From prescription to mindset

With finals season approaching, some St. Joe’s students feel the need to use “Study Buddy” drugs such as Adderall and Ritalin to get ahead of the game.

Katie Bean, assistant director of the Wellness, Alcohol and Drug Education Program (WADE), said it’s impossible to determine which students are more likely to use Study Buddy drugs.

“It’s not causation, it’s correlation,” Bean said. “We don’t know. Are they generally not a good student or are they generally not good time managers? Is it because you feel you’re lacking in your study skills? ‘I need a crutch to help me through [and] need something to help, some kind of additive because I can’t do it alone.’”

Study Buddy drugs are stimulant drugs normally prescribed to treat people with medical conditions like ADHD, ADD and other attention and behavioral issues. Studies taken at St. Joe’s in the Spring 2014 and 2017 semesters showed a decrease in stimulant usage among undergraduates, but there was also a decrease in response rate, which Bean said could have affected the data.

“In Spring 2014, with [a] 20.4% response rate from undergraduates, only 9.3% total said they had taken Adderall in the last 12 months, or any stimulant in the last 12 months,” Bean said. “The Spring 2017 [data] was actually lower, 6.7% total, but we had a lower response rate and that could play a role.”

Even though the data was lower in the later study, Bean said there’s still reason for concern in those findings.

“That’s way less than what people expect, and that is a real issue because if you expect that it’s 95%, you’re more likely to try it or think that it’s normal when in reality it’s less than 10% of people [on campus] that are doing it,” Bean said. “If you think everyone is taking Adderall around finals then you’re more likely to try to take Adderall to study during finals because you think that’s the norm”

Those results are higher than the national average for undergraduate students which, at the time of the first study, was 4.1%. An article published in 2018 for Ohio State News at Ohio State University found that “almost 16 percent of college students” have misused stimulant prescription drugs. The article also found that students who misused stimulant prescription drugs got the drugs from a friend.

A St. Joe’s undergraduate student who requested anonymity happens to be that kind of friend for some people on campus.

“I started giving it to my friends in high school for free just for favors, and I still do that to some of my close friends,” they said.

When asked about how they get these drugs, in their case Adderall, the student said they sell their own prescription for profit.

“I actually have a prescription for [Adderall], but I don’t take it all the time so I always have a bunch left over,” they said. “It’s a profit. I sell other things too, so it’s just like getting your name out there.”

This dealer’s prescription makes everything easier because the prescription allows them to legally get more Adderall. Despite having to mail their prescription from their house to campus, this dealer said “it’s still not difficult at all because it’s entirely legal for me to get it.”

Kim Logio, Ph.D, associate professor and chair of the sociology department, understands the partial legality of this dealer-user relationship.

“What’s happening on campus is that students were realizing pretty early on that they have a legitimate prescription for Adderall and make money because they can sell their adderall, they can sell a pill or two, to a friend who says they need it to stay focused,” Logio said. “Now we have an illegal activity going on.”

The legality of this is what complicates the issue of stimulant prescription drug abuse. Logio sees the complexity of the situation by talking about other legal drugs such as caffeine, nicotine and marijuana.

“If you’re just talking about drugs in particular, caffeine’s a drug, nicotine’s a drug, marijuana’s a drug, alcohol’s a drug,” Logio said. “Alcohol is only illegal before the age of 21. Nicotine is illegal before the age of 18, and even then it’s not even really illegal; it’s illegal to sell it, but not illegal to use it for someone under 18. Caffeine isn’t illegal at any age.”

Along with the partial legality of stimulant prescription drug abuse, drugs like Adderall and Ritalin are able to be used in an inconsistent way because of the way the drugs are designed.

“Sociologically what we’re worried about is it creates a mindset that when you’re struggling you just take a pill,” Logio said. “It’s an addiction mindset.”

What worries people like Bean is that this mindset is nothing more than a mindset and people aren’t realizing that.

“The placebo effect is real.” Bean said.“People think it’s going to help and they actually focus because they took something and think it’s going to help. “They’re a problem everywhere.”