It started with trouble concentrating on a business trip. A colleague offered up his prescription for Concerta, a medication for ADD. "I have some, want to try one?,” said the woman describing what happened next. “I said sure I want to try one and so I took one of his pills and I had an extremely productive day. I really felt like it worked!"The woman, a young professional, asked not to be identified. But she’s clearly not alone. According to a new study, one in five people who take prescription drugs share them. Those most likely to do so are as young as 12 up through age 45.
Turn on the TV and you’ll likely catch an ad for the sleep aid Ambien. In one a rooster crows while the announcer talks about what you can do when “when morning comes in the middle of the night.”
Nearly half of the thirty second ad lists possible side effects including hallucination and walking or driving while sleeping. Yet pervasive drug advertising makes household names out of medications even narcotics. The FDA says these drugs are legal and proven safe.
The same women we spoke to earlier says she's also borrowed Ambien from her brother. “I didn't think I could make a case for it with my doctor because it’s not something I need all the time,” she says. If it were some medication I never heard of for something uncommon, I would never do it. "
The new study suggests a sizable group of people in their 20's and 30's consult friends to both diagnose health problems- - and to decide what drugs to take for them. They do it *not to get high but to feel better.
More focused in the case of the woman who took the ADD medication, less stressed in the case of a second woman who shares the anti-anxiety drug Clonazepan with her grown children. “It's a coping tool and my children need it occasionally,” the woman tells 13 WHAM News. “I never really thought about it as being wrong."
It is illegal to share your prescription medication with another person but a spokesman for the FDA tells 13 WHAM News it’s questionable whether the offense would be prosecuted. Three out of four people who borrow drugs say they do it to avoid having to go to a doctor. Those who loan their drugs say they do it to help someone.
“I take the lowest dose,” says the woman who shares her anti-anxiety medication with her adult children. “What I give them is about a quarter of that. so I know I’m not helping them become addicted I’m just trying to get them through whatever the crisis is."
Yet doctors say as small batches of pills get passed around-- information about dosage -- and risks - - is not included. One in four people who take borrowed medication experience a side effect.
“If somebody shares a medication you don't know what warning goes with it you don't know what interaction with your own interaction you're going to have,” says Dr. Shellie Yussman of the University of Rochester Medical Center. “There's also no guarantee of what that pill really is."
Yet pop culture both glamorizes, and normalizes these legal drugs. Rapper Jay Z’s “Empire State of Mind” includes the lyrics “the city never sleeps better slip you an Ambien…”
Websites like www.pillgirldotcom suggest many young professionals are comfortable, perhaps too comfortable with prescription drugs including those labeled “controlled substance”. In fact 60 percent more prescriptions are dispensed compared to 10 years ago.
Prescription drugs don't seem like a drug in this day and age,” says the young professional we first interviewed for this story. “I think people take it like ‘oh, I’ll take a sip of your drink’ and they don't think of it as dangerous as it could be."
