College students have seen a change in studying trends and new ways to study. Students have started to cram for exams the night before and the day of the exam, sometimes even pulling all nighters and taking the exams with no sleep. Finals week is a prime example of this, as students generally have 4 or 5 exams in a one-week span. In order to help stay awake, the students look to energy drinks, coffee, and even prescription stimulants such as adderall. These caffeinated drinks and drugs allow the students to stay awake and stay focused longer than they ever could on their own natural strength.
A study was conducted on 605 undergraduate and graduate students. They were asked whether or not they drank any energy drinks or had taken any prescription stimulants in the past 30 days. They found that 48.9% of the students had consumed energy drinks in the last 30 days while 25.3% had taken prescription stimulants. Among the prescription stimulant users without prescriptions, it was found that each additional day or having an energy drink increased the odds of taking prescription stimulants by 14%. Another strong factor in the odds of taking prescription stimulants was the number of energy drink binges in the past 30 days.
As a student, I see other students drinking energy drinks and taking prescription stimulants all of the time. When students have an exam at either 8 AM or 10:10 AM during finals week, I feel that they are more inclined to pull an all nighter as opposed to waking up early for the exam. To accomplish this all nighter, they drink energy drinks, coffee, and most of the time take prescription stimulants. While this may be an effective method in the students’ eyes, the risks of using all of the stimulants together are not fully known. This is potentially dangerous to the students’ health and further research needs to be done on these affects. Until that is done, I will stay away from the prescription stimulants and try not to mix or overdue coffee and energy drinks.
References:
Increased Energy Drink Use as a Predictor of Illicit Prescription Stimulant Use.
Woolsey CL1, Williams RD Jr, Jacobson BH, Housman JM, McDonald JD, Swartz JH, Evans MW Jr, Sather TE, Barry AE, Davidson RT.
Subst Abus. 2014 Oct 13:0. [Epub ahead of print]
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.