The Panther Newspaper: To get the grade or let loose, students turn to pills
Psychostimulants, like the Adderall pictured above in different dosages, provide students with an increased feeling of focus and awakeness to study or party.
My psychology midterm was less than 12 hours away and I wasn’t absorbing any of the information in my textbook. I was afraid of failure, so I asked a friend who has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) to share their medication with me.
I swallowed the pill when I woke up the next morning and after a couple hours, suddenly felt alert, focused, energized and even a bit more outgoing — I felt like the best version of myself and even my closest friends noticed a difference in my behavior.
I wasn’t surprised when I found out that I received an A on the test, but the crash that I experienced after taking the drug made me question if my good grade was worth it at all. When I tried to get some sleep that night, my body was worn out from a long day of classes and studying, but my brain refused to shut off. This resulted in me inadvertently staying up until at least 5:30 a.m. and waking up almost every 30 minutes once I did doze off. I may have felt like Wonder Woman while the psychostimulant was active, but I was so groggy and sluggish afterward that I ended up feeling more like a sloth.*
Students, like myself, on college campuses are taking unprescribed psychostimulants like Adderall, which is used to treat ADHD or attention deficit disorder (ADD), to help them study, especially for midterms and finals, or to party.
“A couple of years ago, I had some students coming in who were telling me that they were using Adderall because it would help them keep awake so they could drink more,” said Jeanne Walker, director of student psychological counseling services and professor at Crean College of Health and Behavioral Sciences. “What happens is the Adderall keeps you alert and having fun, so you just stay awake and drink some more and you then over-drink because you’re not getting the effects of the alcohol to put you to sleep.”
One in five college students abuse prescription stimulants at least once in their life, according to a 2014 survey conducted by the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids.
Most students take these psychostimulants in order to achieve functional goals such as studying, working or staying awake. Approximately two-thirds of college students who reported abusing unprescribed psychostimulants said taking the medication helped them get higher grades, improved their overall work performance or helped them gain a competitive edge, according to the same survey.
| Purposeful prescriptions
Someone who has ADHD or ADD typically has higher levels of activity within the neurotransmitters in their brain, which are involved with attention and focus, said Jessica Walker, psychology professor at Crean College of Health and Behavioral Sciences.
“If somebody takes Adderall or another pyschostimulant, it actually increases the amount of those neurotransmitters,” Jessica Walker said. “Neurons have this feedback mechanism on them called auto-receptors and if the neurotransmitter levels get too high, the auto-receptors get stimulated and they cause the neurons to make less of those neurotransmitters over time.”
Jeanne Walker said people with ADHD or ADD will experience hyperactivity and an inability to follow through on simple tasks.
“There’s a part of their brain that isn’t operating correctly and so what that does is it prevents them from doing some of the things that normal people do which is control their behavior, keep their impulses in control and be able to organize things,” Jeanne Walker said.
Becca Cavallari, a junior film studies major, began taking Adderall in July for medical reasons. She said she realized she was restless when she tried to sit in a stationary seat for the duration of a movie, which is when she decided to get help.
“(Film) is the one thing I actually care about and I realized that I couldn’t even pay attention for that long, so that’s when I sought out (an Adderall prescription),” Cavallari said.
Cavallari takes her medication at 8 a.m. every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and said it takes about an hour for her to feel its effects.
“I like being able to sit still, read something and actually understand and not have my brain trail off,” Cavallari said. “I don’t feel physically different … I just feel focused and more direct.”
Cavallari noticed a bit of a dependency when she first started taking Adderall.
“In the beginning, I definitely felt like I needed to take it every single day of the week to feel focused,” Cavallari said. “I can still get work done if I don’t take it, I just have to try harder.”
One of the first days that she didn’t take her medication after taking it every day, Cavallari ran into some issues.
“I went to a day party and I just felt brain dead, like I didn’t know how to connect with people,” Cavallari said. “I think that’s when I was kind of relying on it more and trying to do it every day.”
Cavallari also learned not to mix her medication with other substances such as caffeine or alcohol.
“I had a huge coffee (with my medication) and I literally thought I was having a heart attack. It was too much going on,” Cavallari said. “I’ll also go out on Thursday and I realized when I drink on (the medication), I will blackout and have no idea about anything.”
Information is compiled from a 2014 survey released by the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids.
Graphic by Lauren Armenta, Art Director.
| Abusing Adderall
Jeanne Walker said she was concerned when she had students telling her how they were using the medication inappropriately.
“A lot of people will take it a couple of times and they have no negative side effects but for those people who don’t have side effects there might be somebody who either becomes extremely addicted to it or has serious medical problems,” Jeanne Walker said.
Jessica Walker explained that psychostimulants have a calming effect on people with ADHD, but people who take this medication without a prescription never feel this effect.
“This is because they don’t have the extra high levels (of activity within the neurotransmitters) that somebody with ADHD has, so it doesn’t stimulate the auto-receptors in the same way,” Jessica Walker said.
Aside from the absence of this calming effect, someone who takes a psychostimulant non-medically will have a similar experience to those who are prescribed the medication to treat ADHD, Jessica Walker said.
“Somebody who doesn’t have ADHD would have average or normal levels of these neurotransmitters coursing around in their brain,” Jessica Walker said. “When they take this drug, the drug increases the amount of neurotransmitters in the brain and all of a sudden … they’re able to concentrate more, they’re able to have more energy and more focus.”
Jeanne Walker said that is why many college students will take psychostimulants.
“The problem is that because you can get it so easily and it does really zone you in and make you focus, a lot of students will want to do that,” Jeanne Walker said. “It has positive effects for the short term and so that becomes something that students want because everybody wants to do better.”
Jessica Walker said the benefits of staying awake and paying attention aren’t as great as these students might think.
“It gives you a false sense of how good you are,” Jessica Walker said. “You feel like you’re really getting the material … but you could actually be hurting your ability to remember things on the test.”
Jessica Walker said there is also potential for serious abuse and addiction in the long term if you take medication that isn’t prescribed to you, especially psychostimulants.
“If you keep doing this over and over again, your brain gets used to having the neurotransmitters like that so then if you stop taking the drug, you experience a really big crash where your neurotransmitters go down way low,” Jessica Walker said. “That can lead to things like depression and even suicidal thoughts.”
Taking psychostimulants when they aren’t prescribed to you can cause many negative side effects including low blood pressure, headaches, dry mouth, loss of appetite, irritability, rapid mood swings, insomnia and depression, according to drugwatch.com.
Jeanne Walker said that abusing psychostimulants can also lead to respiratory problems, circulation problems, increased aggression and psychotic episodes.
Jessica Walker suggests that students use their willpower to get them to focus.
“You have to muster up inside of you whatever will you have to let go of the distractions and pay attention,” Jessica Walker said. “Do what you have to do to make sure that you maintain focus and once you really try enough, I think that it becomes habitual.”
Jeanne Walker said that getting enough sleep, eating good food, exercising and meditation are all effective ways to boost your focus naturally.
*Three additional sentences have been added to the recap of my experience taking a psychostimulant because I felt it was necessary to describe the crash in more detail.
Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
