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A friend of mine had a different take than Ann's and Meghan's on The New Yorker's article about "neuroenhancers." She worried that it perpetuated the stigma of taking these drugs for medically prescribed reasons. The article, after all, compares these drugs to cosmetic surgery and the sort of advantage gained by private tutors and mentions only college students who scam their way into prescriptions or who buy the drugs illegally, not the sort who take it to correct for a disorder.
And then there was the mention of "a middle-aged woman, a successful Philadelphia lawyer, who mentioned having to struggle a bit to come up with certain names." The author notes: "Of course, people in her position could strive to get regular exercise and plenty of intellectual stimulation...[But] maybe they want something easier than sweaty workouts and Russian novels: a pill."
Which indicates that taking Adderall is taking the easy way out. Which maybe it is for students who would prefer illegally obtained Adderall to three Red Bulls in one night (which, while legal, surely pose their own health risks) or to less partying.
Meghan, you say, "As Margaret put it, while Adderall and Ritalin were once drugs mainly used to treat ADD and ADHD, now they're ‘drugs that high-functioning, overcommitted people take to become higher-functioning and more overcommitted.' "
Except that this article lets us forget that these are also drugs still used to treat very real disorders. It is too easy to read the article and forget that there are people who are prescribed Adderall because they have ADD or ADHD, who take Adderall for good reason and who are not cheating or gaining unfair advantage or just trying to relieve themselves of their technological distractions by so doing. I would have loved to hear from a college student who takes Adderall for ADD and who has been asked to sell it by classmates or who struggles against the stigma of taking it to complement the students in the article who take it to pull all-nighters.
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If I were an Adderall popper, I probably wouldn't have veered from my Slate tasks today to read Margaret Talbot's fascinating piece about neuroenhancers in the latest New Yorker. But I'll please my employers by turning an afternoon distraction to good use: a blog post!
Margaret points out that "every era, it seems, has its own defining drug," and astutely assesses what makes stimulants like Adderall and Ritalin, the newer Provigil, and a drug called piracetam—touted for dispelling foggy-headedness and promoting productivity—such a good match for our moment. "Neuroenhancers are perfectly suited for the anxiety of white-collar competition in a floundering economy," she writes. "And they have a synergistic relationship with our multiplying digital technologies: the more gadgets we own, the more distracted we become, and the more we need help in order to focus."
It struck me that the era helps shape the media portrayal of that defining drug, too. The quest for the cognitive edge: Not so many years ago, I could imagine that a piece about a surge in cosmetic neurology might well have had a romanticizing bent—or at any rate might have sent readers scurrying off to score some pills, eager not to miss out on what go-getters were doing. For all I know, there were such pieces. Without demonizing these drugs, Margaret does something that I can't help thinking is a lot more useful and, when you stop and think about it, better suited to these already stressful times of ours. Her account makes the blinkered drive for focus and hyper-efficiency—in the face of what sounds like phenomenally little research on the drugs' long-term effects—sound strikingly narrow-minded. It's not that she romanticizes unadulterated genius, either; her piece is a reminder, in all ways, of the virtues of calm reflection.