Stimulant Drugs for ALL

Prescription stimulant drugs may in fact help you stay focused for a short time being, but are there long term benefits as well? 

   Prescription stimulant drugs increase your dopamine and norepinephrine into your system to increase brain activity. When one who is not prescribed any prescription stimulant for a condition, they are increasing their levels to an amount they cannot adhere to by themselves. This usually is to be able to finish assignments and stay up longer staying for an exam, very prevalent in college. 

    These drugs act as a short term chemical brain alteration, but show little to no difference in performance on rote-memory or learning tasks with or without stimulants. The only difference with a stimulant is found in rote-memory or learning in the long term. Smith and Farrh (2011) found that there was an enhancement in the rote memory of those who took stimulants over those who did not when learning a set of words. Softens et al., (1993) also did a series of tests testing cognitive memory, recalling, as well as recognition on memory function with amphetamine (a stimulant drug). They found that it increases the long term memory performance with recall as well as recognition.    

  Memory is a lot of what college exams are based off of so why is it so ethically wrong to help us better our learning with a stimulant? Why do people believe it is wrong to use a resource in order to engage the chemicals in our brain in a positive way to benefit our academic success?

   The way I see it, if we are taking a drug in order to stimulate our brain in a way that is not necessary for normal brain and memory function, they we do not need it in our every day lives. Both of these papers, as well as others say that long term effects of these stimulants are not well known now, why would we want to be the test subjects to this? If a medical provider has not prescribed you a stimulant for ADHA, narcolepsy, etc then this enhancing drug should not ethically be used. We are manipulating a drug that was designed for a medical purpose in order to help place someone's life back to a normal state, that should not be manipulated. 

Soetens E, Dhooge R, Hueting J. Amphetamine enhances human-memory consolidation. Neurosci. Lett. 1993;161:9–12.

Smith ME, Farah MJ. Are prescription stimulants “smart pills”? The epidemiology and cognitive neuroscience of prescription stimulant use by normal healthy individuals. Psychol. Bull. 2011;137:717–741.