Facts: College Student Prescription Drug Abuse
- Most college students use prescription drugs properly. However, about one in every four people aged 19 to 20 report using prescription drugs in a non-medical way at least once in their lives (NSDUH, 2008).
- Most college students, by their sophomore year in college, will have been offered the opportunity to abuse a prescription drug (Arria, 2008).
- Many college students who abuse prescription drugs do so to study all night (a habit most begin while in college) or to get into a certain academic mental “zone.”
- Full time college students are more likely to abuse prescription drugs than part-time college students.
- Non-medical use of pain relievers is also on the rise among college-age students (SAMHSA, 2009). College students also have the highest prevalence of non-medical use of prescription opioids (morphine, codeine, oxycodone, methadone, for example) in the US (McCabe et al, 2007).
- Many college students begin binge drinking at college and combine prescription drugs with alcohol not realizing the potentially fatal effects
- College students aren’t always necessarily using prescription drugs like Xanax and Adderall to get high, but to help with concentration, improve academic performance, to cope with stress, or even for dieting purposes.
References: talkabouttrx.org