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http://www.slate.com/articles/techn..._smart_pills_work_if_you_don_t_have_adhd.html
This morning, like every weekday morning, I showered, dressed, popped a cognitive-enhancement pill, and headed to the office. My brain drug of choice these days is Concerta, a long-acting form of the popular ADHD drug Ritalin. I’ve also taken Adderall in the past. As far as I can tell, one works about as well as the other. The drugs enable me to work more diligently and in longer spurts than I could otherwise. On any given day, they also drastically increase the chances that I will remember to do things like enter an appointment on my calendar, run an errand on the way home, and respond to emails in a timely fashion.
My habit is legal, because I’ve been diagnosed with ADHD, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and I have a prescription. But in the past decade or so, psychostimulants like Adderall have exploded in popularity among people without a diagnosis or prescription. Studies indicate that as many as one in three students on major college campuses have used ADHD medications illicitly, most commonly as a study aid. The insatiable demand has led to shortages at pharmacies across the country.
The law draws a bright line between the use of Adderall by people with ADHD and by those without. For the former, it’s therapy. For the latter, it’s felony drug abuse, punishable by up to a month in jail.
The drug itself, however, does not draw the same bright line. And neither do a growing number of high-achieving, non-ADHD users who see it as the perfect cognitive-enhancement drug—a way to work more, sleep less, and get a better handle on their busy lives.
In today's competitive economy, some might label that cheating, akin to athletes taking anabolic steroids to gain an unfair edge. Others might suspect that nonprescription Adderall users are only cheating themselves—that the drug won’t really help you if you don’t have ADHD, or that deleterious side effects will counteract any short-term advantages the drug may confer. Perhaps it will even turn out to be seriously harmful. If that’s true, the current frenzy might turn out to be short-lived. But what if it isn’t? What if the neuro-enhancement craze is just getting started?
Adderall is hardly the first prescription medication to find a black market among the tired and ambitious. As Joshua Foer noted in a Slate story in 2005, Jack Kerouac wrote On the Road while dosed up on Benzedrine, a stimulant that was once prescribed as a nasal decongestant. And for his series on human enhancement technologies 10 years ago, Slate’s David Plotz experimented with Provigil, an alertness drug typically prescribed as treatment for narcolepsy. (More on that below.)
But the prevalence of ADHD—about one in 10 children in the United States meet the diagnostic criteria, according to a recent survey—and the popularity of Ritalin and Adderall for treatment mean that they are far more widely available than other types of brain drugs. That’s especially so because inexpert doctors have a hard time distinguishing a patient who has ADHD from one who’s faking the symptoms to get a fix.
cont. http://www.slate.com/articles/techn..._smart_pills_work_if_you_don_t_have_adhd.html
This morning, like every weekday morning, I showered, dressed, popped a cognitive-enhancement pill, and headed to the office. My brain drug of choice these days is Concerta, a long-acting form of the popular ADHD drug Ritalin. I’ve also taken Adderall in the past. As far as I can tell, one works about as well as the other. The drugs enable me to work more diligently and in longer spurts than I could otherwise. On any given day, they also drastically increase the chances that I will remember to do things like enter an appointment on my calendar, run an errand on the way home, and respond to emails in a timely fashion.
My habit is legal, because I’ve been diagnosed with ADHD, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and I have a prescription. But in the past decade or so, psychostimulants like Adderall have exploded in popularity among people without a diagnosis or prescription. Studies indicate that as many as one in three students on major college campuses have used ADHD medications illicitly, most commonly as a study aid. The insatiable demand has led to shortages at pharmacies across the country.
The law draws a bright line between the use of Adderall by people with ADHD and by those without. For the former, it’s therapy. For the latter, it’s felony drug abuse, punishable by up to a month in jail.
The drug itself, however, does not draw the same bright line. And neither do a growing number of high-achieving, non-ADHD users who see it as the perfect cognitive-enhancement drug—a way to work more, sleep less, and get a better handle on their busy lives.
In today's competitive economy, some might label that cheating, akin to athletes taking anabolic steroids to gain an unfair edge. Others might suspect that nonprescription Adderall users are only cheating themselves—that the drug won’t really help you if you don’t have ADHD, or that deleterious side effects will counteract any short-term advantages the drug may confer. Perhaps it will even turn out to be seriously harmful. If that’s true, the current frenzy might turn out to be short-lived. But what if it isn’t? What if the neuro-enhancement craze is just getting started?
Adderall is hardly the first prescription medication to find a black market among the tired and ambitious. As Joshua Foer noted in a Slate story in 2005, Jack Kerouac wrote On the Road while dosed up on Benzedrine, a stimulant that was once prescribed as a nasal decongestant. And for his series on human enhancement technologies 10 years ago, Slate’s David Plotz experimented with Provigil, an alertness drug typically prescribed as treatment for narcolepsy. (More on that below.)
But the prevalence of ADHD—about one in 10 children in the United States meet the diagnostic criteria, according to a recent survey—and the popularity of Ritalin and Adderall for treatment mean that they are far more widely available than other types of brain drugs. That’s especially so because inexpert doctors have a hard time distinguishing a patient who has ADHD from one who’s faking the symptoms to get a fix.
cont. http://www.slate.com/articles/techn..._smart_pills_work_if_you_don_t_have_adhd.html
