

Scientists are abusing mental performance enhancing drugs. - tx
http://www.webmd.com/brain/news/20080409/poll-scientists-use-brain-boosting-drugs

======
dws
Where did you get "abusing"? That word appears nowhere in the article.

~~~
tx
What else you call it when a healthy individual takes pills, sometimes a
combination of, that are manufactured for ADD patients?

~~~
as
Mental enhancement?

Scientists aren't athletes. Discovery isn't a zero sum game. If we want to go
by med labels, I think we should remember that rationality isn't the great
driving force of American drug law.

~~~
jmzachary
Then let scientists take whatever drugs they want. Pot, heroin, cocaine, PCP,
LSD, peyote, mushrooms, Vicodin, whatever. Taking prescribed medication for a
use other than for which it was prescribed is illegal. So, by your logic,
what's the difference?

The untold story is why do scientists feel the need to take medication to
(temporarily) enhance their cognitive capabilities. I conjecture it is
oversupply of them competing for fewer dollars and fame-producing discoveries,
and/or most of them really aren't that smart to begin with (despite passing
tests to get advanced degrees).

~~~
ibsulon
I agree. We should allow scientists to take whatever drugs they want. Let's
add everyone else, for that matter. (I think the steroid question is idiotic,
especially as supplementation has become safer.)

Here's another secret. many professional musicians use beta blockers to steady
their hands. They're beating out someone who has superior genetics! Pasta-
forbid!

It's wetware hacking, and it works. (I'll admit to trying modafinil and
realizing it wasn't for me -- never tried ritalin/adderall though.)

~~~
jmzachary
So, anyone can take any drug they want, but steroids are idiotic? Why? Are you
discriminating between scientists and non-scientist bodybuilders? Or are you
singling out steroids as unacceptable and anything else as acceptable?

It's not "wetware hacking" (whatever that means, but it sounds cool). It's
biochemistry, and it doesn't always work.

~~~
ibsulon
I was just looking through the archive and saw this. What I meant was that the
idea of steroids as an illegal substance was idiotic. The dangers of steroids
are overstated with the newer generation of steroids in moderate doses (IE -
below ronnie coleman levels.) Controlling insulin levels personally scares me,
but I don't consider that as something to make illegal either.

My perspective is that people should have the right to use these chemicals on
their bodies as they see fit. Now, if a private company wants to limit those
working for their companies from ingesting such chemicals, I agree that it
should be their option. (The NFL should be allow to test for steroids, for
example.) I also agree that these chemicals should be limited to those whose
bodies have matured.

However, I think it's idiotic to control what an adult does with his or her
body if it doesn't affect another individual.

------
dgabriel
This is nothing new. <http://amphetamines.com/paul-erdos.html>

------
mrtron
I am sure that the vast majority of us use/abuse drugs. To what extent is the
only question.

For example, after years of avoiding it, I have quickly settled in to the
caffeine routine. Coffee in the morning, occasionally a soft drink in the
evening. While this is hardly risky behaviour, it is drug use.

I personally would consider using different drugs more regularly. Jet lag
really can be a killer, so I would take something when travelling if there was
a good option I was aware of.

Personally I am strongly against certain drugs being prescription and
unavailable to informed individuals. It makes it seem like these drugs are
entirely safe when prescribed by a doctor and unsafe if people get them
through other means. I have some heavy painkillers that were legally acquired
but not prescribed by a doctor, and I use them in a very safe way for my
occasional intense back pain. I know many people on the same pain killers who
take them in an irresponsible way as prescribed by their doctor.

It is a topic that I think we need to try and avoid looking at it with such a
narrow vision. I also think a lot of illegal drugs are no more dangerous than
legal drugs, but that is another topic.

~~~
jmzachary
"For example, after years of avoiding it, I have quickly settled in to the
caffeine routine. Coffee in the morning, occasionally a soft drink in the
evening. While this is hardly risky behaviour, it is drug use."

But it's not _illegal_ drug use. You are lumping together taking an aspirin
for a headache in with taking ADD drugs illegally to enhance mental focus.
Having a coffee is not drug use, despite it having caffeine.

It doesn't matter if you think a lot of illegal drugs are no more dangerous
than legal drugs. If you compare the effective and lethal doses of pot and
booze, you'll find booze is much deadlier. What matters is the rule of law.

~~~
mrtron
Using illegal as a matter of consideration is ridiculous. Illegal in what
country? Why is the drug illegal? Taking aspirin for a headache IS the same as
taking ADD drugs.

Having coffee specifically for the caffeine boost IS drug use.

What I am saying is that the rule of law doesn't matter, and as you suggest
with the pot/booze example it is often backwards. Booze is much deadlier and
more dangerous for personal use than pot, no question when you consider lethal
dose.

Legality of drugs would be a small afterthought if I considered taking
something like ADD for concentration. 99% of the consideration would be my
personal health and safety including long term side effects.

~~~
jmzachary
Illegal in the U.S. Your country may have different rules.

Taking aspirin is the same as taking Ritalin for ADD. It is not the same as
taking it for a use for which it is not prescribed.

Logic notwithstanding, the law sure as hell does matter. Try breaking it,
getting caught, and doing time.

~~~
mrtron
I strongly doubt taking Ritalin without a prescription is grounds for jail
time in many countries.

Why does it matter if a drug is prescribed or not? Who has the right to
establish which drugs require prescriptions?

I believe in freedom. Freedom of thought, freedom of choice, freedom of living
your life how you choose. I believe anyone should be allowed to consume any
substance they desire. If Ritalin improves your research as many of these
people think, who has the right to stop them? They aren't harming anyone else,
and are possibly helping.

~~~
jmzachary
I, too, believe in freedom. But freedom doesn't absolve you of personal
responsibility for your actions. If anyone could consume any substance they
desire, it would have a detrimental effect on some basic level of social order
(and I'm not talking about government or top-down control) and it would have a
negative impact on other's freedoms and rights. That's why many drugs are
banned and why people aren't allowed to drive while intoxicated (despite it
being an act of freedom to live your life as a drunk). And I won't need a
lecture on libertarianism, thank you, which many people seem to confuse with
lawlessness.

I'm not sure what else there is to debate about Ritalin. If you want to be a
dopehead scientist, have at it. When the long-term effects start to manifest
themselves in physical or mental conditions we aren't aware of, don't start
whining for the FDA or an attorney to sue the drug maker.

~~~
rms
>That's why many drugs are banned

I bet you also bought the government's line about the war on drugs.

>If you want to be a dopehead scientist You're using ad hominem instead of
logic. And I expect you still haven't said the real reason you are so strongly
in favor of drugs, because none of the reasons you have given have made any
sense.

~~~
jmzachary
"You're using ad hominem instead of logic. And I expect you still haven't said
the real reason you are so strongly in favor of drugs, because none of the
reasons you have given have made any sense."

Ok, let me rephrase it: "if 'someone' wants to be a dopehead scientist, then
go for it." The rest of the quote still applies and is not ad hominem.

No sense to you, perhaps. Something about not using illegal drugs and not
using legal drugs illegally makes sense to me. "Off the label" prescriptions
are not always legal, btw.

Does the reasoning that it's ok to use Ritalin to give smart people a mental
edge imply it's ok for athletes to use performance-enhancing drugs? Why not,
if steroids and growth hormones are legal for other uses? Others in this
thread have implied that steroids are idiotic.

Because you are all smart people, you realize that once a few people start
doping up on Ritalin and getting better results on grant applications, journal
papers, and other tasks, that everyone will pretty much have to join the dope
show and take the same drugs. Taking these drugs will become a barrier to
entry in order to do science. Eventually, those who want a new mental edge
will have to find a new drug, then everyone will take that. That will only go
a few rounds before people start destroying their brains and their bodies.
Scientists will become junkies and that will do no good for anyone in the long
term.

Ultimately, if someone wants to take Ritalin or whatever to give them a mental
edge, nothing I say here will convince them otherwise. Personally, I don't
understand why anyone would need mental enhancement pharma given the
assumption that they are already brilliant to begin with. Maybe that's a bad
assumption for me to make (oh damn, that was ad hominem :)

~~~
rms
The argument advanced elsewhere in the thread is that it is fine for
scientists to take Ritalin because cancer may be cured faster. It's not a
competition.

You still seem to be stuck on the legal versus illegal thing. I sell kratom on
a website. Kratom is a drug-like herb that is a stimulant and an opiate. It
could be used as a drug to enhance mental performance.

Is kratom acceptable because it is legal? Or is it unacceptable because it is
fundamentally more powerful than caffeine?

~~~
jmzachary
To the contrary, scientific research is very, very competitive. There is a lot
of competition to be first to discovery, first to publish, first to patent,
and to win grants. This is especially true for cancer research.

I don't know anything about kratom. If you can legally sell it to enhance
mental performance, be my guest. We aren't discussing herbs, though. We are
discussing use of medicines prescribed for ADD by people without that
condition in order to increase mental focus.

Regardless of your, my, or any other opinions on the matter, the fact is that
use of prescription drugs for purposes other than which they are prescribed is
illegal. That is my whole point. Doctors get into trouble all the time for
writing scripts for pain killers to abusers in exchange for money (or sex).
Don't blame me if you don't like the law; I didn't enact it.

BTW, in the same thread, I provide links to research on the long-term effects
of Ritalin, a Schedule II drug. Most of the results indicate long-term abusers
suffer effects similar to cocaine abuse and depression.

------
comatose_kid
"But a third of respondents said they would feel pressure to give such drugs
to their children if other children at school were taking them."

Apparently a third of the respondents are big dorks.

~~~
sdurkin
This is an interesting argument. From a libertarian standpoint, I have the
freedom to take whatever actions I want, so long as those actions don't
interfere with the freedom of others.

Now, science is not a zero-sum game, but school is. There are a limited number
of spots in top universities, and the pressure to get one of those spots is
enormous.

So if my peers are all using study drugs, then I would be compelled to use
those drugs to remain competitive. So their use of the drugs would interfere
with my freedom of choice.

~~~
jmzachary
"So if my peers are all using study drugs, then I would be compelled to use
those drugs to remain competitive. So their use of the drugs would interfere
with my freedom of choice."

Not only that, but the playing field among you and your peers returns to
parity except the cost is that everyone needs to take study drugs to keep up.

------
kleevr
<http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/>

~~~
kleevr
<http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/makingchoices/index.htm>

------
crxnamja
also read that scientists that drink beer are dumber and produce worse
research...

~~~
gojomo
That widely-reported study was well-skewered here:

<http://life.lithoguru.com/index.php?itemid=119>

May still be true, I don't know, but the study fodder that created the
headlines a while back was flimsy.

------
LPTS
Let's be honest.

Our culture has a completely hypocritical attitude towards drug use. The
people who make the drug laws are either idiotic or spineless politicians, the
people who enforce them are sadistic bullies, and the people who support the
system are uninformed morons, latent Fascists or nosy busybodies.

In fact the entire drug war is actually a proxy for a cultural conflict
between conformist and nonconformist elements in society. It's common for
conforming bullies to be enabled to abuse nonconforming weird kids by school
authorities. The drug war is that at a huge scale.

A few commonly seen fallacies include that use does not mean abuse. Use can be
beneficial (see Carl Sagan, Steve Jobs). Abuse is not always a net negative
(see, Paul Erdos, the rock and roll hall of fame). Addicts can function fine
in society (cofounder of hopkins).

If some scientist looking for a cancer cure wants to take speed or provigil to
help them work, more power to them. Do you want to tell families suffering
from Alzhihmers that their cure was delayed because the best researcher was
arrested for taking ADD medication to hold the complexities of the disease in
her memory as she worked on a cure? How much time should a cancer researcher,
using a mental performance booster and trying to find a cure be put in jail?

In fact, I would argue that, for brilliant scientists working on saving lives,
the obligation to dedicate themselves fully to their work in much more
pressing then the obligation to follow idiotic, racist, superstitious laws. In
fact, much scientific progress came from scientific people breaking dumb
superstitious laws and societal conventions. See, for example, early
researches in anatomy, which the church treated as unholy, or early research
in astronomy. So if researchers (particularly researchers who save lives) want
to do this, it's part of a long, illustrious tradition of ignoring irrational
rules to get science done.

But then I care more about progress and a cure for these things then the
particulars of what metabolites are in the urine of the researchers that found
it. Maybe I'm deviant confused and unethical that way.

~~~
ericwaller
It's a much less noble cause, but I've made a similar argument in regards to
professional athletes using steroids.

Sure steroids can seriously screw up your body, but some of these guys are
making millions of dollars a year for their physical performance. There's
nothing immoral about letting these guys trade long term health for shorter
term physical performance and loads of money.

~~~
pg
The difference with athletes is that they're playing already circumscribed
games. Since everyone has to obey artificial rules, there's no harm in making
the rules prevent damage to the players. In fact it's hard to think of a sport
that doesn't already have rules of this type.

Winning in games is by definition relative. But winning at ideas is absolute.
The faster you find a cure for cancer the better.

I'm not advocating using drugs to help you think better, btw, but there's more
of a case there than in sports.

~~~
LPTS
"I'm not advocating using drugs to help you think better, btw, but there's
more of a case there than in sports."

This could mean several things. i'm curious what you think about a few cases
that make explicit some of the ambiguities.

1 A person has debilitating OCD and is prescribed ritalin by a psychiatrist,
which they take daily, so they can function.

2 A healthy person at the top of their field takes ritalin and other
stimulaties daily over his career to enhance performance, prescribed by a
physician. Cannot perform at the top of his field without it.

3 A person has debilitating OCD, is uninsured, and self medicates by taking
illicitly obtained psilocybin mushrooms 6 times a year. (studies show that
psilocybin reduces symptoms of OCD for longer then a month).

4 A person has treatment resistant cluster headaches that stops them from
thinking. Their treatment provider informs them that their best bet is
probably psychedelic mushrooms, which must be obtained illicitly.

5 A person has a psycho-spiritual crisis after finding out their religious
leader is a fraud, and takes illicit LSD in the aftermath with confused and
possibly self destructive intentions. Partly as a result of this experience,
their psychology is permanently altered in a way that makes their thinking
better.

6 An alcoholic uses illicitly obtained LSD to induce the kind of spiritual
experience his psychologist said correlated with a relapse of alcoholism.

7 A musician takes illicit drugs as part of the creative process.

8 A musician takes prescribed drugs not according to directions as part of the
creative process.

~~~
LPTS
(ritalin isn't prescribed for OCD. My bad, should of said ADHD, but too late
to edit)

~~~
dcurtis
Ritalin is prescribed for OCD occasionally. It's just not an advertised use.

~~~
LPTS
I thought so. Then I couldn't find nothing to back it up. Cause it's off label
and I didn't look hard.

