Cognitive Enhancing Drugs?
Towards responsible use of cognitive-enhancing drugs by the healthy (Nature.com)
Human ingenuity has given us means of enhancing our brains through inventions such as written language, printing and the Internet. Most authors of this Commentary are teachers and strive to enhance the minds of their students, both by adding substantive information and by showing them new and better ways to process that information. And we are all aware of the abilities to enhance our brains with adequate exercise, nutrition and sleep. The drugs just reviewed, along with newer technologies such as brain stimulation and prosthetic brain chips, should be viewed in the same general category as education, good health habits, and information technology — ways that our uniquely innovative species tries to improve itself.
What do you guys think about the use of cognitive enhancing drugs? The BoingBoing guys talked about this earlier in the semester, and Nature just published this (already controversial) article arguing for their use and acceptance.
3 Responses to 'Cognitive Enhancing Drugs?'
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Pulled from the article: “Physicians are sometimes asked to prescribe for enhancement by patients who exaggerate or fabricate symptoms of ADHD, but they also receive frank requests, as when a patient says “I know I don’t meet diagnostic criteria for ADHD, but I sometimes have trouble concentrating and staying organized, and it would help me to have some Ritalin on hand for days when I really need to be on top of things at work.”
From a physiological point of view, there’s nothing wrong with this if it really is just “sometimes” — say once a month, like during midterms. But a psychological dependence can grow from those experiences. For example, if a “recreational user” takes Ritalin for his first chemistry exam, and gets a B, he may think “thank God I had that Ritalin or I would have failed! I have to get some for the next exam.” If he’s unable to get any, he may completely freak out by how poorly he’ll do without it and be so upset that he fails an exam he should have passed.
But the real problem is that most of these “recreational users” turn into regular users. Suddenly those times when work is overwhelming become more and more frequent as our definition of “overwhelming” becomes less intense. If you used to just take it for exams, but now you need it anytime you have a quiz to study for or a homework assignment to do, you have a problem.
When you use a drug that regularly, the brain becomes desensitized to it. Your body builds up a tolerance to the drug, requiring you to take more and more to feel “normal” again. This is why many doctors have their ADHD child patients take a “vacation” from the drugs over the summer — so they can go back on a lower dosage and be free to “just be kids” for the summer. When this kind of tolerance builds up, you simply CAN’T focus or learn without them. I don’t think we can condone that kind of dependence on drugs that require constantly increasing dosages.
Rebecca Spizzirri
11 Dec 08 at 6:40 pm
I feel like ADD and ADHD medications are yet another sign of our societies inability to consider the consequences of our actions. These medications are viewed as a method to improve our society like education and good health habits. Really? What about the depression that one feels after the medication wears off? Or are these “experts” suggesting that people remain medicated all the time? What about the claim that when you’re not on such meds, the difference in performance is striking, and you feel incapable to achieve your best? Henceforth, a dependency is developed. What are the long term effects of these meds? Is it really fair for some people to have access but not others? I’m not sure what’s worse, caffeine pills or these ones. I guess one is available over the counter, and the other is available next door. Which is more accessible to you?
Lihy E.
12 Dec 08 at 4:50 pm
I fully agree with the above two arguments. The article lists 3 arguments against using prescription drugs for “cognitive enhancement:” that it is cheating, that it is unnatural and that it amounts to drug abuse. They then proceeded to refute these views with: in sports, it is cheating, so we would have to instill a set of rules for separating these drugs from allowed enhancements - private tutors and caffeine (which would just be setting up the rules for people to break, really). While this is a somewhat legitimate argument, because caffeine is an addictive drug, caffeine isn’t really effective at enhancing cognitive abilities and private tutors teach you to help yourself, they don’t take the tests for you. If you can’t learn how to study better, don’t take hard classes, but drugs is cheating cause its not you.
In terms of being ‘unnatural,’ they say look at the rest of our society - its as unnatural as possible. Why draw the line? But look at how depressed our society is, and how dependent on drugs we are - it’s not something we should be inviting or accepting, it’s something we should be fighting against.
As for drug abuse, I think the above two arguments quite adequately cover that refutation.
Who do these people think they are, anyway, supporting kids and even adults with recreational drug use? (And yes, we are still ‘kids’, our brains don’t stop developing till 22 or 23 for the most part.)
Elena Solomon
13 Dec 08 at 12:24 am