<p>I had a look at our state laws on possession of prescription drugs and they are rather convoluted. The laws have to deal with sale, manufacture, getting someone else to manufacture, etc. I ran into an interesting case where one man had another man’s prescription drugs. He claimed that he found them and was going to return them. It talks about the incidental possession of lawful prescription drugs by a third party. The person lost his appeal on a technicality. I had to find an additional law that stated that possession is lawful for the person that bought the drugs and for the person that the drugs are intended for. So I assume that this means that a person that picks up prescription drugs for another person is in lawful possession. But it would seem that another party (say the other parent) carrying the prescription bottle, wouldn’t be in legal possession. Or a student asking a friend to hold a prescription bottle in his bag for a short time wouldn’t be in lawful possession.</p>
<p>When we travel, I always carry the entire family’s prescription drugs in my carrry-on baggage. (It’s easier that way and we don’t have to worry about things falling out of backpacks or meds in missing suitcases.) I have never had a problem with anyone questioning why I had my sons’ meds in my possession. I keep all meds in their properly labeled containers rather than in pill-dispenser boxes (which, while they are smaller and more convenient, give me pause when traveling).</p>
<p>I think that in practice, there are few problems with the with family members holding meds. Police and prosecutors use their discretion. But it doesn’t help to have confusing laws.</p>
<p>I’ve been working with a few parents groups on state education legislation and a few legislators wanted to pass a law affecting us. There were many hearings and it was clear that legislators didn’t know how we operated and were passing laws while essentially illiterate about the subject. Legislators essentially admitted it in hearings.</p>
<p>The bill that they proposed had a lot of implementation problems because they didn’t understand the environment. But they wanted to get something passed to claim brownie points at election-time.</p>
<p>And I think that a lot of our state laws are written this way. So the actual practice of enforcement may be to ignore the law as it is poorly written.</p>
<p>Just to clarify on the psychological addiction, I didn’t mean that adderall is addictive for those who actually need it and are prescribed; rather, those who don’t need it and start taking it may find themselves addicted to the idea of leaning on a substance that increases their concentration, alertness, etc.</p>
<p>that or triple tall lattes
;)</p>
<p>It’s like any other drug. Some may find it addictive, some may not.</p>
<p>Ugh. Though I have pointed this out several times, apparently it bears repetition:</p>
<p>Adderall is amphetamine. Amphetamine is associated with dependency and tolerance by the body. It is physically addictive.</p>
<p>That said, in medicinal dosages, taken at a steady level (especially in the XR formulation), it indeed is unlikely for a person to get addicted. But that doesn’t mean the drug isn’t addictive.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>It’s not black and white like that. Why do you think some people can use coke recretionally while others can’t take themselves off of it? Some people find certain drugs addictive others do not. Just because it’s an amphetamine doesn’t mean it’s addictive. Not in any sense that is going to manifest itself in somebody.</p>
<p>Actually, it is exactly that black and white. If a drug can produce dependence and addiction (physical or psychological), it is addictive. There are degrees of addictive, obviously, and with amphetamine medical users are unlikely to become addicted, but that does not change the fact that amphetamine is addictive.</p>
<p>And that “addiction” doesn’t mean anything if you actually don’t feel addicted to it. Caffeine is addictive and I have never felt a need to go get another soda??</p>
<p>By the way, looks like adderall is far from 100% addictive as you claim. Looks like it’s not so black and white. </p>
<p>Is Adderall addictive?
The United States Drug Enforcement Administration has found that Adderall can cause physical dependence, but it has a higher risk of causing psychological dependence.</p>
<p>Uh uh, I didn’t say it was black and white insofar as everybody who used it became addicted. I merely said that the definition of a drug as addictive is black and white: if it can cause physical or psychological addiction, it is addictive. That part is black and white. Whether a particular person becomes addicted is, obviously, not.</p>
<p>Ah, then we disagree on nothing</p>
<p>College Confidential is 100 percent addictive. Everybody go to bed! It’s even late in California!</p>
<p>Shrinkrap-
Think it might be helpful to explain the difference between when a med is “addictive” (physiologically or psychologically) vs when it is abused? I think some of the students here seem to use the terms almost interchangibly, in error. Many of my patients are on psychostimulants, or pain meds, or anxiolytics or muscle relaxers. Few, if any are “addicted”, but some do abuse the meds. I defer to your eloquence to explain this.</p>
<p>I have a child who has learning disablitiies and ADD. Up until 9th grade he was so anti any drug that we could not get him to even consider them. In 9th grade he relented and started on a path of trying to find a stimulant he would tolerate. His grades went from all over the map to A’s in many subjects. He barely passed Math in 8th grade but on meds was able to complete 5 more years of math in 3 yrs with strong grades. Prior to meds he could not read a chapter of a book. On meds he sometimes even reads for pleasure. We know he would not be in college today if it was not for meds.
Now to today. He just finished his freshman year. His grades are not great. In classes without much reading and writing he did great. Classes that required concentration and long sustained reading he did terrible. Including failing art history. He rarely took meds at college.
He hates what they do to him. He feels it changes who he is. That the meds take away what is essentially his core soul. He is less creative and less impulsive. We like the less impulsive because that is what often gets him in trouble.
He is home and we have had a few talks after reading these ADD threads. His take on college. He did not tell anyone that he had stimulants. He does feel if he had friends definitely would have asked for some. He doesn’t know if he would have said no.
He feels that by asking him to take the meds we are giving him speed. Even though for him the meds don’t make him amped up but calmed down. He feels like Dr’s and therapists and parents are drugging their kids. He has become anti-pharmacy drugs. On the other hand he see’s not problem or addictive problem with people smoking pot.
We are talking about him going back on the meds. I don’t think he can get through college with grades to keep a scholarship without meds. But don’t know how I can force it when he feels it is a form of drug abuse to use these meds.
He is 18 and see’s things from an 18 yr old male brain.</p>
<p>[NIDA</a> - Research Report Series - Prescription Drugs: Abuse and Addiction](<a href=“Summary of Misuse of Prescription Drugs | National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)”>Summary of Misuse of Prescription Drugs | National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA))
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<p>Mom60 and others,</p>
<p>I am sympathetic to the plight of responsible college kids who don’t like to take prescribed medicines that are the topic of controversy. Particularly if there’s a first medicine in their life, they don’t like the regularity of it. They need what others abuse, so they feel if they do as prescribed, they too are abusers. They take what some say are “addictive” but for them, they are prescribed…they make the leap to believe if they take their prescribed meds, they are “addicts.” </p>
<p>There’s tremendous misunderstanding because some think that taking these as prescribed gives them an unfair edge academically, and they are not only responsible but ethical, so they buy the line that they are getting a false leg up academically.</p>
<p>So let me try to express what I think very simply:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>For people who require Adderall to concentrate, following documented diagnosis of ADD or ADHD, these medicines (stop calling them “drugs” okay?)
restore the biochemical communication within your brain so that you can function as your brain was born to do. You’re not adding anything; you’re replacinig something gone astray.</p></li>
<li><p>For someone NOT prescribed, and not suffering from ADD or ADHD, that other person (roommate, whoever) on your dorm floor gets a very different response from the same pill. They experience it as “speed.” For you, the experience is more like you are normally nearsighted but taking the meds is like putting on your glasses to restore your vision to 20/20.</p></li>
<li><p>If you need a medicine daily to perform, you are dependent on it. The same could be said about food and water. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>For example, I need Synthroid every day to replace a missing hormone. It’s not my fault that my body sidelines that hormone-producing gland, it just does. So, if I take the replacement daily, I function as a baseline person should. If I don’t, in a matter of days or weeks, I fall apart. </p>
<p>Does that mean I’m “addicted” or “Dependent” on Synthroid? YES. That’s the nature of a prescribed daily medicine. Unless it says “take as needed” you depend on it to be l00 percent whole. That could also be said of so many other medicines, from cholesterol reducers that your parents take to anyting else a doctor prescribed you Need Daily. </p>
<p>There is nothing wrong with that. You also need milk and food daily. You are chemically dependent on those substances as well. So what?</p>
<p>Someone else could overeat the same foods and gain weight but if your metabolism is such that your body works differently, your story is not the same as the person down the dorm hall.</p>
<p>Deal with your doctor; start calling drugs “medicines” when they are prescribed and not drugs; if it’s a daily prescription and you need it to simply pay attention – it’s about like needing a prescription for glasses to see 20/20 because without them you’re nearsighted. </p>
<p>You wouldn’t say that all the kids in your classes who wear glasses get an “unfair advantage” academically, would you? You don’t bully those who wear glasses by sayign they shouldn’t use their glasses in class…or else they get an unfair advantage over you? (Yeah, right, you can all see the board now…that’s really unfair.)</p>
<p>Let’s say you don’t yet need glasses, because you are blessed with 20/20 vision at this time in your life. One day, you borrow and try on theirs…you’ll see the world all wrong. But if they wear their prescribed glasses, (prescribed because they were needed, acc to a doctor) then they’ll see the world all right. Those glasses mean something different to one who needs them and one who is just trying them on. </p>
<p>Don’t get confused by what borrowers say about something you need. Glasses aren’t an unfair advantage; they level the playing field. Some kids in the class need them; others don’t. Nobody borrows the other guy’s glasses, nor do they demand that some not wear them so it looks “fair.” </p>
<p>Doctors went to medical school to be able to distinguish between those who need a prescription and those who do not. If your Adderall or whatever is prescribed and you need to take it daily to concentrate properly, you are taking medicine, not drugs. When you take a pill, for you, it’s like putting on a pair of glasses each day.
You depend on the pill for a normal day just as a person needs to find their glasses or they’re cooked. You both “depend” on what was prescribed…for YOU. Don’t lend your glasses or your pills to those who don’t need them. Don’t begrudge the kids who need glasses or Adderall just to start at the same starting line, academically speaking. </p>
<p>I hope this helps a dialogue. I think some of the very responsible and ethical students are feeling badly about taking prescribed medicines to which they are entitled because others may be abusing them, selling them, or even faking acting to get the 'scrips easily. That has nothing to do with you.</p>
<p>Mom60, please let me know if this is helpful.</p>
<p>jym, I will have to wait on that explanation. Mom60, your post breaks my heart; my son is the same way. He does not like how it “feels”. He does not feel like himself. He has taken stimulants for behavior problems since he was 4 y.o., and the look on his face when I hand them to him now, at 15 is so sad. We have always called them his “behavior medicine”, and it’s only recently that he’s started to understand what they are. He is embarassed, doesn’t tell frineds ( but they still tell him he’s “hyper”), and makes sure they are out of site when he has company. He was suspended and faced charges of assault for impulsively “pantsing” some kid in the locker room. I think that was his last trial off; about one year ago. We use the shortest acting, lowest reasonable dose, and his grades suffer, but that’s acceptable to us. His experience, and reports from other kids really color my impressions of Child Psychiatry. In this context, I do not worry about stimulant abuse in children…again, their parents are a whole 'nother story.</p>
<p>I have a child with ADHD currently on Strattera, a non-stimulant as others have mentioned. For him, ADHD meds have been a godsend, and I can’t imagine what the past several years would have been like without them. My only concern with Strattera is that it is relatively new, so there may be long-term effects that are not known. Meds like Ritalin and Adderall have been around for a very long time. While there are potential side effects as with any other medication, they are known and can be monitored by a physician. Taken properly, these are relatively safe, effective meds. Used improperly is another story. If you or your child need these medications, follow the advice of a competent trusted physician instead of getting medical advice from someone like Tom Cruise. I would also suggest that college students keep their meds in a lockbox because they can be stolen. If they are stolen they may be hard to replace due to the limitations on filling these prescriptions.</p>
<p>P3T, very eloquently said. Thank you. Shrinkrap, your post is also appreciated. I hope they help provide some clarification for Mom60’s son and others. Mom60, perhaps it will help your son to think about the cost/benefit of the medicine for just the next three years to help him get through college. If at the end of that period he can find a job he can do successfully without taking medicine, that will be an option for him. For now, however, his job is college. Doing that job well may require him to take medicine, at least some of the time. I think P3T’s post helps explain why taking a medicine that has been prescribed for him is not drug abuse. </p>
<p>He also does not need to discuss his condition or medicine with any of his friends, no matter how close. I asked my son if people ask him for his pills at college and he said the only people who know he has them are the people he went to high school with. He hasn’t told anybody else. Some of his high school “friends” have asked him for pills and he says he just tells them he is out. Since our son is known as a forgetful/spacey person (probably not uncommon for kids with ADD), the excuse of forgetting to fill his prescription is apparently believable or at least a face saving device that works. He does keep his medicine in a locked box. </p>
<p>He also chooses not to take it whenever possible, such as over the summer. This results in lots of little inconveniences like going to the bank today to deposit a check, deciding he left the check at home, and coming home to find the check in his pocket. Life is more difficult for him and for us when he is off meds, but that is a compromise that we all make in exchange for him taking the meds when performance on a task is really necessary, such as in college. Perhaps if you explained it in this light, your son would feel better about doing what needs to be done to succeed in school.</p>