Last term, during Dead Week, a friend of mine had an exceptional amount of work to do. A paper due for this class, a project for that class, work until 10 p.m. - one night he realized it was physically impossible to finish everything he was supposed to. So, he took Adderall - something he'd never done before - and suddenly the impossible was possible. With sleep the last thing on his mind, he cranked out paper after paper (three in all) and even made it to class on time. He didn't get outstanding grades on the Adderall-fueled assignments, but he certainly passed. All in all, he would probably tell you the $5 for a pill and increased heart rate were worth it.
Welcome to the world of neuroenhancers. On a college campus, just about everyone knows someone who has used neuroenhancers - usually Adderall, Ritalin or their amphetamine-based cousins - to get work done or study long hours they never could have managed otherwise. Meant to treat attention deficit disorders, the drugs are illegal without a prescription. But that doesn't stop the thousands of high-functioning and "success"-obsessed students who feel a need to be just a bit higher-functioning. An April article in The New Yorker that examined the use and effects of these drugs dubbed them the drug of this generation's choice, like psychedelics in the '60s, heroin in the '70s and cocaine in the '80s. It cited a 2005 report by a professor at the University of Michigan's Substance Abuse Research Center, which found that in the previous year 4.1 percent of American undergraduates had taken "prescription stimulants for off-label use." At one school, the number was 25 percent. Here at the University, Adderall is apparently "bigger than weed" in the residence halls, one student who was quoted in the Emerald said.
Is anyone surprised? Parents increasingly are bent on giving their children every possible edge, enrolling them in enough extracurricular activities to impress even the most exclusive prep schools. In college they must create a portfolio that outshines thousands of others in order just to enter the efficiency-obsessed, always-connected work force, where the daily grind certainly isn't any less grinding. If you could pop a prescription pill that would give you an extra 12 hours to build your resumé or make a 24-credit term feasible, why wouldn't you?
Some argue against the "recreational" use of drugs designed to treat physical or psychological conditions. But to call this increased use of neuroenhancers recreational is inaccurate. My friend didn't have any fun, but rather experienced, as the New Yorker article called it, "a pinched, unromantic, grindingly efficient form of productivity." In an always faster-paced world that offers more mindless distractions than ever (how long has it been since your last Tweet?), this productivity is becoming a necessity. It's not about fun, it's about work.
Then again, many who talk about their use of the drugs say neuroenhancers aren't miracle workers. "I don't think people who take Adderall are aiming to be the top person in the class. At the most basic level, they aim to do better than they would have otherwise," said a recent Harvard graduate in the New Yorker article, who took Adderall regularly to keep up in school.
Yet some information paints a different picture. The journal Psychopharmacology wrote about a 2002 study on modafinil, another neuroenhancer, and said the results suggested that "modafinil offers significant potential as a cognitive enhancer." Nature, another scientific journal, published a commentary in December that suggested society should cautiously "respond to the growing demand for cognitive enhancement."
We don't need to encourage Americans to work even harder than they do, and the idea of an entire generation using amphetamines to succeed makes me more than a little nervous. But, in a competitive field, if suddenly half your competitors are better equipped to do their job and you don't want to be left behind, what are you supposed to do? If enough people use neuroenhancers, society's expectations will raise to the level of what the drugs make possible; everyone else will be faced with the choice: compete or not.
The same commentary in Nature argued that we must reject "the idea that 'enhancement' is a dirty word." Most people are afraid to talk about taking neuroenhancers, partly for legal reasons, but largely because they don't want to be seen as drug users or people who can't function without help from a substance. But it's hypocritical for there to be a stigma around using these drugs: People wouldn't use them, or at least not to the degree that they do, if they weren't more or less forced to.
I'm not advocating using neuroenhancers. I strongly feel that my body and brain should be good enough the way they are, as long as I take care of them. But I also recognize that I could get more work done if I did use neuroenhancers. And, because it's highly unlikely our society will stop valuing rock-hard work and superhuman efficiency anytime soon, this is a trend I'm not sure there's any point in fighting against.
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