Hi Everyone!!
A few notes:
Please be sure to read both of our posts, as they address the topic through different lens, and we both have utilized different resources.
I apologize if this post appears weird... I can't quite finagle it correctly so that the text appears uniform. I C&Ped from a google doc and the formatting is a little strange and a little distracting.
Without further ado...
There is an immense amount of pressure to succeed on campus: after all, we are “The Leaders and Best”. To be one of the Leaders and Best, one must often serve up sleep as a sacrificial lamb. When this occurs many of us resort intake of caffeine to stimulate us enough to get through our classes, assignments and exams. During midterms and finals, many of us crank up our caffeine intake to an absurd level just to get through all of the information one must know for the exam the next morning. Within this heightened caffeine consumption, there is a subset of individual who go farther than 8 cups of coffee and make the choice to illicitly obtain and use psychostimulants such as Adderall.
”Unafflicted abusers of the drugs claim that they are endowed with supreme powers of concentration and intense activity.” (Kingston Man, 2007).
Regardless of whether Adderall is used as a performance enhancer in the classroom or as a performance enhancer at the parties during the weekend there are serious consequences to its abuse. Almost always these consequences are framed in a way that benefits the non medicated users. They are warning about the potential psychosis a healthy individual can have, about the possibility of addiction and overdose. In public discourse individuals who have need of the medication are seldom addressed in the consequences of prescription drug abuse. The Michigan Daily article: The doping scandal in your biology class, is one rare piece that sheds light on how prescription drug abuse affects the individuals who need the medication:
“Students who bend the rules to illegally obtain prescription drugs dilute the reality of psychological illness for legitimate sufferers. The 8 percent of users who don't need the drugs ruin it for the 3 percent who do. Real brain diseases are cast into doubt and legitimate sufferers are written off as lazy or unmotivated” (Man, 2007).
In addition to perpetuating the stigmas and stereotypes surrounding students with ADHD or learning disabilities, individuals who chose to use Adderall illicitly are able to amplify their already privileged minds to set the already high standard one must meet to be a “leader and best” even higher. Using the drug as a party stimulant further could not be a more antithetical abuse. As an individual who requires psychotropic drugs to function in an emotional plane similar to that of my neurotypical peers, it angers me that people make light of and tokenize medication--that is an critical need for many people--in party environments. It completely undermines seriousness of the medication and that of the biological disorder.
Some key things to consider when framing your response:
Findings cited in both the Michigan Daily articles assert that nonprescription users are most likely: a member in a sorority or fraternity, white, male and have a high family income. The Michigan Daily article also names Jewish religious affiliation as a risk factor (I am curious as to why Jewish affiliation was named, perhaps it has more to do with the sometimes true intersection of Jewish affiliation and high SES rather than Judaism itself?). These findings suggest that Adderall is more accessible to individuals with “stacked” privileges: SES, Male, White.
For me what is most glaring is that it is white, male, upper SES individuals who have the most access to illicit drugs and are most likely to use them. This is not surprising to me, as these identities especially when stacked on top of one another inundate individuals with great power. Not only do individuals with these intersecting identities set the standard for success on campus, they set the standards for success in almost all areas of life.
Other things to consider:
Why is it that the consequences of abuse/misuse are framed in a way the benefits the abusers (as warnings)? Why is that the perpetuated stigmatization and the diluted reality of psychological illnesses are rarely addressed in public discourse surrounding prescription drug abuse--namely that of Adderall/Ritalin? Why is this still a pervasive problem 7 years after the Daily article: The doping scandal in your biology class was published? Has this problem gotten worse, have the consequences for both parties changed? Are we as a campus culture more critical of the problem 7 years later?
Michigan Daily Articles from 2007 and 2014 respectively:
I definitely like the different perspectives that you and Elkena brought to this issue. The ways in which privilege and party culture interact is a subject that is very compelling to me, and something I hoe to unpack more in the future. I'm also interested in looking into the ways people of more marginalized identities interact with the drug, if/when they do, and whether that experience is different from that of this more privileged perspective. I'm guessing it is different in some way but unsure of exactly how that might present. Lastly, I too am curious about where they got Jewish religious affiliation as a risk factor. It doesn't really seem to make sense on the face of things.
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