Another Day at the Office

Some students make pocket money waiting on tales, some work dorm crew, some push inflects into the hands of are a shoppers. A select few, however, get paid for less strenuous work. They take drugs.

Four Harvard students did exactly that on five Thursday evenings this fall, as they listened to music, munched on pizza and played Trivial Pursuit under the influence of a little pink pill of mysterious nature. Their salary: $400.

The locale for these evening activities? McLean Hospital, a Harvard-affiliated in situation that has conducted several similar experiments over the past six years.

The purpose of the research is to see how liable certain drugs are to be used abusively. In between bites of pizza the test subjects were asked to fill out questionaires about how they felt, both emotionally and physically. Researchers will use the answers they gave to find patterns of response to the drugs being tested.

Participating students, who asked not to be identified, cited various reasons for taking part in the research, not least among them economic ones.

"It's a great way to make some money without doing much work," said one student. "I also thought it would be interesting to take part in a major study like this."

Seeking subjects for the research, McLean advertises on Boston area campuses and in college newspapers for people simply interested in making $400 in a study on recreational drugs.

"I thought it was a joke," said one undergraduate veteran of the studies, who asked not to be identified. "I thought may be the I am poor had put the posters up to see how many people would fall for it."

Maressa H. Orzack, the psychologist running the study at McLean, said that it is necessary for test subjects to have had experience with the type of drugs under study because it would be "unethical for them to introduce someone to a drug they might not be able to handle." Experience, thus, is as important a pre-requisite as interest.

Those chosen for the study in which the Harvard students recently took part passed through a series of tests before their selection. First, Orzack explained, they were grilled over the phone to find out what types of drugs they had taken recreationally. If they fit the bill in that department, they were asked to visit McLean for a further series of tests and interviews.

"Basically, we want people who are sound in mind and body," Orzack added.

But despite their experience with drug use, several subjects found the drugs they took affected their memory and sense of time. "You think you're really coherent when you're there, but then you realize the next day that your really didn't realize what was going on," one participant recalled.

A common side effect of some of the drugs being tested in hiccoughs. One students, though, cited an unusual consequence of his participation. "Sometimes I get creaks in my elbows," he said.

Some found that the drugs disturbed their routine more than others. One student said he was perfectly fine by 10 o'clock the night of the study, while another said he had trouble getting up the next day.

The research done this time was on sedatives. Orzack said the majority of drugs used in testing sessions had been on the market as prescription drugs and had been abused.

Orzack added that the research measures the abuse potential of new drugs by comparing responses gained from testing them to results gathered from administering drugs already known to be abused.

Each testing session lasted four and a half hours. The subjects were kept about two hours longer to ensure that they were well enough to ensure that they were well enough to go home and were then sent home by taxi.

Over the weeks of the tests, participants said. McLean researchers were careful to follow up.

"They seem to be really concerned about how the drug is affecting you in the long run," said one student involved in the study. "They always ask questions like, 'Have you been keeping up your personal appearance lately?'"

Confidentiality is another concern of McLean Hospital, as students are admitting to having taken drugs illegally by participating in the institution's research.

Some participants have other reasons for wanting to keep secret the nature of their employment. "My mother thinks I have a regular job," said one student involved in the research. "I think she might get worried if she knew what I was doing."

As for the pizza and Trivial Pursuit, establishing a recreational setting for the drug research is something. Orzack and her collages have done in all the tests done over the past six years. She said, however, that the results of their tests have been almost the same as the results of studies conducted in non-recreational settings.

The Harvard students who took part in the most recent test enjoyed the "recreational" part of their job. "I would hate it if they just put your in a hospital room by yourself and gave you drugs," said one participant. "I really like the people I do the testing with and we have a fun time."

Another student seconded that opinion, saying. "We're all planning on getting together and having a little party of our own sometime."