Feature Final

Sitting around a table in the Palm Court at the Plaza Hotel, six friends
sip from porcelain teacups and munch 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. A girl pushes her hair behind her ear, bringing up the new spring line of a big fashion house. A boy clears his throat before reviewing the new indie blockbuster he illegally downloaded.

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. There is a calm in the conversation, and he smiles. 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 Plaza 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
ignored.

“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.”

In the midst of schoolwork and final projects, prescription drugs are often forgotten about, although their abuse increases.; out of 30 students interviewed, more than half thought that prescription drug abuse at the school was a problem. Seventeen 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.

The ignorance surrounding prescription drugs seems to be a part of the appeal – at least to Dylan D. “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 who 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. According to the New School students that
admitted to using unprescribed drugs, the most popular ways of acquiring
the drugs were through a friend. Thirteen students said a friend had given them the drugs, nine out of 10 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.”


Regardless of the risks that come with abusing prescription drugs- 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.”