Research Assignment: Factors that Lead to College Drug Use

College Drug Use
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The Effects of College Drug Use
Introduction
Statistically, college students form the largest group of drug users. Most college students are aged between 18 and 24 years and the risk of getting into addiction is high in this category of individuals (Amethyst Recovery Center, 2017). It is as well notable that students who enroll on full-program are twice more likely to use drugs as those who don’t enroll for college studies. Research studies indicate that the menace affects mostly the first-year college students who become overwhelmed by socialization anxiety (Spencer, 2017). They find drug use as a treatment for this anxiety very compelling. It’s quite a devastating thing for parents to withstand their children’s addiction. The high rates of drug addiction and the related devastating effects raise an alarm of the country’s future leaders and society at large. This is one reason it’s important to look at devastating effects of drug use in college by first understanding factors that lead to it.
Factors that Lead to College Drug Use
So the question is why is college drug use so high? As mentioned earlier, as students get into the new environment, they are filled with socializing anxiety. Students are thus triggered to drug use since it gives them false confidence that makes their socializing easier. Besides that, there are other several factors that lead to college students turning to drugs. Peer pressure is the most common factor. Students surrounding themselves with people who use drugs as recreation or to enhance performance often feel tempted to use the drugs.
Stress in college is something very common. Students while in college are faced with overwhelming obligations; part-time jobs, coursework, internship name them. To cope, they turn to drugs. Likewise, college workload is overwhelming with numerous assignments demanding a lot of time and energy. In such situations, students take drugs as stimulants without noticing that they are slowly getting hooked up. Others take drugs to boost their grades. A senior student at Auburn University says, “I am more driven. I don’t focus on anything.” This is to explain how he focuses on a paper. He depends on ADHD drugs to help him focus and out of distractions so as to get higher grades (Cooper, 2011). Curiosity is another factor. There are students who are curious in nature not only in their professional realm but also in the personal realm. It will be so ridiculous to factor out that this curiosity can lead to drug experimentation.
Spencer (2017) writes of the experiences of the students in recovery. Most of the students said that they took heroin as stimulants and to come down. There are students whom opium use started as a painkiller, to others; it was a matter of speeding up. Slowly by slowly they got addicted to a point that one girl by the name Julie Linneman, a Villanova University student was in a group of opium users which Spencer referred to as ‘her people’. For this case, there was peer pressure, course overload, and curiosity which led the students to drug abuse.
Ignorance is another factor. From personal experience, there is a friend of mine...