In Their Own Words: ‘Study Drugs’
A 16-year-old, determined to succeed on her own merits, who finally bends under the pressure. Students with legitimate prescriptions who are hounded for their pills. Young men and women whose use of stimulants spirals out of control.
After inviting students to submit personal stories of the abuse of
prescription drugs for academic advantage, The Times received almost 200
submissions. While a majority focused on the prevalence of these drugs
on college campuses, many wrote about their increasing appearance in
high schools, the focus of our article on Sunday. We have highlighted
about 30 of the submissions below, almost all written by current high
school students or recent graduates.
In often vivid detail — snorting their own pills, stealing pills from
friends — the students described an issue that they found upsetting,
valuable, dangerous and, above all else, real. Most of them claimed that
it was a problem rooted not in drugs per se, but with the pressure that
compelled some youngsters to use them.
— Alan Schwarz