March 10, 2013, 3 a.m.
One in 12 university students misuse prescription stimulants in an attempt to enhance brain power and get better grades, a study has found.
The first attempt to gauge Australian use of pharmaceutical stimulants to increase focus, memory and concentration at university has confirmed the use of the drugs, particularly in highly competitive disciplines such as law and medicine.
The study found that up to 8 per cent of Australian university students misuse prescription stimulants such as methylphenidate (sold as Ritalin), dexamphetamine (Adderall) and modafinil (Provigil) to get better grades.
The use of psychostimulants to enhance brain power in education has attracted little attention in Australia compared with the controversy around drugs in sport.
The survey on four campuses gathered responses from more than 2000 students.
The lead researcher, performance psychologist Jason Mazanov of the University of New South Wales school of business in Canberra, said it was clear that ''Australian university students are using substances to increase their performance at university''.
''Darren'', a final-year law student at the University of Sydney who wished to remain anonymous, recently gave up dealing in Ritalin because he ''got a real job''. But it was ''very easy to get'', he said, because many students who had been prescribed Ritalin for attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder as children were tired of taking the pills.
The going rate for a 10 milligram tablet was about $2.50, he said.
''I mostly did it for fun. I didn't make any money. I got to meet people and go out to parties where I would not otherwise get to be,'' he said.
Dr Mazanov said there was ''zero evidence'' about whether the drugs actually improved users' academic performance or their job prospects.
''Darren'', for one, is sceptical. He said it was much more common to use the drugs for play than work.
''People say it is a focus drug but it doesn't make you necessarily focus on study. It is just whatever is in front of you … If the phone rings you are completely likely to just get sidetracked and go off and do something else,'' he said.
Studies in the United States have found psychostimulants are more commonly misused by university and college students than by the young adult population generally, at rates from 6.4 to 7.9 per cent compared with 3 to 5.4 per cent in the general young adult population.
Associate Professor Jayne Lucke of the University of Queensland Centre for Clinical Research said findings on the effectiveness of the stimulants for study were mixed and it depended on which drugs and the person.
For example it appeared ''people who start with a lower level of memory ability have a greater improvement than people who are already high-performing'', but the improvement is ''very small''.
Professor Lucke said the US research suggested typical users were struggling with middling grades, ''the fraternity type who is also using lots of alcohol and illicit drugs, someone who wants to party'' rather than high performing students trying to get to the top of the class.
Despite a lot of anecdotal evidence ''there is no hard data'' for increasing use of prescription stimulants for study purposes, said Dr Sharlene Kaye, a research fellow at the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre at the University of New South Wales.
Side effects for prescription stimulants including dependence and psychosis were similar to those for illicit psychostimulants such as methamphetamine (ice). Prescription stimulants were also risky for people with heart conditions and high blood pressure, Dr Kaye said.
The industry body Universities Australia said universities ''discourage in the strongest possible way the misuse of any substance''.
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