Drug use and life style among college undergraduates: a 30-year longitudinal study.

OBJECTIVE: The authors examined trends in the prevalence of substance use and its relationship to attributes of life style among college students over a 30-year period. METHOD: They distributed anonymous questionnaires to 796 seniors at a large New England college in 1999, using methods essentially identical to those of their previous studies at the same college in 1969, 1978, and 1989. RESULTS: Most forms of drug use rose to a peak in 1978 then fell over the next 21 years, except for use of 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine ("ecstasy"). On several variables, college substance users differed more sharply from nonusers in 1999 than in previous decades. CONCLUSIONS: Although the study was limited to students at a single institution, its findings suggest that college drug use is generally declining and that users have increasingly diverged from nonusers in their values and life style.

Drug use and lifestyle among college students in Austria and the United States.

Using an anonymous questionnaire, we assessed the prevalence of alcohol use and illicit drug use among 545 college students in Innsbruck, Austria in 1995. The questionnaire also assessed various aspects of students' lifestyles, including academic performance, college activities, career plans, visits to a psychiatrist, and sexual activity. We compared these results with those obtained using the same questionnaire at a similar American college in 1989. We found that the prevalence of virtually all forms of illicit substance use was much higher among the American students. In both Austria and the United States, however, we found few differences between drug users and nonusers on most measures of lifestyle, with the exception of hetero-sexual activity.

Bupropion in tricyclic antidepressant nonresponders with unipolar major depressive disorder.

Tricyclic antidepressant (TCA) medications are among the most widely used pharmacologic treatments for depression. However, a substantial number of patients fail to respond to these agents. Few standardized trials of pharmacologic treatments for TCA nonresponders are available. Bupropion has an apparently different mechanism of action than TCAs and represents a possible treatment for the TCA nonresponder. Based on positive results from pilot studies, a standardized study evaluating bupropion in TCA nonresponders was conducted. Forty-one depressed outpatients who had failed to respond to adequate documented TCA treatment, defined by specific criteria of dosage, duration, and plasma concentrations, entered a 1-week single-blind placebo phase, followed by an open 8-week bupropion treatment phase utilizing doses of up to the maximum daily dose of 450 mg. Response was measured by change on the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HAM-D), Clinical Global Impressions-Severity (CGI-S) and Improvement (CGI-I) Scales, and the Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale (HAM-A). Bupropion treatment resulted in an improvement in depression on all outcome measures. Forty-nine percent were considered "responders," in that they achieved > or = 50% improvement on the 28-item HAM-D. Fifty-four percent were classified as responders based on a CGI-I rating of much or very much improved. Statistically significant improvement in depressive symptoms, measured by mean scores for the HAM-D, CGI-S, and HAM-A, was achieved at the end of the study (as compared to baseline). Twelve patients (32%) had a HAM-D score of < or = 10 at termination.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

A cognitive-behavioral therapy for sleep-maintenance insomnia in older adults.

Older adults (3 men, 4 women, aged 55 to 68 years) with chronic sleep-maintenance insomnia were treated sequentially with relaxation therapy (RT) and then with a cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) specifically designed for alleviating sleep maintenance problems. Sleep diaries and an objective measure of sleep, the sleep assessment device, showed only modest improvements in measures of wake time after sleep onset, sleep efficiency, and night-to-night sleep variability following RT. However, significant improvements in these measures were observed following CBT and at a 3-month follow-up. These findings, considered in conjunction with previous reports, suggest that CBT specifically addresses factors that sustain sleep maintenance complaints. Additional trials of CBT with larger samples are warranted.

Drug use and life style among college undergraduates in 1989: a comparison with 1969 and 1978.

The authors conducted anonymous questionnaire studies of drug use and life style among college seniors at the same institution in 1969, 1978, and 1989. The 1989 group of students reported strikingly lower frequencies of virtually all forms of drug use than their counterparts in 1969 and 1978. As in 1969 and 1978, the drug users among the 1989 group were indistinguishable from nonusers in grades, athletic activities, other college activities, and feelings of alienation. Only visits to a psychiatrist and sexual activity distinguished users from nonusers.

College undergraduate drug use and life-styles, 1969, 1978 and 1989.

G SUBSTANCE ABUSE / * ep ENTS / * psychol INE HOL DRINKING / psychol BEHAVIOR

Methaqualone.

Methaqualone is considered a sedative hypnotic drug with a pattern of pharmacological effects similar to those of barbiturates such as pentobarbital. It does have chemical similarities to the barbiturates but was, in fact, synthesized as part of an Indian program looking for antimalarial drugs (Brown and Goenechea, 1973). Methaqualone was selected for the focus of this study five years ago, because of its popularity as a euphoriant among casual recreational drug users in the Boston area. Methaqualone, instead of a barbiturate hypnotic, was therefore used to test our proposed methodology for the assessment of the abuse liability of sedative drugs. As one reviews the history of the clinical use and illicit abuse of methaqualone, it appears particularly unfortunate that a study of this sort was neither completed nor available to our Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) in 1965. It was at this time that the drug was approved for prescription use and placed in Schedule V, a schedule which essentially places no restrictions on the clinical use of a prescription drug (Falco, 1976). This paper will both review the development of methaqualone and present an experimental methodology for assessing its abuse liability under seminaturalistic conditions.

Drug use and life-style among college undergraduates. Nine years later.

A questionnaire study of drug use and life-style among college seniors, previously performed in 1969, was repeated at the same college in 1978 with identical methods. Moderate increases in marijuana use were found; cocaine use had increased dramatically; most other drug use changed only slightly. Differences between users and nonusers, already modest in 1969, had narrowed further by 1978: users and nonusers were indistinguishable on grades, athletics, other college activities, career plans, and subjective alienation. Only heterosexual activity and visits to a psychiatrist still distinguish users from nonusers.

Assessing the subjective effects of stimulants in casual users. A methodology and preliminary results.

In order to assess the subjective effects of nefopam, a new non-opiate analgesic, a study was designed using highly educated, young, middle-to-upper class subjects in a naturalistic setting. Results suggest that the design is capable of differentiating variations in subjective drug effects. On a number of measures, 10 mg of d-amphetamine, a modest dosage, could be distinguished from placebo, showing changes in the direction expected for stimulant drugs. Nefopam (90 mg), on the other hand, showed few differences from placebo or caffeine (300 mg). Nefopam appeared mildly dysphoric, rather than stimulant, in subjective effects.