Instead of drinking copious amounts of coffee and eating junk food, some students might be seeking out stimulant drugs like Adderall or Ritalin to cope with finals.

Stimulant drugs like Adderall and Ritalin are prescribed by a doctor to help those people who have trouble paying attention or focusing for an extended amount of time, which depends on each individual. Students who are not prescribed stimulant drugs might look to take them to help focus while studying for finals.

“People do suffer, and people have gotten much better from using medication,” said Dr. Carver Nebbe, physician at the Thielen Student Health Center. “It’s so confounding that these medications also work for everybody else to a degree, and that they have a street value.

Nebbe said it feels as if there are more students who come in complaining that they cannot focus towards the end of the semester.

However, Nebbe said he usually lessens the amount of appointments with these students towards the end of the semester. Not only because he has follow-up appointments with other students but because it is not an accurate assessment of students’ needs.

“Studying is hard; paying attention and focusing is cognitively one of the hardest things we do. The idea behind ADHD is that the person with the developmental disorder has a significant decrease in ability to focus on stimuli,” Nebbe said. “It’s very attractive to have something that will help to do that.”

Emily Wilkerson, freshman in general preveterinary medicine, said that she has enough energy on her own and would not seek out stimulant drugs.

Wilkerson said that she does not think it is a good idea for students who are not prescribed these medicines to take them.

“I think they think it will help them focus, and it really won’t,” Wilkerson said. “I know people back home used to take Adderall just as a drug, so I don’t think it’s really going to help. I think it’s going to cause other problems that lead to addiction.”

Nebbe said that it may not cause a long-lasting issue if students take these un-prescribed medications, he still wishes students would not abuse them. Students may also have a tendency to use these drugs without being prescribed in the future.

“If you take them and then you don’t take them, will it cause you some kind of big problem? Generally no. You’re going to take them and then you’re not going to take them and the one thing that you do notice is that when you take them, it really helps,” Nebbe said. “I would prefer that people be very conscientious and honest about how it all works.”

Wilkerson said she thinks some students will be able to buy drugs like Adderall and Ritalin from friends who have been prescribed the medications.

“They probably know who’s on it and just ask. The kid who’s on it is probably like, ‘oh I’m making money on this, so why not?’” Wilkerson said.

While students who abuse stimulant drugs may not develop a serious addiction, Nebbe said that there are more healthy and helpful ways to cope with the stress of studying.

“The most healthy approach [to studying] would be technique. What I preach to students again and again and again is that routine is really important,” Nebbe said. “Keeping a regimen is going to be very, very helpful in terms of regular sleep, making sure you get sound sleep.”

Nebbe said that even minimal cardiovascular exercise and eating regular, healthy meals will help brain function. Techniques like studying chapter objectives, review questions and vocab words with which students can use to quiz themselves while studying will make study session smoother.

Studying for shorter and more frequent times will help focus and incorporate memory better as well.