The use of Adderall and other cognitive enhancing drugs by healthy individuals is often met with moral outrage, and in the United States it is punishable by prison. But why is this so? What is so wrong with augmenting focus and improving working memory?
In reality, Adderall is no different than the other forms of cognitive enhancement doctors have been recommending for decades; including a good diet, exercise, and regular sleeping habits. Not to mention the other things people ingest to improve focus and energy, such as coffee and energy drinks. All these things have stimulating effects on the brain, and many affect the catecholamine system, just like Adderall does to improve focus. And yet, no one seems to be saying that drinking coffee should be banned or we should limit the amount of sleep people are allowed to have. So why should the use of Adderall cause such an uproar?
Some people claim that it will undermine human nature, or diminish the value of our achievements, but if this was so then these same people should also stop people from eating healthy (since the variety of food that is available now was not available to people in the past) and drinking energy drinks, since it undermines the “authenticity” of their achievements. Of course, this is absurd, perhaps in other cases these arguments may make more sense, but in the case of Adderall, it only improves focus, it doesn’t suddenly make everyone a genius or able to do things they wouldn’t be able to do before, if they put their minds to it. As a result, in terms of human achievement, Adderall won’t undermine it any more than other forms of “enhancement” that we seem to take for granted.
Secondly, some people assert that Adderall gives unfair advantages to certain people, at the cost of others – especially in college. But again, this argument takes for granted all the other inequalities in the world – in comparison, Adderall will have little effect. For instance, people are endowed with different levels of mental faculties to begin with, some people can’t afford to go to elite schools and get a good education, and others don’t have easy access to the Internet, and all the information it brings with it. Clearly, these inequities are far more troublesome and the use of Adderall is a small inequality in comparison.
Therefore, the use of cognitive enhancing drugs, like Adderall, by healthy individuals is an overly inflated debate which takes for granted all the accepted forms of enhancement, and other problems in the world. Just as drinking coffee has become a staple for society, cognitive enhancing drugs may well be the new trend in a couple decades.
6 comments:
I agree that on many levels adderall and coffee and other commonly accepted practices are very similar, but there is one thing the sets adderall apart for me. Adderall is an extremely hard drug to stop taking. For patients who have been taking adderall for an extended period of time they need to be tapered off the drug for nearly a month before they can successfully get off. Some may compare this to caffeine headaches however while it is similar the level of difficulties involved with getting off each drug are not on the same level. People taking adderall on a consistent basis should be in contact with a doctor that can monitor their situation. Whereas I do not think it is necessary for people drinking a cup of coffee a day to see a doctor.
I agree that we should welcome new methods of improving our brain function. I also agree that cognitive enhancement tools – including the pharmacological – will be increasingly useful for improved quality of life and extended work productivity. However, it is foolish to ignore the problems that such use of drugs could create or make worse.
For instance, I disagree with your claim that Adderall is no different than good diet, exercise, and regular sleeping habits. Physicians control the prescription of Adderall; therefore, certain groups may have greater access to the benefits of the drug. For instance, let’s say we have a pair of twins (two boys) and one has ADHD. Naturally, the parents seek help for the disadvantaged son by having their family physician prescribe him Adderall. In this case, by having physical Adderall pills in the household, the healthy boy now has greater access to Adderall than other healthy boys. Although this example may not be very practical or common, it nonetheless shows that Adderall may not be as equally available to the population as are good diet, exercise, and regular sleeping habits.
Also, I do not believe the debate over cognitively enhancing drugs is “overly inflated”. There are very important issues at stake that must be addressed. The fact is that we still have not done enough research into the use and impacts of cognitive enhancing drugs, such as Adderall, by healthy individuals. There may be very real undiscovered physiological harms and benefits that we have yet to factor into the debate.
Nonetheless, I wholeheartedly agree that research-backed safe and effective cognitive enhancers will benefit both individuals and society in the long run.
The use of Adderall is not problematic in itself. People drink alcohol to relax and let loose, coffee to stay awake, and medication to sleep. Adderall doesn't change a person any more then any of these other drugs. Rather then protesting Adderall, we should make it legal to everyone so that college students and other procrastinating workers will not have to become criminals in order to share the same benefits of their peers who have access to the benefits of this drug legally. We need to strongly consider whether or not the things we outlaw really should be illegal or just discouraged.
I think you brought up some very interesting questions with the issue of Adderall use. I agree that it is very difficult to draw the line between which kinds of mental enhancements are ethically acceptable and which kinds are not. But I think we can at least attempt to explain why Adderall use is “met with moral outrage.” Let’s start with the difference between Adderall and good diet/ exercise/ regular sleeping habits. I think the difference here is that the last 3 don’t really fall into “human experimentation” because they don’t alter your body in an “unnatural” way. Everyone has to eat, sleep, and exercise to live, and so by doing these things regularly, you’re not taking in any foreign substance that is not necessary for you to sustain your life.
As for distinguishing between Adderall and coffee, it is a lot more difficult. But again we can try. Coffee contains caffeine, which gets in the way of adenosine receptor sites so that they don’t detect adenosine as well as they should, which results in a small awakening effect because you feel less sedated by the adenosine in your body. In other words, two negatives indirectly make a positive. On the other hand, Adderall mixes two drugs that are very powerful and forces your body to release large amounts of serotonin and dopamine. So this directly and forcefully increases your alertness. Therefore, Adderall forces your body to produce “unnatural” amounts of chemicals and could be considered more of a “human experimentation” than caffeine is. Still, I recognize that, as you said, it’s difficult to draw the line definitively.
Your second argument, that Adderall’s unfair advantage is insignificant compared to other inequalities, I think could be qualified with some arguments from the other side. It looks like your ideas on the fact that people are “endowed with different levels of mental faculties” parallels Sandel’s perspective on sports: that people are born with different gifts to begin with, and so striving is not the point of sports, academics, music, etc. but excellence is. However, not everyone believes that. For example, when I was in elementary school, teachers gave us “Mad Minute” tests (I’m sure some of us remember doing those), and our grades were based on improvement, not on how fast we could do them already. To give another example, many sports, such as kendo (the “way of the sword,” as with many cultural sports that end in “do” or “way” – taekwondo, aikido, etc.) pride themselves in the fact that the point of the sport is to cultivate a “way” for oneself, to refine one’s character, and are not about winning at all. Therefore, we must not dismiss the fact that in so many cases, effort does count more than achievements, and so taking drugs like Adderall to increase concentration and performance would actually be a big issue.
And for other inequalities besides natural talents, I think good education, access to the internet, and other such things can only help you to a certain extent. A dumb kid with access to the internet and whose parents paid tons of money for him to go to an “elite” school won’t necessarily end up being smarter, have a better job, etc. compared to a kid who could only use hard copies as opposed to electronic ones and went to a public school but put in lots of effort, which could take someone further than we sometimes give it credit.
http://www.ehow.com/how-does_5406378_adderall-work-add_.html
http://science.howstuffworks.com/caffeine4.htm
It seems that we often draw an imaginary line between what we deem natural versus unnatural. If I take vitamins, fish oil, or other nutrients that could be easily obtained through eating right, then I am just supplementing my diet. Drugs such as Adderall, however, are clearly unnatural, and they therefore bring a host of ethical issues with them. I disagree with this dichotomy. As you mention, we as a society already accept the widespread ingestion of caffeine in the form of coffee and energy drinks. People often say that they need coffee to get through the day. One could use the same argument used against enhancing drugs against caffeine. It undermines our appreciation of achievements since without it, many would not be able to function nearly as well as they do every day.
Of course, this argument seems ridiculous. Drugs such as Adderall are so much more powerful than coffee. How can we classify them together? This highlights the arbitrary line that we have drawn. Pharmaceutical are obviously more powerful than coffee, but that does not make them inherently worse. They are just a more concentrated and powerful way of achieving a result that is already culturally accepted.
This is, of course, an enormous oversimplification of these drugs. Adderall is a schedule 2 drug not because it is somehow ethically wrong to consume, but rather because it is potentially dangerous if taken without proper supervision (it is a type of amphetamine). Focusing on this, however, ignores the underlying issues that are up for debate. If we had a drug with just as powerful effects that was as safe as coffee, do we still object to its use? Like many issues surrounding these topics, it brings up the therapy versus enhancement debate, but I believe that as a society, we are already on the road to accepting such drugs as a valid form of enhancement. As you said, cognitive enhancement drugs may well be a new trend in a couple decades, for the moment, they may just be further back on the same path to acceptance that Coffee went along.
http://search.proquest.com/docview/219857980
http://search.proquest.com/docview/319586173
http://www.drugs.com/monograph/adderall.html
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/01/03/can-you-build-a-better-brain.html
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