On a windy mountain road in French Pyrenees you grind up the
mountain, your bike eating the dotted line pavement like a carbon fiber pac-man. You have broken away from the peloton and push
forward, the crowd splitting like the red sea as you ascend. Your legs burn, crying for oxygen, but your
brain convinces them to push harder you know the polka dot jersey (award for
the best climber) and maybe even the yellow one could be yours. The last 10 years of your life have prepared
your for this moment; every meal carefully calculated, every training ride
planned by your coach, your bike made of space age materials. You have optimized every fiber of your bike
and body to give you any advantage. And
then it happens. Seemingly out of
nowhere a man from Texas pulls up next to you, makes eye contact as if to say “nice
try” and then proceeds to hammer up the mountain ahead of you with machine like
precision and determination.
Now imagine if instead of a mountain in the Pyrenees you are
in a lecture hall at the university about to take your final exam. Or you are at the local testing center taking
the MCAT. It is less obvious where the
peloton is, but when the scores come out you will find out how you stack
up. Are you still behind that man from
Texas? The story of how he beat you on
that mountain is well known, but what if he beat you in the classroom by the
same means?
Doping is no longer limited to athletics. In recent years there has been an increase in
use of amphetamine stimulants on college campuses. The mostly widely used amphetamines are
Adderall and Ritalin, which both have legitimate uses for treating mental
disorders such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). However, an increasing number of college
students are using these medications as “Smart Drugs” to increase their ability
to study and focus for long periods. Drugs
are obtained by either faking ADHD symptoms, or through a non-pharmacy
source. Interestingly at least one study
has shown these medication to be only minimally helpful (1), although other
studies have shown the benefits to be more significant (2). Despite this, up to
15% of college students have used Adderall or similar cognition enhancers without
a medical need (3). Usage has also shown increases during high stress times such as finals (4).
Briefly, the mechanism of these amphetamine medications:
Individuals with ADHD have decreased levels of the neurotransmitter (NT)
dopamine. Medications like Adderall and
Ritalin block dopamine re-uptake, effectively increasing the amount of dopamine
in the synapse (5). Increased dopamine
levels have been shown to increase motivation and attention, while decreasing
distractibility.
The future of how we treat doping in academics is not
entirely clear. Differentiating between use
and abuse may prove to be difficult, making regulation complex and full of
ethical grey area. As we’ve seen in Le
Tour, if doping goes unchecked, the only way to succeed is to cheat; those who
play by the rules are the ones that lose.
I don’t think we want the academic world to stoop to that level. Academic doping needs to be addressed before it’s
too late.
References:
1.
Ilieva I, Boland J, Farah MJ. Objective
and subjective cognitive enhancing effects of mixed amphetamine salts in
healthy people. Neuropharmacology 64: 496–505, 2013.
2.
Steiner H, Van Waes V. Addiction-related
gene regulation: risks of exposure to cognitive enhancers vs. other
psychostimulants. Progress in neurobiology 100: 60–80, 2013.
3.
Workman T, Eells G. Assessing the Risks
and Issues: Prescription Drug Abuse on Campus [Online]. Prescription drug
abuse: Assessing the risks ….
http://www.law.stetson.edu/conferences/highered/archive/media/higher-ed-archives-2010/assessing-the-risks-and-issues.pdf
[14 Oct. 2013].
4.
Burgard D a, Fuller R, Becker B, Ferrell R,
Dinglasan-Panlilio MJ. Potential trends in Attention Deficit Hyperactivity
Disorder (ADHD) drug use on a college campus: wastewater analysis of
amphetamine and ritalinic acid. The Science of the total environment
450-451: 242–9, 2013.
5.
Sherzada, Awista An Analysis of ADHD Drugs:
Ritalin and Adderall, JCCC Honors Journal:
Vol. 3: Iss. 1, Article 2. Available
at:http://scholarspace.jccc.edu/honors_journal/vol3/iss1/2 2012
Brad,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your post. I have seen many college students obtain adderall, ritalin, or vyvanse illegally. And, quite frankly, it is kind of upsetting when kids use medications that are not prescribed or do not have ADD or ADHD to excel in the classroom.
When you mentioned that college kids use amphetamines during finals, it got me thinking…I remember in my undergraduate psychology class, my professor said that the way you study is the way you should take the test (i.e. you study on adderall, you should take the test on adderall). If you study in a certain mindset, you are more likely to recall information when your brain operations are similar to when you learned it. While I was unable to find research in regards to using certain medications or substances while studying and test taking, I was able to find that studying in the same environment where you originally learned the information is good for recalling information (Dutcher 2011). So, although these kids are using adderall to study more "efficiently" and to retain information, if they are not taking the adderall during the test, who knows if they will actually perform well.
Reference:
Dutcher J. Study Tips from Psychology. April 2011. Psychology in Action. Retrieved from: http://www.psychologyinaction.org/2011/04/23/study-tips-from-psychology/