Study Drugs

“I’m going to take an Adderall and study all night.”  There’s no telling how many times those words have been echoed around campus.  Today students face extreme academic pressures to get the best grades possible.  In high school, the stakes are getting into a good college.  However in college, the stakes become much higher as getting bad grades can lead to you not getting into the med school you want, or not landing an internship that could lead to your dream job.  The stakes are different for everyone, but one thing is certain at a top university like Vanderbilt: everyone wants to succeed.  Because of the rigorous academic work, and competitive scholastic environment at universities across the country, students look for any advantage they can get.  Today, the answer for so many is Adderall, also known as the ‘study drug’ (1). Many have been prescribed it; many more have taken it.  Because of the effects of the drug, many students will find ways of obtaining the drug such as buying it from a friend, or even faking symptoms to get a prescription.

Adderall is prescribed for people with ADHD or narcolepsy.  However, since the drugs effects on the brain increase student’s ability to focus, many people fake symptoms in order to get the drug so they can use it to study.  A recent study showed that 93% of students were able to fake Adderall symptoms and get a false positive diagnosis.  Therefore, many of the people who get prescribed ADHD medicine do not necessarily need it.  This means doctors are overprescribing the medicine.  Furthermore, one experiments findings said that “students could successfully get a false positive diagnosis with just five minutes of Google searching on ADHD symptoms” (2).  Thus, the testing currently in place is ineffective and does not accurately assess the symptoms of ADHD. The fact that students are able to very easily and successfully obtain a prescription if they desire is scary considering the perceived competitive advantage it gives in terms of studying and grades.

So how prevalent is Adderall usage?  This week I made a survey to ask people around Vanderbilt’s campus to find out how many students around us are using Adderall or other drugs prescribed for people with ADHD.  Of the people who completed the survey, only 38% of students were prescribed Adderall or other drug, however 79% of students said they had taken the drug.  This means that roughly 40% of students surveyed who were not prescribed the drug had taken it for studying or other use.  With such a large number of people surveyed saying they have taken the drug, I was curious to see if there were any specific characteristics of people taking the drug.  There seemed to be equal percentages of males and females taking Adderall.  However, there were a disproportionate number of people in fraternities or sororities taking the drug.  Further, the older the respondent was, the more likely they were to have taken the drug.  Thus, on Vanderbilt’s campus it seems the most likely people to take these study drugs are older members of fraternities or sororities.

At a top quality academic institution such as Vanderbilt students are often in great competition with each other.  Therefore, is it fair to have a drug that helps you study? In a competitive college if your friends are doing it and showing positive results, then you have a huge incentive because those are the people you’re competing for jobs with.  As bad and unethical as that may sound, many people who don’t need the drug have resorted to Adderall in order to increase their GPA.  As one student put it, Adderall is “steroids for the brain”.  Thus, if you look at baseball where in the early 2000’s steroids became a huge problem, as one person taking them would lead to increased batting average and homeruns.  Then more and more people began taking steriods.  While the problem was eventually cured in major league baseball, the same principles apply to academics in college.  As some people begin taking these ‘brain drugs’ and seeing results, more and more will join them.

Students have gone beyond taking these drugs for studying.  Many college kids taking these drugs are unaware of their severe consequences.  “Between 2005 and 2010, emergency room visits related to ADHD stimulant medications used non-medically tripled from 5,212 to 15,585 visits” (2).  Nearly half of those visits were from mixing Adderall with alcohol.  Therefore college students are now using Adderall to stay up late into the night and be able to drink more.  The solution from stopping students from abusing these drugs is two fold.  First and easiest, awareness about the side effects and consequences of taking prescribed Adderall should be preached to college students.  Second, and more effective, would be developing a more accurate test for Adderall so only those in need will be prescribed the medicine.  However until that is done, students will always be able to fake the symptoms and doctors will be unable to tell.

1. http://www.wjla.com/articles/2013/11/adderall-use-rising-among-college-students-97245.html
2. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/12/02/7-things-you-need-to-know-about-adderall.html
3. http://www.rxlist.com/adderall-side-effects-drug-center.htm