![]() Drug counselors say that for some teenagers, the pills eventually become an entry to the abuse of painkillers and sleep aids. Little is known about the long-term effects of abuse of stimulants among the young. “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.īut 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. 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. (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. 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. Observed Gary Boggs, a special agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration, “We’re seeing it all across the United States.” “It’s not as if there is one school where this is the culture. “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. 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. Of the more than 200 students, school officials, parents and others contacted for this article, about 40 agreed to share their experiences. 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. “Everyone in school either has a prescription or has a friend who does,” the boy said.Īt 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. SAT it gave them a tunnel focus tailor-made for the marathon of tests long known to make or break college applications. The drug did more than just jolt them awake for the 8 a.m. 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. Throughout the parking lot, he said, eight of his friends did the same thing. He leaned over, closed one nostril and snorted it. 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. 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. He steered into the high school parking lot, clicked off the ignition and scanned the scraps of his recent weeks.
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