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UW prescription drug abuse alarming... |
Sitting in the dimly lit study room during finals week is a girl frantically searching through her bag, her brown hair falling in front of her face as she desperately empties its contents onto the table. She is looking for the one thing she needs to study: her pills.
Beyond those who need them, using and abusing these medicines has become the new—and dangerous—craze in UW-Madison dorm rooms and around study tables.
While over-prescribing doctors are certainly not helping the situation, it is the illegal bartering of pills for money on this campus that is enticing many and helping none.
For those with medical needs requiring Adderal, Zanax and Ambien, using prescription drugs is understandable. However, too many are buying these drugs from fellow students to enhance a Saturday night. They are then at risk of becoming dependent.
On any given weekend evening, it is nearly impossible to walk down a dormitory hallway without hearing snatches of conversations including the slang terms for one prescription drug or another. Drug abuse increases during exam week.
According to a study by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the number of people 12 and older who had taken OxyContin—a.k.a. prescription heroin—for recreational purposes had reached approximately 2.8 million in 2003.
Our generation—or Generation Rx, as we are now being referred to—is replacing harder drugs like cocaine with the much easier to get prescription ones. When crushed and snorted, Adderal has virtually the same effect as coke.
Addiction is all too real and difficult to deal with. If the abuse of these prescription drugs does not come to an end, where will it stop? Is it so far fetched to imagine Starbucks one day converting from caffeine to Adderal if the population demands it (and the government allows it, of course)?
Several places exist for help in battling an addiction to prescription drugs. These include the counseling services at and a more formal rehab program at Tellurian UCAN here in Madison.
This is cache, read story here