[Vision2020] Risky Rise of the Good-Grade Pill

[Sue Hovey]

Yes, there isn't much evidence cramming the night before helps ones 
performance on tests.  And right, projects are a different story.

Sue H.

-----Original Message----- 
From: Dave
Sent: Sunday, June 10, 2012 9:14 PM
To: vision2020
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Risky Rise of the Good-Grade Pill

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
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>>>
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>> -- 
>> Windows, OSX, or Linux is the same choice as:
>> McDonald's, Burger King, or a (real) Co-Op.
>
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