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When Smart Drugs Attack
Pretty good article on Washington Post about the increase in abuse of “smart” drugs among highschool and college age students. It also has a lot of interesting quotes which lead me to believe that pharmaceutical companies are watching these trends with a careful eye in order to eventually turn them into totally legit markets.
According to one 2002 study, “more than 7 million Americans used bootleg prescription stimulants, and 1.6 million of those users were of student age.” Students talk about how using these drugs means the difference between a 3.8 GPA and a 4.0, giving them the edge needed to get ahead in life. Some other startling statistics as well:
Total sales have increased by more than 300 percent in only four years, topping $3.6 billion last year, according to IMS Health, a pharmaceutical information company. They include Adderall, which was originally aimed at people with attention-deficit disorder, and Provigil, which was aimed at narcoleptics, who fall asleep uncontrollably. In the healthy, this class of drugs variously aids concentration, alertness, focus, short-term memory and wakefulness — useful qualities in students working on complex term papers and pulling all-nighters before exams. Adderall sales are up 3,135.6 percent over the same period. Provigil is up 359.7 percent.
In May, the Partnership for a Drug-Free America issued its annual attitude-tracking study on drug use. It is a survey of more than 7,300 seventh- through 12th-graders, designed to be representative of the larger U.S. population and with an accuracy of plus or minus 1.5 percent, according to Thomas A. Hedrick Jr., a founding director of the organization. It reported that among kids of middle school and high school age, 2.25 million are using stimulants such as Ritalin without a prescription.
That’s about one in 10 of the 22 million students in those grades, as calculated by the U.S. Department of Education. Half the time, the study reported, the students were using these drugs not so much to get high as “to help me with my problems” or “to help me with specific tasks.” That motivation was growing rapidly, Hedrick says.
There’s also some very telling quotes about the different attention that drug enforcement gives to people abusing these types of drugs:
Smart-pill use has not been the focus of much data collection. This comes as no surprise to researchers such as Richard Restak, a Washington neurologist and president of the American Neuropsychiatric Association, who has written extensively about smart drugs in his 2003 book, “The New Brain: How the Modern Age Is Rewiring Your Mind,” as well as his forthcoming “The Naked Brain: How the Neurosociety Is Changing How We Live, Work and Love.”
Contributing to this dearth, he points out, is that these drugs are not famous for being abused recreationally and they are not being used by people with a disease.
This is not “the type of data collected by the FDA,” he says. Law-enforcement activity has been sparse. “Who is the complainant?”
Compared with the kind of drug users who get police attention, “This is an entirely different population of people — from the unmotivated to the super-motivated,” Restak says. These “drug users may be at the top of the class, instead of the ones hanging around the corners.”
In other words, “smart” pills make people more firmly entrenched in society’s conventions and games. And thus they are invisible - if not positive. While meanwhile, other drugs like marijuana, etc are dangerous because they enable people to pick apart or sidestep a lot of those same social restrictions.
There’s also a really interesting tidbit where a college student abusing smart pills (I hate even calling them that) talks about the unintended side-effects of using these drugs, such as obsessive-compulsive cleaning. “You’ve done all your work, but you’re still focused. So you start with the bathroom, and then move on to the kitchen . . . ” This is especially important because of how widespread use of these drugs has become. It indicates a behavioral and possible cultural shift towards obsessive-compulsive tendencies, courtery of the “laserlike focus” these drugs afford.
Something tells me the future is going to be a very clean and creepy place.
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June 26th, 2006 at 2:00 pm
This trend is vomit-inducing on so many levels.
June 26th, 2006 at 2:10 pm
dry cleaned…………..
June 26th, 2006 at 6:42 pm
It sounds like a cyberpunk novel: every day, you pop your “smart pills” to stay in the rat race, or even out of jail. Reminds me of your “scientology vs pharmasutical companies” post… What if you were forced to take them? freaky
June 27th, 2006 at 12:03 am
That’s funny, the article doesn’t mention how these things jack up libido in moderate doses but cause impotence in high doses.
In most usage, “smart drug” or nootropic doesn’t include potent CNS stimulants. Adderall is Dexedrine. As in, Dextro-Amphetamine. It’s old and well-known. Provigil or modafinil is more colloquially a smart drug, in that it’s not particularly a CNS stimulant or a very atypical one if it is. That said, in my experience Provigil is basically speed without the let-down or heart worries but worse on the liver.
This doesn’t really discuss piracetam, tyrosine, hydergine, or any of the other smart drugs, which really do not generate an OCD response and generally lack side effects (Piracetam, e.g., while effective at improving memory, reaction, and inhibiting brain damage from lack of sleep and alcohol at around 800mg/day, can be taken at over 40g/day for months without any measurable impact on the body. on th eohter hand, it tastes awful). The article is basically about speed, and niether of these compounds is new, to say the least… it sort of reveals how fucking not with-it the mainstream press is. Vice Magazine was writing peaons to the glories of extended release dexedrine two years ago, and Hunter S. Thompson was doing talking about eating it by the fistful forty years ago, and the Post just caught on to the fact that this stuff just might have some “mainstream” uses. No shit. “New Wonder Drug ‘Alcohol’ Makes It Easier to Get Laid!” “Mysterious ‘Ecstacy’ Causes Massive All-Night Group Hugs and Shoulder Massages!”
I have to disagree with this. First, if “smart drugs” were invisible, why does the mainstream press keep getting worked up about meth, which may be the only reason most factories in the midwest run a third shift? But more importantly, If you can take, e.g., provigil, and get by at normal levels but only sleep four hours a night, that’s another couple hours in which you can get your own projects done. Imagine how much of *your* code, or your novel, etc., you could get done. At the same time, consider how these things make it easier to meet increasingly ridiculous work responsiblities. Like a loaded gun, these things are entirely ambigious–to what ends are you using them?
June 27th, 2006 at 4:21 am
Sounds a bit like a modern day biography to me. Anyone not had their morning coffee or caffeinated alternative to get them going today? It’s an under looked, and really fascinating drug in terms of behaviour modification.
June 27th, 2006 at 6:46 am
the reason why we take these drugs is to keep up with the joneses.whoever they are………….it is a deep-rooted dissatisfaction with our self that drives us to want to work more. the productivity goes into the pocket of someone else, unless you are an entirely self-reliant entrepreneur, in which case you are driving others to produce. a fair number of my clients are professionals who are unable to switch off the “ocd” like state of conditioning that they attained in school and in thier work and it manifests in eating, cleaning, arguing, smoking and drinking………all of the anxiety related behaviours that other new miracle drugs can “cure”.
June 27th, 2006 at 2:59 pm
This is a fad, like “summer of the sharks.” Meth has been a huge problem in the midwest for DECADES and only the recent adoption of it in the club scene has managed to get the news to pay it any attention.
“Those damn blue collar tweekers, they are running this here town!”
June 30th, 2006 at 12:33 pm
there is a god and his name is adderall
trust me
June 30th, 2006 at 2:58 pm
a good point, and very perceptive, channel null. reframing the context of “smart drugs” to discuss basically just amphetamine like compounds strikes me as rather disingenuous, if not downright insidious.
the whole point of nootropics, to me, was never about temporarily tackling a symptom (like the temporary workload capacity improvement mentioned in the referenced article,) but rather, about creating permanent improvements in physiology, neurochemistry, and brain structure, i.e. the benefits should still be seen months and even years after the smart-drug dosing has stopped.
June 30th, 2006 at 3:48 pm
pmp,whilst it may be wonderful to have drugs that would provide the improvements you`ve listed, the drugs that get consumed are the ones that make us perform better in the short term. i don`t know anyone who looks to invest in behaviour that will only pay dividends years, if not decades in the future. people want things now and the marketplace focuses in providing short-term if not immediate results.
further to that, it`s very difficult to know how to measure such beinfits to the average person unless the results are significant and can`t be attributed to other factors for the simple reason that there`s no control “twin” to compare to.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:49 pm
i’m not disagreeing with those trends, i’m just saying it’s shallow to call these pharmaceuticals, which merely induce a temporary increase in vigilance and workload capacity, ’smart pills’.
when did workload capacity and vigilance duration become the major measurements of ’smarts’?
June 30th, 2006 at 4:53 pm
on the other hand, the pharmaceuticals mentioned by channel null, and several others not mentioned, do indeed work in the way i’m describing. indeed, they are the ones classically referred to when using terminology such as ‘nootropics’ or ’smart drugs’