HOW MANY OF THESE STUDENTS USED PRESCRIPTION DRUG TO PASS THEIR EXAMS???

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More students are popping pals' Ritalin to get an edge

Melissa Ludwig / San Antonio Express-News

Students toiling over finals will join a growing number of their peers across the country who are popping pills such as Adderall and Ritalin to stay alert and cram for tests.

The prescription drugs normally are used to treat attention deficit / hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Many of those students either bum pills or buy them from friends with prescriptions.

Adderall's effects are "like coffee, but better," says Justin, a 19-year-old freshman at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Justin declined to give his last name because he doesn't have a prescription for the drug. "It's the opposite of being scatterbrained," he says. "It's like tunnel vision."

The number of students abusing the drugs still is small but growing, according to a recent survey.

Education officials long have been aware that some students abuse Ritalin. But abuse of Adderall is relatively new, some school officials say.

According to the Shire PLC, the manufacturer of Adderall and Adderall XR, side effects include loss of appetite, headaches and insomnia. Misuse can cause cardiovascular damage and sudden death, according to Shire's Adderall XR Web site.

Nationally, about 7 percent of college students say they've used a prescription stimulant nonmedically, according to a 2001 study by University of Michigan researcher Sean Esteban McCabe and colleagues at Michigan and Harvard universities.

In a 2003 survey of undergraduates at an unnamed Midwestern university, McCabe and his colleagues found 54 percent of students who were prescribed stimulants were approached by their peers to give or sell them the drugs.

"A first step is just educating campuses and letting them know this is occurring," McCabe says. "These drugs are highly effective for most students with ADHD, and you don't just want to end all prescription of drugs if they are serving a purpose."

But Keith Anderson, a staff psychologist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., says students are turning to ADHD drugs "for everything from helping them stay awake to weight loss, and some believe they will get euphoria from snorting and injecting it." About 2.5 million children and 1.5 million adults take medication for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, according to the FDA. The administration's databases contain 25 instances of sudden death in people taking ADHD drugs.

Health risks increase when the pills are crushed and snorted, injected, taken in combination with other drugs or in large doses, according to university health professionals.

Justin, the UTSA student, says he buys pills for less than $5 each, or he gets them from his friend, Paul, who also asked his last name not be used.

Paul, also a freshman at UTSA, says a doctor prescribed him Adderall a couple of years ago after he complained of concentration problems. Paul doesn't take the pills as directed. Instead, he uses them as a study aid or as motivation to clean his apartment. He doesn't take it for fun, but knows people who do.

"If you take it at the beginning of a party, it keeps you up and not so stupid drunk," he says.

Some university counselors say the ballooning number of prescriptions contributes to the problem.