9 ms·

Using prescription stimulants as study aids

48 points by grellas 16y ago

dawson 16y ago
Nescafé and Methylphenidate (prescribed, of course) are your friend.
- robotkad 16y ago
  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 16y ago
    You're quite right. In fact, I avoid all caffeine (even Tea) when taking it. Had some nasty crashes on Concerta.
GHFigs 16y ago
Fat chance of discouraging people from abusing anything routinely described with a straight face as a "cognitive enhancer".
- roel_v 16y ago
  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 ;)
anonymoushn 16y ago
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.
grovulent 16y ago
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.
mrleinad 16y ago
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 16y ago
  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?
somethrowaway 16y ago
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.
Estragon 16y ago
Is there any direct empirical evidence that these drugs improve intellectual function? Apples-to-apples IQ tests, or something like that?
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
begemot 16y ago
If you need that big of a crutch then you shouldn't be attending university in the first place.

48 points by grellas 16y ago

dawson 16y ago

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

robotkad 16y ago
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 16y ago
  You're quite right. In fact, I avoid all caffeine (even Tea) when taking it. Had some nasty crashes on Concerta.

GHFigs 16y ago

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

roel_v 16y ago
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 ;)

anonymoushn 16y ago

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.

grovulent 16y ago

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.

mrleinad 16y ago

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 16y ago
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?

somethrowaway 16y ago

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.

Estragon 16y ago

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

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

begemot 16y ago

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