There’s nothing new about teenagers doing anything they can to stay up all night and get their work done (remember No-Doz?). What’s so worrisome now, though, are the reports surfacing about the huge surge in teen abuse of ADHD medications, with sometimes fatal results. Of course, lots of kids take prescription drugs just to get high, and that’s a hugely disturbing problem. But what worries me in a different way are the kids who aren’t necessarily on people’s radar — the high-achieving students with no history of drug use who are taking the ADHD meds as study and performance aids, and putting themselves at enormous risk.

The New Yorker did a disturbing piece on this subject recently that focused on college-aged students’ off-label use of medications like Adderall and Ritalin to become hyper-focused and hyper-productive. What these students don’t realize, according to multiple studies cited by the article, are the unpleasant side-effects these medications carry, and their real potential to create dependency.

Clearly there’s more education to be done. I have talked to my own kids about this before, but I’ll be bringing it back up again for sure.