Are you familiar with the term Study Drugs? If you’ve been to college, or have a college-aged child in your house, chances are you’ve heard of it. Also referred to as “smart drugs” or cognitive enhancers, study drugs are prescription stimulants which often get improperly used by college students who are pulling all-nighters or cramming for tests.
When a patient is diagnosed with ADHD or ADD, they’re commonly prescribed medications like Ritalin, Vyvanse, or Adderall. Stressed, fatigued, and panicked students are seeking these meds out, even though they do not have ADHD or ADD, to get short-term energy boosts and increased mental focus. Sadly, many think these study drugs are safer than ‘street drugs’. This is false. These drugs are highly addictive and have similar side effects to street drugs.
Unlike street drugs, though, there is no mysterious black market for the pills. All a student has to do to get their hands on them, is either get prescribed the medication themselves (the screener questions are fairly easy to game) or make friends with those who already have a script.
Adderall and College Students seem to go hand in hand these days and abuse, in particular, is spreading. It seems harmless, right? Just a quick pick me up.
Having this outlook comes from poor drug education and a lot of assumptions. These drugs work rapidly on the brain, generating first tolerance, and then dependence. If a person isn’t careful, that drug they started taking as a ‘quick pick me up’ can turn into the end of their academic career as symptoms of addiction set in. Depression. Anxiety. Fatigue/lack of sleep. All of that is in addition to the threat of overdose because of the growing dependency on the product to continue functioning at normal levels. It’s a vicious cycle.
Fortunately, just like with illegal drug addictions, the way to beat an addiction to Adderall—or other study drugs– is a focused drug addiction treatment plan that addresses the dependency and the thinking that went into it.
Don’t be afraid to get help. Millions of students are looking for a way out of the cycle every year. Look for a qualified drug rehabilitation facility near you and ask about treatment programs for Adderall and other smart drugs, many of which have been proven multiple times over to help break the cycle of “smart drug” addiction.
