College, a time for everyone to explore their youth and freedom. When I say explore, I mean this in a plethora of ways. Explore with people, explore with the area, and finally, explore with partying, a.k.a pills and pot! After reading today's headline about pills starting to take over for pot, I was very intrigued. Being recently out of college with it still fresh on my memory, I figured I could share my experience to root out some fact and fiction.
I went to URI, also know as UR "High" to those that indulge in the party life at URI. For a school that went from the top 5 national party list to a dry campus within a couple years, a lot has changed. To someone like me, these changes are boring and unfortunate. To parents and professors, this is excellent news. Fact: pot, pills, and all other drugs are found at pretty much every college in the nation, hands down. Sure, some have more than others, some have more of one than the other but fact is they are out there and they will continue to be.
I have a severe case of ADHD. I am the guy who cannot sit still, is always on the move, and who gets bored within seconds during most activities. This led me to a prescription of Adderall. I started taking "Addies" as I call them in 9th grade. My world basically opened up. WOW. I could focus, concentrate, and study. Grades rose instantly. Grades were not the only thing changing though ... I was. Adderall is a strong drug that people do not realize the full potential of ... especially college students.
Adderall was nothing special to me until I went to college. I took it a few times a week in high school to help me concentrate and study. I repeated this same process in college, gradually winding off them due to side effects. Adderall did one thing to me ... made me go NUTS. It is a serious stimulant that causes your brain to race. For me, it actually calmed me down at times, easing my ADHD. Other times, it would absolutely ruin my day because I could not stop thinking about certain things and it gave me terrible mood swings that not only I noticed. It also suppressed my appetite. I could not even think about eating while on the medication causing me to lose weight ... something I will do anything not to do as I have an obsession with gaining weight (always been hard for me).
For reasons like this I stopped taking it as frequently. This leads me to college. I was exposed to quite a lot in my four year experience. The one thing I learned was that if you had Adderall, you were quite popular with both guys and girls. Come time for finals, your phone did not stop ringing. "Dude, can I have an Adderall?!" "I have a test tomorrow; I really need some help ... ?" It was honestly quite pathetic to me. People were convinced that they needed Adderall to help or they would fail. And I would constantly tell people, just watch out because Adderall is really strong, especially when snorted which is what most do that don't have a prescription. Snorting Adderall ... no thank you! I can actually remember a time when I was talking to a girl and her nose started dripping a blue substance from a pill she recently snorted. Talk about a turn off!!
So now I get to the other stuff. Pot is everywhere. I mean everywhere even when you think it is not. My college was no exception. To be honest, it would have been harder to find someone who did not smoke than who did, a stunning fact. This is what makes me question today's headline of "Move over, Marijuana Young Americans increasingly choose pills over pot." What I also found was Adderall made it so that people wanted to smoke Pot. Pot helped ease their mind while it was racing from the pill. Is this a good or bad thing here people? I am sure you can answer that for me. When it came to the harder stuff, Valium, Xanax etc., those were a little out of my league, but no stranger. Same thing, they are everywhere and if you had a prescription, you were quite popular. Having a friend who overdosed on his 21st birthday from snorting Methadone pills, I saw the worst case scenario of someone who thought they were just having fun. Well, he will never have fun again nor will any of his friends and family be able to see him again.
Pills are not for everyone but college students sure do love them. The problem is how easy it is to get them. I know more than a dozen kids who simply went to their doctor and said "I can't concentrate." They were instantly given a prescription for Adderall. Funny too since I refer to it as "The Devil" with all the side effects that can seriously trump other aspects of your life. You cannot overdose on pot, but you can on pills, both prescription and illegal. People think pills are harmless when they are quite the opposite. Pills like Xanax and Adderall can become highly addictive. The more kids who have a prescription for all these kinds of pills, the more kids will buy/abuse them. And in my opinion, though some may disagree (and I am no expert), Pot is much less harmful than pills.
So if pills are the new pot we are in serious trouble!