

Using prescription stimulants as study aids - grellas
http://chronicle.com/article/A-Ban-on-Brain-Boosting-Drugs/126523/

======
grovulent
Ignoring for a moment the large number of distinct issues raised in the
article I want to focus on just how ridiculous to consider the use of such
drugs as cheating.

Before I present my argument - ask first why you might think it cheating? It
only makes sense to think of it as cheating if you think that education is a
competitive activity, and that in competitive activity you should only be able
to avail yourself of your god given abilities.

My argument then relies on the belief that seeing education as a competitive
activity is heinous in the extreme. Yes - it IS treated as a competitive
activity. Your grades reflect your standing relative to other students in your
class as enforced by bell curves which academics are made to apply after the
fact. It is ridiculous. What makes me really angry is the way universities
then force course co-ordinators to give a clear statement of learning outcomes
in course descriptions - as if they fucking matter. For if the point of
education was to achieve a learning outcome - then YOU WOULD BE GRADED
ACCORDING TO WHETHER OR NOT YOU MET THAT LEARNING OUTCOME - not according to
your relative standing.

Education should be about learning outcomes. I want to know - who has this
skill... etc... not, who was the best in year X. Because even if I only ever
accept the best - it's still a crap shoot as to what I really get.

And now they want to restrict people's access to drugs that could help them
meet learning outcomes? Because they are so enamoured of their perverted
education paradigm that they can't see the forest for the trees. I work in a
university and I honestly wonder if the people above me who make these
decisions can count to three. No doubt on reading this the first question
they'll ask is how they'll determine who should get the scholarships if they
can't rank competitively.

To which I answer - rank competitively all you want. Just don't confuse this
process with grading.

This brings us to the second aspect of cheating - that you can only use your
god given abilities in a competitive environment. If we assume that grading
has now been separated from the ranking process - for the purposes of finding
the best students - one still has to ask if it's fair to use drugs to get an
edge. The answer (and as far as I'm concerned this answer goes equally for
sports and everything else) is an easy yes but only if the following
conditions hold.

1) Access is universal 2) cost is negligble 3) health risks are negligble

You don't, for instance, want to award your scholarships to folks that end up
dying of heart attacks at 30. But dexamphetamines and the like have been
around for over 100 years. These are well understood drugs. The only problem
is 1) - but as the author seems to demonstrate - this isn't actually a problem
since it's apparently so easy to get them.

~~~
Duff
A phony ADD/ADHD diagnosis is cheating because getting diagnosed as a
"learning disability" entitles you to special accommodation. You're also a
party to a felony, since you are either committing insurance fraud from the
bogus prescription or are an accessory to fraud by illicitly purchasing the
pills from someone.

When I was in college 15 years ago, I personally knew of at least a half dozen
people who managed to get themselves diagnosed with late onset ADD or ADHD.
Getting the diagnosis was trivially easy -- drug ads in major magazines at the
time often included "quizzes" that happened to be very similar to whatever the
doctor was told to ask by the pharmaceutical sales chick.

The reason? You got "special accommodation" for your "disability" (ie. you get
to take tests alone in a comfy chair in a private office without time limits)
and you could easily sell or abuse the drugs that were prescribed. Many
classes in the engineering programs were open-book exams -- being able to use
a book for an unlimited period of time instead of the 60 minute window that
you normally had was a tremendous advantage.

I really don't care about the "learning outcomes", but I do care that we're
creating a culture where casual abuse of medical diagnoses and health
insurance for personal gain is acceptable.

~~~
grovulent
You don't care about learning outcomes?

Sorry - I'm gonna have a hard time caring about the rest of your argument
until you justify that a little.

I'm not arguing that people should fake ADD to get scripts. I do think this is
a wrong and bad thing to do - but not because it makes them "academic
cheaters" - it's because it forces up costs on the drug that genuine ADD
people need just to be level with ordinary people. I know - because I
genuinely am one - believe it or not. And I'm gonna be pissed if I have to
start paying 100 bucks a bottle because the government's budget gets blown on
a-holes who are faking it. But that's a different issue to what we're talking
about here.

Having said that - I think the solution to both problems is to throw open the
market with certain controls to limit substance abuse - and let the free
market bring down costs (since the larger market will allow greater economies
of scale in production).

~~~
yardie
The learning outcome is irrelevant. It's irrelevant to the cheaters and to the
poster above. Someone taking amphetamines to cram is doing exactly that. They
aren't learning, they are just cramming to get through the next set of exams.
So to them the learning outcome is irrelevant if the only thing that matters
is the grade.

------
somethrowaway
I do not know if I have undiagnosed ADD. Occasionally I wonder, especially
those times when I go to put on my shoes to leave the house and discover that
30 minutes have passed and I've only managed to put one of them on because
somehow I've started doing something else.

Either way, I've used Adderall while programming (for which I do not have a
prescription), and even small amounts make a significant difference in number
of levels of abstraction and detail I can hold in my head at once, and how
quickly I can both initially reach and drop back into 'flow' when interrupted.
The best analogy I've come up with is that increases your mental RAM - so I'm
not having to write anything to swap. Got a really nasty pile of code you need
to refactor, or even completely rearchitect? Adderall lets you fit a whole lot
more of the problem space in your head at once.

 _Sometimes_ on very rare occasions, I can somehow hit that sweet spot with
caffeine and get the same effect as Adderall. But it happens very rarely - too
easy to under or overshoot the caffeine dose, and even when I do manage to
pull it off, the perfect mental RAM increase only seems to last about 45 mins.
With Adderall, it happens every time, and I can can stay in that state for 12
hours or more.

I don't use Adderall frequently. It's kinda a pain in the ass to get, and a
little pricey. But when you're just _stuck_ on something, it can really help
you break through that mental wall.

------
anonymoushn
This does not surprise me. I regularly use 200-500mg caffeine in a day, and I
did more while I was in college. (some) prescription stimulants and (some)
stimulants that are victims of prohibition would do the same job better and
with less severe physical side effects, but I can't be bothered getting them.
It's not that I respect the law; it's just more convenient to use the
inferior-but-legal option.

------
mrleinad
I'm currently (as in right now) using Modafinil as a brain-booster to keep me
awake for an exam this afternoon.

With regard to this: "If, for example, students use such drugs to mitigate the
consequences of procrastination, they may fail to develop mental discipline
and time-management skills.", as lots of HN readers may know,
procrastination's a bitch. There are infinite methods to counteract it, yet we
(I) keep falling through the cracks and not doing what I'm supposed to be
doing. Not saying this drug suddenly eliminates that (I've been brain-boosted
while procrastinating -hey, isnt' writing on HN hours before an exam
procrastination?-), but it buys me time and a little edge in my gray matter to
keep me going.

"Instead of ferreting out and punishing students, universities should focus on
restoring a culture of deep engagement in education, rather than just
competition for credentials"

Well, here in Argentina, and this college particularly, although I'm doing it
for credentials mostly, the main problem is not "the culture", but how
contents are delivered by proffessors in the classroom. My studying plan is
from '95, and little has changed since then in it (System's engineering, btw).
Some proffesors are like mummies from the 70's, talking about Algol and Ada
like it's the next hot technology. On the other hand, education's free, there
are lots of jobs, and IT is one of the fastest growing areas of work nowadays
(where is it not?). I currently have a job working for a company that develops
products for MS and some other clients, using MS tools.

That said, I'm a bit concerned about my health, and will be taking routine
medical checks. Nevertheless, I'm not an addict (no, really). Although I use
it now and then, I don't crave for it, nor I need it all the time. It's just
an extra help for certain situations, like taking coffee when you're asleep,
or ibuprofene when you have a mild headache (that perhaps could be solved by
going to bed for a couple hours, but you have to keep working/stuying).

Prohibition, like on many other things, won't do any good to anyone, except
maybe the ones that sell the drugs.

~~~
sgift
I've never used any of these drugs myself, but arguments like "if you use
this, you'll never learn <some skill which author thinks is important>" always
seem a bit dull to me:

Isn't the main value of new technologies/drugs/utilities that people don't
have to do things the 'old way' anymore? Nobody is using a slide rule these
days, but why should they?

~~~
RyanMcGreal
There's a difference in kind, it seems to me, between acquiring proficiency in
a particular technology - like using a slide rule or an abacus or a scientific
calculator or JSON serialization on a REST interface - and developing habits
of planning, working and time management to maximize productivity in any
technical context.

These days, my job requirements throw lots of new technologies my way, but my
basic approach to learning a technique, incorporating it into my workflow and
completing a project remains more or less consistent.

By all means, eliminate busywork and seek efficiencies that get you to your
solution more quickly; but don't fall into the trap of thinking an all-nighter
on bennies is a viable replacement for organization and self-discipline.

~~~
true_religion
Although you can use drugs to enable an all-nighter to learn a certain
technology _just before_ you need it, you can also use drugs during the
daytime hours to enable you to concentrate on learning material _far before
you need it_.

The former solution is what I've seen preferred by students who don't
prioritize school, and the latter is what the so-called "nerds" use.

~~~
mrleinad
Of course. That's my M.O. as well. Don't let my previous post and the fact
that I was sacked at today's exam make you think otherwise. :(

I get another chance in 2 weeks. I better go back to stuying..

------
Estragon
Is there any direct empirical evidence that these drugs improve intellectual
function? Apples-to-apples IQ tests, or something like that?

------
GHFigs
Fat chance of discouraging people from abusing anything routinely described
with a straight face as a "cognitive enhancer".

~~~
roel_v
Yes, I'm bothered by this term, too. On the other hand, what term should we
use, that is easy to understand and broadly (if not to the highest level of
detail) describes a wide range of drugs with widely varying effects? Something
like 'intellectual performance enhancer' is longer, sounds more pretentious
and isn't much more accurate, either.

Then again, if all my problems were as severe as this one, I'd be a happy
camper ;)

------
dawson
Nescafé and Methylphenidate (prescribed, of course) are your friend.

~~~
robotkad
True, but when used at the same time they are a nightmare. Methylphenidate has
a pretty severe crash (at higher dosages) and caffeine makes it much much
worse.

~~~
dawson
You're quite right. In fact, I avoid all caffeine (even Tea) when taking it.
Had some nasty crashes on Concerta.

------
begemot
If you need that big of a crutch then you shouldn't be attending university in
the first place.

