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"Smart Drugs" - Good or Bad?
Rufus_Shinra
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
"Smart drugs" is the slang term for drugs such as adderall or provigil that enhance your ability to perform cognitive tasks. Now the drugs are usually designed for medical conditions such as ADHD or narcolepsy, but many people use them for their mind-enhancing capabilities. Adderall is commonly used for students trying to study, and a recent study showed that as much as 35% of US-based researchers take performance enhancing drugs.
There was a really good essay on this a few months back about someone who tried provigil to see its effects, I highly recommend it. Here's some key parts:
So what do you guys think about the use of drugs to enhance your capability to fnish work? I am completely torn on the issue - on the one hand I drink caffeine and take other mind-altering substances, but on the other I don't think that work/studies should force you into taking a substance just to keep up.
To me, this is a huge personal issue. I can't come up with a satisfactory answer one way or the other - I'm afraid on one hand that I could be getting better grades and on the other hand that I'm letting my mind be warped so that I'm more productive to society.
Thoughts?
There was a really good essay on this a few months back about someone who tried provigil to see its effects, I highly recommend it. Here's some key parts:
A week later, the little white pills arrived in the post. I sat down and took one 200mg tablet with a glass of water. It didn’t seem odd: for years, I took an anti-depressant. Then I pottered about the flat for an hour, listening to music and tidying up, before sitting down on the settee. I picked up a book about quantum physics and super-string theory I have been meaning to read for ages, for a column I’m thinking of writing. It had been hanging over me, daring me to read it. Five hours later, I realised I had hit the last page. I looked up. It was getting dark outside. I was hungry. I hadn’t noticed anything, except the words I was reading, and they came in cool, clear passages; I didn’t stop or stumble once.
...
If this drug had been available during my A-Levels or finals, I would have been the first to guzzle it down. But isn’t that cheating? What’s the difference between Provigil for students and steroids for athletes? And if this drug becomes as popular as, say, anti-depressants or Ritalin, won’t there be a social pressure for workers to take it? Many parents feel intensely pressured by schools today to drug away their child’s disobedience; will they feel pressured by their bosses to drug away their natural fatigue?
Professor Anjan Chatterjee says, “This age of cosmetic neurology is coming, and we need to know it’s coming.†The use of Provigil and its progeny will be mainstream and mainlined in just a few years, he argues, and this made me feel excited by the prospect – and anxious. But all this raced through my brain as I worked faster (and ate less) than I ever have: it was hard to dwell on the drawbacks in those circumstances. As the end of my final five days approached, I had to decide what to do. Do I order another pack? Do I try to think all my thoughts at a faster pace from here on in with the power of Provigil?
I paced and agonised and finally concluded that taking narcolepsy drugs when you don’t have narcolepsy is just stupid. Our lack of knowledge about what it does to your brain was, in the end, a deal-breaker for me. Perhaps in sixty years we’ll know for sure it’s safe, and I will have spent my life at only sixty percent brain-capacity – but I’d rather risk that than brain damage. So I have cut a deal with myself. I am keeping a pack in the bathroom cabinet for the days when I am really knackered and have to be able to work fast and fluently – but I won’t ever take more than two or three a month.
So what do you guys think about the use of drugs to enhance your capability to fnish work? I am completely torn on the issue - on the one hand I drink caffeine and take other mind-altering substances, but on the other I don't think that work/studies should force you into taking a substance just to keep up.
To me, this is a huge personal issue. I can't come up with a satisfactory answer one way or the other - I'm afraid on one hand that I could be getting better grades and on the other hand that I'm letting my mind be warped so that I'm more productive to society.
Thoughts?
Rufus_Shinra on
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Imagine a painkiller with no side effects. Sounds great, right? Pain is a defense mechanism. . Dose yourself up so you never felt pain, and you'd probably do horrible damage to yourself purely by accident. These drugs are probably in the same category.
And that's assuming no long term side effects at all. Which given what they're fucking around with I seriously doubt.
Do not take drugs if you have no prior condition. Just don't.
I mean, methylphenate and amphetamines aren't all that dangerous, especially when used responsibly under clinical supervision. But whether they're actually good or bad for a person depends on the person, their doctor, and the dosage.
Students, especially high schoolers, should not be looking at these as "cramming aids" or something you can binge on right before finals instead of just studying a couple hours each day. They are prescription drugs.
Like what?
Ask your doctor.
No way in hell.
People should not be the drugs they take.
I'm just going to stick with the stuff that I know works: Coffee!
I drink alcohol on Friday nights to make me more care-free and sociable for play time.
Should I not be doing those two things? The drugs are without a doubt altering my state of mind and changing who I would really be into something else.
Why would taking a drug like provigil the night before studying for a huge final be any different?
Note: This is NOT a rhetorical question, I am genuinely interested. I'd love to hear a good response.
So, i love adderol for studying. That shit is fantastic.
As far as work, that's another issue. I think that stuff like adderol is great for learning, but I see little value in using it for work, unless your job is like . . data entry. But as anyone who has ridden the a-train knows, if you get distracted by something, you stop caring about what you actually took it for. So it might not even be good for that.
I agree with your second sentence, but it seems we disagree on the greater issue. A person can definitely utilize a substance such as Adderall to improve concentration. People in general obviously shouldn't have unregulated access to such things, obviously.
As someone who has in the past used Adderall in such ways, I'd like to say that it can be a real life-saver. I'd never do it again, because I don't like putting my body through that, but there was no other way I was getting a 10-page, 40-source term paper done in a night without it.
For the same reasons we don't allow athletes in the olympics to use steroids.
Learning has intrinsic value. Education is not solely a competition.
What if you aren't in competition with other students, though?
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
Example? Think about college entrance qualifications here, and job markets after that. Sounds like socioeconomic advantage to me.
I know a sizable percentage of people have been abusing these drugs to study for it, and will be on these drugs to take the actual exam.
Being a curved exam, them doing this makes it less likely that I will pass. At what point do they become a necessity in the study of law?
It should be noted that lawyers already have one of the highest rates of both substance abuse and suicide of all professions. These drugs will only escalate these numbers.
If you weren't in a competition you wouldn't give a fuck about what you got on the final. You would just go in and put down what you know.
The test would literally be just a way to test your own knowledge on a subject.
But we all know that is hardly ever the case. I only had one professor who ran tests like that.
Amphetamines have been available for years and years. See: benzedrine inhaler abuse beginning in the late 1920's
sounds like provigil would have been a better choice but still horribly wrong
edit: whats even more wrong is the teachers dont care, they just want top notch projects
You're pretty wrong on all accounts. A lot of what you cite is just the results of wear and tear.
Humans as we know them do exactly what they were built to do, nothing more.
That's a bogus response because it's not a competition. A person isn't cheating by taking a study aid like adderall anyway.
It comes down to this at least with me, that an advantage is a good thing and life is about weighing decisions. If you're willing to put your body through that, no matter how little or great the affect, then by all means go ahead.
Plenty of them are trustworthy.
But how the fuck can you tell the difference between people who are taking ritalin for ADHD and those who are taking it just to study better?
The whole issue frustrates me, the line is so gray that I have no idea what is ethical at this point.
It is absolutely a competition.
I don't see your point.
Academic research has a competitive element to it--there's a limit to the grant money out there, after all. However, it seems to me that if mental steroids were really to work, then we would want our researchers to be on them, because then they would do their work (and improve the lot of the rest of us) that much more effectively.
I'm all for performance-enhancing drugs, much in the same way I'm for other things that enhance performance, like keeping a clean desk and giving yourself time for long periods of uninterrupted thought. The danger unique to drugs like this, of course, is their side effects, and the lack of knowledge we have about how they interact with the brain over extended periods of use. That's the risk that keeps me from taking this stuff like candy.
Some people will cheat, others will use drugs so they can cram for 30 hours before their final, and they will get A's they may or may not deserve. My ADD and I will study a couple hours a day, without stimulants, and I will get A's I do deserve. It's silly to hope for a level playing field and it's even sillier to get enraged about other people's choices, especially when they involve drugs that have very legitimate uses and help a lot of people to cope with their problems. Just make your own (right) choices and be content with yourself.
Secondly, if the primary concern is unfair advantages, then what would happen if these drugs were readily available and affordable? And what if everyone knew how much they could safely take, and having more than a small quantity on your person was illegal?
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
Oh I know that he wasn't talking about some Laotian pharmacy, but still--how trustworthy can you be while still selling prescription drugs over the counter? I guess I just don't know much about this sort of thing, and my fear that they would send me rat poison while stealing my credit card are unfounded.