“Consumers will have to consider what level of discomfort or risk they’re willing to accept in exchange for sharper recall or enhanced powers of concentration (Healy, 2004).”

My sister was addicted to cocaine when I was younger, and because of this I grew up believing that the only drugs we should be afraid of were the illegal drugs that you couldn’t get from a doctor or a pharmacy. When I got to college I became aware of an entire world of drugs that can be prescribed to people and then distributed for all types of reasons. The people that were using these drugs didn’t look like “drug users” that I had seen on television, they were just college students that wanted to take the edge off or needed to focus on a test.

When I began working at my job, which is a MS/HS with students that range between the age of 10 and 16, I noticed that some of my students were facing similar problems to the ones that I had been made aware of when I got to college. My students shared with me that they feel a pressure to be smarter and more focused, especially since there are times when they struggle to focus and they don’t understand why. That struggle to focus reminds me of our lesson on adolescent brain activity where we discussed how their behavior is out of their control at times because there is so much changing within them. When students don’t understand these changes that are happening inside of them it causes them to take matters into their own hands. They try to resolve these issues with medications and supplements that they believe will make them “better” students and it is important to understand the issues that our students are struggling with and then provide them options to help them succeed in whichever way they deem appropriate for themselves as an individual.