Risky Rise of the Good-Grade Pill

[xchrom]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/10/education/seeking-academic-edge-teenagers-abuse-stimulants.html?ref=health


“Now I have to worry about this, too? Really? This shouldn’t be what they need to do to get where they want to, ” said Dodi Sklar, after listening to her ninth-grade son, Jonathan, describe how some classmates abuse stimulants.

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.

[fasttense]

1. I suspect a lot of people are on stimulants in our society.

There is so much hyper activity around, from people writing fifty books a year, to managers working 20 hour days.

I don't condone it, but whenever I see someone who seems to be excessively prolific, I wonder what they are on.

The kids are just imitating what is happening in adult society.

[ejpoeta]

2. my sister is bipolar and when she was on the high part, she could go

for days without sleeping. Just saying.

[The Doctor.]

6. Cut off the coffee supply....

and everything would grind to a halt.

[Schema Thing]

7. right? give me adderall over coffee any day.

[siligut]

3. So what happens when they can't get the drug?

If all their accomplishments are the result of an outside source, what will happen when that source dries up?

[Roselma]

4. Not good...my son was on ritalin from third through 8th grades.

We decided to let him stop for high school. His high school grades were unremarkable - a few A's, some B's, mostly C's. But, during that time, he learned all sorts of techniques to stay on focus and on task. This is a young person who was diagnosed early, and had gotten almost straight A's while on ritalin. Ritalin (and other stimulants) work. My son, however, said he felt spacey much of the time, and his heart rate was a bit high. He would rather have slightly lower grades than feel like a zombie. In retrospect, I believe that we're diagnosing young children on the normal attention spectrum as ADD or ADHD, because they are distracted due to any number of things. My son told me that the noise surrounding his open-classroom school used to drive him batty. A slide show in the next classroom would attract his hearing-attention and he would just watch his teacher's mouth move.

[DinahMoeHum]

5. What's next? Urine/blood tests right after the kids take their SATs???

Before they are allowed to leave the building??

Sheesh. Just what the kids need, more performance-enhancing drugs.

[originalpckelly]

8. This why the one that's a pro-drug needs to be prescribed more.

It prevents this from happening, because you can't just snort it, it has to pass through your body and be metabolized before it has an effect.

[dixiegrrrrl]

9. Uppers never focused my attention.

Pot sure did tho.
(speaking of the long ago college days)

[Egalitarian Thug]

10. Do you suppose this is how we have a generation of "honor students" that can't

comprehend a paragraph written at the level of the 8th grade? That fail to grasp the concept of an equation?