter will be sure to make her proud and make it to the top of pyramid. The father never passed with above B’s or C’s, “be sure to bring home that ACADECA trophy!” Not only is it the desire to make up for their own failures, but also to prevent the children from making those same mistakes. As the children grow older, they are given speeches of how to avoid drugs, how to not be afraid on that first day, how to make friends, and how not to offend teachers. Joining clubs looks excellent on college applications. The idea is planted in their brains as a child, that they need to excel in order to be worth anything. Parents feel like they have a responsibility to make sure their children get good grades, so they can often resort to threats or bribery. It can range anywhere from pulling their children out of clubs, or promising money for straight A’s. These ideas of rewards, and the fear of punishment can propel them into maintaining a good grade point and staying in those clubs. Another example would be the fear associated with losing control over electronics, such as phones, gaming systems, and computers. So much of the society is heavily based on electronics, the promise of either losing or gaining the means to participate in the society can change the attitude towards school, and the grade they receive. With the idea of self-worth being centered around school work imprinted on us at such a young age, it also opens the door to potential failure. That failure can haunt the student, and can make them afraid of the future that they might live in with the less-than-adequate grades. Generally what fuels this line of thought is the failures of the parents, the stories from them, the same ones that make the parents push their kids to make better choices than they did. The pressure can not only be applied by the parents, but also by the kids trying to model themselves with the only comparison being the parents themselves (Palmer). The school itself can provide an equal amount of stress on performance as the parents. Assemblies often feed students the goals of graduating top of the class, making it to the ever so scary and looming title of Valedictorian. Apart from titles like Valedictorian, there are other rewards, such as honor roll, principal's list, and perfect attendance. Those titles are everywhere around the school, being pushed by the morning announcements, the teachers, and the assemblies prepping kids for the new year. Next to the assemblies, the other students can be just as worse. Peer pressure is required for high school, definitely on the checklist for a proper high school experience. That peer pressure that takes place at school can lead to all sorts of bad activities in order to get good grades: cheating, taking study-enhancing drugs, cramming for tests. Being around friends who are in honors and AP classes can result in the feeling to compete for grades, or at least be on the same page as the friends with grades. Students are often pushed to cheat in order to maintain that grade point average. School has become less about the education itself, and more about getting good grades. Cheating is not the only bad result of peer pressure, there can also be uses of Adderall, a study-enhancing drug. If all the high school students in the harder classes are using this to stay up all night and focus on the test material, then something needs to be done for the competition of other students. This raises the use of Adderall at the school, Adderall being a drug designed for children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) to help them calm down (but can provide children without ADHD the opposite effect) as it is a psychoactive drug. The competition between the students, and the friends can increase the use of improper material, like the drugs and the cheating (“Risky Rise of the Good-Grade Pill”). Something that can fuel the fire between the competing students is the lexicon they have around the school. How often are words such as “stupid, dork, loser, dumb, nerd” getting thrown around as insults in high school? The answer is all the time. Those words can carry a horrible meaning, and can ruin someone’s day. All the more reason to avoid getting called that at all costs. A way to do that, most teenagers have found, is to change the way they perform at school. If getting good grades will decrease the chance of being made fun of and being called stupid, then most kids are all for it. There is pressure to get good grades, and change themselves, from the words their peers use, and the way they act. The students who compete for grades are often found on the honors and Advanced Placement (AP) track, which are talked about all throughout the school. These classes are encouraged at the school and the assemblies, with the idea that they will help fuel the way into college. While this may be true, it is also providing students with the idea that college is not an achievable thing without them. When in the honors classes, there is still an expectation of getting high grades, even though these classes are harder. There is extra stress on higher level classes for those grades, adding to the overall stress of the student. This idea of higher classes being better for everything, is also pushed by the teachers. There are teachers who push kids to doing their best, but who also give them the idea that they will never get to college unless they take certain classes (Palmer). Take a walk down the street, there are billboards advertising the nearest college, there are fliers of upcoming events in that college, there are shirts with the logo on them. The looming presence of college is everywhere, but it is always portraying it in an air of respectability. The existence of that idea, brings along the idea that not going to college is not allowed, and has no respect. The high paying jobs are the ones that have years and years of schooling behind them, the jobs with framed pieces of paper to claim the worth of the position. People look down on those who never completed college, it is treated with a sad look and a mumble of disrespect and wasted dreams. With the current economic state, it is even harder to get into college. It is more expensive than it ever has been, it has more competition, and more scholarships to give out to higher-qualifying people. In order to get scholarships, and to get noticed from colleges, they have to be spectacular, they have to stand out. However, everyone is trying to stand out, and get noticed by those colleges. This pressures students to get good grades so they can be sure to be able to pay for the college they want to go to, and avoid that so called “dead end” way of life. The media (music, television, movies, radio, poetry, and books) that students are exposed to often shows the protagonist (or a lovable character) as being a well-educated individual. These characters are usually shown as archetypes, like the straight A honors student, the biker with the leather jacket, the broken man who wants to fix everything else, the one who never stops running. All those characters and those ideas are put forward with an air of intelligence to them, influencing the children who absorb it. Media is one of the most influential factors in this society, especially on teenagers. When they connect so well and personally to a character, or a song, that can change their mind about what they want to be, and it can change their perspective on what good qualities are. Often times these characters will give the students a reason to get good grades, so they can be just like the girl who saves the world after her chemistry test, or they can be the man driving away from the fear, but knowing why he does it (“Pressures to Get Good Grades”). Being a student in this society is difficult: times have changed, and school is harder. Parents interfere by trying to make their children’s grades better. They do not realize just how influencing they can be, raising their kids with the idea of perfection. School can be equally as bad, teaching the children about honors and AP curriculums, and the application process for college. All the while giving them the idea that without those classes, the applications will go to waste. Society can have the same effect on students, spreading the word about the declining economy and the cost of tuition of college. They make entrance to college a competitive field, the winner with the best grades can get in for as little money as possible. As a student myself, I can say that these fears and concerns have been running through my head for years. I still stay up at night with the thought running through my head, “have I really done enough yet?”

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Drug Abuse in High School and College

Introduction.

Drug abuse refers to the use of illegal substances or misusing drugs prescribed by a Doctor in excess amounts thus resulting into substantial medical harm and misery due the repeated usage of and overdependence on the substance. (MedicineNet.com).

It is the saddest thing to see someone expose themselves to the dangers of drug abuse. I say expose themselves because, if at all someone is not abusing drugs because of a mental or psychological problem, then it just a matter of personal choice for an individual to abuse or not to abuse drugs.

During my time in high school and college I saw many students who became victims of drug abuse. In my community I have met people who are completely destroyed by drugs financially, emotionally, psychologically and even socially. It has broken families. It is not pleasing to see the potential in the youth of our society to be wasted. The problems brought by drug abuse are enormous, compounded by the financial implications especially for those in low income bracket.

In college I joined a guidance and counseling association where we were trained in counseling our peers in the college against drug abuse. During the holidays I also joined a guidance and counseling organization which is also a member of the Community Anti Drug Coalitions of America. In those organizations I met different people with various experiences of drug abuse. Those encounters had a big role in shaping my desire to want to help change the lives of those who had this problem of drug abuse. During my time in the above organizations we planned for various campaigns against drug abuse and held education forums for college, high school and also community drug abuse education programs. I have also been very instrumental in contributing to the newsletters produced by these organizations which aim at educating the youth and parents against drug abuse.

Through these organizations we also organized various awards and ceremonies and still do, to promote awareness of the problem of drug abuse. In order to move to a higher level with my efforts in serving my community I decided to take up the graduate education in social work. I figured out that with an increased education in this field I can be able to better understand my work and be a positions where I can be able to implement changes that affect people positively more efficiently.

Loyola University, School of Social Work has a Nonprofit Management and Philanthropy Sector Program that teaches leaders coming from both the public and private areas of philanthropy to better give service to the general society. Through this program, participants are able to acquire various skills which are pertinent to an individual involved in social work. Some of the leadership skills that one is equipped with through this program are raising of funds for use in social work, the management of non profit making organizations, planning at the strategic level of management, giving grants and donations and most of all they develop an understanding of how the charity organizations function.(Loyola University Chicago).

Loyola University School of Social Work has a great contribution towards training the leaders who are given to serving others, serving the society, mankind. The issue that I am dealing with is the counseling of the drug abuse victims. Most of the victims we meet are some of the downtrodden of the society, people who need to be helped and be reaccepted into the society so as to become productive members again. This is a task that requires professional skills in terms of management of the rehabilitation institutions in which it is carried out and of course funds for running the institutions themselves. Most of the funds for these institutions usually come from grants or donations from various organizations. It is in this aspect that the contribution of Loyola University is most needed in the support of the task I have taken.

The principles of the National Association of Social Workers are also supportive of the kind of work that I have chosen to be involved in especially in the promotion of social justice. This is in the sense that, in a society there are different people with different lifestyles and of course accompanied with different kinds of problems. There are those who are enlightened, educated and financially well off. On the other extreme we have the members of the society who are not so well educated, the poor living in the poor neighborhoods and mostly these are the people who are adversely affected by the brunt of drug abuse. They are the ones mostly exposed to the drugs and the drug dealers.

Education is a basic human right, more so when it is targeted at helping change an individual’s life, because in a situation where drug abuse is due to ignorance, the difference between the amounts of information one has on drugs can mean either life or death. Through service to the society, these principles are satisfied and by providing social justice, a responsibility for all of us to work towards helping the other less fortunate members of the society. (NASW, 2008). Through social work, the campaigns against drug abuse, the general educational forums and the counseling of the victims and final rehabilitation, social justice can be done and the rehabilitated people can be able to work and fend for themselves.

In the social work profession, there are various researches looking into different ways of how social work can be integrated into different aspects of the society. With respect to social work and the problem of substance abuse, research has been carried out in terms of investigating the relationship between drug abuse and poverty, the effects of drug abuse on the society. Some of the questions that can be used as guides in this effort are: what is the income bracket of the drug abuse victims, in which parts of the community do the drug abuse victims live, what percentage of the drug abuse victims live in the poor neighborhoods and what is the highest education level attained by the victims.

Given that there is scarcely if any, efforts directed towards alleviating poverty as a way of reducing the prevalence of drug abuse especially among the poor, I have seen that there is a way in which this can be explored and I am putting my efforts into it. My vision for my professional work is to go further into looking into the aspects of social work that I feel have been neglected. In this case I may have lots of hurdles ahead, but with promise of great achievement in my endeavors.

In order to improve the social work professions response to the issue of direct relationship between drug abuse and poverty, it will be helpful to highlight the problem in the specific areas and do a lot of awareness campaigns. Carrying out and publishing a research into the issue will also do a lot in improving the response.

During my study course in high school, I studied Biology with various topics that covered the human biology ranging from the structure of the cell and the functions, genetics, human anatomy and human physiology. Under these topics we covered drugs and their effects on the human body and reproduction. Some of the drugs that we learned about are cocaine, alcohol, nicotine, marijuana and khat (a stimulant known in some countries as miraa).

Loyola University Chicago. School of Social work. Philanthropy NMPS. 2008. Web.

Definition of Substance abuse . 2008. Web.

National Association of Social Workers. Putting Poverty on the Election Platform: The Time to Eradicate Poverty is Now. 2008. Web.

Social Work in United States . 2008. Web.

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IvyPanda . "Drug Abuse in High School and College." September 26, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/drug-abuse-in-high-school-and-college/.

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Home — Essay Samples — Nursing & Health — Drug Addiction — Drug Addiction: Choice or Disease?

Drug Addiction: Choice Or Disease?

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Published: Sep 16, 2023

Words: 677 | Page: 1 | 4 min read

Table of contents

The choice argument, the disease model, psychological and sociological factors, a holistic perspective.

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