I Googled my way after a discussion with a fellow pre-med classmate about the "ethics" of Adderall. She would complain about people who seem lazy and yet do well in school and say things such as: "Ugh, she probably takes Adderall!"
This is so depressing seeing people on a forum, created for students becoming MEDICAL DOCTORS, saying things such as "drugs are bad" or "drugs are cheating"
First, let's get this straight. Not everyone is born equal. We have been lodged in our head since the day we were born that "All men are created equal" or other soliloquy/guidelines, you name it. When you think of the individuality of each person, it consists of two general categories: Nature + Nurture. Nature is such that your genes give you a greater chance to be predisposed to diseases and disorders such as ADHD. Nurture can be anything from you being dropped, or the way society has treated you due to your image, or even stress causing your predisposed gene to be expressed. People often misconstrue when discriminating others that there is a third variable in which is the main source of our equal-individuality and that everybody has the equal opportunity at an equal effort to do something. That is wrong. Ask yourself if you have any of the following: Use correction lenses, drink coffee, wear make-up, eat food. The first three of the list is easier to understand what is "cheating" in life. Unless your ethical perspective of "cheating" is using tools to assist you with things you do in life, then it isn't really cheating. There isn't very much of a red border line defining what is cheating and what is not cheating, as the policy varies for many different situations.
Food is a drug. Coffee is a drug. Adderall is a drug. Anything you take from an external source to promote natural responses in your body is a drug. I'm not going to get into what is "natural" and what is "unnatural" as everything is relative to one another, but in this case, we have to understand Adderall (Amphetamine) stimulates your pre-frontal cortex by reversing the dopamine reuptake transporter at the synpase thus increasing the concentration of dopamine at the synaptic cleft. Dopamine is the neurotransmitter consistent with alertness and other goodies that you get from amphetamine. In a normal person, there is a hypo-dopamine concentration due to the lack of D4 receptor gene. ADHD helps fix this by allowing dopamine to exchange-diffuse through the synapse. Food, is broken down by enzymes and absorbed in the small intestine and depending on what the food is, has different effects on your body. Carbs give you energy, protein gives you muscle. I'm not going to explain that process, the point is, basically, drugs change your bodies one way or another.
Ethics
Here's my very general abbreviated definition of ethics:
If something doesn't harm anybody, then it isn't unethical.
Then why does Adderall must be legally prescribed?
There are many reasons why the FDA wants to regulate certain things. Everything can be abused, and everything must be taken in moderation. Eat too much? -> Obesity -> Die. (Then again you could also die from many other ways)
However, most of us have something called the Hypothalamus which regulates when you're full and need to stop eating. Plus, food is required for more important functions such as...well...being alive; thus it isn't regulated
Adderall is a psychostimulant drug, it's not necessarily needed to directly live, however, it has a great effect in the way some of us live. Remember, Adderall is an amphetamine - it has many therapeutic uses, not just for "ADHD". People can benefit from Adderall for different reasons. Some more than others. While others it can have detrimental effects. Not everybody is made the same, just as not every drug can solve the same problem or some drugs can solve many different problems. The main reason it is regulated, is that it can be abused much more easily causing harm to both the person in use and possibly others. Physicians, by law, are told to limit prescription Adderall to a maximum of 30 dosages of whatever dose per patient per month. The patient must see the physician once a month in order to continue usage. Many prescribed patients don't use the entire dosage and thus leads to a surplus. Everybody wants money. Thus it leads to illegal sales of Adderall. However, Adderall, at low dose, is generally not dangerous, thus regulation. Adderall is also generally not addictive compared to other higher sources of amphetamine due to the peak effect that they have. Adderall does not directly make you any happier (e.g. Serotonin increase) because Adderall is a low-dose form of amphetamine. Only at higher dosages are prone to abuse and addiction.
Those are the basics, now to get to the real question, is using Adderall without prescription considered cheating when using it for academic purposes? First of all, getting a prescription is not hard. It's not meant to be. The main goal was to regulate Adderall to prevent harm done by people... we only want the beneficial effects of drugs. Generally people who put the effort to find a physician, go to the physician, then explain why they want Adderall, rationally believe that they will have beneficial effects when using Adderall. This is perfectly fine because humans have evolved to use tools to aid them in tasks. Want to reach something higher and you're not 16'? Make a ladder and climb it. Want to increase your chances of procreating with the opposite sex? Wear make-up. (Yes, there are many valid answers to these questions, I'm just pointing out simple answers that people often deem as "unnatural")
So thus, you can understand how Adderall has become a tool now. Some people use Adderall because they can't focus even if they study daily without cramming, while others they can't study because they had other preferred desires and use Adderall to prevent sleep in order to cram for tests. Let me tell you one thing, there is no drug available that will protect you from the harm that lack of sleep does to you. So perhaps you have temporarily raised your GPA by doing well on that test you just crammed for with the assistance of Adderall to keep you awake the night before. Great job, however, these people are only cheating themselves. Believe it or not, but the amount of sleep you get correlates with how long you live. Sleep is not exactly a cumulative effect, but it can be seen that way, if you slept 1/2 as much as what you should sleep, you would probably live 1/2 as long as you would have lived. Sleep can only be compared to your own sleep requirements. And yes, longetivity has many, many other factors. But as we can see, using Adderall as that cram-drug you may win one way, but lose another. Thus it is advised to use Adderall at the early mornings to help you concentrate throughout the day, and allow you to sleep at night. When using Adderall as a cram-drug, it does serve a therapeutic purpose, but deprives you of another.
To conclude, you should not discriminate against people who use Adderall lightly, don't be so close minded to think of "cheating" by using a drug... save that for the athletes. We are physicians. We acknowledge our genetic predispositions and fight it with medicine. We use our tools. In sports as you can see, it is dominated by people with genetic predisposition that assists them in their field... or disorders such as the XYY syndrome which can also assist them. However, to them it's not considered a disorder as it promotes their career. The law forbids the usage of steroids mostly because it has detrimental effects on health with usage, but people regard the reason as "cheating" just as many of you in this forum.
Basically a cliche way of ending this is, don't harm yourself or others. Use Adderall for the therapeutic effects without the detrimental effects. If you don't need it, why bother? You save money and time which you could use to study even more than those "drugged up kids" you often label. If you believe it has beneficial uses and believe you can use it to minimize/prevent any of the detrimental effects even if you don't have ADHD, go for it! Do it legally. Medicine are our tools, and we use our tools to help people. Be a good Doctor of Medicine, not discrimination.
