Are smart drugs cheating?

ksmajmudar said:

...I wouldn't want to know that my surgeon relied on adderall use to get through undergrad and medical school. This is not to say that they may not know their material - it's the idea that they can't focus without adderall. I wouldn't want to be stressing, wondering "did my surgeon take his adderall this morning?"

Then again, I probably wouldn't even know. Just sayin'

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On the otherhand you ought to be worried if the person with ADHD/ADD doesn't take his adderall. I actually would be worried if my surgeon has ADHD/ADD. What if he forgot to take his adderall. If aderall is considered as unacceptable for a normal person then may be people with ADHD/ADD should not be allowed in certain fields.

Why adderall has undesirable effect on normal person while it doesn't have undesirable effect on person with ADHD/ADD is another qusetion.

Personally I don't even need coffee. It's just an habit one can do without.

ksmajmudar said:

In my personal opinion, I don't think medical students should be relying on adderall. There is certainly a difference between adderall and coffee - you can maintain one in a reasonably health lifestyle. As a doctor, it's a-okay to be drinking a cup or two of coffee every morning. Is it healthy to be popping an adderall every morning, if you don't have ADHD/ADD as prescribed by a psychiatrist? Some of you may say it's arguable, but I certainly don't think so.

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Do you think popping a caffeine pill every morning can be reasonably healthy?

If so, what do you think is the physiological difference between what caffeine does and what amphetamine salts and methylphenidate do?

My view is anything goes what people do at their desk is there own buisness, all that matters in the end is who performs. Are you gonna say the kid that aced all his exams on Addy "cheated" you out of a spot in med school? Seriously, this is the real world NO ONE CARES!!!! Especially the "Cheater"

Nootrophic drugs do enhance learning at a faster rate, I don't want to go in great detail how it affects you regarding the nervous system and AHP's etc. But yes I do believe that it would be cheating in my opinion.

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Maybe , but hold on for a second. I think it all boils down to what makes a "smart person" smart? Is it better memory, better transmission of nerve signals, faster inherent reflex, better focus or all of the above?

The answer in my opinion is all of the above. Or put is simply, a SMART person is a person that performs a task with greater efficiency when compared to an Average person .This can be any task from socializing to quantum physics.

Thus someone who is taking "smart drugs" is able to assimilate more information in a much shorter span of time when compared to a person who is not using these substances.This makes him more focused, by extension more efficient and thus smarter. This is an advantage and thus it is cheating. Every advantage is unfair but then again so is life I don't judge those that choose to do it.

"cheating"...no.

stupid, dangerous, and distasteful...yes.

Posted before, but relevant:

Background story:

So I was diagnosed with ADHD (predominately inattentive type, but a few combined symptoms) five weeks ago...I've always gotten decent grades in school (top 5% of my class in high school, honors student, etc), but it's taken extra work on my part to focus and pay attention. I literally have three checklists and assignment lists (iProcrastinate, Google Calendar, and post-it notes) to keep myself on task, and even then it doesn't always work. After talking to my mom (who was diagnosed with ADHD as a kid and is currently on Vyvanse) about my struggles focusing during lecture/studying, she suggested I visit a psychiatrist.

The doctor diagnosed me with moderate ADHD. According to her, it tends to run in families, and having a parent with it drastically increases one's chances. She initially prescribed me Ritalin, but I had a horrible reaction. I had migraines, felt anxious, and didn't feel like myself. A sort of foggy mental feeling took over. Thy psychiatrist said that such a reaction was rare (but I've read otherwise from others online), but she would try changing medicines. She said she prefers Adderall, but due to the shortage would have to prescribe something else. She changed my prescription to 40mg Vyvanse (60mg now), and the difference is night and day. I'm usually anti-medicine (for superfluous reasons, of course), but if this is how everyone else feels all the time, I'm jealous of what I've been missing out on.

It's now extremely easy to concentrate, and I crave knowledge (as dumb as that sounds). I sat down to take notes on a chapter for one of my classes and was dumbfounded when I looked at the clock and saw that only 25 minutes had passed. Usually it takes me 1+ hours due to the scattered thoughts and distractions. It was almost as if time was on pause. I can finally focus on what my professors are saying (unless it's really really boring, but that's not the medicine's fault). Studying for exams is no longer a stressful burden to get myself to sit down, it just happens. Thus far, I only take the medicine on weekdays, and it drastically improves my days, academically, and with my interactions with my friends.

My mom said she has noticed a huge improvement when talking to me on the phone (I live 5 hours from home and only see them on breaks), and my suite mates said they feel like I pay more attention to them when we're hanging out. I no longer interrupt people when they're speaking, and I am able to listen to others better.

Is this a "smart" drug? No. I got decent grades before the medicine and I'm getting decent grades after the medicine. My memory is unaffected, but my attention span is drastically improved. This helps with studying, but it's not a miracle drug that makes me ace every exam.

The people I know who buy Adderall to stay up all night and cram are the ones who are borderline failing or C students anyway. IMO, using stimulants without a prescription doesn't count as cheating, at least per literal interpretation of most university honor codes. It's illegal, unsafe, and shouldn't be done, but not cheating.

I also don't consider a person who needs to take a stimulant for ADHD inferior. That's just preposterous.

If you have ADHD, is it easy to self-diagnose yourself? From what I've read, heard, and seen, it seems like if your mind wanders or you can't concentrate for an adequate amount of time while studying or doing homework, you have ADHD. I figure this is normal, this has always happened to me. I don't mean to berate those with ADHD, I just have a hard time understanding ADHD cases where it's just your attention and rather not your attitude (like talking over professor, getting up to do something completely random when you should be doing X, etc).

jcruiser said:

If you have ADHD, is it easy to self-diagnose yourself? From what I've read, heard, and seen, it seems like if your mind wanders or you can't concentrate for an adequate amount of time while studying or doing homework, you have ADHD. I figure this is normal, this has always happened to me. I don't mean to berate those with ADHD, I just have a hard time understanding ADHD cases where it's just your attention and rather not your attitude (like talking over professor, getting up to do something completely random when you should be doing X, etc).

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Talking over your professor would be an impulse behavior, not an attitude flaw. There is an inattentive type where you don't have hyperactivity, but mainly have struggles paying attention. This is more common in adults. There is also the hyperactive type, and then there's the mixed type with symptoms from both.