Attention-increasing drugs like Adderall and Ritalin, though regulated by prescription, are abused or resold on college campuses for recreational use and late-night study sessions that require more than just caffeine and loud music, some students say.
Both drugs, which carry the threat of addiction, are Schedule II drugs, which are closely supervised by the federal government. And although students often use these drugs to improve their focus, they are also sometimes crushed and snorted solely to get them high, said Dr. Joji Suzuki, a fellow in addiction psychiatry at Boston University Medical Center.
“We don’t know for real what people are doing,” Suzuki said. “With supervision, people can use these prescriptions safely. [If] not under medical supervision, [they] are risking a lot.”
However, unlike many other drugs people obtain illegally without a prescription, the majority of non-prescription users of Adderall, Ritalin and similar medications take the drugs not to lose their inhibitions or change their perceptions, but to enhance their academic performance, said Northeastern University assistant professor of pharmacy Christian Teter.
Teter, who co-authored a study published in October 2006 of 4,580 undergraduate college students’ drug use at a large Midwestern university, said researchers do not yet fully understand the extent of and reasoning for the use of prescription stimulants among college students.
“We’re just beginning to ask the right questions,” he said. “A lot of earlier data wasn’t asking the right questions.”
For example, white males in fraternities have emerged as front runners in terms of stimulant use, Teter said.
“We are still trying to figure out why,” he said.
Edgewood University sophomore Nikki Weismer said she took Ritalin on a regular basis by prescription when she was a freshman at BU last year to help her focus, but has not used it since.
“Lots of my friends buy Ritalin or Adderall to use it to cram for midterms or finals or recreationally,” she said in an email, adding some of them call others to bring more doses of the drugs while they study at the library.
Weismer said she had little trouble obtaining her prescription from SHS after she complained of trouble focusing, but said the doctor she saw recognized signs of her mild attention deficit disorder.
Other students, however, manage to obtain the drug purely for recreational use through other means, such as buying it from students who have been prescribed the drug.
“Many kids who have prescriptions use it as a source of money making,” Weismer said.
Getting a prescription for these drugs is not so easy, even though students may request these drugs specifically.
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, for which people are prescribed drugs such as Ritalin or Adderall, is a developmental disorder, so individuals diagnosed with it must have shown some symptoms before the age of seven, said child psychiatrist Dana Rubin.
“In college, if you have someone who thinks they are showing the first symptoms of ADHD, they probably do not have it,” Rubin said. “But it is not uncommon to not be diagnosed until then.
“It can’t be someone who had no symptoms at all and then all of a sudden they do,” she said, and added she avoids asking students directly for their opinion on whether or not they need certain drugs.