Belligerati

I wonder if the 22% would seem so unlikely if you corrected for family income level, race, attending a university and age. (oh, and also that they only need to have had it prescribed once in the 4 years to qualify as "having had a legitimacy prescription")

Regardless, I can add an anecdote. Here at Upenn I spent an evening during finals with one of my friends who is rather open about the fact that she has a Ritalin prescription. During the course of that one evening she got 4 phone calls and 2 visits from people seeking to acquire her Ritalin. Friends wanted to know if they could have some, her pot dealer wanted to know if he could buy some . People who she barely knew wanted to know if they could buy some as well. It was really kind of creepy.

I commented that I couldn't help feeling a little bit like it was cheating. Its sort of like steroid use in sports right? But there are some key differences, sports operate in there own arena. It doesn't actually help us as a society to have someone who can run faster or lift more. (with the possible exception of the military, and if the military decides it will benefit from giving its soldiers steroids then thats what it will do, they are quite reasonably not restricted by a lot of our silly laws.)

On the other hand, there is a great advantage to having smarter better educated people. Even if they got that way by using mental steroids. Even if it shaves a few years off of there life.

I have always been very tempted by the smart drugs, but never actually used any of them. Watching someone on them is quite amazing though, there is nothing quite like seeing someone work for 36 hours straight at the level of focus that most of us can only reach for 2-4 hours on our very best days. Being able to do that is quite tempting.

What a facinating story. Do these smart drugs help you retain information as well as absorb it in the first place? That'd be important in deciding if they are net positives.

Even controlling for all that it seems high. I went to school with a few prescribed Ritalin users and a few Ritalin abusers who bought it, got it through the mail or what have you. Lumping them all in, it was far less than 10% of the people I knew. Now there were probably people I didn't know using and abusing.

But I do have a control variable. Depression. Smart drug abuse may be easy to hide, and if properly medicated, ADD is too. But depression is not. I know a few medicated but depressed people who have the kind of washed out but impossibly relentless positive attitude that only anti-depression drugs can work. But the unmedicated are always easy to spot, as they sleep away the day in their dark dorm rooms, fail to do their work, speak so many complaints and eat just to feel alive, they are much easier to identify.

Consider this article:
http://www.mcmanweb.com/article-205.htm
It says that a survey by the National Mental Health Association reported that 10 percent of college students have been diagnosed with depression. Other expertise is cited that the lifetime incidence of depression is 20 percent, and the peak age of onset is around college age.

It is hard for me to believe that the people I went to school with were more likely to be on ADD drugs than to be depressed.

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