For most white-collar professionals, very little is going to be gained by doing so. Drugs might help you grind out more hours, and they can give you confidence

For most white-collar professionals, very little is going to be gained by doing so. Drugs might help you grind out more hours, and they can give you confidence in your focus (the subjective sense of accomplishment is increased more than actual performance). Those drugs certainly make boredom less of an issue if you're at the bottom in a very demanding firm (e.g. an investment bank's analyst program). They're not going to make you better at politics, however. Overperformance is far more dangerous to your career in a typical office job than underperformance. That's why the highs of a cyclic mood disorder like bipolar are more dangerous to one's employment than the lows. In a low, you underperform and might attract bad notice after a couple months. On a high, you work hard on something you weren't asked to do, it's brilliant, and then you get canned for (whether in fact or in appearance) neglecting your assigned work. Most white-collar workers are 25% depressed, chronically, by middle age and it doesn't hurt their ability to keep a job (although it's a disadvantage in interviews for new ones). It helps them fit in. I'd say that it's worth using "smart drugs" for short bursts of work, or possibly in the creative professions if you don't answer to anyone. But most corporate workers don't need more "smart". They'd fare better with the opposite.