Chasing the Red Queen in Academia

Whenever I call my parents to gripe about my course load, or over how stressed I am with the three midterms and a term paper due next week, they always-ever so gently-remind me that I'm not operating on the full-time grind schedule from nine to five Monday through Friday. Of course I'm not! Us college students have to organize our schedules around a constant deluge of demands. In a recent New Yorker piece, Margaret Talbot described this mindset as arranging our lives "in terms of what [we] can physically do in a week while still achieving a variety of goals...-social, romantic, ... extracurricular, résumé-building, academic commitments."¹ In the past decade, admissions standards have escalated, and the competition that they breed continually presses down on us through all four years, from freshman orientation to graduation.

Many students nationwide have come up with a clever, but devious, adaptation to this new academic environment. The solution to the time crunch: off-label use of neuroenhancing stimulants like Adderall and Ritalin. These drugs help students focus between classes, club meetings, office hours, and never-ending library cram sessions. True, caffeine consumption has become almost a religious sect at top universities. But when it's Sunday night and you have a 3-page problem set due at noon on Monday, caffeine may not be enough to get even Einstein through that all-nighter.

Surprisingly, the use of these neurostimulants reaches far beyond the student culture. In a 2008 survey, one in five Nature readers reported use of cognitive enhancing drugs, which revealed that many in the scientific community had used drugs off-label "to stimulate their focus, concentration or memory"². The NIH has referred to this practice of pill-popping to increase intellectual performance as "brain-doping." What's interesting is that many studies hold that the cognitive benefits of these drugs in "healthy" individuals are minimal³, if they exist at all.

However, neurostimulants aren't used exclusively by students looking to keep themselves on top. As Talbot points out, the majority of users "are decent students at schools where, to be a great student, [they] have to give up a lot more partying than [they're] willing to give up."¹ These students want the best of both worlds: to enjoy the golden years of their youth, while still making the grade. But these students make a sacrifice. Everyone knows that work done at the last minute is never as good as that essay you labored over for weeks. Work cranked out in an Adderall-induced mania may pass, but not with flying colors.

So whether you're a top student looking for a boost right before a major final, or a social butterfly skillfully balancing work and play, there is one common thread that motivates this widespread and controversial behavior; the pressures of increasing competition at colleges and universities. Any advantage is desirable, and these neuroenhancers are readily available to the willing consumer²--the Nature News poll found that one-third of the non-medically used drugs were purchased over the internet.

Just like Alice chasing the Red Queen in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, students are racing and rapidly evolving behaviors, like pill-popping for better concentration, just to stay in the same place. As academia gets harder, resourceful students adapt to the newenvironmental conditions. It''s coevolution in the ivory tower!

References:

¹ Talbot, M. "Brain Gain: The Underground World of Neuroenhancing Drugs." The New Yorker. April 27, 2009.

² Maher, B. "Poll results: look who's doping." NatureNews. April 9, 2008.

³ Chatterjee, A. "Is it acceptable for people to take methylphenidate to enhance performance? No." BMJ 2009;338:b1956

Image Credit: futurehi.net