Dustin Moore
John Crawford
English 102
April 9, 2015
Drug Prevention on College Campuses
When thinking about substance abuse on a college campus, the first thing that comes to
most minds is alcohol. While alcohol is a large problem on most college campuses, a new
endemic is also arising: prescription drug abuse. It is estimated that nearly one in every four
college aged students have or are abusing some sort of prescription medication (“Taking Action
to Prevent and Address Prescription Drug Abuse”). This is an alarming statistic, especially
considering the horrible side effects that these drugs can have on people. This extreme increase
in drug abuse can be combatted by reforms put in place by health care officials, colleges and
universities and the American media. I can attest from a personal position that these drugs are
not worth the potential benefits or highs that may come from them.
From a very young age, I have seen the powers that prescription drugs can have on
somebody. My brother was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder or ADD when he was a
freshman in high school. From there, I saw his life go down-hill. He began to abuse these drugs
almost immediately. He would use them to stay up all night and play video games. I could tell
that the stimulant drugs he was taking had horrible adverse reactions. He began to show signs of
depression and developed horrible mood swings. I personally attribute his prescription and
subsequent addiction to these drugs to a great deal of the problems that he has today. After his
abuse of Adderall, he began to experiment with other drugs. His symptoms of depression and
mood disorders, symptoms brought on by the ADD medicines, lead to more prescriptions of anti-
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depressants, anti-psychotics and sleep medications. All of these prescriptions have a high abuse
risk, and abuse them is exactly what he did. My brother eventually got so bad that he dropped
out of school and had to go into a mental health facility. He was cleaned up and finished his high
school career online. However, his problems persisted. My brother was still depressed and still
on multiple prescriptions. He had missed out his senior year of high school and ruined an
extremely bright future. He enrolled at Midlands Technical College but shortly dropped out after
that. My brother is now twenty one years old and still lives at home. He does not have a job and
has not been to school in years. A boy who had the entire world in front of him had his entire life
ruined due to the abuse and misuse of prescribed stimulants pills.
The danger of prescription drugs does not stop at stimulants. One of my best friends
growing up was also affected by prescription medications. This young man was a six foot three
inch lefty who could put a curve ball in the perfect spot every time. He had scholarships to
attend Winthrop University and the University of South Carolina-Aiken to play baseball. That
was, until prescription medications took over his life. It started in his later years of high school
when he began taking Xanax and Klonopin, both antidepressant medications that cause a
depressant kind of high when taken in excess. When these drugs entered his life it seemed that
nothing else really mattered. He began taking Xanax every day at a rate higher than any normal
prescription. They eventually got him expelled from high school and were the reason that he lost
all of his baseball scholarships. The drugs ruining his future did not seem to make him want to
stop taking these drugs but seemed to fuel him to take them even more. One early morning,
while my friend was on multiple depressants, he got into a serious car accident. I still remember
what he told me about that day: “I was going fast around a curve and tried to overcorrect. I felt
the car go off the road and then I just blacked out.” His car ended up flipping, hitting a telephone
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pole and landing on its side. My friend broke his neck and is now paralyzed from the chest
down. He will no longer be able to play the game that he loves or even live a normal life.
Prescription drugs and bad decisions have taken that away from him.
There are similar situations happening on college campuses across the country. College
students are looking toward stimulant drugs to get by when their big exams come up. They think
that these drugs can help them to stay up all night and write papers or cram for tests. One
student said, “It has given me the boost to work non-stop for ten hours a day,” and even
contributes his top class rank to stimulants (“‘Smart Drug’ Abuse Plagues College Campuses”).
A reporter from Today was sent to a college campus to see just how easy it is for college students
to get these drugs. She was able to locate a student who was willing to sell her Adderall within
thirty seconds of walking into the library. When the reporter said she was out of cash, the
student gave her tips on how to go into the doctor and fake symptoms of ADD to get a
prescription (“‘Smart Drug’ Abuse Plagues College Campuses”). These drugs are getting
increasingly easier for college students to get their hands on and they are not aware that they can
cause arrhythmia, increased blood pressure, hyperthermia, heart attack, stroke and even sudden
