Drugs for Grades

The world these kids describe, the pressure to do well on a test, the looming of college admissions seems so narrow, so conventional, so devoid of the grandeur and delusion we associate with adolescent excess and aspiration. A 16-year-old girl from the Midwest writes, in a sentence that accidentally flirts with satire: ?I found a complete surge of adrenaline and ecstasy flow through my brain as I tackled factoring, science notes and a four page paper ?? The excess they are describing, the drug abuse they are engaging in, is so functional, so alpha, so relatively healthy and goal-oriented, in its own way, that it almost (and I do mean ?almost?!) makes one nostalgic for the old-fashioned wildness or self-destructiveness of a different crop of teenagers.

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