Daniel
Ashkenazy, a promising pre-law student at the University of
California, San Diego, had planned to fly home to the San
Francisco Bay Area to see his visiting grandparents on Jan.
14. Instead, he died that day after taking the addictive painkiller
OxyContin and then drinking alcohol at a fraternity rush party.
'I believe that those kids who are high achievers are the
kids who are at risk,' Pamela Ashkenazy, seen here with her
son Daniel, says. Family photo via AP
Daniel's mother, Pamela Ashkenazy, found her son's misuse
of a prescription drug puzzling. Daniel, 20, had a 3.8 grade-point
average his junior year. He spoke with her nearly every day.
He didn't seem to fit the profile of a young person who might
drift into drug abuse, she said. But in the four months since
Daniel's death, Ashkenazy has reached a different conclusion
about the type of teens and young adults who abuse prescription
drugs.
"I believe that those kids who are high achievers are the
kids who are at risk," she says. "Parents think if they are
raising their kids in affluent homes, if their kids are getting
good grades, nothing is wrong. Well, none of that protected
him."
The Ashkenazy case reflects what various university researchers
are finding as they begin to examine an emerging boom in prescription-drug
abuse among young adults and teenagers: Many of those who
misuse narcotic pain relievers such as OxyContin or Vicodin,
or stimulants such as Ritalin, are doing so not necessarily
to get high, but also to ease stress or to try to improve
academic performance.
Patterns of use and abuse
Recent nationwide surveys by the University of Michigan and
other researchers have indicated that the abuse of prescription
drugs among young adults and teens is increasing, while the
abuse of drugs such as cocaine and heroin is decreasing among
those groups. The studies have said that about 6.7 million
people ages 12-25 took a prescription drug for non-medical
purposes during the previous year. Among illicit drugs, only
marijuana had more users in that age group, about 12.8 million.
On Wednesday, the Society for Prevention Research, a group
of scientists who examine drug abuse and recommend ways to
counter it, presented analyses and original research based
on such data collected during the past three years. Carol
Boyd, director of the Institute for Research on Women and
Gender at the University of Michigan, said researchers are
beginning to understand which youths abuse prescription drugs,
why they do so and where they get the drugs.
Sean Esteban McCabe, interim director of the Substance Abuse
Research Center at the University of Michigan, said his colleagues'
examination of drug use among college students found that
"competitive" universities — those with high academic standards
— reported higher rates of illicit use of prescription drugs.
McCabe did not identify specific campuses with high usage
rates. However, he said researchers have found students are
more likely to abuse prescription drugs if they are white,
live in a fraternity or sorority house and have lower than
a "B" average.
McCabe also found that young women who used prescription drugs
illicitly usually got them from family members, particularly
parents, while young men who used such drugs without prescriptions
usually got them from friends.
Meanwhile, Boyd surveyed 1,017 middle and high school students
in a Detroit-area public school district. Almost half the
children had legitimate prescriptions for Ritalin and other
medications. Ritalin is a stimulant used to treat attention
deficit disorder.
Among the students surveyed by Boyd's group, one in four with
legitimate prescriptions said other kids had asked them for
pills. One in five said they had sold or traded away at least
one pill. Most of the students who reported using such drugs
without a prescription — 79% — said they had done so to relieve
pain rather than to get high, Boyd says. About 11% said they
took the drugs to get high.
Boyd says the survey indicates that "when we talk about this
big boom in prescription-drug abuse, we have to talk about
two different groups who are using the drugs for two different
reasons."
'Not like when you're drunk'
In a separate study at the University of New Mexico, Gilbert
Quintero and other researchers at the university's Center
for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention recently interviewed
52 college students who said they had misused prescription
drugs during the previous year.
Quintero found that many of the students medicated themselves
to relieve stress. The students identified 58 different brand
names of drugs they had misused. Vicodin was the most popular,
with 65.4% saying they had used it without a prescription,
followed by Percocet, the tranquilizers Valium and Xanax,
and OxyContin.
Quintero quoted a 20-year-old woman who had misused Percocet,
a painkiller. "It just relaxes me," she told the researchers.
"It's a complete relaxer but you can still function and do
other things. It's not like when you're drunk and totally
out of it."
Some students said they took prescription drugs socially because
they are cheaper than alcohol. One out of four students interviewed
said they had misused Ritalin, primarily to keep up with academic
demands, Quintero said.
Popular
pills
Prescription
drugs most often abused by teenagers and young adults include:
Ritalin. A mild stimulant often prescribed to children to
treat attention deficit disorder (ADD), attention deficit
hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and narcolepsy. Abusers take
it to suppress appetite, stay awake and feel euphoric.
;OxyContin. A strong pain reliever similar to morphine. Highly
addictive, it is designed to be absorbed gradually. Crushing
or chewing pills can cause a large amount of oxycodone, the
active ingredient, to be released at once. That creates the
potential for a dangerous or fatal overdose.
Vicodin. A strong pain reliever that can be addictive. It
is particularly popular among young adults. Its use among
professional athletes was spotlighted when Green Bay Packers
quarterback Brett Favre was treated for an addiction to the
drug in 1996.
Percocet. A painkiller that can be addictive. It's often given
to patients who have undergone surgery.
Morphine. Another addictive painkiller that is known for its
use on patients who have undergone surgery. It is a base ingredient
for many other painkillers, including OxyContin.
Sources: National Institute on Drug Abuse, Center for Drug
Evaluation and Research
