Cafeteria to Cocaine: India’s Campus Drug Crisis Unmasked

Siddhartha Gupta | Thu, 09 Oct 2025
In many Indian colleges today, synthetic drugs like MDMA and LSD are slipping quietly from the shadows into mainstream student social life. Peer pressure, hostel nightlife and the longing for acceptance are fueling this alarming shift. Through interviews with students and psychologists, we explore how “just one party pill” becomes a spiral of dependency, secrecy, and identity crisis. This article peels back the glamour to unpack the human cost behind the new “cool”—and challenges us to rethink what acceptance really demands.
Drug abuse in students.
( Image credit : Freepik )
When we think of student substance use, images of smoking, alcohol, or maybe weed often come to mind. But in recent years, synthetic “party drugs” — MDMA (ecstasy), LSD (acid), ketamine, and designer amphetamines — are emerging more quietly in student circles. In states like Kerala, there are reports of LSD stamps and MDMA sales increasing even in smaller towns.
Ullekh NP
Unlike traditional substances, these synthetics carry a glamorous mystique: they promise heightened experience, euphoria, deep connection, escape, an altered sense of time. In a world where social media posts and party photos are a form of currency, these mind-altering experiences promise content too. But they also carry a darker side—dependency, paranoia, cognitive damage, broken identities.
A recent qualitative study in India found that many adolescents who turn to illicit drugs don’t see themselves as addicts at first. Their narrative is often, “It’s just for fun,” or “It helps me break the monotony.”
Many use synthetic and combination drugs with cannabis to amplify effect.
What begins as a one-off “trip” becomes something that shadows dorm rooms, creeps into friendships, and unspools mental life.

Peer pressure: The quiet courtship

Biggest problem of society.
( Image credit : Freepik )
Peer influence is nothing new—but in the context of synthetic drugs, its role is quietly insidious. Adolescents and young adults are especially susceptible to peer norms, trying on identities and molding behavior for acceptance.
In one survey of college students in urban India, 72% of users said they were introduced to cannabis (often a “softer” start) by friends, and 29.6% cited peer pressure as the reason for use.
  • Replace cannabis with synthetics, and the dynamics multiply—but the pattern holds.
  • In hostels, it often plays out like this: the popular group, or “inner circle,” plans a party. They drop cues—“there’ll be ecstasy,” “it’s a vibe you can’t miss,” “you’ll thank me.” You hesitate. They frame it as a gateway to deeper connection. You cave. You rationalize: just this once. The next time, it’s easier to acquiesce.
  • Peer pressure may be direct (“just smoke this”) or indirect (social exclusion for not participating). In many cases, students describe subtle “nudges” rather than overt coercion. In studies on adolescent substance use, nearly 59% of participants cited friends as the major influence in initiation.
It’s worth noting: peer pressure isn’t the root of all evil—but in an ecosystem where belonging feels precarious, the cost of saying “no” can feel higher than the cost of the drug itself.

Hostel culture, rave nights, and the availability factor

Hostel life is a crucible of freedom, stress, friendship, rebellion—and vulnerability. Young adults, often away from familial oversight for the first time, are navigating autonomy, emotional upheaval, and peer hierarchy. In that mix, synthetic drug use can flourish.
  • Rave nights—full moon parties, EDM nights, secret gigs—offer ideal conditions: pulsating lights, loud music, a crowd seeking transcendence. It’s fertile ground for substances like MDMA (which enhances empathy and euphoria) or LSD (which distorts perceptual boundaries). A pill or blotting paper becomes the shibboleth, the passport to peak experiences.
  • Inside hostels or PGs, access is rarely from a faraway source. Seniors, local networkers, even lab assistants have at times been implicated in sourcing and distributing drugs within student ecosystems. Recent arrests in Greater Noida revealed a lab technician and even a constable distributing MDMA to students via WhatsApp and deliveries.
This proximity and clandestine network make synthetic drugs feel less like distant dangers and more like hidden backstage passes to the party culture.

The psychology behind the spiral

Drugs and alcohol
( Image credit : Freepik )

1. The lure of altered states

Young brains—still developing—are biologically more responsive to novelty and reward. Drugs that promise emotional intensity, euphoria, altered consciousness play right into developmental curiosity.

2. Self-medication and escape

Academic pressure, homesickness, depression, relationship breakdowns—many students see drugs as shortcuts out of emotional pain. In many psychiatric narratives of adolescent users in India, initiation often occurs in context of psychosocial stressors.

3. Normalization and social contagion

As more students openly talk about drug trips or post about them online, norms shift. What once seemed deviant becomes another brag in stories, subtly glamorized. Social contagion theories suggest behaviors proliferate when they feel socially validated.

4. Escalation and dependence

Synthetic drugs may initially be used sporadically, but with repeated use, individuals may chase more intense effects—leading to dose escalation, drug mixing, or switching to stronger substances. Cognitive control erodes; psychological need grows. Earlier studies find that many who attempt quitting relapse under peer pressure.
ScienceDirect

Data and prevalence: What studies tell us

  • Data on synthetic drug use in Indian colleges is fragmented and often self-reported. But what exists is alarming.
  • In a survey of substance use among college students in three North Indian cities, researchers found non-negligible prevalence of misuse.
  • A study on knowledge and attitude toward cannabis in Mumbai colleges found ~11.2% of students were users; crucially, 29.6% cited peer pressure as the motivator.
  • In research on risk and protective factors, peer pressure is among the most consistently identified risks across geographies.
  • Regionally, media reportage in Kerala notes rising sales of LSD, MDMA, cocaine, etc., even in less urban areas.
While the numbers may be underestimates (due to stigma, nonreporting, legal fear), the signals are clear: synthetic drug use is no longer rare on campuses. It’s nascent, quiet—and spreading.

The costs: More than ruined mornings

1. Mental health toll

Anxiety, depression, psychosis, flashbacks, paranoia—synthetic substances can worsen or precipitate psychiatric disorders, especially in vulnerable minds. Students may suppress their suffering, mask symptoms, or misattribute them to exam stress.

2. Cognitive & academic decline

Memory lapses, attention deficits, poor academic performance, erratic attendance—these become the visible side-effects. A student who once was sharp begins to fade.

3. Social fractures

The secrecy, lies, distance—friendships strain. Family relationships crumble. Students become alienated. The very thing they sought—acceptance—crumbles as the cost mounts.

4. Dependency and risk behaviors

Needle sharing (if drugs cross into injectables), mixing with other substances, overdose. The gateway to harder drugs becomes steeper. Legal risk and criminalization are ever-present threats.

5. Identity erosion

Many users speak of losing their “authentic selves” — the self before drugs, before hiding, before debt. Recovery is not just detox—it’s re-finding identity, repairing trust, navigating the ruins.

What works? Prevention, intervention, and repair

1. Peer-led education & culture shift

Programs where students educate students—not with moralizing lectures, but through honest conversations—are often more effective. When a friend says “I quit” or “I regret,” it carries weight.

2. Mental health infrastructure

Colleges must have accessible counselors, mental health services, safe spaces to talk. Students in crisis must be able to seek help without fear of stigma or punishment.

3. Early awareness and life skills

Workshops on emotional regulation, stress management, refusal skills—not just “don’t do drugs” messaging—are essential. Students must be equipped to navigate peer pressure, identity crises, loneliness.

4. Collaboration with law enforcement & decriminalization (for minor users)

Heavy-handed policing often drives use underground. There must be balance—holding traffickers accountable while providing treatment pathways rather than purely punitive responses.

5. Reintegration, rehabilitation, mentorship

Students recovering need support systems: peer mentors, academic reintegration, therapy, community support, vocational guidance.
Some steps are being taken: Symbiosis University in Pune launched a campus-wide anti-drug campaign “VIHAAN” combining awareness, peer support, emotional well-being efforts.

Barriers and challenges

Stigma & fear of reporting:Students avoid admitting use for fear of punishment or exile.
Lack of data: Many institutions don’t even include synthetic drug metrics in surveys.
Undertrained staff: Faculty or administrators often lack the training to detect or counsel.
Resource constraints: Especially in rural or smaller colleges, mental health services are thin.
Cultural denial: The perception that “this problem happens elsewhere,” or “our students are good kids,” can blind institutions to emerging trends.

Toward a campus of real acceptance

Alcoholic trend between students
( Image credit : Freepik )
When “cool” becomes chemical, we lose more than sobriety: we lose students, relationships, trust, promise. Synthetic drugs like MDMA and LSD don’t carry the stains of past stigma, so they slip quietly into social currents—until someone drowns behind the mask.
To meet this challenge, we need more than policies. We need empathy, courage, honest conversation, structural support, peer leadership. A million tiny decisions—by seniors, professors, counselors, administrators—can shift culture.
Let us dare to build colleges where students can be “cool” without compromise; where belonging isn’t bought on a pill; where say-no is as respected as say-yes; where you don’t have to vanish into synthetic oblivion to feel alive.
Because the cost of acceptance, when paid in chemicals, is far too high.

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