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Prescription Drug Roulette
When she was 14, Amanda Wiederhold had the last of four sinus surgeries. The best part, says the aspiring musician: "I got pain pills every time." She took some of the pills for her pain and brought the rest, along with some medications she'd stolen from her mom, to parties at her friends' houses. There, she and her pals would get high on those and other prescription drugs.Forget BYOB. For some teenagers, parties today are of the bring-your-own-pills variety. Amanda and her friends brought whatever they could get their hands on: Vicodin, Percocet, Percodan, OxyContin and other painkillers; antianxiety medications like Xanax; stimulants like Adderall and Ritalin; and over-the-counter drugs. Then they began the dangerous game of prescription drug roulette.
These gatherings are called pharming parties, and they can be deadly. They're taking place in living rooms and basements across the country. At some parties, the kids toss their pharmaceutical offerings into a communal bowl, grab an assortment as if the pills were Skittles and knock them back, usually with alcohol. At others, like the ones Amanda attended, it's more organized, with bartering and negotiations, says Tom Hedrick, a founder of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America. "Someone will say, 'I have X, which is harder to get. You'll have to give me three of what you have to get one of what I have.'"
The abuse of prescription drugs, a practice known as pharming (short for pharmaceutical), is rampant among middle and high school students. According to a 2005 report from Columbia University's National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA), 2.3 million kids ages 12 to 17 abused prescription drugs in 2003.
"What's frightening is that so many kids are doing it," says Hedrick. "And parents are unaware." This problem isn't on their radar. But it should be: A National Institute on Drug Abuse survey estimates that there's been a 25 percent increase each year since 2001 in the use of sedatives and barbiturates among high school seniors.
Jim Steinhagen, executive director of the Hazelden Center for Youth and Families, a drug-and-alcohol rehabilitation center in Plymouth, Minnesota, blames technology, in part, for the speed at which these parties have gotten so popular. "They've become the cool thing to do," he says. "They've caught on because kids communicate that to each other. And passing along information is easier with chat rooms, text messaging and the Internet."
In Caldwell, Texas, Amanda's hometown, a farming community of 3,500, pharming parties often take place in the cocoon of a traditional gathering. "We'd mingle and then at some time we'd go off to the side," Amanda recalls. "We'd go outside and open up our little plastic bags and share pills. I didn't always know what I was taking." But she didn't care.
Kids aren't looking for any specific medication. "Conventional wisdom used to be that it was an OxyContin problem," says Hedrick. "We now know that it has nothing to do with the brand. The newer the product, the more interesting. Kids will take it and figure out how to mix it with other things to get a different kind of high."
Steinhagen agrees: "They want to know how they can get high quicker, faster, what's the best buzz?" That's why they combine the drugs with one another and with alcohol and illegal drugs such as marijuana -- sometimes with fatal results.
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