Thought for Food

“Dextroamphetamine 10mg; Adderall xr 20mg” by Samuel Y // via simko

RE: “cognitive enhancers” or “cosmetic neurology” (in my opinion, both dangerously biased terms): read “Brain Gain” by Margaret Talbot (The New Yorker).

Talbot looks at off-label use of drugs like Adderall, Ritalin, and Provigil by college students, a professional poker player, rat-racers in competitive corporate environments, Cambridge academics, and the Army, among others.  (Terry Gross interviewed her yesterday on Fresh Air.)

She warns of a “neuroenhanced” future:

Not long ago, I met with Anjan Chatterjee, a neurologist at the University of Pennsylvania, in his office, which is tucked inside the labyrinthine Penn hospital complex. Chatterjee’s main research interests are in subjects like the neurological basis of spatial understanding, but in the past few years, as he has heard more about students taking cognitive enhancers, he has begun writing about the ethical implications of such behavior. In 2004, he coined the term “cosmetic neurology” to describe the practice of using drugs developed for recognized medical conditions to strengthen ordinary cognition. Chatterjee worries about cosmetic neurology, but he thinks that it will eventually become as acceptable as cosmetic surgery has; in fact, with neuroenhancement it’s harder to argue that it’s frivolous. As he notes in a 2007 paper, “Many sectors of society have winner-take-all conditions in which small advantages produce disproportionate rewards.” At school and at work, the usefulness of being “smarter,” needing less sleep, and learning more quickly are all “abundantly clear.” In the near future, he predicts, some neurologists will refashion themselves as “quality-of-life consultants,” whose role will be “to provide information while abrogating final responsibility for these decisions to patients.” The demand is certainly there: from an aging population that won’t put up with memory loss; from overwrought parents bent on giving their children every possible edge; from anxious employees in an efficiency-obsessed, BlackBerry-equipped office culture, where work never really ends.

On a personal note, I tried Adderall for the first time not long after I got to Tulane.  An older frat boy* handed me a little blue pill outside the library.  It sounds stupid, but everyone was doing it.  And what’s not to like?  I could write a paper in a night — a paper that I’d get an A on.  (Or at least an A-.)  I didn’t eat.  I lost weight!  And I partied late, late, later….  (And then it all came crashing down.)

Nowadays, I get more done than ever (but not as much as I could, and I’m okay with that); the trick isn’t drugs, just good old fashioned sense.  Ah, adulthood.

* My experience was painfully typical.  As Talbot writes:

According to McCabe’s research team, white male undergraduates at highly competitive schools—especially in the Northeast—are the most frequent collegiate users of neuroenhancers. Users are also more likely to belong to a fraternity or a sorority, and to have a G.P.A. of 3.0 or lower. They are ten times as likely to report that they have smoked marijuana in the past year, and twenty times as likely to say that they have used cocaine. In other words, they are decent students at schools where, to be a great student, you have to give up a lot more partying than they’re willing to give up.