[Vision2020] Risky Rise of the Good-Grade Pill
Dave
tiedye at turbonet.com
Sun Jun 10 21:14:14 PDT 2012
Um, put off, last minute, projects were a different story.....
Dave
On 6/10/2012 9:09 PM, Dave wrote:
> You know, I discovered in collage that a good night's sleep would help
> you through any test much better then cramming.
>
> Dave
>
>
> On 6/10/2012 2:55 PM, lfalen wrote:
>> I never used a pill, but I did drink about 30 cups of coffee,
>> studying from midnight until breakfast when I was an undergraduate.
>> Roger
>> -----Original message-----
>> From: Moscow Cares moscowcares at moscow.com
>> Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2012 13:06:26 -0700
>> To: Sue Hovey suehovey at moscow.com
>> Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Risky Rise of the Good-Grade Pill
>>
>>> The 1960s were so heavily drug-laden that if you remember them at
>>> all, chances are you weren't there.
>>>
>>> Seeya round town, Moscow.
>>>
>>> Tom Hansen
>>> Moscow, Idaho
>>>
>>> "If not us, who?
>>> If not now, when?"
>>>
>>> - Unknown
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Jun 10, 2012, at 12:52, "Sue Hovey"<suehovey at moscow.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> We used amphetamines in college way back in the 50s for exactly the
>>>> same thing..late night studying or finishing assignments before
>>>> deadlines because we’d put everything off till the last minute. I
>>>> sure wasn’t unique in my habits, and this was Baylor University
>>>> where we didn’t drink, smoke, or even dance (in public,) but we did
>>>> use those little pills. I don’t think much has changed here.
>>>> Everybody used them, either to keep awake or lose weight, or both.
>>>>
>>>> Sue H.
>>>>
>>>> From: Art Deco
>>>> Sent: Sunday, June 10, 2012 6:23 AM
>>>> To: vision2020 at moscow.com
>>>> Subject: [Vision2020] Risky Rise of the Good-Grade Pill
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> June 9, 2012
>>>> Risky Rise of the Good-Grade Pill
>>>>
>>>> By ALAN SCHWARZ
>>>>
>>>> He steered into the high school parking lot, clicked off the
>>>> ignition and scanned the scraps of his recent weeks. Crinkled chip
>>>> bags on the dashboard. Soda cups at his feet. And on the passenger
>>>> seat, a rumpled SAT practice book whose owner had been told since
>>>> fourth grade he was headed to the Ivy League. Pencils up in 20
>>>> minutes.
>>>>
>>>> The boy exhaled. Before opening the car door, he recalled recently,
>>>> he twisted open a capsule of orange powder and arranged it in a
>>>> neat line on the armrest. He leaned over, closed one nostril and
>>>> snorted it.
>>>>
>>>> Throughout the parking lot, he said, eight of his friends did the
>>>> same thing.
>>>>
>>>> The drug was not cocaine or heroin, but Adderall, an amphetamine
>>>> prescribed for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder that the
>>>> boy said he and his friends routinely shared to study late into the
>>>> night, focus during tests and ultimately get the grades worthy of
>>>> their prestigious high school in an affluent suburb of New York
>>>> City. The drug did more than just jolt them awake for the 8 a.m.
>>>> SAT; it gave them a tunnel focus tailor-made for the marathon of
>>>> tests long known to make or break college applications.
>>>>
>>>> “Everyone in school either has a prescription or has a friend who
>>>> does,” the boy said.
>>>>
>>>> At high schools across the United States, pressure over grades and
>>>> competition for college admissions are encouraging students to
>>>> abuse prescription stimulants, according to interviews with
>>>> students, parents and doctors. Pills that have been a staple in
>>>> some college and graduate school circles are going from rare to
>>>> routine in many academically competitive high schools, where
>>>> teenagers say they get them from friends, buy them from student
>>>> dealers or fake symptoms to their parents and doctors to get
>>>> prescriptions.
>>>>
>>>> Of the more than 200 students, school officials, parents and others
>>>> contacted for this article, about 40 agreed to share their
>>>> experiences. Most students spoke on the condition that they be
>>>> identified by only a first or middle name, or not at all, out of
>>>> concern for their college prospects or their school systems’
>>>> reputations — and their own.
>>>>
>>>> “It’s throughout all the private schools here,” said DeAnsin
>>>> Parker, a New York psychologist who treats many adolescents from
>>>> affluent neighborhoods like the Upper East Side. “It’s not as if
>>>> there is one school where this is the culture. This is the culture.
>>>>
>>>> Observed Gary Boggs, a special agent for the Drug Enforcement
>>>> Administration, “We’re seeing it all across the United States.”
>>>>
>>>> The D.E.A. lists prescription stimulants like Adderall and Vyvanse
>>>> (amphetamines) and Ritalin and Focalin (methylphenidates) as Class
>>>> 2 controlled substances — the same as cocaine and morphine —
>>>> because they rank among the most addictive substances that have a
>>>> medical use. (By comparison, the long-abused anti-anxiety drug
>>>> Valium is in the lower Class 4.) So they carry high legal risks,
>>>> too, as few teenagers appreciate that merely giving a friend an
>>>> Adderall or Vyvanse pill is the same as selling it and can be
>>>> prosecuted as a felony.
>>>>
>>>> While these medicines tend to calm people with A.D.H.D., those
>>>> without the disorder find that just one pill can jolt them with the
>>>> energy and focus to push through all-night homework binges and stay
>>>> awake during exams afterward. “It’s like it does your work for
>>>> you,” said William, a recent graduate of the Birch Wathen Lenox
>>>> School on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
>>>>
>>>> But abuse of prescription stimulants can lead to depression and
>>>> mood swings (from sleep deprivation), heart irregularities and
>>>> acute exhaustion or psychosis during withdrawal, doctors say.
>>>> Little is known about the long-term effects of abuse of stimulants
>>>> among the young. Drug counselors say that for some teenagers, the
>>>> pills eventually become an entry to the abuse of painkillers and
>>>> sleep aids.
>>>>
>>>> “Once you break the seal on using pills, or any of that stuff, its
>>>> not scary anymore — especially when you’re getting A’s,” said the
>>>> boy who snorted Adderall in the parking lot. He spoke from the
>>>> couch of his drug counselor, detailing how he later became addicted
>>>> to the painkiller Percocet and eventually heroin.
>>>>
>>>> Paul L. Hokemeyer, a family therapist at Caron Treatment Centers in
>>>> Manhattan, said: “Children have prefrontal cortexes that are not
>>>> fully developed, and we’re changing the chemistry of the brain.
>>>> That’s what these drugs do. It’s one thing if you have a real
>>>> deficiency the medicine is really important to those people — but
>>>> not if your deficiency is not getting into Brown.”
>>>>
>>>> The number of prescriptions for A.D.H.D. medications dispensed for
>>>> young people ages 10 to 19 has risen 26 percent since 2007, to
>>>> almost 21 million yearly, according to IMS Health, a health care
>>>> information company — a number that experts estimate corresponds to
>>>> more than two million individuals. But there is no reliable
>>>> research on how many high school students take stimulants as a
>>>> study aid. Doctors and teenagers from more than 15 schools across
>>>> the nation with high academic standards estimated that the portion
>>>> of students who do so ranges from 15 percent to 40 percent.
>>>>
>>>> “They’re the A students, sometimes the B students, who are trying
>>>> to get good grades,” said one senior at Lower Merion High School in
>>>> Ardmore, a Philadelphia suburb, who said he makes hundreds of
>>>> dollars a week selling prescription drugs, usually priced at $5 to
>>>> $20 per pill, to classmates as young as freshmen. “They’re the
>>>> quote-unquote good kids, basically.”
>>>>
>>>> The trend was driven home last month to Nan Radulovic, a
>>>> psychotherapist in Santa Monica, Calif. Within a few days, she
>>>> said, an 11th grader, a ninth grader and an eighth grader asked for
>>>> prescriptions for Adderall solely for better grades. From one girl,
>>>> she recalled, it was not quite a request.
>>>>
>>>> “If you don’t give me the prescription,” Dr. Radulovic said the
>>>> girl told her, “I’ll just get it from kids at school.”
>>>>
>>>> Keeping Everyone Happy
>>>>
>>>> Madeleine surveyed her schedule of five Advanced Placement classes,
>>>> field hockey and several other extracurricular activities and knew
>>>> she could not handle it all. The first physics test of the year —
>>>> inclines, friction, drag — loomed ominously over her college
>>>> prospects. A star senior at her Roman Catholic school in Bethesda,
>>>> Md., Madeleine knew a friend whose grades had gone from B’s to A’s
>>>> after being prescribed Ritalin, so she asked her for a pill.
>>>>
>>>> She got a 95. Thereafter, Madeleine recalled, she got Adderall and
>>>> Vyvanse capsules the rest of the year from various classmates — not
>>>> in exchange for money, she said, but for tutoring them in calculus
>>>> or proofreading their English papers.
>>>>
>>>> “Can I get a drink of water?” Madeleine said she would ask the
>>>> teacher in one class, before excusing herself and heading to the
>>>> water fountain. Making sure no one was watching, she would remove a
>>>> 40-milligram Vyvanse capsule from her purse and swallow it. After
>>>> 30 minutes, the buzz began, she said: laser focus, instant recall
>>>> and the fortitude to crush any test in her path.
>>>>
>>>> “People would have never looked at me and thought I used drugs like
>>>> that — I wasn’t that kid,” said Madeleine, who has just completed
>>>> her freshman year at an Ivy League college and continues to use
>>>> stimulants occasionally. “It wasn’t that hard of a decision. Do I
>>>> want only four hours of sleep and be a mess, and then underperform
>>>> on the test and then in field hockey? Or make the teachers happy
>>>> and the coach happy and get good grades, get into a good college
>>>> and make my parents happy?”
>>>>
>>>> Madeleine estimated that one-third of her classmates at her small
>>>> school, most of whom she knew well, used stimulants without a
>>>> prescription to boost their scholastic performance. Many students
>>>> across the United States made similar estimates for their schools,
>>>> all of them emphasizing that the drugs were used not to get high,
>>>> but mostly by conscientious students to work harder and meet
>>>> ever-rising academic expectations.
>>>>
>>>> These estimates can be neither confirmed nor refuted because little
>>>> data captures this specific type of drug misuse. A respected annual
>>>> survey financed by the National Institute on Drug Abuse,
>>>> “Monitoring the Future, reports that abuse of prescription
>>>> amphetamines by 10th and 12th graders nationally has actually
>>>> dipped from the 1990s and is remaining relatively steady at about
>>>> 10 percent.
>>>>
>>>> However, some experts note that the survey does not focus on the
>>>> demographic where they believe such abuse is rising steadily —
>>>> students at high-pressure high schools — and also that many
>>>> teenagers barely know that what they often call “study drugs” are
>>>> in fact illegal amphetamines.
>>>>
>>>> “Isn’t it just like a vitamin?” asked one high school junior from
>>>> Eastchester, a suburb of New York.
>>>>
>>>> Liz Jorgensen, a licensed addiction specialist who runs Insight
>>>> Counseling in Ridgefield, Conn., said her small center had treated
>>>> “at least 50 or 60” high school students from southern Connecticut
>>>> this school year alone who had abused prescription stimulants for
>>>> academics. Ms. Jorgensen said some of those teenagers landed in
>>>> rehab directly from the stimulants or, more often, grew comfortable
>>>> with prescription drugs in general and began abusing prescription
>>>> painkillers like OxyContin.
>>>>
>>>> A spokesman for Shire, which manufactures Vyvanse and Adderall’s
>>>> extended-release capsules, said studies had shown no link between
>>>> prescribed use of those drugs and later abuse.
>>>>
>>>> Dr. Jeff Jonas, Shire’s senior vice president for research and
>>>> development, said that the company was greatly concerned about the
>>>> misuse of its stimulants but that the rate was very small. “I’m not
>>>> aware of any systematic data that suggests there’s a widespread
>>>> problem,” he said. “You can always find people who testify that it
>>>> happens.”
>>>>
>>>> Students who sell prescription stimulants to their classmates focus
>>>> on their burdens and insecurities. One girl who sells to fellow
>>>> students at Long Beach High School on Long Island said: “These kids
>>>> would get in trouble if they don’t do well in school. When people
>>>> take tests, its immediately, ‘Who am I getting Adderall from?’
>>>> Theyre always looking for it.”
>>>>
>>>> Every school identified in this article was contacted regarding
>>>> statements by its students and stimulant abuse in general. Those
>>>> that responded generally said that they were concerned about some
>>>> teenagers turning to these drugs, but that their numbers were far
>>>> smaller than the students said.
>>>>
>>>> David Weiss, superintendent of Long Beach Public Schools, said the
>>>> survey his district used to gauge student drug use asked about only
>>>> prescription medications in general, not stimulants specifically.
>>>>
>>>> “It has not been a surface issue for us — we’re much more conscious
>>>> of alcohol or other drug use,” Mr. Weiss said in a telephone
>>>> interview. “We haven’t had word that it’s a widespread issue.”
>>>>
>>>> Douglas Young, a spokesman for the Lower Merion School District
>>>> outside Philadelphia, said prescription stimulant abuse was covered
>>>> in various student-wellness initiatives as well as in the
>>>> 10th-grade health curriculum. Mr. Young expressed frustration that
>>>> many parents seemed oblivious to the problem.
>>>>
>>>> “It’s time for a serious wake-up call,” Mr. Young said. “Straight
>>>> A’s and high SAT scores look great on paper, but they aren’t
>>>> reflective measures of a student’s health and well-being. We need
>>>> to better understand the pressures and temptations, and ultimately
>>>> we need to embrace new definitions of student success. For many
>>>> families and communities, that’s simply not happening.”
>>>>
>>>> Fooling the Doctors
>>>>
>>>> During an interview in March, the dealer at Lower Merion High
>>>> reached into his pocket and pulled out the container for his daily
>>>> stash of the prescription stimulants Concerta and Focalin: a
>>>> hollowed-out bullet. Unlike his other products — marijuana and
>>>> heroin, which come from higher-level dealers — his amphetamines
>>>> came from a more trusted, and trusting, source, he said.
>>>>
>>>> “I lie to my psychiatrist — I expressed feelings I didnt really
>>>> have, knowing the consequences of it,” he said, standing in a park
>>>> a few miles from the high school. “I tell the doctor, I find myself
>>>> very distracted, and I feel this really deep pain inside, like I’m
>>>> anxious all the time,’ or something like that.
>>>>
>>>> He coughed out a chuckle and added proudly, “Generally, if you keep
>>>> playing the angsty-teen role, you’ll get something good.”
>>>>
>>>> Christine, a junior sitting nearby, said she followed the
>>>> well-known lines to get her drugs directly and legally, a script
>>>> for scripts. “Im not able to focus on schoolwork,” she said in a
>>>> mockingly anxious voice. “I’m constantly looking out the window.”
>>>> Although she often uses the drugs herself, snorting them for a
>>>> faster and more intense effect, she said she preferred to save them
>>>> for when her customers crave them most.
>>>>
>>>> “Right before everybody took the PSATs, a bunch of kids went to the
>>>> bathroom to snort their Addies,” she said.
>>>>
>>>> This is one of the more vexing problems with stimulants in high
>>>> schools, experts said — the drugs enter the schools via students
>>>> who get them legally, if not legitimately.
>>>>
>>>> Older A.D.H.D. drugs required low doses every few hours, and
>>>> schools, not wanting students to carry the drugs themselves, had
>>>> the school nurse hold and dispense the pills. Newer long-lasting
>>>> versions like Adderall XR and Vyvanse allow parents to give
>>>> children a single dose in the morning, often unaware that the pills
>>>> can go down a pants pocket as easily as the throat. Some students
>>>> said they took their pills only during the week and gave their
>>>> weekend pills to friends.
>>>>
>>>> The mother of one high school freshman in Westchester County said
>>>> she would open the kitchen cabinet every morning and watch her son
>>>> take his prescribed dose of Ritalin. She noticed one day that the
>>>> capsule was strangely airy and held it up to the light. It was empty.
>>>>
>>>> “There were a few times we were short in the month, and I couldnt
>>>> understand why,” recalled the woman, whose son was in eighth grade
>>>> at the time. “It never dawned on me until I found those empty
>>>> capsules, and then I started discovering the little packets of
>>>> powder. He was selling it to other kids.”
>>>>
>>>> A number of teenagers interviewed laughed at the ease with which
>>>> they got some doctors to write prescriptions for A.D.H.D. The
>>>> disorder’s definition requires inattentiveness, hyperactivity or
>>>> impulse control to present clinically significant impairment” in at
>>>> least two settings (school and home, for example), according to the
>>>> Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Crucially, some of this
>>>> impairment must have been in evidence by age 7; a proper diagnosis
>>>> for a teenager claiming to have A.D.H.D., several doctors said,
>>>> requires interviewing parents, teachers and others to confirm that
>>>> the problems existed long before.
>>>>
>>>> Many youngsters with prescriptions said their doctors merely
>>>> listened to their stories and took out their prescription pads. Dr.
>>>> Hilda R. Roque, a primary-care physician in West New York, N.J.,
>>>> said she never prescribed A.D.H.D. medicine but knew many doctors
>>>> who did. She said many parents could push as hard for prescriptions
>>>> as their children did, telling her: “My child is not doing well in
>>>> school. I understand there are meds he can take to make him smarter.”
>>>>
>>>> “To get a prescription for Adderall was the Golden Ticket — it
>>>> really was,” said William, the recent graduate of Birch Wathen in
>>>> Manhattan.
>>>>
>>>> A high school senior in Connecticut who has used his friend’s
>>>> Adderall for school said: “These are academic steroids. But
>>>> usually, parents don’t get the steroids for you.”
>>>>
>>>> As with the steroids taken by athletes, the downside of
>>>> prescription stimulants appears after they provide the desired
>>>> short-term competitive benefits This was the case with a recent
>>>> graduate of McLean High School in Virginia, one of the top public
>>>> schools in the Washington area.
>>>>
>>>> Late in his sophomore year, the boy wanted some help to raise his B
>>>> average — far from what top colleges expected, especially from a
>>>> McLean student. So he told his psychologist what she needed to hear
>>>> for a diagnosis of A.D.H.D. — even gazing out the window during the
>>>> appointment for effect — and was soon getting 30 pills of Adderall
>>>> every month, 10 milligrams each. They worked. He focused late into
>>>> the night studying, concentrated better during exams and got an
>>>> A-minus average for his junior year.
>>>>
>>>> “I wanted to do everything I could to get into the quote-unquote
>>>> right school,” he recalled recently.
>>>>
>>>> As senior year began, when another round of SATs and one last set
>>>> of good grades could put him over the top, the boy said he still
>>>> had trouble concentrating. The doctor prescribed 30 milligrams a
>>>> day. When college applications hit, he bought extra pills for $5
>>>> apiece from a girl in French class who had fooled her psychiatrist,
>>>> too, and began taking several on some days.
>>>>
>>>> The boy said that as his A-minus average continued through senior
>>>> year, no one suspected that “a kid who went to Bible camp” and had
>>>> so improved his grades could be abusing drugs. By the time he was
>>>> accepted and had enrolled at a good but not great college, he was
>>>> up to 300 milligrams a day — constantly taking more to stave off
>>>> the inevitable crash.
>>>>
>>>> One night, after he had taken about 400 milligrams, his heart
>>>> started beating wildly. He began hallucinating and then convulsing.
>>>> He was rushed to the emergency room and wound up spending seven
>>>> months at a drug rehabilitation center.
>>>>
>>>> To his surprise, two of 20 fellow patients there had also landed in
>>>> rehab solely from abusing stimulants in high school.
>>>>
>>>> “No one seems to think that it’s a real thing — adults on the
>>>> outside looking in,” the boy said. “The other kids in rehab thought
>>>> we weren’t addicts because Adderall wasn’t a real drug. It’s so
>>>> underestimated.”
>>>>
>>>> ‘No Way You’d Notice’
>>>>
>>>> The Sklar family lives near the top of a daunting hill in Ardsley,
>>>> a comfortable suburb north of New York City. Ardsley High School
>>>> sends dozens of graduates every year to Ivy League-caliber
>>>> colleges. When students there use Facebook, they all know that its
>>>> founder, Mark Zuckerberg, once walked the same halls.
>>>>
>>>> At their kitchen table after school last month, Dodi Sklar listened
>>>> as her ninth-grade son, Jonathan, described how some classmates
>>>> already abused stimulants — long before SATs and college
>>>> applications. An accomplished student who said he would never join
>>>> them, Jonathan described the ease with which he could.
>>>>
>>>> “There’s no way you’d notice — that’s why so many kids are doing
>>>> it,” he told his mother. “I could say I’m going for a run, call
>>>> someone I know who does it, get some pills from them, take them,
>>>> come home and work. Just do it. You’d be just glad that I was
>>>> studying hard.”
>>>>
>>>> His mother sighed. “As a parent you worry about driving, you worry
>>>> about drinking, you worry about all kinds of health and mental
>>>> issues, social issues,” she said. “Now I have to worry about this,
>>>> too? Really? This shouldn’t be what they need to do to get where
>>>> they want to.”
>>>>
>>>> Asked if the improper use of stimulants was cheating, students were
>>>> split. Some considered that the extra studying hours and the
>>>> heightened focus during exams amounted to an unfair advantage. Many
>>>> countered that the drugs don’t give you the answers” and defended
>>>> their use as a personal choice for test preparation, akin to tutoring.
>>>>
>>>> One consensus was clear: users were becoming more common, they
>>>> said, and some students who would rather not take the drugs would
>>>> be compelled to join them because of the competition over class
>>>> rank and colleges’ interest.
>>>>
>>>> A current law student in Manhattan, who said he dealt Adderall
>>>> regularly while at his high school in Sarasota, Fla., said that
>>>> insecurity was a main part of his sales pitch: that those students
>>>> “would feel at a huge disadvantage,” he said.
>>>>
>>>> William, the recent Birch Wathen graduate, said prescription
>>>> stimulants became a point of contention when a girl with otherwise
>>>> middling grades suddenly improved her SAT score.
>>>>
>>>> “There was an uproar among kids — some people were really proud of
>>>> her, and some kids were really jealous and mad,” he recalled “I
>>>> don’t remember if she had a prescription, but she definitely took
>>>> more than was prescribed. People would say, ‘You’re so smart,’ and
>>>> she’d say, ‘It wasn’t all me.’ ”
>>>>
>>>> One sophomore at Harvard-Westlake School in Studio City, Calif., is
>>>> unsure what his future holds. Enrolled at one of the top high
>>>> schools on the West Coast, he said he tried a friend’s Adderall
>>>> this semester but disliked the sensation of his heart beating
>>>> rapidly for hours. He vowed never to do it again.
>>>>
>>>> But as he watches upperclassmen regularly abuse stimulants as they
>>>> compete for top college slots, he is not quite sure.
>>>>
>>>> “Junior and senior year is a whole new ballgame,” the boy said. “I
>>>> promised myself I wouldn’t take it, but that can easily, easily
>>>> change. I can be convinced.”
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
>>>> art.deco.studios at gmail.com
>>>> =======================================================
>>>> List services made available by First Step Internet,
>>>> serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.
>>>> http://www.fsr.net
>>>> mailto:Vision2020 at moscow.com
>>>> =======================================================
>>>> =======================================================
>>>> List services made available by First Step Internet,
>>>> serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.
>>>> http://www.fsr.net
>>>> mailto:Vision2020 at moscow.com
>>>> =======================================================
>>>
>> =======================================================
>> List services made available by First Step Internet,
>> serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.
>> http://www.fsr.net
>> mailto:Vision2020 at moscow.com
>> =======================================================
>>
>>
>>
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>> Windows, OSX, or Linux is the same choice as:
>> McDonald's, Burger King, or a (real) Co-Op.
>
> =======================================================
> List services made available by First Step Internet,
> serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.
> http://www.fsr.net
> mailto:Vision2020 at moscow.com
> =======================================================
>
>
>
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> Windows, OSX, or Linux is the same choice as:
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