Why are Adolescents and Young Adults Misusing Prescription Drugs?

Experts²⁶ suggest several reasons why adolescents and young adults turn to prescription drugs to get high:

• Escape and boredom;
• Preservation of friendships, romantic relationships, and family life;
• Competing for college admission, including competition for advanced placement and honors courses in high school;
• The balance between schoolwork, grades, and extracurricular activities like sports and clubs;
• The desire to have the "ideal" physical appearance.

Furthermore, many adolescents and young adults misuse prescription drugs because they mistakenly believe that prescription drugs are safer than "street drugs" for a variety of reasons:²⁷

• These are medicines;
• They can be obtained from doctors, pharmacies, friends or family members;
• It’s not necessary to buy them from traditional "drug dealers"; and
• Information on the effects of these drugs is widely available in package inserts, advertisements and on the internet.

To Beth, taking her brother’s ADHD medicine seemed like a good idea to keep her appetite in check. She’d heard how bad and expensive diet pills can be, and she wrongly thought that the ADHD drugs would be safer.

Two ways in which adolescents and young adults are engaging in prescription drug misuse include pharming and academic doping.

Pharming

Pharming is a popular way to abuse prescription drugs among teens and young adults. Through utilizing their incredible social network, youth simply trade their prescription/OTC medications with a friend. They get high by ingesting a mix of pills, often with alcohol (which is a depressant). These "cocktails" can be extremely dangerous and the consequences fatal because the teens tend to ingest handfuls of pills or bottles of cough syrup instead of just a few pills or teaspoons in a short period of time. Overdoses of prescription drugs and OTC drugs (including dietary supplements) accounted for approximately 42 percent of the 1.7 million drug-related emergency room admissions in 2006.²⁸

Academic Doping

Academic doping has become more prevalent at higher education institutions. College students are increasingly abusing stimulants to help them stay awake for extended periods. Also, students are taking Ritalin® and Adderall® without a medical need or prescription with the intent of enhancing their concentration or improving their performance on papers or tests to compete in school. Moreover, some medical and law students, as well as young professionals, reportedly use stimulants non-medically as performance enhancers to enable them to study longer or work for longer periods of time, therefore giving them an edge over their peers.