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"PinterestFacebookJust like you? Chanel Roady, Jenny Ellis and Shandi Williams of Norman, Oklahoma, who have each loaned or borrowed prescription drugs.\nJust like you? Chanel Roady, Jenny Ellis and Shandi Williams of Norman, Oklahoma, who have each loaned or borrowed prescription drugs.\nIt takes up to eight pills to get 26-year-old Jenny Ellis through her day. Before her morning coffee, she pops two Lortab painkillers to help relieve the achy, flulike symptoms of her fibromyalgia. In the afternoon, taking two Tylenol 3 with codeine keeps her discomfort at bay. With dinner, it&amp;#39;s a Cymbalta for depression and a Klonopin for anxiety. Around bedtime, Ellis takes Levothroid for her underactive thyroid, and sometimes an Ambien to bring her down so she can fall asleep. (Just a year ago, she often took more pills, including a stimulant, Provigil, to counteract her painkillers&amp;#39; drowsy effects.) Though Ellis believes she really needs all of her prescriptions, she dreams of someday living completely pill-free. &amp;quot;I&amp;#39;m on more medication than most senior citizens,&amp;quot; says the jewelry store assistant manager from Norman, Oklahoma, &amp;quot;and I hate it.&amp;quot; But taking a pharmacy&amp;#39;s worth of pills has another significant, unexpected side effect: Ellis&amp;#39; friends often ask her for a little pharmaceutical help.\n&amp;quot;People are constantly texting me for my pills,&amp;quot; Ellis says. &amp;quot;Someone might want a painkiller for cramps, or an Ambien to go to sleep. If I gave them out to everyone who asked, there would be none left for me. But in the past, I have shared my pills with friends who I thought really needed them. These days I can&amp;#39;t afford to. I keep them for myself.&amp;quot;\nHer friend Shandi Williams admits she&amp;#39;s asked friends for painkillers after several endometriosis surgeries that left her in chronic pain. &amp;quot;I asked my doctor for more, but he&amp;#39;s worried I&amp;#39;ll get addicted&amp;#8212;so I took matters into my own hands,&amp;quot; says Williams, 25, a health care worker, who also has her own prescriptions for an antianxiety drug and a sleep aid.\nAnother friend of Ellis&amp;#39;, Chanel Roady, is convinced she suffers from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). &amp;quot;I have difficulty concentrating and can never sit still,&amp;quot; says the 25-year-old professional organizer, whose job, by definition, requires focus. But because she&amp;#39;s uninsured, Roady hasn&amp;#39;t consulted a doctor about feeling so scattered. After googling her symptoms, she asked a friend with an Adderall prescription if she could try a pill. It worked, she says. &amp;quot;I felt an intensely focused calm. I was able to finish every project I started without getting distracted.&amp;quot; Now Roady borrows or buys one pill a week from different friends. &amp;quot;I wish I could take it daily,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;But my friends need their prescriptions, and I don&amp;#39;t have the time or money to go to a doctor for my own. So I schedule as much as I can in one day, and that is the day I take Adderall.&amp;quot;\nThese three friends represent the new faces of prescription drug use in America. In a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study, nearly 30 percent of women ages 18 to 44 admitted to handing out or borrowing prescription medications from friends and acquaintances. And with more than 50 percent of young women now taking legitimate, doctor-approved prescriptions&amp;#8212;an all-time high, according to the same CDC report&amp;#8212;these drugs are in no short supply. &amp;quot;Young women today are more and more willing to take prescription pills, and also to share them,&amp;quot; says Carol Boyd, Ph.D., director of the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and a nurse specializing in substance abuse issues. &amp;quot;And more and more women are comfortable hitting up friends for drugs.&amp;quot;\nWhat kinds of drugs are we talking about here? Mood-enhancing pills like stimulants and antianxiety drugs are the most widely swapped, experts say. Like athletes who take steroids, many women turn to them to enhance their performance&amp;#8212;to do better on a test, for example, or stay calm during a work presentation. Anjan Chatterjee, M.D., professor of neurology at the University of Pennsylvania, calls this type of lifestyle tweaking &amp;quot;cosmetic neurology&amp;quot;: &amp;quot;It&amp;#39;s like cosmetic surgery&amp;#8212;just as some people elect to get liposuction to look better in their clothes, others are taking a pill they think will make them more productive or alert.&amp;quot; And you probably know women who are doing it. Consider:\nMimi, 24, from Newport Beach, California, who says she has a paralyzing fear of public speaking. &amp;quot;I&amp;#39;ve borrowed Xanax to help me get through speeches and interviews and to unwind after a bad day. With the drug&amp;#39;s help, I&amp;#39;ve been able to execute a speech multiple times with great success.&amp;quot;\nChristina, 28, a music industry professional in Los Angeles, who borrows Adderall from friends; she particularly finds herself craving one when she has a lot on her plate: &amp;quot;One pill means I do 12 hours of work in half the time,&amp;quot; she explains.\nJenna, 23, from New York City, who has experimented with lots of friends&amp;#39; prescriptions. &amp;quot;In the past year,&amp;quot; she says, &amp;quot;I&amp;#39;ve taken Klonopin, Adderall, Ritalin, Vicodin and OxyContin. I used to travel a lot internationally for work. I get nervous flying, so I would take a Klonopin for anxiety a few hours before the flight and an Adderall when I arrived, so I&amp;#39;d be ready to work. About a year ago, I had a very bad breakup, and Klonopin was a good friend to me.&amp;quot;\nHow did so many of us become so nonchalant about taking prescription drugs? &amp;quot;This is a generation that was raised on pills,&amp;quot; explains Naomi Wax, founder of the popular blog pillgirlreport .com. &amp;quot;Women in their teens and twenties grew up in a culture where pills are pervasive and increasingly mainstream, which makes the prospect of trying them&amp;#8212;even without a doctor&amp;#39;s prescription&amp;#8212;seem a lot less daunting than it was for their mother&amp;#39;s generation.&amp;quot; Boyd agrees: &amp;quot;We live in a culture that believes medication can solve almost any problem.&amp;quot; And for some women, a doctor&amp;#39;s sign-off is just a technicality to getting that relief.\nNot Just a Simple Little Drug Deal\nEveryone takes them, they&amp;#39;re legal and proven safe&amp;#8212;so what&amp;#39;s wrong with nabbing a pill from a friend? For starters, taking a drug without a prescription is as illegal as using street drugs, although few cases result in jail time. The health risks, however, can be more immediate. Pill borrowing may make women feel that the drugs they take are no big deal, when in reality no drug is 100 percent safe or without side effects. For example, Adderall, an amphetamine, comes with the Food and Drug Administration&amp;#39;s serious &amp;quot;black box&amp;quot; warning, because its misuse can cause heart problems and even death. But women who borrow drugs from friends likely never see that warning.\nThey also may never learn about possible drug interactions from a doctor, pharmacist or drug insert. &amp;quot;I have patients come in all the time and say, I was feeling panicky, so I took my friend&amp;#39;s Xanax,&amp;#39;&amp;quot; says Sharon Orrange, M.D., an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. &amp;quot;My first question is What else are you taking?&amp;#39;&amp;quot; Certain drugs should never be mixed: Xanax and sleeping pills like Ambien can have a dangerous sedative effect when combined, Dr. Orrange says. Ritalin and some common antidepressants can increase blood pressure to unhealthy levels. Opioids, or pain pills&amp;#8212;sometimes taken to get high&amp;#8212;can dangerously slow heart and breathing rates when mixed with allergy medications containing antihistamines. And combining decongestants and stimulants (like Sudafed with Adderall) may cause a dangerous spike in blood pressure or lead to irregular heart rhythms.\nAnd although prescription drugs may seem safer than street drugs, they still can lead to addiction. The stimulant Provigil, for instance, is more habit-forming than originally thought, according to a recent study (and also may reduce the efficacy of birth control). And taking opioids for an extended time has been linked to abuse or addiction in up to 19 percent of patients. Whether a person will become addicted depends on many factors, including genes and how much and how long they&amp;#39;ve been taking the drugs. &amp;quot;Most people will take these pills and be fine, but we don&amp;#39;t know who the others are until they are hooked,&amp;quot; says Nora Volkow, M.D., director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). Doctors can monitor their patients for these issues and take steps like adjusting dosage levels or switching medications. But for women taking drugs on their own, Dr. Volkow says, &amp;quot;It&amp;#39;s like playing Russian roulette.&amp;quot; Experts say we shouldn&amp;#39;t underestimate the power of these drugs and the potentially tragic consequences of misusing them. (Two examples: the deaths of Heath Ledger and Michael Jackson.)\nBut Do They Work?\nWhile most experts agree that unsupervised pill popping is always risky, some have actually suggested that stimulants such as Adderall, Ritalin and Provigil should eventually become more available to people as study and work aids. In an editorial published last year in the scientific journal Nature, seven leading experts in medicine, science and law argued that using these drugs to boost mental performance was the way of the future. &amp;quot;Cognitive enhancement has much to offer individuals and society,&amp;quot; they argued.\nBut even those proponents, including Ronald Kessler, Ph.D., professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School, say it&amp;#39;s too soon to use drugs this way because the health risks are just too great, especially without a prescription. &amp;quot;We know little about the long-term effects of these medications on people who do not have diagnosable conditions,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;The last thing a person concerned with brain power should do is gamble with using chemicals that influence her brain in ways that we do not understand.&amp;quot;\nDrugs work in diagnosable conditions because they address biological shortcomings or imbalances, to oversimplify a complicated process. Adderall, for example, works in part by raising certain chemical levels in the brain. But the body is a finely tuned system&amp;#8212;too much of the chemical may just make you jittery without any mental benefits. That could help explain why there&amp;#39;s no solid proof that &amp;quot;performance-enhancing&amp;quot; drugs actually work in people without medical conditions. &amp;quot;When a person takes a stimulant like Adderall, she may think that she&amp;#39;s performing better,&amp;quot; Dr. Volkow explains. &amp;quot;But while they may make you stay awake or focus better, there is no hard evidence that they make you smarter.&amp;quot;\nIf you believe they do, though, you run into another side effect to casual pill-popping: Users may lose confidence in their ability to function and excel without a pill. In one survey, about 45 percent of Duke University students who admitted to using Adderall without a prescription felt they &amp;quot;needed&amp;quot; the drug to do their best. &amp;quot;You can develop the psychological conditioning that tells you that you need it in the future,&amp;quot; Dr. Volkow says. &amp;quot;That&amp;#39;s incredibly detrimental. You start to become a psychological slave to the drug. Why put yourself into that self-fulfilling mind-set?&amp;quot;\nSo what do we really need to sleep, perform or feel better? For many healthy women, experts say, simple behavior changes will do the trick. &amp;quot;If there really is no illness,&amp;quot; Kessler says, &amp;quot;then the first choice should be changes in diet and exercise.&amp;quot; Sharon Brigner, a nurse and deputy vice president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the trade association for the country&amp;#39;s leading pharmaceutical research and biotechnology companies, echoes that sentiment: &amp;quot;These are good medicines,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;When used as prescribed, pills can be lifesavers for people with medical conditions like fibromyalgia, ADHD, diabetes and depression. But when misused, there can be serious health consequences. Since when is wanting more energy a medical condition?&amp;quot;\nSome women, well aware of the possible risks, are comfortable with their choice to take drugs casually. Chanel Roady admits, &amp;quot;My life seems so crazy, I do feel like a pill is the answer. Of course, I would much rather do it through a doctor&amp;#8212;I feel bad relying on my friends.&amp;quot; Christina, the music industry professional from L.A., says she&amp;#39;ll continue borrowing the occasional Adderall. &amp;quot;It really focuses me,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#39;t have any regrets about taking it.&amp;quot;\nOther women have come to regret their casual pill-popping. Jessica, 27, from North Bethesda, Maryland, took a friend&amp;#39;s Xanax when she was feeling overwhelmed. Because Jessica had been prescribed Xanax two years earlier, she thought it would be fine to share a friend&amp;#39;s drugs. However, the dose was about four times stronger than what she&amp;#39;d previously taken. &amp;quot;I felt woozy and knocked out,&amp;quot; she recalls. Natasha, 26, from Columbia, South Carolina, says she won&amp;#39;t take Adderall again after popping a friend&amp;#39;s pill to stay up for all-night partying. &amp;quot;It made me so wired,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;My heart was pounding.&amp;quot;\nLeaving casual drug use behind can be life-changing, says Kassandra, 22, from New Hampshire. &amp;quot;When I was going through a stressful time, a friend gave me Valium and I loved it,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;For about six months, I was on autopilot. It became a struggle to get through the day without pills. Then I started dating a guy who convinced me that I didn&amp;#39;t need them. I now realize that I have the ability to function in my life without any sort of drug to numb me.&amp;quot;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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