Study drug use among university students
2 August 2017
The title of the news post hooked me.
“A Cambridge Professor says study drugs should be sold over the counter.”
The by-line reeled me in.
“A third of students say they’ve taken them.”
The use of so-called ‘study drugs’ is the focus of my CRADLE fellowship, and forms part of my broader research program which looks at the non-medical use of prescription substances. A large part of my research career has focused on the use and harms associated with performance and image enhancing drugs such as steroids, and more recently I have taken an interest in the use of study drugs by tertiary students. I was an investigator on an Australian Research Council (ARC)-funded project which investigated the prevalence of use of study drugs amongst almost 1,800 tertiary students, and explored in-depth the reasons why students used them. A key recommendation from the research I have been involved in has been to further explore the policy and regulatory environments and the responses within universities to this issue. So you can see why the news post caught my attention.
You may be asking what I mean by the term ‘study drug’. It’s a term that I use broadly to encapsulate any substance a student uses to help them study. A lot of the literature in this field stems from neuroethics, where the term ‘cognitive enhancement’ is used. In this field, “’Cognitive enhancement’ (or “neuroenhancement”) broadly encompasses a range of technologies and interventions that aim to improve concentration, memory, attention, or other cognitive functions in otherwise healthy people” (Hildt & Frank, 2013). The term study drug has traditionally been used to refer to the use of prescription substances to increase concentration and stamina, and is something akin to a lay person description of what I am investigating. I personally don’t think it matters what term we use, it’s what students use and why they use it that I believe is more important.
By now you probably have a picture in your mind of a student popping prescription stimulants like Adderall® or Ritalin®, maybe something they have bought from a friend, maybe bought on the internet, or maybe using a little extra of their ADHD medication. Well, that’s not far from what the evidence suggests is happening. But that picture is incomplete – the data from a pilot study conducted with colleagues back in 2013 shows that caffeine is by far the most commonly used study drug (Mazanov, Dunn, Connor & Fielding, 2013). We are also seeing some new kids on the block called ‘nootropics’, which are drugs, supplements, or other substances that are claimed to improve cognitive function, particularly executive functions, memory, creativity, or motivation, in healthy individual. So if you want to get ‘smart’, you have a lot of options available to you.
Whether these substances do what they claim is a blog post in itself. What matters to me is whether students think they do, whether they use them, and if they experience any negative side effects. And if students use them, why? As I mentioned, my CRADLE fellowship is allowing me to explore the university environment and try and decipher whether it’s what we as academics do that make students turn to these substances.
University is already a high-pressure environment. Are we making it worse? If so, do students feel that the only way to cope is to turn to these substances to get through it all? These are important questions when thinking about the health and well being of our students.
