Stimulants
This New Yorker article on cognitive enhancement is actually pretty well-balanced and wise. The whole thing is worth reading if you're interested in this subject, but in particular the comments of "Alex" had a familiar ring for me:
That afternoon, he went to the library, where he spent “too much time researching a paper rather than actually writing it-a problem, I can assure you, that is common to all intellectually curious students on stimulants.” . . .
After we had ordered beers, he said, “One of the most impressive features of being a student is how aware you are of a twenty-four-hour work cycle. When you conceive of what you have to do for school, it’s not in terms of nine to five but in terms of what you can physically do in a week while still achieving a variety of goals in a variety of realms-social, romantic, sexual, extracurricular, résumé-building, academic commitments.” Alex was eager to dispel the notion that students who took Adderall were “academic automatons who are using it in order to be first in their class, or in order to be an obvious admit to law school or the first accepted at a consulting firm.” In fact, he said, “it’s often people”-mainly guys-“who are looking in some way to compensate for activities that are detrimental to their performance. [. . .] I don’t think people who take Adderall are aiming to be the top person in the class. I think they’re aiming to be among the best. Or maybe not even among the best. At the most basic level, they aim to do better than they would have otherwise.” He went on, “Everyone is aware of the fact that if you were up at 3 A.M. writing this paper it isn’t going to be as good as it could have been. The fact that you were partying all weekend, or spent the last week being high, watching ‘Lost’-that’s going to take a toll.” . . .
Alex remains enthusiastic about Adderall, but he also has a slightly jaundiced critique of it. “It only works as a cognitive enhancer insofar as you are dedicated to accomplishing the task at hand,” he said. “The number of times I’ve taken Adderall late at night and decided that, rather than starting my paper, hey, I’ll organize my entire music library! I’ve seen people obsessively cleaning their rooms on it.”
Ouch. One lesson learned from my experience with amphetamines: it is *very* important that my objectives for the next few hours be made unambiguous *before* taking the stuff -- otherwise it often results in a lot of misdirected energy. Having gotten a feel for how to use it effectively, my current focus is on how to orient myself correctly before hitting the gas pedal, which is a problem that has cognitive-behavioral rather than pharmacological solutions.
The supposed focus/creativity trade-off touched on in the article is, in my experience, something of a myth: what one might loosely call "juxtaposition" is a crucial element in creativity, and the working memory boost conferred on me by the amphetamines allows me to hold more things in my head at once. But that's a matter of working with the raw materials which are already in my head, and therein lies the rub: if your thoughts suck, if you're not looking in the right direction, tightening your focus with stimulants will not help you. You'll be more productive at whatever you're doing but whether that's actually worth doing depends entirely on you.
The true pitfall of stimulants is the hypomania they induce -- they make it much, much easier to do whatever you've decided to do by indirectly turning down the volume on task-irrelevant neural activity. They give you what you want, good and hard. All the kvetching about the new wave of stimulant use is really kvetching-by-proxy about cultural mental illnesses that are being brought out more sharply by them. (It would likely be *very* revealing to know the rates of stimulant use among, say, investment bankers over the past decade or so.) Drugs are, among other things, diagnostic devices, and are not to blame if you don't like what they reveal.
That afternoon, he went to the library, where he spent “too much time researching a paper rather than actually writing it-a problem, I can assure you, that is common to all intellectually curious students on stimulants.” . . .
After we had ordered beers, he said, “One of the most impressive features of being a student is how aware you are of a twenty-four-hour work cycle. When you conceive of what you have to do for school, it’s not in terms of nine to five but in terms of what you can physically do in a week while still achieving a variety of goals in a variety of realms-social, romantic, sexual, extracurricular, résumé-building, academic commitments.” Alex was eager to dispel the notion that students who took Adderall were “academic automatons who are using it in order to be first in their class, or in order to be an obvious admit to law school or the first accepted at a consulting firm.” In fact, he said, “it’s often people”-mainly guys-“who are looking in some way to compensate for activities that are detrimental to their performance. [. . .] I don’t think people who take Adderall are aiming to be the top person in the class. I think they’re aiming to be among the best. Or maybe not even among the best. At the most basic level, they aim to do better than they would have otherwise.” He went on, “Everyone is aware of the fact that if you were up at 3 A.M. writing this paper it isn’t going to be as good as it could have been. The fact that you were partying all weekend, or spent the last week being high, watching ‘Lost’-that’s going to take a toll.” . . .
Alex remains enthusiastic about Adderall, but he also has a slightly jaundiced critique of it. “It only works as a cognitive enhancer insofar as you are dedicated to accomplishing the task at hand,” he said. “The number of times I’ve taken Adderall late at night and decided that, rather than starting my paper, hey, I’ll organize my entire music library! I’ve seen people obsessively cleaning their rooms on it.”
Ouch. One lesson learned from my experience with amphetamines: it is *very* important that my objectives for the next few hours be made unambiguous *before* taking the stuff -- otherwise it often results in a lot of misdirected energy. Having gotten a feel for how to use it effectively, my current focus is on how to orient myself correctly before hitting the gas pedal, which is a problem that has cognitive-behavioral rather than pharmacological solutions.
The supposed focus/creativity trade-off touched on in the article is, in my experience, something of a myth: what one might loosely call "juxtaposition" is a crucial element in creativity, and the working memory boost conferred on me by the amphetamines allows me to hold more things in my head at once. But that's a matter of working with the raw materials which are already in my head, and therein lies the rub: if your thoughts suck, if you're not looking in the right direction, tightening your focus with stimulants will not help you. You'll be more productive at whatever you're doing but whether that's actually worth doing depends entirely on you.
The true pitfall of stimulants is the hypomania they induce -- they make it much, much easier to do whatever you've decided to do by indirectly turning down the volume on task-irrelevant neural activity. They give you what you want, good and hard. All the kvetching about the new wave of stimulant use is really kvetching-by-proxy about cultural mental illnesses that are being brought out more sharply by them. (It would likely be *very* revealing to know the rates of stimulant use among, say, investment bankers over the past decade or so.) Drugs are, among other things, diagnostic devices, and are not to blame if you don't like what they reveal.