Picture from www.iamrogue.com/limitless
Have you seen the movie “Limitless”? Eddie Morra is an unsuccessful writer whose life is transformed by a top-secret “smart drug” NZT. It allows him to use 100% of his brain and he can remember everything he has ever read, seen or heard.
Do you know that the made-up plot in the movie, in fact, happens in real life? A number of people, including students in universities, keep using “smart drugs”, like Adderall, Ritalin, and modafinil, and they say that it has given them the boost to work non-stop for 10 hours a day and made them more concentrated and more intelligent. Originally, Adderall and Ritalin are prescribed for patients with attention deficit disorder (ADD) or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD); modafinil is generally taken as the treatment of narcolepsy. However, some university students are taking the drugs, because they hope to be smarter in order to get higher grades.
A surprising number of students take the drugs without thinking of the risks of the drugs. An American study, cited in the journal Nature, estimated that up to 25% of students at some campuses had taken neuroenhancing drugs in the past year. They think they are doing something that their body can tolerate, but they do not realize these drugs are highly addictive
Picture from bioethics.net
substances. For example, a freshman honor student named Aly said that she took only one week to become dependent on Adderall. Besides addiction, there are numerous side effects. Ritalin, as an example, can cause nervous system side effects (such as, dizziness, headache, nervousness, trouble sleeping), gastrointestinal side effects (such as, nausea, vomiting, and abdominal pain), and cardiovascular side effects (such as, changes in blood pressure and pulse rate).
Continue the story in “Limitless” mentioned at the beginning, Eddie Morra suddenly experiences financial and social success, but soon realizes that he has to keep taking the drug, which has lethal and lasting side effects, in order to keep the ability. Does he really become smarter? The same questions apply to these drugs like Adederall. Do people who take “smart drugs” really gain IQ? Dr. Greely published her paper about Cognitive-Enhancing Drugs on Nature, and stated that these drug typically improve concentration and a few areas of cognitive performance, but only while the drug is still in the blood. Therefore, it may be more accurately to refer to these drugs as productivity enhancers instead of intelligence enhancers. Seriously, an overdose of Ritalin can be fatal. Moreover, these drugs are recently developed, thus lacking long-term observations of future physiological effects.
Adderall XR 20mg capsules by Patrick Mallahan III
At the end, I wish people would stop using these “smart drug”, because they do not make people actually become more intelligent, but can cause addiction and ruin people’s lives.
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