'Mind Doping' Becoming More Common 371
runamock writes "The Los Angeles Times is running a story on the growing use of 'mind drugs':
'Forget sports doping. The next frontier is brain doping. ... Despite the potential side effects, academics, classical musicians, corporate executives, students and even professional poker players have embraced the drugs to clarify their minds, improve their concentration or control their emotions. Unlike the anabolic steroids, human growth hormone and blood-oxygen boosters that plague athletic competitions, the brain drugs haven't provoked similar outrage. People who take them say the drugs aren't giving them an unfair advantage but merely allow them to make the most of their hard-earned skills.'" There's an interesting comment on this topic in Fresh Air's top cultural trends of 2007 broadcast.
Re:Flashback! (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually, there's a chance that it may make it entertaining enough to actually watch... Who knows? On with the drug trials!
Awesome (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Flashback! (Score:3, Interesting)
incorrect underlying assumption (Score:4, Interesting)
So, many of the drugs may not be doing a whole lot to help people achieve more success.
Re:Awesome (Score:1, Interesting)
I was pissed off because they were all prescriptions.
My Doc would not give those to me.
I have however found that taking supplements does a decent job.
I was very deficient in Vitamin D and Calcium because I do not eat foods high in those substances. I started popping D pills with calcium and now I feel a lot better, no more "crappy morning" syndrome. I think clearer too. I also take a B complex pill so I can make sure I get all my neurotransmitter precursors (B vitamins are used by the body to create almost all your neurotransmiters such as serotonin and dopamine, etc).
I am also about to start a body cleansing regiment to remove toxins from my body such as aluminum, mercury, pesticides, etc. Hopefully that will make me feel even better.
About the money (Score:4, Interesting)
So the sports product must be controlled with dress code, drug codes etc, and when the sports product does something wrong, something that any normal person would do, the product is released so as not to tarnish the lilly white reputation. The drug thing is not about the product, it is about the image of the product. This goes to non sports products targeted as family and conservative friendly, like the Disney creation Hannah Montana who commands a premium as the product is "wholesome".
Now, if these other mental acts every become marketed as uber conservative family friendly, and the entertainers in these acts every become products, then we are likely to see them crack down on drug use, but that will be the smallest problem. Right now classical performances, art museums, indie public television, all of this type of entertainment, can get away with all sorts of stuff because they now the people who watch are not looking for the bland uber conservative family 'I am afraid of my body' entertainment. Bad or Good, the product is marketed toward a people with a wider view of the world, included families. For instance, parents send their kids off to these top rate colleges, and they must know full well that mistakes will be made in relationships and controlled substances, among other things, so there must be faith that the child has enough intelligence and a sufficiently good upbringing so the parents can let do.
Healthier is better. (Score:2, Interesting)
Not really new (Score:5, Interesting)
His colleague Alfréd Rényi said, "a mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems", and Erdös drank copious quantities. (This quotation is often attributed incorrectly to Erdös.)[3] After 1971 he also took amphetamines, despite the concern of his friends, one of whom (Ron Graham) bet him $500 that he could not stop taking the drug for a month. Erdös won the bet, but complained during his abstinence that mathematics had been set back by a month: "Before, when I looked at a piece of blank paper my mind was filled with ideas. Now all I see is a blank piece of paper." After he won the bet, he promptly resumed his amphetamine habit.
Nicotine (Score:4, Interesting)
Good to be dumb (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually, many non-graduate jobs prefer people to be pretty dumb, academically at least. The jobs they offer only require a small amount of training which doesn't require much intelligence or academic ability, and doesn't offer much other than tedium. They don't want to employ someone who has academic prospects for fear that they might leave or just start not caring. This was a problem when I was a high school student - retailers didn't want me because of my straight As - they knew I'd be going to university, while the guy who failed three of his subjects would have much more potential as a long-term employee.
When you're 16 and you've just got As and A*s at GCSE and then you can't even get a summer job, it's pretty disheartening. I'm in my final year of university now and at the beginning of the year I got a part-time (and damn well-paid, for a student at least) job as a PHP developer, though, so I guess it has evened out!
Re:Not really new (Score:5, Interesting)
It's actually hard to find anything wrong with the results. Erdos is one of the greatest mathematicians of all time. I work in applied mathematics (cryptography) and some of my work relies on his discoveries. I'm not going to exaggerate and say he invented the internet, but there is foundational material in computer science that derives from his findings. I'm personally glad that Erdos took amphetamines, regardless of whether he depended on it. His drug use harmed at most one man, compared to the six billion others in the world who benefited from his work.
Also, you'd be hard pressed to argue that amphetamine use was harmful to Erdos. He lived a long life.
Re:Flashback! (Score:5, Interesting)
Funny you should say that. SOME hallucinogens behave like smart drugs at lower doses. LSD and mushrooms come to mind. LSD becomes a smart drug at 10% of the "psychedelic dosage" and behaves like it's cousin, Hydergine. Mushrooms start acting as an aphrodisiac at about 25% of the psychoactive dosage. Doesn't help me since the psychoactive dose puts my wife straight into sleepy/tired-land for the most part.
Re:One word that we can all relate to; (Score:2, Interesting)
Big in India (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Doesn't impact entertainment and ignorance (Score:5, Interesting)
I take piracetam, vinpocetine, adrafinil, and methylphenidate. Of course it gives me an "unfair advantage". That's why I take them. It also benefits society, because it makes me orders of magnitude more productive as an engineer and a scientist that I would be otherwise. It benefits my family, various people in need in my community, and the many children in third-world nations that I can support because my income is freaking enormous. If I were good at something more lucrative than what I do, I might feel less pressure to enhance my performance, but I doubt it. With power (to produce income) comes responsibility (to distribute income).
Re:Flashback! (Score:3, Interesting)
That's because Acid's for the plebes. You want the high done right, you hit the mushrooms. Cleaner, smoother trip.
My Experience with Provigil (Score:3, Interesting)
Firstly, it really *does* work as advertised -- when I take it, I feel like my IQ has jumped by 20 points. My brain feels like a well-oiled machine. Ideas flow, I work WAY more efficiently and with a much greater degree of focus, I'm wittier in conversation... it really is that good. Even if you've gone 24 hrs without sleep, you can take it and be fully functional. You'll still feel physically tired, but your brain will be humming along just fine. It's pretty remarkable. I would take it daily, if not for the side effects.
That's the good... now the bad. You DO (or at least *I* do) crash, when it wears off. For the first 5 hours everything is fine, but then progressively my brain starts to get foggy and I start to feel a bit dizzy and spaced out. By T+ 7-9 hrs, I'm not doing so great, and I just want to sit or lie down someplace and veg. The drug has a long half life, so even though I'm feeling more and more tired as the evening progresses, I do have dificulty falling asleep that night, and when I do sleep, my sleep is crappy. Even the following day (if I haven't taken more), I'm sort of out of it and I'm still feeling foggy. The day after THAT, everything is back to normal.
If not for the side effects, it really would be a miracle drug. As it stands, I take it only when I really have to (important deadline for work, etc.), & often I'll just take 1/2 or 1/4 of a pill.
Disclaimers: YMMV, and in general I seem to be more sensitive than average to any drug I take...
careful what you wish for (Score:4, Interesting)
Unlike the anabolic steroids, human growth hormone and blood-oxygen boosters that plague athletic competitions, the brain drugs haven't provoked similar outrage. People who take them say the drugs aren't giving them an unfair advantage but merely allow them to make the most of their hard-earned skills.
That quote constitutes excellent evidence that you can improve mental performance without actually making people any smarter. Do you think that Barry Bonds connects with that pitch because of steroids? His eye for reading the pitch is as great a natural gift as any natural gift possessed by any poker player. What the steroids do is allow his body to exploit his natural gifts more fully, at a more advanced age than was previously possible.
Ben Johnson had an explosively quick reaction to the starting gun, which had nothing to do with steroids.
False Start Rules May Slow Athletes Down [nserc.gc.ca]
What would the attitude toward steroids be if a steroid was discovered with far fewer negative side effects? What athlete couldn't claim more complete exploitation of their "hard earned skills"?
Consider the XY karyotype Spanish hurdler Maria Patino [aissg.org] who was disqualified in 1985 for not being a woman, despite having a genetic androgen insensitivity (which I presume means that even if she took steroids, it would have no useful effect).
Indeed, there are at least two well-known American movie stars who are XY women, according to researchers in sex differences, although neither of the actresses wishes her condition to be made public.
Careful what you wish for. Some hyper-feminine women are a genetic dead end. This is fair in Hollywood, but not in sports?
Now let's suppose we discover that some males are endowed with a suppressed genetic response to steroids that leads to the negative side effects of roid rage and liver disorder. Should these males, who can take large doses of steroids safely, be allowed to take these drugs? Or not, because other men can't? What exactly are we trying to prove here? Shouldn't the winners win, and the losers lose? Is any sporting event won in this era by an individual who was born with genetic assets that the rest of the population lacks?
One of the consequences of taking steroids is that they allow the athlete to train "their hard earned skills" harder and longer. Of course, the athlete might wear their cartilage to a nubbin by the age of 30, but what's to stop the athlete from having that replaced with the latest miracle Teflon?
Let's suppose a "memory" drug is invented. How does that work? You can memorize an encyclopedia by the age of 25, but by the age of 30 you can't remember what you had for lunch yesterday, because "all circuits are busy"? Maybe this side effect isn't discovered until twenty years later, as the first generation just-add-water-and-stir "geniuses" are never heard from again as they can neither find their car keys nor their cell phones.
There's an age old adage in sport that if you aren't cheating you aren't trying hard enough. What modern competition will become is a battle to have your particular advantage, stimulant, or beneficial genetic abnormality declared competition legal, while your competitor's advantages are restricted.
Our athletes are already groomed more like dancers and supermodels. With improved genetic testing, we'll be able to identify the superior individual (with respect to rules we are concurrently politicking to establish) at a preschool age. Defects in knees or bone structure can be repaired while the child is young enough to rebound quickly. Endorsement defects can be repaired with cosmetic surgery. Competitive drive can be supplanted with neurological enhancers.
And for what? Why do we worship Tiger Woods to begin with? What has he ever done for me, or anyone else here? I personally feel the human race wo
Be Precise (Score:5, Interesting)
From TFA:
> "Whatever company comes out with the first memory pill is going to put Viagra to shame," said University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Paul Root Wolpe.
The first company to come out with a memory pill (a true cognitive enhancer) was Sandoz of Switzerland. The name is Hydergine. The person who discovered it was Albert Hoffman. If he hadn't also discovered LSD and become (in)famous for that, he'd probably been nominated for a Nobel for Hydergine (and a bucket full of other highly useful drugs of his day). He mentioned he takes Hydergine 4 or 5 times a day -- at his 100th birthday party.
There have been many such drugs (nootropics; noh'-oh-troh''-pics) created since then. All of them are owned by companies that are owned by people not from the U.S. and so no U.S. companies can make profit from them. Thus, the FDA won't approve them, and pretend they don't exist. As evidence I point to recent Nobel recipient Eric Kandel (for his work on the dopamine system) who claimed he'd use his award money to create the first cognitive enhancing drug (nootropic), essentially publicly and purposefully ignoring Hoffman's discovery and the subsequent inventions.
On my way to a PhD in neuroscience, I got a master's in healthcare administration. I learned way too much about the FDA and big pharma to ever be comfortable with them again. The above statement is only one reason for that. An excuse given for not approving it is that it can cause one to become dizzy if they stand up fast. In other words, it's an effective anti-hypertensive -- it lowers blood pressure. That's more a benefit than a drawback, and is more harmless than the "acceptable" side effects from recent drugs being advertised. Hydergine and the other nootropics have far fewer negative side effects than most drugs and virtually no interaction with any other drugs, and have beneficial side effects besides. These are approved in part by the FDA, but only for advanced brain degenerative diseases, where their benefit is fairly negligible and unrecognizable. Use by those without such disease is not approved, and actively discouraged.
The good news is that due to the 1989 AIDS drug law, one can import from overseas 90 days worth at a time of any drug approved there for the on-label use. The bad news is that the USPS will try to confiscate any drugs coming from outside the US -- even those allowed by the 1989 AIDS law. This is due to pressure from the FDA, the corporate welfare office for big pharma.
I myself took Hydergine and Nootropil for 2 years, instead of the levodopa prescribed for Parkinson's. After that I no longer needed the levodopa (and still don't, a decade later), which itself has a rebound effect, causing permanent and progressive degeneration of motor control. If it weren't for these nootropics I probably would never have been able to finish my PhD. They cost me about $150 per 90 days, sent from Portugal. I consider that to be the best value for money spent in my entire life.
Re:diet and lifestyle too (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:speed (Score:1, Interesting)
ive done plenty of recreational dexedrine and let me tell you, one 15mg cap even taaken orally (time release) fucks one right the fuck up if your not used/addicted to it. just the next day you need two for a similar effect. im pretty sure if you snorted a month worth of dex you would die on the spot.
Kava anyone? (Score:2, Interesting)
Surprised I haven't seen any mention of kava [wikipedia.org]. In the western Pacific it is used as a very light social stimulant and sometimes even as a complete replacement for alcohol. Said to have a very mild sedating effect with light euphoria and talkativeness. I've read some studies from around the web which have even suggested that kava might be a suitable replacement for antidepressant medications which lacks the usual side effects and dependency. (Word of warning: I also read this drug has contraindications against certain kinds of brain drugs, so do your own research first!) The only known serious side effect is liver damage, but further research indicates that this only results in poorly-harvested kava which includes the aerial parts of the plant; traditionally, kava is prepared using only the root which doesn't seem to contain the liver toxins present in other parts of the plant.
I've not tried it myself, but I've got a batch on the way. According to reports on Erowid, the effect is very subtle and is more like a gentle nudge in the right direction as far as thinking clearly and without anxiety. Sounds right up my alley, personally.
Societal influences (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The List of Drugs (Score:3, Interesting)
Then, around my sophomore year, I was placed on the betablocker, Atenolol to help offset a heart murmur I have. After about a year on the stuff, I went from my old D-F range to an A-B range in my overall grades. By my senior year, I finished out both semesters with a straight A average across the board, and did so only being present for half that time due to a major surgery I had performed on my spine about halfway in. Of the improvements, some of the most impressive results I achieved in that time includes finishing out the entire curriculim for English/Literature classs in only four weeks (which resulted in a document of about 90 pages on things like Shakespeare and various aspects of creative writing) and achieving an understanding of advanced computer programming and business law studies almost instantly. (Most likely, my ability to understand logics problems recieved a significant boost from the drug.)
However, the Atenolol did have an odd side effect of creating vivid dreams of almost completely abstract concepts. Almost like have Salvador Dali-goggles. Eventually, I did figure out how to mentally control this effect to achieve lucid dreaming and eventually was able to offset solving real world problems to my sleeping hours and recording the results after waking up. I probably did some of my best computer programming work back in those days because of it.
I've since been taken off the Atenolol in favor of Metoprolol. Unfortunately, the benefits I get from it are nowhere close to what I did get under the Atenolol. However, this could be caused partly by a former two year battle with chronic congestive lung and heart failure preventing proper oxygen flow to the brain. I'm definitely much slower now than I was before that point.