Richard Fee - class president, college graduate and avid lover of baseball and the outdoors. At the age of 24, he committed suicide.
A recent article in The New York Times chronicled the life and death of Fee, who developed a dependence on Adderall, the popular and controversial prescription drug used to treat patients with ADHD. After two years of constant use, Fee's doctor cut his supply off, and, unable to feed his addiction, he hung himself in his closet.
The moral of this story is not meant as a wag of the finger at those abusing the prescription drug. It's not to turn one man's story into an after-school special or to exaggerate the numbers. It is to point out something that is frequently ignored or forgotten about: with so many students now able to access Adderall and similar drugs easily, prescription abuse is becoming alarmingly prevalent.
It's a problem we need to stop turning our heads from.
The issue of Adderall abuse is usually approached cautiously out of fairness to those who actually need it, and rising usage numbers are attributed to maturity and greater recognition. But in paying attention to only these groups, we ignore a population of college students obtaining stimulants by whatever means possible, usually faking symptoms or buying from willing dealers.
There's no conclusive number for how many college students use Adderall as a study aide, but various studies have estimated between 8 and 35 percent. A 2011 on-campus survey revealed nearly one-third of UB students stated they had used the drug non-medically. Of those who had admitted use, nearly 90 percent indicated they received the pills through a friend or through someone who sells it.
For whatever reason, prescription drugs don't get as much airtime as some of the more "glamorous" narcotics. Maybe that's because more people have access to prescription drugs than ever. Nearly 14 million monthly prescriptions were written for Americans ages 20 to 39 in 2011.
Ask any student who uses Adderall actively how easy it is to get. Prescribers follow ADHD questionnaires designed to assist in the gathering of a patient's symptoms as an end-all shortcut to diagnosis. It doesn't take much more than a few careful fibs to the doctor to have a prescription note forged over. Sometimes it's even easier if, like many doctors, your doctor believes in prescribing stimulants not to treat ADHD but simply to boost academic performance.
The negative outcomes of the medication are rarely discussed. So many students view Adderall as a miracle drug - a perfect little pill you can take to get your work done that only stays in your system for a few days. But nobody wants to think that perfect little pill could cause any long-term harm.
The DEA classifies Adderall as a Schedule II drug - the same as cocaine. An article in medical journal The Lancet compared 20 drugs using a scale of 0 to 3 for physical addiction, psychological addiction and pleasure. Despite the stigma and national attack on drugs like marijuana, amphetamine leads cannabis in all categories.
Death may seem like an extreme or hyperbolized outcome, but the chance of addiction is not. Approximately 10 percent of adolescents and young adults who misuse ADHD stimulants become addicted to them, but instead of greater regulation discussion or more thorough diagnosis, doctors continue to prescribe them for anybody who walks through the door looking even mildly unfocused.
Most doctors place the estimate for adults who actually have ADHD at 4 percent, but it's quite obvious the percentage of adults taking medication for it is much higher. The abuse stigmatizes the people who actually need it, pushing them from priority. And despite what the pill can do for your body, what it does to you carries far greater significance.
Email: editorial@ubspectrum.com
