College-age Students Use ADHD Drugs to Make the Grade

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College-age Students Use ADHD Drugs to Make the Grade
Doping for the Dean's List
Drug-induced performance enhancement goes academic
With all the coverage and controversy over Olympic and
professional athletes using performance enhancing drugs, is it
really any wonder that the use of controlled substances to
increase performance has gone mainstream? Of course not.
But what's really mind-boggling is that I'm not just talking
about athletics, here.
Nowadays, some folks are misusing prescription medications
to help enhance their test performance and grade-point
averages.
According to a recent ABC News online report, the newest
drug craze among college-age students isn't Ecstasy, cocaine,
or hash, but mind-altering ADHD drugs like Aderall or
Ritalin — the same ones that are turning our kids into mind-
numbed zombies (or worse, suicidal or murderous
psychopaths). And it isn't even to get high, like in the old
days. It's to get an edge up on other students applying for
coveted spots in universities and graduate schools across the
country.
Now, I'm all for competition, but let's set some limits, huh?
Like those dictated by common sense (not to mention the
law)?
Apparently, this is far from an isolated incident. One college
student interviewed for the article claimed that at least two-
thirds of the student body have tried the stimulants at least
once — obtained, of course, by purchasing pills from a
fellow student with a "legitimate" prescription. If this claim
is true, it means many prescriptions for Ritalin, Aderall, or
any number of other ADHD drugs are nothing more than
fronts for illegal drug trafficking!
What do these drugs do, you're asking? Those that take them
claim they help them to tune everything else out and focus on
reading, studying, or paper-writing. It also helps them to stay
awake for those all-nighters. Jeez — whatever happened to
coffee?
Don't these collegians realize that they're taking chances
with their health, or even their lives? ADHD drugs have been
shown to carry with them some serious heart risks — not to
mention impotence, nervous tics, mood swings and
psychosis. And these are only the ones we know about from
the mainstream press!
The scariest part of the story is this: According to the piece, a
spokesperson for a major standardized-test tutoring company
claimed that HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS are increasingly
using these drugs to help them prepare for the SAT. How
does the firm know this?
Keep reading and I'll tell you, but make sure you're sitting
down first...
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Doc, are you SURE my kid doesn't have ADHD?
I wonder on how many occasions in the past I've talked
about ADHD and the poisons they prescribe for it. To say it's
been numerous times would be the understatement of the
century. But it seems like every time I write about it, at least
a few readers write in and lambaste me for being too hard on
the parents of kids with this made-up malady.
They say I'm not compassionate enough — that some kids
REALLY NEED those stimulants to be healthy and well-
developed. They say that no parent in their right mind would
ever allow their child or children to take any kind of drugs
unless they were absolutely necessary…
And in a perfect world, this would be the case.
But we live in a hyper-competitive society, and also one in
which the self-esteem of some adults is so weak that the
achievements of their children have become vicarious
validation for parents — so much so that they're willing to
pump their teenagers full of mind-altering drugs just to be
able to say "My kid did better than your kid on the SAT."
Yes, you read that right: Parents have begun to put their
adolescents on highly addictive ADHD drugs just to help
them get better scores on the SAT test, according to the ABC
News article I cited above. They do this despite the fact that
there isn't even any proof that it helps at all!
I've always said that poor parenting is at least as much to
blame for not only ADHD (whether legitimate or imagined),
but obesity, depression and so many other challenges to
health our children face.
And because more and more parents are medicating their kids
in the name of success, we can add prescription drug
addiction to that list.

Staying dedicated without being medicated,
William Campbell Douglass II, MD
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