Feature Draft

Six friends sit around a table in the Palm Court at the Plaza Hotel, sipping from porcelain teacups and munching on an assortment of delicate pastries and sweets. The friends are a mixture of ages and interests, but all have a common thread – each is currently a college student, dealing with similar pressures from professors and peers alike. One of the boys, dressed fashionably in a charcoal button up cardigan over a magenta dress shirt, announces that he has some news to share. He has recently been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), a developmental disorder concerned with inattentiveness, over activity, impulsivity or a combination.

“We all cheered when he said he got diagnosed with ADD… like it was a good thing,” admitted Mercedes B., part of the tea party and a 19-year-old BAFA student at Eugene Lang College and Parsons School of Design. “Because that means that he gets pills.”

Prescription drug abuse has been on the rise in the past decade in the United States; use of unprescribed drugs in the past ten years has grown by 430%, according to a study done by the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. College students have definitely contributed to this growth; a 2010 survey by the National College Health Association had ___ results. Out of 105,781 students surveyed, 3.2% had taken antidepressants, 7.5% had taken painkillers, 4.3% had taken sedatives and 7.8% had taken stimulants – all without a prescription for the drug.

“Our culture has viewed [prescription drug abuse] as inevitable, more inevitable than smoking weed,” nineteen-year-old New School student Dylan D. said. “It’s hyped by the media. It’s always in movies, television shows.”

Prescription drug use and abuse at the New School is a topic often swept under the rug.

“They didn’t say anything [at orientation],” Grant N., a Parsons student, said. “People go crazy working here, they should tell you about the effects abusing drugs like Adderrall.”

The issue of abusing prescription drugs is not without relevance at the New School; out of 30 students interviewed, more than half thought that prescription drug abuse at the school was a problem. 17 students admitted to using prescription drugs they had not been prescribed, and two even admitted to deceiving a doctor into giving them a prescription they did not need.

A recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention discovered that almost 40 Americans die every day from prescription drug overdoses. This poses a serious risk for students, who take pills, which they purchased or were given, without an understanding of dosages or the addictive properties of the drugs. Many of the New School students surveyed were not even sure how to spell the names of the drugs that they admitted to taking.

Dylan D. believes that ignorance to be part of the appeal of prescription drugs. “You can’t see how much you’re taking. It’s a source of excitement. People are curious to try things when they don’t know what the results will be.”

Grant N. doesn’t even remember what he took recreationally. “It was Percocet or Vicodin, I don’t remember. I took like four, and it didn’t do shit.”

Other students’ self-medicate, using the drugs to solve minor aches and pains or to help them focus intensely on their studies.

“I know some Architecture students that take Adderall all the time,” Grant N. explained. “It’s the only way they can get work done.”

An increase in the amount of prescriptions given has led to an increase in the amount of people abusing prescription drugs, according to the CDC.

“Enough narcotics are prescribed to give every adult in America one month of prescription narcotics,” Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the CDC, said in a telebriefing in early November. “This stems from a few irresponsible doctors and, in fact, now the burden of dangerous drugs is being created more by a few irresponsible doctors than by drug pushers on the street corners.”

The idea of a “dealer” seems to be almost absent from prescription drug abuse. The mysterious “friend”, who seems to have an unlimited supply of prescribed drugs they would be more than willing to share, has replaced the drug dealer. Of the New School students that admitted to using unprescribed drugs, the most popular ways of acquiring the drugs were through a friend. 13 students said a friend had given them the drugs, while 9 said they had purchased the drug from a friend.

Mercedes B. has only taken a prescription painkiller once, and a friend gave it to her, without any request for compensation – though it could also be contributed to the doctor’s negligence.

“The Percocet came from a friend who was getting his wisdom teeth removed. He got a full prescription three or four months in advance, so we just snorted it.”

[FACULTY QUOTE HERE]

Regardless of the risks that come with abusing prescription drugs are great – arrest, addiction, and expulsion, to name a few – some students don’t feel that it is a problem at the New School.

“I don’t think anything bad is coming out of it,” Dylan D. believes. “I think a majority of the New School uses [prescription drugs], but it’s the same at other colleges. Everybody does it.”
Either way, prescription drug use is on the rise, and there are mixed feelings about what should be done.

Dr. Thomas Frieden of the CDC believes in attacking at the primary source.

“States can take effective action to shut pill mills and reduce doctor shopping by patients,” he suggested during the telebriefing. “Boards that are concerned with physician licensure can take appropriate action against physicians who have been inappropriate in providing prescription narcotics outside the bounds of reasonable medical practice.”

Students, however, just want to be better informed.

“During orientation, health services had a table with condoms,” Dylan D. said with a chuckle. “Really, they should’ve had information about prescription drugs – you know, what they look like, the effects. The fact that [prescription drugs] are addictive. Honestly, I didn’t even know that.”