“When you’re using, it’s kind of a lonely thing,” Holly began, her words trailing off into a mix of memories. On a breezy, sunlit day in March 2024, Holly sat outside the Sierra College Rocklin campus library on the veranda for an interview with members of this year’s California Humanities Emerging Journalists team.
It’s no secret that the college experience has included experimentation with drugs. When I think of drug use on campus, I picture sitting in circles on a grassy hill, smoking joints, trading revolutionary ideas, and experimenting with psychedelics like LSD. Fast forward a few decades and what you get is a complex drug problem that exists in colleges around the country, and the new juggernaut is the prescription drug trade.