"Smart drugs? Sounds great! What do they do?"
Posted on 04/27/2010 6:15:00 AM PDT by Kid Shelleen
If there were a drug that would make you smarter, would you take it? Today an increasing number of healthy people are using drugs without a prescription as a way to improve their mental function.
It's called neuroenhancement and if you want to find someone who's trying it out, just visit a college campus. That's where a surprising number of students are turning to drugs like Adderall and Ritalin, originally developed to treat attention disorders, to boost their brain power and help them make the grade
(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...
LOL, they used cocaine back in the 70’s and 80’s for the same reasons.
Ritalin can be crushed and snorted for a high (I am told) that is indistinguishable from that of cocaine.
There’s a whole host of drugs called nootropics that they don’t mention in this article, I tried a couple of them, I noticed no difference whatsoever.
I’ve read on another forum and many swear by them, just as many notice no difference whatsoever.
Fancy talk it all you want, what they’re doing is taking speed. Nothing new at all.
Adderall is basically dexedrine. Ritalin is another amphetamine. Speed - plain and simple. Back in the day - they were called “diet pills”, yellowjackets, black beauties, etc...
I once pulled an all nighter before finals with Nodoze and coffee. Even if I’d wanted speed - I never had the kid of cash required - I preferred to throw away my money at the Pub.
Ritalin, at least if you swallow it, is no stronger than caffeine, but is more effective for a lot of people, myself included. Ritalin also lacks the physical addiction feature of caffeine. While the severity of caffeine withdrawal varies widely, virtually everyone experiences at least a headache, and quite a few people, myself included, experience more severe symptoms. If I’ve been consuming just two cups of tea a day as my only caffeine intake, and then miss the second cup one day, I end up with severe and debilitating headaches that on a few occasions have led to vomiting. If I take 40 mg of Ritalin every day for months, and then forget or just don’t take it because I don’t need to do anything that requires concentrating on information, I have no physical symptoms whatsoever, and just feel a bit spacier.
To me, physical withdrawal symptoms are a sign of something I shouldn’t be ingesting. Just because the government has chosen not to label caffeine as a “drug”, doesn’t make it safer than things the government has chosen to label as “drugs”. Plenty of people are ending up in emergency rooms from caffeine overdoses, that can produce serious heart rhythm abnormalities. The lobbyists for the coffee and caffeinated soda industries would go berserk if the FDA proposed making Ritalin a freely available non-prescription drug, like aspirin, and it wouldn’t be because they’re concerned about consumers’ safety.
Dude, you sound like a NORML ad.
Fancy talk it all you want, what they’re doing is taking speed. Nothing new at all.
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Ding ding. We have a winner, folks.
You are absolutely right. Pharmacologically, these drugs very much resemble meth...and as Canned Heated used to sing, Speed Kills...
There ARE real nootropics.
I have been taking Hydergine daily since 1979. It has been proven to raise measured IQ by about 10 points over time. I also take Centrophenoxine, Gingko Biloba, Vinpocetine, and assorted nutrients.
Hydergine has a significant side effect: It makes lab rats live 16% longer than the control group.
Ritalin and the other amphetamines are not true nootropics. They provide only a short term advantage. I would never even consider taking them.
Don’t underestimate the power of the pharmaceutical lobby in convincing the public that a huge array of medications should be available by prescription only. They make a heck of a lot more money from prescription drugs than non-prescription, and fight hard to prevent any prescription drug from being changed to non-prescription status (e.g. Claritin). If a prescription from a government-licensed doctor is required to get a drug, then the drug is automatically rolled into the massive enterprise of third-party payment for medical care, eliminating most consumers’ price sensitivity (because they’re only paying a small co-pay, often less than the cost of many non-prescription drugs) and pushing the cost off to employers who are required to provide health insurance plans and increasingly to government-run, taxpayer-funded health insurance programs.
Objectively speaking, there is absolutely no reason for Ritalin to require a prescription, while caffeine doesn’t. Not to mention Tylenol/acetaminophen, which is the leading cause of acute liver failure requiring transplant, and yet can be bought off the shelf by any adolescent with a hangover and/or menstrual cramps. The whole “prescription” thing is just another scheme by which big business uses government to boost profits, at the expense of citizens’ money and freedom. There are really very few drugs for which there is a legitimate need for government regulation to protect the poublic. One example is vancomycin — we can’t have the effectiveness of last-ditch antibiotics being destroyed because a bunch of idiots go out and buy “the strongest” stuff when they’ve got a minor sinus infection or something. Extremely addictive drugs, both those that currently require a prescription and totally illegal ones like meth, are legitimate targets for government regulation, because of their huge propensity for literally robbing users of their freedom, and turning them into desperate criminals who steal from and sometimes kill innocent non-users in their quest for money to buy more of the drug. But 99% of drugs that currently require a prescription pose no risk to the general public, and no greater to risk to people who would use them inappropriately, than freely available alcoholic beverages do.
Tell that to the USAF which prescribes amphetamines to pilots.
Generic Ritalin doesn't cost any more than coffee. The big expense is the government's requirement that you go to a government-licensed doctor to get a prescription for it. The street price is artificially driven up by the government regulation.
I agree completely. But nevertheless, you sound exactly like pro-marijuana advocates. Almost verbatim.
The political theory is much the same, but the “substance” sure is different. In an information-based society, ability to spend long periods focusing on information is critical to both individual and national economic success. The ability to become spacy and giggly and overindulgent in snacks isn’t good for anything. However, I would expect industry lobbying opposition to legalization of marijuana to come from the alcoholic beverage industry, and not from the pharmaceutical industry. The number of people using or seeking to use marijuana for real medical reasons is microscopic compared to the number using it purely recreationally. Although I don’t use alcohol or marijuana, or approve of the use of either, I can certainly see that there’s no legitimate reason for the government to classify alcohol as legal while classifying marijuana as illegal. The annual carnage from alcohol use is massive, and the victims are not just users, but also those killed by users, primarily in vehicle accidents and domestic violence. Marijuana certainly takes a toll on the economic productivity of users, but doesn’t directly harm anybody else, and is very rarely a causative factor in the death or permanent major disability of users.
One could make a much more intellectually sound argument for Ritalin being available without prescription to anyone over 18, than for alcoholic beverages being legally available to anyone at any age.
"Smart drugs? Sounds great! What do they do?"
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