For two weeks, Miranda Pennock, editor of the Skaneateles Press and Marcellus Observer and I have been digging deeply into the apparent epidemic of middle and high school students abusing prescription drugs.
And it's frightening.
In college, it was the norm to hear about classmates or roommates or study partners self-medicate. Whether it was a cup of coffee or an energy drink to stay awake through a monotonous three-hour Power Point lecture, or less legal methods - buying a neighbors' Adderall, for example, because that 20-page paper was not going to write itself the night before deadline. The latter was not something I personally saw a lot of, but I knew it went on.
Compared to the immeasurable amount of alcohol I saw consumed between those study sessions and lectures, and the inevitably foolish and sometimes dangerous events that followed, self-medication for the sake of school work seemed rather innocent, if legally questionable.
Hearing of similar stunts by local youth, though, forced me to look at my own chemical dependencies, and determine where I drew the line between what I felt was acceptable and not. They are tough questions I imagine many parents are asking themselves now, as well. If they aren't, they should be.
In speaking with Jeanne Elmer, director of the Student Assistance Program, she made an excellent point: when kids pop prescription pills, they're just copying what they see adults do.
And if their parents can do so without adverse effects, why can't they? After all, they are legal drugs, available only from a doctor - what could go wrong?
Tie that rationale in with an adolescent’s inability to fully assess the risk of a situation or action, and it is obvious something needs to be done to address the issue.
The tips offered to parents urge them to lock up medications, count the pills, talk with their children - all great advice, if mostly common sense. But what I don't hear anybody telling parents to do is to take a good look at their own medicine cabinets and take stock of just how much medication they are ingesting - just how many different chemicals their children watch them take.
Juveniles are very willing to put things in their bodies, Elmer said.
Guess what? So are adults.
If we weren't, these drugs would not be so readily available for our teenagers.
CATEGORY: General Society
TAGS: prescription drugs, drug abuse, youth, students
