At 14, *Xiaomei, a high-performing student from a coastal province in China, decided to overdose on cough medication. She wanted to impress an older boy who told her it would help her relax. The tablets were usually only available with a doctor's prescription, but she managed to buy them online. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing BBC News.

This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing BBC News.

At first she found that they made her a bit dizzy. But she was soon hooked to the slightly numb sensation, which, to her, felt like a brief respite from the pressure of looming exams. When taken in large doses, the drug can cause serious side effects, including hallucinations and impaired coordination.

Eventually she tried other medication recommended to her on chat groups. Some were for pain or epileptic seizures. Sometimes she would take five tablets. Other times she would try more than 10 to feel the effects of different drugs.

For two years, she took large quantities of various prescription drugs. None of them were prescribed to her or anyone in her family. She bought them all on the internet.

"When I felt too much pressure from my studies, or I didn't do well at exams, or even when I quarrelled with my parents, I would take these drugs," she told the BBC. "I was running away from reality."

The BBC has heard similar stories from dozens of Chinese teenagers in chat rooms across various social media platforms. Nearly every one of them seemed to be escaping the same thing: pressure. They were doing that by chasing what is being described as a "pharmaceutical high".

One girl shared a voice note after taking large doses of a neuropathic pain drug. Her words were slurred and hard to comprehend: "I feel my body doesn't belong to me. I'm so dizzy."

"Just sleep," comes the advice. "You will be fine tomorrow."

One boy offered to use his father's old prescription to fake a new one for the same drug.

Some offered tips: "If you want to hallucinate, you can just buy... it's not been controlled yet," says one user, suggesting a drug used by people with Parkinson's to control tremors. In excessive doses it can cause confusion or even delirium.

"Which keyword should I use to search for it on online platforms," another user asks.

It is hard to gauge the scale of the problem, as there are few official figures.

But it is serious enough that the government launched a nationwide crackdown two years ago against the cough suppressant Xiaomei started using, classifying it as a psychotropic drug which would only be available to patients with a doctor's prescription. That made it much harder for young people to buy online.

Then in April this year, authorities noticed that young people had switched to another drug and imposed tighter controls on how it is prescribed and dispensed at chemists. Still the BBC was offered the drug in an online chat room for as little as 10 Chinese yuan ($1.5; £1.09) per gram.

Non-regulated substances are easy to acquire and even when one drug is controlled by the authorities, young people quickly find alternatives, according to a 2025 paper written for the Crime Prevention Institute at the Ministry of Justice.

In some cases the BBC found that teens online were using different names for drugs to avoid detection, which the 2025 study also noted.

There is growing evidence that young people across the world are turning to prescription medication to fight off pressures and anxiety.

So easy access to cheap prescription drugs in China is perhaps not that surprising given that it produces the vast majority of the world's pharmaceutical ingredients.

When Xiaomei wanted to buy the cough suppressant, it just took a few clicks for an entire box of the medication to be delivered at her door, she says. "You could simply enter your ID number on shopping platforms and buy it directly."

The ID, which is a national identity number, includes her age but she says she was still sold the drug, no questions asked. It was also cheap - often 50 tablets cost less than a dollar.

On paper, China is winning the war on illegal drugs. Official data for 2025 shows a dramatic fall - 41% - in newly identified drug users under the age of 35.

However authorities have had to acknowledge that the misuse of prescription drugs is becoming a widespread problem. It has been especially surging among minors, China's National Narcotics Control Commission warned in a recent report.

Xiaomei says that a lot of students in her elite chemistry class were discussing ways to overdose on prescription drugs to avoid feeling like "complete losers".

"It is just so hard to pass exams and to stay in elite classes. In our school, the elite classes operate on an elimination system; if your academic scores drop, you get kicked out of the class. When you fail, you feel like failures, believing you have no chance in life."

Part of the pressure comes from parents who also see their child as their only hope for the future, says renowned Chinese sociologist and director of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Xiang Biao.

Because of the one-child policy which ended in 2016 after decades, many families only have one child, Biao adds, who shoulders all their expectations.