Better than Fine? People Say They Take Medicines to Help Concentrate

Oh she's been sleeping now since 9:00, wow that made me happy. It's just past 10:00pm and now it's my turn to sleep. I have to get up at 4:30 for work. 6 hours is plenty for this old lady. Good night ms.ivy - don't stay up too late now.

During undergrad I took some of these so-called study enhancers along with many of my friends. As an earlier post put it, most of us were cramming for exams. Some of us dabbled in other drugs like ecstasy, etc. too. Thank God for conversion.

Taking drugs to get through school shows only weakness. I went back to college at the age of 39 i had three small kids and i was divorced. I got a BA in business in three years because of perseverence not drugs. I graduated with a 3.75, I had also joined a volunteer fire department and took an EMT class while i was doing this. If i can do this with no drugs anyone can.

When I was in medical school, I heard lots of rumors about medical students taking drugs. I have no idea how many were, but any number is significant. These are the doctors today who are prescribing drugs to patients.

If they felt that it helped (it probably did, based on published experimental trials), they would have few qualms about prescribing them for their patients. But the fact remains, many of these medications have serious risks from side effects or adverse behaviors.

The risk of side effects doesn't seem significant when you are trying to help a borderline Alzheimer's patient stay at home. The risk might also be justified for troops in some battlefield situations. When you are dealing with college students who may be compensating for poor study habits, those risks seem very important.

Of course, some of the medical students wouldn't have been able to pass the tests without the boost. Should they be allowed to use cognitive enhancers? If they did, wouldn't you wonder about how well they can practice medicine unless they are continually "boosted" by drugs.

Other medical students taking drugs were good students who took drugs to get a competitve edge for the best residencies. For those, you just question their ethics.

The bottom line, if you are going to improve problems with abuse of prescription drugs, you better monitor medical students, residents, and practicing doctors. The incidence of drug abuse is higher in this population, and they are (or will be) responsible for handing out the prescriptions.

I have to go with Ms. Ivy on this one, I work at Harvard university and I see it firsthand daily. These kids are not out partying and just using Adderall to supplement an out of control lifestyle they are using it because of the overtly competitive atmosphere.

We are not talking about your 15 year old daughters who get A's or B's in the local high school. (wheee) We are talking about young adults who are fighting like sharks for entrance to exclusive grad schools or cutthroat investment banking jobs on Wall Street and the like. Balancing time between writing a thesis, working full time hours while still heading up social clubs and functions requires more time than a human should be awake.

"Sleep is for fools" - Thomas Edison

There is no right or wrong here just the world we have created and people are adapting to live in it.

Is it cheating? That's one of the big questions here. What is cheating? Anything that give you an unfair advantage, I'd say. That's why people cheat, to get a leg up on the competition. Can everyone use these drugs? Technically, yes; legally, probably not. So, yeah, these drugs give their users an unfair advantage.

Consequently, I'd be inclined to say that using these drugs is cheating. I'm currently working on my PhD, and I've never taking any of these drugs, and I know people who were able to get them simply by asking their doctors for them (I'm thinking specifically of Adderal). Could I do the same? Sure, but where's the honor in that? It's like winning a gold medal because you took some performance-enhancing substance. Even if you're not caught, it still cheapens the victory because you're no longer fully responsible for your own actions--the drugs get some of the credit.

If you're not disciplined enough to do your studies correctly--NOT partying and drinking and then cramming--then you DESERVE whatever happens to your grades. And even if you make the grades, what kind of life are you preparing yourself to live for? Maybe you should consider the possibility that you're not college material. Just get a job--the experience will be more valuable and you'll be contributing something to your community.

That's my two cents.

Ever see the movie "The Paper Chase"? It was about a bunch of students at Harvard Law School. In the movie, the students weren't doing blow to get through finals but in real life they were - still are.

Same can be said for medical school.

Why do we slap the best and brightest with impossible coursework?

Google is the General Practitioner of my generation. You don't have to pop Ritalin to do a google search.

To date, Universities are still the gatekeepers to a good job - but all that may be changing. Especially when the kids with degrees enter the real world to find that there are very few jobs out there.

This is just like the Major League steroid debate, justifiable use because: 1. Everybody else is doing it. 2. The competition and stakes are so high, that using substances is OK. Gee, I hope every reader is OK when they need surgery, and find out that their doctor partied all night, but is doing fine with the adderal he just took.

Is it cheating to take cognitive enhancing drugs to improve your test scores? Answer that question by answering this question. Would you trust your doctor if you knew they had used cognitive enhancing drugs to pass medical school?
I believe cognitive enhancing drugs have been proven to improve test scores, but have not been shown to improve long term retention of information. In other words, take two doctors who have scored equally well on a test, but one achieved it by taking cognitive enhancing drugs. If you retest those doctors 2 years later (and neither takes cognitive enhancing drugs the second time), the doctor who never used the "juice" would score better than the doctor who had originally been "juiced".
If you do say that it is okay for the medical students to use drugs to pass tests, then shouldn't doctors have on their medical licenses whether or not they are required to use cognitive enchancing drugs to practice medicine? It would be just like a driver's license stating that you are required to have vision correction in order to drive.

Interesting topic. My daughter is a junior in college. Just recently she was complaining to me about all the students she knows who use Alderall to help them study for mid-terms and finals. She does not use such "aids" herself, and I commend her for that. She knows better than play with fire. Yet, she is a bit bitter about what she considers to be unfair competition.

However, in the end, she has still come out ahead. An accounting major, she got one of the coveted summer internships at a Big 4 firm. She does not have the best GPA (grades). But they are good enough, and I do believe that her part time work experience and her people skills made a big difference.

The lesson? Life is not all about grades and extra curricular activities. If only students would learn that...

If it is ok to use these types of drugs, it is also ok for athletes to use steroids and for hippies to smoke pot. Who is to decide what drugs are right for the individual and for what purpose? Only you can decide that for yourself. This makes the case for the legalization of pot more than any argument I've ever heard. Why not just legalize all drugs? In fact, why not MANDATE drug use. Everyone must take drugs all the time. Don't give me these lame excuses for taking drugs - if you can't do it without them you can't do it. Period.

Interesting. If one has to take drugs to make it at the University then maybe one should not be there. Reliance on drugs will continue during careers where stress is greater than at the University. Would be very interesting to have brain scans of before and after a certain period of years to observe what organically happens to the brain.

Sports, school, or life. Performance enhancing drugs = cheating. This comment from a libertarian who is in favor of decriminalizing all recreational drugs.

I can't help but wonder if this isn't a symptom of the failure of the educational system in this country. Students are so ill-prepared for college courses that they have to resort to such measures to get anywhere. As one poster also pointed out, this kind of behavior in college will be resorted to again and again in life. Not a good prospect if your doctor engaged in this behavior in medical school.

DON'T BE FOOLED BY THIS REPORT WHICH COVERTLY TRIES TO CONVINCE YOU THAT RITALIN HELPS YOU. RITALIN AMD ADDERAL ARE "SPEED". DO YOU REALLY KNOW WHAT YOUR DOING TO YOUR BODY AND MIND GIVING THESE DRUGS TO KIDS OR YOURSELF? DO YOU HAVE ANY REAL CLUE? AND IF YOU THINK A PERSON IS ENHANCING THEIR PERFORMANCE BECAUSE THEY'RE ON COKE OR SPEED THEN, YES MAYBE YOU WOULD CALL THIS "PERFORMANCE ENHANCING". I CALL IT BEING A DEPENDENT DRUG ADDICT WHO IS SUFFERING THE SYMPTOMS OF A MIND-ALTERING DRUG. A FEW YEARS BACK ADHD WAS INVENTED AND NO ONE EVEN THOUGHT OF POPPING DRUGS TO GET SCHOOL WORK DONE. THEY'D DRINK COFFEE OR TEA OR A COKE FOR A LITTLE BIT OF CAFFEINE BUT NOTHING LIKE RITALIN. MY GOD! KIDS DIDN'T USE SPEED NOR DID THEY NEED IT JUST LIKE THEY DON'T NEED IT TODAY. SCHOOLS ARE ALSO DOING KIDS A DISSERVICE BY GIVING THEM 4 OR MORE HOURS OF HOMEWORK. WHO HAS THE TIME? RITALIN AND ADDERAL ARE SPEED, MAKE NO MISTAKE ABOUT IT FOLKS AND THEY SIDE EFFECTS OF SPEED ARE THE SIDE EFFECTS OF THESE "PERFORMANCE ENHANCING" DRUGS.

I hate it when people who don't know what they are talking about talk and act like they are all knowing. My daughter is highly ADHD. She is also very smart and in advanced classes in High School. I fought putting my daughter on ritalin. It became a matter of quality of life for her. Does anyone think that ADHD people like the disability that comes with this type of condition? Without the medication these kids are labeled as trouble makers and as adults usually become addicted to alcholol or drugs.
My daughter does not have excess energy and stamina on her adhd medication. It infact calms her down and gives her quality of life. I don't know how kids can get these drugs so easily. My daughter's adderall xr and strattera are very expensive. I am ADD it is no fun being ADD. It can be very diabilitating. As a teacher I have seen how students with ADD are ostrasized if their medicine isn't well regulated to help control their symptoms. You can be doing well on your ADHD medication and one day it stops helping. Its a very rough road to be ADHD. My daughter has more energy when she is off her adhd medication. But then she is prone to impulsive acts and mental meltdowns.

It be great if some of you who put down these medications could walk in my daughter's and my shoes for a day

My son has ADDH, the inattentive kind. He is on Strattera which is not a stimulant. At some point though, he may need Adderal since some drugs just suddenly quit working. These meds are NOT prescribed willy-nilly. Obviously some posters on here have NO experience with ADDH. I waited five years to put my son on the meds and he was miserable at school. Homework was simply a nightmare. He is now a straight A student and please note, grades were not a reason for him being on meds. I was just worried sick he would get lost, hit by a car or start drinking (it runs in the family). He is a sucess story now.

Let your children free and use their energy while it last. While poisoning your own spawn may make you happy, it makes me angry