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.
The boy said.
“Everyone in school either has a prescription or has a friend who does.”
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.
The use of these so-called "Good Grade Pills" that high school and college students are taking to improve their grades are fully analyzed in the following infographic;
OnlineDegrees.org (CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE)
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.
DeAnsin Parker, a New York psychologist who treats many adolescents from the affluent neighborhoods like the Upper East Side said.
“It’s throughout all the private schools here. 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.
William, a recent graduate of the Birch Wathen Lenox School on the Upper East Side of Manhattan said.
“It’s like it does your work for you.”
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COMMENTARY: This is the first time I had heard about these attention deficit hyperactivity disorder medications, or "good grade pills." I can't believe that so many students, from affluent families are taking these dangerous pills just to ace their mid-term exam or write an A paper. I thought that alcohol and illegal drugs like marijuana, cocaine and meth were the drug of choice for affluent kids, but if you start combining the hard drugs with these "good grade pills," you have the ingredients for disaster.
Courtesy of an infographic titled "The Good Grade Pill" by OnlineDegrees.org and an article dated June 9, 2012 appearing in The New York Times
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