"In Their Own Words: ‘Study Drugs’ "

<p>Lemaitre, your case is fascinating and I’m glad you’ve found benefit from these drugs and are enjoying your cognitive rehabilitation. Your analogy to insulin is apt. That’s why I feel it’s unfortunate that the phenomenon of abuse and the “mass sale” structure of pharma in the US may combine to ultimately impede the r&d of such drugs. The r&d is so phenomenally expensive and otherwise un-funded that it seems only those drugs that can become pervasive are pursued!</p>

<p>Zy, I’m not going to spend a lot of time arguing ethics with you because I suspect your comment is more knee-jerk than reasoned and I do agree some folks have to get over the illusion of justice, BUT please tell me you’re not naive enough to believe that taking speed is not cheating :wink:
If I gave you a motorized cart that went 26 miles an hour and told someone else to use their body to run 26 miles, who would win and who would be the athlete?
Would the muscle memory of the person in the motorized cart know how to run for 26 miles?
Education isn’t about just crossing the finishing line. It is a cognitive habituation of actual practices combined with insight that nets a capacity for critical thinking that is critical to a functioning society. If you can NOT solve a problem in the same time without a drug as with a drug and said drug is not a compensatory device (eg you don’t have ADD) then yes, you are cheating!</p>

<p>But more than the guy next to you, you’re cheating yourself of actually developing and honing the one tool you have in life. When a person only pours it on at the 11th hour, they’re also not really doing the work in the same sense. They’re not participating, for example, in the process, or in the ‘community’ of the learning experience which is made better by being shared. And they’re not conditioning their mind and reasoning capabilities to be optimally functional daily.</p>

<p>GTCkid makes some good points as well. What I’ve never been able to understand is how so many “A” students can seem so utterly berift of sense. But the artifice of superficial learning might go a long way toward explaining that phenom ;)</p>

<p>Education is not a competition. It is not a race. It’s an individual-centered, collaborative endeavor.</p>

<p>It’s cheating.</p>

<p>If you are pathetic and can’t keep up in school, decrease your course load.
If we keep sanctioning these idiot actions under “it’s their bodies OMG guise,” then where is the line drawn?
If study drugs are okay, what of steroids? </p>

<p>I can’t stress how sad it is that youth are so obsessed with grades that they take these measures. Ya can’t justify everything.</p>

<p>Steroids are fine when they aren’t used by those involved in competitions. :/</p>

<p>Ive found that the small doses of marijuana I take for pain relief also help me concentrate.
I still need to take my vvyanse however, otherwise I would never get out of bed.</p>

<p>Steroids are used outside of competitions? Interesting. </p>

<p>Kids at the top in these rigorous schools should stop thinking of school/life in general as one big competition. It’s ridiculous.</p>

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<p>Emeraldkity, I am assuming you have ADHD/ADD correct? In which case, don’t know if you know this, but marijuana has actually been proven to improve dopamine function/production and ergo concentration, particularly in people with inattentive-type ADD.</p>

<p>Ive seen those studies, the trick is figuring out the right dose. Which should be easier once it it is legalized everywhere & we can do more research in US.</p>

<p>Since I generally ingest marijuana orally ( I buy canna butter & make cookies), I have to experiment each time I buy the butter because it can be a little different.</p>

<p>For ADD, you really don’t need very much, & sativa works better than indica, which is the kind I use for sleep/pain.</p>

<p>Oh, I guess someone is doing research on appropriate dosing.
[Marijuana</a> (Cannabis sativa): Dosing - MayoClinic.com](<a href=“http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/marijuana/NS_patient-marijuana/DSECTION=dosing]Marijuana”>http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/marijuana/NS_patient-marijuana/DSECTION=dosing)</p>

<p>I’ve recently been diagnosed with ADHD - Inattentive Type and given an Adderall prescription. I do think that I have ADHD. But I was hoping I’d get some testing done and professional confirmation that I do have ADHD, and that didn’t happen at all. It seems as though I just walked in, recited a few ADHD symptoms, and got a prescription. Anybody could do that. But I’m still not positive I have ADHD, although I do have some of the symptoms, and to be honest I’m kind of appalled at lack of rigor in giving a diagnosis and a prescription. I want to be sure that I have ADHD before I take any medication to treat it, but it seems like they just prescribed it to me as a matter of course.</p>

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<p>I don’t think that’s fair. People who use Adderall are still doing the work, studying the material, etc. The Adderall just makes it easier to focus while you are studying. If you’re studying for 12 hours straight due to Adderall, the Adderall is helping you be able to focus for 12 hours, but that doesn’t change the fact that you’re actually working for those 12 hours, and doing all the critical thinking involved in that. You’re still getting the “cognitive habituation of actual practices,” because you’re still performing the actual practices. If the drug makes it possible for you to stay up all night working, you’re still staying up all night working; it’s not like the Adderall does the work for you. It doesn’t magically make you smarter or give you the answers. When you cheat on a test, it’s usually by copying answers or something like that, in which case somebody else has done the work for you. That’s not the case with Adderall. If Adderall allows you to study more and learn more, isn’t that a good thing? Isn’t the purpose of an education to learn as much as possible? So if Adderall makes it so you can study for longer or learn for longer or focus for longer, isn’t that good? Cheating in the sense of copying answers doesn’t let you learn because you’re not doing the work, but Adderall does. You can say that those who can’t keep up should decrease their course load, but all that means in the end is that they’re taking less classes and learning less material. Surely that’s not good?</p>

<p>You can say that the use of Adderall is due to students viewing education as a competition, which may very well be the case, but I think you’re viewing education as a competition too, in which those using performance-enhancing drugs beat those who are being honest and doing it “fairly.” But if the point of education is learning rather than competition, shouldn’t it be a good thing if some students manage to study more and learn more, regardless of whether or not they achieve those results naturally? If it isn’t a competition, it shouldn’t matter if it’s fair to the other students because the point isn’t to beat anyone, it’s to learn. The reason steroids are frowned upon in sports is because they give some players an unfair advantage, but if education isn’t a competition, does it matter what advantages people have?</p>

<p>But of course, education is a competition, in which those with the highest GPA get better jobs. In that case, I think those who handle their school workload the best, and learn the most, are the ones who would be most successful in those better jobs. If those taking Adderall are better able to study and therefore learn more than their non-Adderall counterparts, then surely they’d be the ones better suited for the job than those who had to take a lighter courseload and therefore learn less.</p>

<p>I can get almost straight A’s in high school without Adderall despite my probable ADHD; what makes me more deserving of the Adderall than someone who works hard and gets straight C’s who doesn’t have ADHD, if it helps both my grades and his? Whether you have ADHD or not, it’s still “performance-enhancing.” What decides whether or not it’s a “compensatory device?” Compensating for what? If you can’t focus as much as you need to, you can’t focus as much as you need to, ADHD or no ADHD. I have plenty of friends without ADHD who frequently cannot focus on their work; why is it cheating for them to use Adderall at those times, but not for me?</p>

<p>I’m not saying that everybody should use Adderall; as a matter of fact, I’m hesitant to use it myself despite the fact that I have a perfectly valid prescription for it. I think it’s a shame that so much is expected of young adults that they feel they have to take drugs just to keep up. I’m simply questioning your logic in describing its non-prescription or non-ADHD use as cheating.</p>

<p>If your brain chemistry does not “need” adderall, then the physiological impact of the drug is the equivalent of street speed. And research suggests that amphetamine use impairs long-term working memory, among myriad other issues, not to mention actual addiction.</p>

<p>When you use an amphetamine, you’re not actually conditioning your mind or body to do the work organically; you’re conditioning your mind to rely on speed to bring clarity. The irony is that while hopped up on speed you may indeed feel clever and insightful, but you’re less likely to retain the material long term and are creating a condition that may ultimately impair your future cognitive capacity.</p>

<p>That is not to say that nothing good has ever come from people with altered consciousness. Philip K. Dick, for example, was a prolific sci-fi writer who was a known speed freak. His addiction to speed, however, made his life quite miserable in terms of cognitive function eventually, which anyone whose ever read his last barely cogent writings about the godhead and the pink beam of light will tell you ;)</p>

<p>Notwithstanding, amphetamines are performance enhancing and illegal. Whether for sport or academic pursuit, it’s simply unsportsmanlike (and ultimately short sighted in terms of one’s development) to use an illegal substance to gain advantage, whether by grade or race result. That so many posters question this core concept of ethical conduct says something about our society, and perhaps explains the kind of drug-addled recent bad behavior we saw on Wall Street ;)</p>

<p>On a personal level regarding your dx, you may find that in a rigorous college environment you may find the depth of material more challenging and have more trouble keeping up despite strong hs performance. But I understand your reticence about taking adderall. My suggestion would be to get a full, adult neuropsych evaluation that includes IQ and processing speed testing to identify whether there are gaps in your performance, and then see whether or not you’re inclined to do a drug trial with the rx. Other things including high protein diet, morning exercise, TM, and cognitive behavioral therapy are also useful for people with inattentive-type ADD. Only you can make the “risk-reward” assessment in your personal circumstances. Best wishes.</p>

<p>how is it unsportsmanlike if its not a sport?</p>

<p>try actually making an internally consistent ethical argument before you go asserting your moral superiority over those around you.</p>

<p>Wow, phil, aren’t you sweetness and light this morning!
How be you ramp up that clever noggin of yours and accept the metaphor, will ya?
Jeesh.</p>

<p>sorry I tend to object to insults of my moral integrity</p>

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<p>All of these only proceed from long-term overdosing. Moderate use of adderall will not produce these consequences so extremely.</p>

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<p>False analogy. Fallacy.</p>

<p>If it’s not a sport, if it’s not a competition, then the concept of sportsmanship does not apply. It is a personal issue related to how one decides to pursue personal advancement. </p>

<p>Education is a personal journey. I do not study in order to outdo others; I do it in order to learn as much as I can so that one day I can be a hero and help the world. You are treating this like some zero-sum game, where my success means someone else’s failure, where individuals are competing in schools rather than collaborating to build a better world.</p>

<p>You are incorrect.</p>

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<p>I’m not sure how much you know at all about core concepts of ethical conduct, but I’d try to cut down on the “holier-than-thou” attitude if I were you.</p>

<p>Our family struggles with spectrum type symptoms but stimulants only help moderately.
Exercise helps much more with focus.</p>

<p>[Take</a> your pick of articles on exercise & ADD](<a href=“http://www.johnratey.com/newsite/Articles.html]Take”>http://www.johnratey.com/newsite/Articles.html)</p>

<p>Comments about Penn are accurate. I have to keep the fact that I’m on prescription methylphanidate for ADD pretty much secret because of the people who harass me to buy my pills. I refuse to sell them because a) it’s illegal and b) taken outside of prescription, they can be really harmful (my doctor upped my dose from 10mg to 15mg and I hallucinated so NOPE back down to 10mg). </p>

<p>Not to mention how regulated those medications are; if it’d a 30-day prescrption you can’t get the prescription refilled until 30 days have passed. (I accidentally knocked my bottle over and my pills spilled onto this nasty, NASTY floor and I had to take them because I couldn’t get a refill for another like 25 days -_-)</p>

<p>Actually, one of my friends was buying Adderall even though he’s not ADD and took too much for too long freshman year and he told me that now he has heart problems.</p>

<p>Just my 2 cents.</p>

<p>Methinks Phil doth protest too much.</p>

<p>Only on planet irony would one opine to comment on another’s interpretation of ethical conduct in a paragraph containing these two statements about an ILLEGAL ACTIVITY :wink: :</p>

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<p>Don’t most kids who ingest this stimulant (the ones without a learning disability, ofc) do so in order to surpass their classmates who they see as competition?
Quite sure most don’t take Adderall to boost learning potential because they absolutely adore learning.</p>

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<p>Is that your idea of a rebuttal? Because that’s called a red herring.</p>

<p>folks, this is turning out to be a pretty thoughtful thread, please don’t turn it into a ****ing match. Thanks. </p>

<p>From the point of view of “thirty years later”, I agree with the comments about what happens if you don’t develop your own ability to work and focus. Out here among the working stiffs, I see a big difference between colleagues who can plan their work and colleagues who can’t. No matter how smart and charming, the latter eventually get dumped in the bucket of “doesn’t respect either their own time or others’ time”, and you learn to avoid their 5:45PM telephone calls asking for you to drop everything you’re doing to help them meet their deadlines, because you know they are up against the deadline because of their own decisions earlier in the day or week. </p>

<p>Likewise the attitude towards education can show up in attitude toward job. Are you pushing yourself now to find the meaning of the classes you are taking, regardless of whether they lead directly to a 6 figure income? Then you might turn out to be the colleague that everyone comes to for advice and help, because they somehow sense that you will put their needs ahead of your own, at least for the time it takes to sort out their problems. And if you get enough practice analyzing and solving other people’s problems, and you develop the reputation for that, you might be pleasantly surprised with your personal success over the long run. (Yes, I know, along the way, you will be solving problems for someone who didn’t focus enough, see previous paragraph, because you aren’t going to cut them off until after you figure out who they are, but that is a high class problem to have to deal with.)</p>

<p>This isn’t a direct response to any of the issues that have been raised, but I hope it shows you why some of us geezers think that it’s important to treat your education as something more than just a short-term contest. </p>

<p>With regard to the varying effect of a medicine on different chemical makeups - not a scientist or doctor myself, but since I’ve read multiple articles in the popular science press about the subject, I would guess that the idea is getting pretty wide acceptance by now. So I would tend to agree with the idea that Adderal for someone who is ADD is going to have a very different effect than Adderal for someone who doesn’t want to do their studying until the last minute.</p>