"Want Some Drugs? A Tale of Peer Pressure to get some A's"

At Beer Shoppe a few days ago, my friend James whipped out a packet of crinkled aluminum foiling and placed it on the barrel we were using as a table. I was telling him about a paper I was struggling to write, I couldn’t concentrate, I couldn’t write anything good.

“Here,” he said as he placed the tablets on the barrel beside a glass of a chocolate stout. “I used this to write my paper last week. Busted it out in a few hours and got an ‘A.’”

“What is it,” I asked, examining the packet of 6 tiny white pills.

“It’s called Modafinil,” he said as he sipped on his beer.

Adderall, Ritalin, Vyvanese are the common ADHD prescription medications that have become abundant in the student vernacular.

While many students today are diagnosed with ADHD, students without the learning disability are taking advantage of the same drugs. More and more students are using these medications without prescriptions of their own. They wait outside classrooms for students who can sell them these pills, usually for $5 a piece. This is common. This is not new news. In fact, The California Aggie covered the craze five years ago in a piece called, “Adderrall: A college love story.”

While the growing demand for high-intensity study aides doesn’t surprise me, what startles me about the inconspicuous tin foiling of “Modafinil,” is how the exploration for high-intensity study aides are starting to crop up. And all the while, the understanding we have of these drugs is not yet clear.

According to the National Institutes of Health, in 1998, Modafinil was approved by the FDA as a treatment for narcolepsy. While the medication is still being studied in its treatment for ADD, depression, schizophrenia and others, the mechanism of action still remains elusive. An article published by The Guardian in 2013 discusses the way the drug is disrupting sleep patterns. Dr. Peter Morgan from Yale University believes that long-term use could damage the memory.    

James found the drug online when he was looking for a more potent study aid, a kind of Adderall 2.0. Coffee wasn’t working for him anymore, he needed something that could take him to the level he needed in order to bust out papers and calculus problem sets in a single night. He can only buy it online, so after doing some research, he’d figure he’d give it a try. And it worked.

“My brain goes like a million miles per second when I use it. I can get so much work done. But sometimes I’m up all night and end up making Coq Au Quinn. You just become so wired,” he said.

I’ve heard this before from other classmates and friends who live by their caffeine pills and the prescription medications they scalp outside of class. One student, Iris, can’t get out of bed unless she is able to take a caffeine pill right after she wakes up.

“As soon as I wake up, I pop a caffeine pill I bought an Amazon. It’s the only way I can even get out of bed now,” she says.

They want to be wired, they need to be wired. But as James was talking I noticed the thing that intrigued me far more than the need to get ahead of the brain capacity he was born with or nurtured throughout his academic career.

There has become a black market for these high-intensity study aides. Some researchers estimate that about 30% of students use stimulants non-medically, according to an article published by CNN in 2014.

These are classified Schedule II substances, next to cocaine, meth, and morphine, which means that they are highly addictive. What could that mean for a young brains that are still forming and maturing? What could it mean for a culture of students that are more concerned about getting ahead in their assignments than the chemical effects drugs like these may have on their brains?

Dr. Arne Ekstrom, associate professor of psychology at UC Davis, says that “to date there is no convincing evidence of memory improvements with these drugs, or any drugs, for that matter, using well-controlled randomized double-blind studies in humans.”

Science is still catching up with the demand that students feel like they need in order to account for the growing competition in an academic setting. But like Dr. Ekstrom pointed out, the effects are still unknown. With these medicines being purchased in the black market, it is hard to study the effects of those taking the drugs, like James.

James is a bartender in Sacramento, he is used to staying up all night for an inebriated clientele. When the weekdays roll around, he’s already exhausted and needs something that will give him the edge to push through. But sometimes James is really late to our meetings, he overslept for the class he was studying for, he lost his appetite because he popped two Modafinil the night before. The same drug that is getting him through his homework is affecting his concept of time, his sleep pattern and his appetite.

According to psychiatrist, Dr. Edward Hallowell, these stimulants “strengthen the brain’s brakes, it's inhibitory capacities, so it can control its power more effectively.”

While the scientific understanding of these stimulants is meant to help students that seem to need to “power more effectively,” even those that are prescribed the medication doubt it's healthy.

Chris Michael was put on Adderrall as a kid. “I personally felt that it is a substance that shouldn’t be prescribed to minors. It is essentially a controlled type of crystal meth. Amphetamine, in any form, does more harm than good.”

Chris does not take the medication anymore. He was wary of the way it made him feel.

I contacted several psychiatry and pharmacology professors at UC Davis about the study of these high-intensity study aides. The consensus was that the research is still unclear. What we do know is that anyone taking these medications without prescriptions is abusing the medication itself. Especially when medications are purchased online, then the ability to study the effects is hindered. What does it mean for a society that is concerned with being productive to the point of self-medicating? What does it mean for people like James who live on the high of these medications?

Very few people know about Modafinil in the United Sates, however, it’s use has become a point of contention at universities like Cambridge and Oxford. Students have been asking for mandatory drug tests to even out the playing field for those that are not taking these medications illegally. It has become a kind of performance-enhancing drug for academia. Whether or not changes like this will be made is also unclear.

UC Davis alum Brandon Sime expressed his concern about the use of these medications. “If someone has a disability and can't focus, then I believe it helps them and society; however, a lot of people abuse these, and it is very unfair in classes that grade on a curve because they have an unfair advantage. As a consequence, their grade doesn't reflect their work ethic and intelligence.”

Sime worries that these drugs may help students pass their classes, but it does not prepare them for work they would be doing in the future. He says, “In this sense it is harmful to society.”

James isn’t worried about how the medications are affecting him. He says he only takes it when he needs them, he hasn’t grown dependent. Last week he contacted the company he purchased his last batch from. He said they weren’t strong enough and that they’d send him another batch, free of charge.

James couldn’t always remember conversations we had or wasn’t fully present. Whether it was attributable to his own nature or the effect of stimulants he was using regularly was something I didn’t know. It’s something that even science is still trying to figure out.

What is known is that we are moving towards a society where pharmaceuticals are needed in order to compete. This now includes a growing need to use high intensity study aides in academia. Whether or not these drugs will undo the work students put into gaining an education will show over time. Between experimenting with drugs and drinking alcohol, perhaps study aides are just another form of experimenting.

That night, I still couldn't get my paper done. I looked at the blank word document on my screen as the cursor went in and out of focus. I had the crinkled aluminum foiling on my desk beside a mug of tea. It was approaching midnight and I needed to have 1500 words by 8 am on a book I hadn’t quite finished.