Some surveys suggest that one out of four college students take precription drugs like Adderall and Ritalin to help them think more clearly. Sure, most of that use is illegal–the drugs are sold by students who have prescriptions to students who don't –but concern about the law is superseded by worry about grades. Now comes an editorial in the journal Nature, suggesting that adults get in on the act, albeit legally, and start using prescription drugs to help us compensate for the waning ability to focus that Geezer is all to familiar with.
"Many of the medications used to treat psychiatric and neurological
conditions also improve the performance of the healthy," the authors write…."Because of their effects on the
catecholamine system, these drugs increase executive functions in
patients and most healthy normal people, improving their abilities to
focus their attention, manipulate information in working memory and
flexibly control their response."
"Like all new technologies," the editorial advises, "cognitive enhancement can be used well or
poorly. We should welcome new methods of improving our brain function.
In a world in which human workspans and lifespans are increasing,
cognitive enhancement tools  including the pharmacological  will be
increasingly useful for improved quality of life and extended work
productivity, as well as to stave off normal and pathological
age-related cognitive declines."
What do you think? Should we use drugs like Adderall to help us focus? Read the editorial in Nature and leave a comment in the box below.
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if it improves our brain function for the better without any side effects then sure we should.
I think if it helps you or you like to do it, do whatever it is that you want! The government shouldnt have any say over most of the things they do. if adderall helps you, take adderall, if smoking weed helps you, smoke it, your all grown ups now, capable of making your own decisions.
Anything that alters your mental or cognitive ability should be treated with respect. As long as you are an adult and willing to accept responsibility for your behavior it’s up to you. In other words, if you do something stupid don’t blame the drug you did it of your own free will, just shut up and pay the price.
Oh boy this sounds like a recipe for disaster, make Ritalin and Adderall the new caffein. When they invented amphetamines in the 1940’s-50’s they were touted as a “miracle breakthrough, no one has to sleep any more.”
It has nothing to do with morality or civil rights either, that’s a cheap straw-man argument to make dissent seem oppressive, old-fashioned or prudish. Yes, it’s “your body” but it is a question of prudence and stupidity, not morality or rights.
There are rarely if ever “no side effects” from drugs. There is no free lunch, drugs by definition alter the metabolism. Like driving your car at 120 miles per hour there is always a cost for short-term benefits. Just look at the overdose information on the label and “I’m crashing dude.” It almost always just takes time to recognize the harmful effects in a population.
And what becomes the norm if everyone is taking stimulants? What about the right to stay clean and still be competitive? In a world of pill-heads you have to stay on the green pill or try the new blue pill to stay competitive with those people? Perhaps try the un-tested black pill (that perhaps is later shown to cause liver failure or an occasional fatal arrhythmia)? Or crystal meth, it’s probably the gold standard of stimulants, just one drug away, and look at the life-enhancing benefits it has conferred on its users and society.
For God’s sake, they’ve already found problems with the ingredients in something as mild as those disgusting pep drinks and they want to advocate unleashing pharmaceuticals for standard use? Do you trust the folks at the drug companies to fully inform you of the side-effects that might cut into their sales? 50,000 dead Vioxx users did.
How many more overdose cases would we find in emergency rooms, how many more corpses of over-extended students and employees will be discovered?
It’s analogous to allowing the use of performance-enhancing hormones in sports. You create an arms race and people damage themselves to keep up. The whole concept sounds like the creepy society in ‘1984,’ “time for you blue pill.”
And do you want to live in a society where your surgeon/gardener/babysitter/policeman, etc. are on guess what stimulant, doing guess-what to that person’s mind? The guy driving the big-rig next to you trying to make it to Tulsa on time? We already live in a world where one in three people have an identifiable mental disorder, do you want to make it one in two? I predict the SWAT teams will be that much busier trying to subdue barricaded armed over-dosed psychos who killed their family in an effort to protect us all from the extraterrestrials.
Drugs should only be used to compensate for a dysfunctional metabolism or illness, to try to restore health, and even then only when its a good bet that the malady outweighs the hazards of the drug. Stimulants are used by the military for performance, but only in life-threatening situations where they have to stay alert. Or when drugs are used for fun (:-)) like alcohol or walking down a beach stoned, but then only on occasion and with due care, watch you intake, don’t operate cars or guns, don’t start arguments, etc. Moderation in all things -Aristotle.
The body is an exquisitely complex metabolism and you don’t get something for nothing. Messing with neurotransmitters with relative impunity on a regular basis is almost certainly going to f**k up the brain. It’s like boosting the voltage on a computer. Drugs are like guns or cars, they may be useful or enjoyable but you always have to respect their destructive power and treat them accordingly.
So if an older or ill person’s mind is waning that’s one thing, but to make it an acceptable norm for healthy young people to stay sharp is insane. The risks vastly outweigh the benefits and to allow it penalizes people who don’t care to participate.
Bravo! Very well said! My hope is that the inadvertent side-effect will be that they can’t breed. “nuf said.
Sports has never been about true competition. You can be the greatest natural born athlete the world has ever seen but if you can’t get the best food or have the best equipment the odds are against you winning.
Drugs are just another advantage if they work. They haven’t so far. There’s always a new drug, a new shortcut, a way to avoid the hard work it takes to be a winner. Drugs change how the body function sometimes it takes decades before the side effects are found.
Why not smoke a cigarette and think about it?
Thank goodness for some of you with a modicum of sanity. It is true that the body has elaborate feedback mechanisms, such that stimulation of a system/receptor will initially give a complete response, but with repeated stimulation the response is diminished, requiring more drug to accomplish the same response until finally, as in narcotic use, you require the drug simply to feel normal. There is also the moral question of what nobility is there in attempting to enhance one’s performance, physically or mentally, by the clever use of chemicals. Fundamentally, except in cases of truly organic deficiencies, people must realize that happiness and physical well-being are best served by mental and physical efforts as opposed to solutions outside of themselves.
always wanted to enhance my ability and to use drugs to do this has crossed my mind. I have to think is this leading to a dependicy that may be like a drug that most people may not be able to control. As you age you are not as sharp as a year or ten ago is it worth it.
Leary Bill
Adderall drug is not a way to have the better focus..The guys who take this drug are actually habitual of taking this…So if they forget to take it then they feel that the concentration is not totally put by them..
Whoa! Slow down! SWAT teams and….? C’mon, Ritalin and its newer cousin Adderall have been around for years. They are commonly used for kids with ADD, ADHD. They are NOT addictive. (Unlike amphetamines). For kids or adults with ADD or ADHD they normalize the brain and help it focus…they do not make the person hyper or whatever it is you imply.
My son with a diagnosis of ADHD (ADD without the hyperactivity) was on minimal doses of these meds when younger. For college he chose to go onto Adderall after talking to his therapist (never just give a kid with ADD/ ADHD the meds; they also need some type of group therapy or other therapy geared to helping them cope with the different way they see the world). His therapist told him to take Adderall in the “adult” mode, ie, as needed not daily. For a day with very boring classes where he may have trouble concentrating, or a hard test, etc. This is not to give him a leg up over his peers but to make him equal to them…
Coincidentally, I later was prescribed Adderall by the neurologist I was seeing for severe migraines. After talking to him about some problems at work, which were worsening, he prescribed this for me as well. It was very helpful—I only used them during the work day. I was not “hyper” but it DID help me focus for a full 8 hours or more.
Of course ALL medications have side effects. If aspirin was invented today it would be a prescription drug. A person has to use common sense and talk to their doctor; make sure the doctor knows of all the other medications, herbs etc the patient is on, and so forth…the study mentioned here interested me very much, as I know of several professional adults also on Adderall or the other drugs in that family to help focus in this increasingly demanding, multi-task oriented world we live in…(from an RN.)