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'Mind Doping' Becoming More Common
runamock writes "The Los Angeles Times is running a story on the growing use of 'mind drugs':
'Forget sports doping. The next frontier is brain doping. ... Despite the potential side effects, academics, classical musicians, corporate executives, students and even professional poker players have embraced the drugs to clarify their minds, improve their concentration or control their emotions. Unlike the anabolic steroids, human growth hormone and blood-oxygen boosters that plague athletic competitions, the brain drugs haven't provoked similar outrage. People who take them say the drugs aren't giving them an unfair advantage but merely allow them to make the most of their hard-earned skills.'" There's an interesting comment on this topic in Fresh Air's top cultural trends of 2007 broadcast.
People who take them say the drugs aren't giving them an unfair advantage but merely allow them to make the most of their hard-earned skills.
That sounds like what I used to say when I was dropping lots of acid and eating oodles of mushrooms in the '80s! Worked for me and never affect me in any way... gotta run, the xmas tree is breathing again.
Trolling is a art,
Caffeine.
Commodore64_love: I don't comprehend people who're so frightened of death that they'll bankrupt themselves to stay alive
The former might not be quite so obvious. The reason people are outraged when sportsmen or Olympic competitors use drugs is because people watch it for entertainment and to admire the abilities that people and animals can reach. College tests or business meetings aren't televised for people to be entertained or to marvel at the natural abilities of the human brain, so it doesn't have the same effect. Many horse racing gamblers will often say they wouldn't mind drugs, if the stats were released. While they're probably joking, I think there is some truth to it.
Did anyone else RTFA just to see what they should be taking to enhance their brain?
My Freakin Blog
Doping is doping. If you're altering your state of mind you are still doping. And yes, if you were in an academic competition then taking a drug to make you more clear-thinking is an advantage.
I've been taking a mind doping drug every morning for decades. It's called coffee.
The underlying assumption here is that being smarter helps people be successful, but the correlation between intelligence and success is relatively small.
So, many of the drugs may not be doing a whole lot to help people achieve more success.
how hard we try to 'fix' ourselves.
Most of us aren't really as broken as we think.
I find it interesting that in these articles you always see in the news, you never see the word "amphetamine" used. It's always "ADHD drugs". When people term a drug "speed" in the majority of cases, they're referring to the stronger ADHD drugs. Adderall (d-l-amphetamine), dexedrine (d-amphetamine), and desoxyn (methamphetamine!) are all used for this purpose and yet you will never hear in the news that people 3 and up with a diagnosis of add/adhd are using amphetamine or methamphetamine. It's always euphemistically termed. Think about it.
So the sports product must be controlled with dress code, drug codes etc, and when the sports product does something wrong, something that any normal person would do, the product is released so as not to tarnish the lilly white reputation. The drug thing is not about the product, it is about the image of the product. This goes to non sports products targeted as family and conservative friendly, like the Disney creation Hannah Montana who commands a premium as the product is "wholesome".
Now, if these other mental acts every become marketed as uber conservative family friendly, and the entertainers in these acts every become products, then we are likely to see them crack down on drug use, but that will be the smallest problem. Right now classical performances, art museums, indie public television, all of this type of entertainment, can get away with all sorts of stuff because they now the people who watch are not looking for the bland uber conservative family 'I am afraid of my body' entertainment. Bad or Good, the product is marketed toward a people with a wider view of the world, included families. For instance, parents send their kids off to these top rate colleges, and they must know full well that mistakes will be made in relationships and controlled substances, among other things, so there must be faith that the child has enough intelligence and a sufficiently good upbringing so the parents can let do.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I think that a normal healthy person can get better results with proper sleep, diet and exercise and a daily power nap or meditation. Saying this as a former brain doper that now has better results the natural way.
You assume that it is our lifestyle which is the better and so those that cannot operate as effectively in it are of lower intelligence. The problem with this is their lifestyle (Aboriginal lifestyle anyway, I'm not particularly knowledgable of African or Hispanic people before the spread of white man and the trends they were moving towards) didn't and wouldn't have created global warming. Their society was not severely impacted by droughts. They didn't need to desalinate water or recycle it in order to simply be able have enough for their society. They did not have to go to war simply to use the tools of their society.
To me the Aboriginal who lived in their old ways sounds much more intelligent then myself and most of my fellow Australians and Americans.
Paul Erdös seemed to be quite productive on uppers:
His colleague Alfréd Rényi said, "a mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems", and Erdös drank copious quantities. (This quotation is often attributed incorrectly to Erdös.)[3] After 1971 he also took amphetamines, despite the concern of his friends, one of whom (Ron Graham) bet him $500 that he could not stop taking the drug for a month. Erdös won the bet, but complained during his abstinence that mathematics had been set back by a month: "Before, when I looked at a piece of blank paper my mind was filled with ideas. Now all I see is a blank piece of paper." After he won the bet, he promptly resumed his amphetamine habit.
This isn't entirely new. The fact that nicotine enhances short term memory has been known for quite a while. I know someone who doesn't smoke but does buy the nicotine gum just so he can get that specific boost.
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
Actually, many non-graduate jobs prefer people to be pretty dumb, academically at least. The jobs they offer only require a small amount of training which doesn't require much intelligence or academic ability, and doesn't offer much other than tedium. They don't want to employ someone who has academic prospects for fear that they might leave or just start not caring. This was a problem when I was a high school student - retailers didn't want me because of my straight As - they knew I'd be going to university, while the guy who failed three of his subjects would have much more potential as a long-term employee.
When you're 16 and you've just got As and A*s at GCSE and then you can't even get a summer job, it's pretty disheartening. I'm in my final year of university now and at the beginning of the year I got a part-time (and damn well-paid, for a student at least) job as a PHP developer, though, so I guess it has evened out!
Amnesty International
By your logic, a well-balanced meal, tea, coffee, or even a good nights sleep would be considered doping.
Oh, you mean like Apartheid or the Belgian Congo or Imperial Egypt or Imperial India or.... (list goes on FORVEVER...)
Retard, Hispanics are descended from European culture, ever hear of Spain? Conquistadors? Get a clue. Won't bother responding to the rest of your diatribe because I already proved you don't know what you're talking about, and thus anything that follows out of your cowardly mouth is unreliable.
(%i1) factor(777353);
(%o1) 777353
Interesting the term never surfaced in the article...perhaps the author needs some. OTOH, the number of misspelled, grammatically flawed entries here would indicate many of us could use a little mental boost.
007: "Who are you?"
Pussy: "My name is Pussy Galore."
007: "I must be dreaming..."
The War On Drugs.
The same way I can get more intoxicated from two beers than from a marijuana cigarette, yet only the beer is legal.
What could possibly hurt the security of the American people more than giving our own government the ability to hide its
A lot of the drugs *are* amphetamines, including Adderall (generic form - mixed amphetamine salts) and Desoxyn (methamphetamine).
Others (Ritalin, Concerta & generics) are methylphenidate, which is very similar to amphetamine.
I have experimented with Nootropil.
It worked, in a subtle way. And bear in mind the down is bigger than the up, useful for getting out of a dopey mood. Could be a lifesaver if you had to perform. However, you should be able to make yourself alert without drugs.
However:
- it doesn't fix confidence, just the ability to think quick if you want it
- you can still feel sleepy or lazy. If at a party it just prevents that mind freeze
- the next day I felt as dopey as I felt alert before; i.e. the low is a little greater than the high so you have to be prepared for this
- it creates dependency. You notice the times of not being on it more, obviously, the drugs don't work
I now keep just a few half tabs in case I need to drive back from somewhere for work / prevent getting stranded and for emergencies.
That's my experience on the subject.
A blog I run for the wealth
There is a difference, mainly in operation.
These stimulants (Adderall, Ritalin, other amphetamine/amphetamine-like drugs) have an effect as soon as the chemicals reach your brain. Much like caffeine or nicotine, the effects last for awhile and taper off. They can be consumed whenever without any withdrawal (at normal doses). For example, someone might take these drugs twice a year for finals.
Prozac and other antidepressants tend to take a few weeks before results are felt at all. Those kinds of drugs rely on altering brain chemistry and generally must be taken on a schedule to remain effective, and can even have negative effects if you miss a dose. You can't just take them whenever you're feeling upset and get an effect 20 minutes later.
Sharon Morein-Zamir, a psychologist at Cambridge University who writes about the ethics of brain enhancement, said her interest in the medications was largely academic. But when someone she knew who had been taking Provigil for a neurological condition offered her some pills, Morein-Zamir's curiosity was piqued.
"I knew the literature and wondered what it felt like," she said.
The drug helped her focus as she worked at her computer for hours straight. But she wondered if it was a placebo effect.
Prescriptions for Inderal and other beta blockers can be readily obtained from physicians. Tuck said some doctors had told her they used the drugs themselves to calm their own nerves before making presentations at medical meetings. Musicians say their drug use is all aboveboard.
and finally a few comments on negative side effects...
But cosmetic neurology, as some call it, has risks. Ritalin, Adderall and other ADHD drugs can cause headaches, insomnia and loss of appetite. Provigil can make users nervous or anxious and bring on headaches, while beta blockers can cause drowsiness, fatigue and wheezing.
One Stanford University study found that low doses of Aricept improved the performance of healthy pilots as they tried to master new skills in a flight stimulator, but the side effects -- dizziness and vomiting -- were less than desirable in a pilot.
-- QED
Stimulants (amphetamines, modafinil) can be addictive (or have potential to be--modafinil is Schedule IV), beta-blockers (Inderal, aka propanolol) cannot. There is a huge, huge difference between the two. Beta-blockers have long been indicated for anxiety and are well tolerated in most patients, your grandfather is probably on beta-blockers, I'm not really sure what relevance they have to TFA. I guess the journalist here doesn't know the difference or just doesn't care.
(Not a doctor, not a pharm anything, just an ordinary medical student speaking. Merry Christmas!)
Bacopa, Brahmii, and others....herbs of the Ayruvedic tradition, all used now and for thousands of years by many students and engineers all over India to give them an edge... and steal your job ;) . Bacopa at least has a fair amount of clinical studies to back it up too and these herbs have a long history of safety.
- Sweeney Torvalds, demon coder of Fleet Street
Granted, not every classical musician you see on stage is taking pills. But there are a number who will not go on stage without them. Personally, I subscribe to the banana method. Large quantities of bananas eaten for a week before a high-pressure situation is a common "natural" practice amongst my peers as well.
But mind doping something new? Bah! This practice has been going on for a long time in the music world.
Not really, There are all sorts of ways to clear your mental process and focuss on the task at hand. In sports, the drugs give special advantages like refining muscle mas and tone towards a specific goal or increasing your oxygen levels on the blood so you can perform longer or faster.
In mind doping, the enhancement isn't something that wasn't there before. It doesn't effect how intelligent or creative you are, it only removes obstacles hampering your ability to tap into that already existing mental capacity.
The differences are clear in this respect. It would be like running a race and having someone clear hurdles from your lane (performance enhancements) as apposed to having someone remove pieces of gravel, plastic cups and other debree in your lane(mind doping). The causes and effect are really that different. One helps you do something better while the other helps you do something without distractions that shouldn't be there.
I can attest to how effective Provigil is. It does have side effects, though.
Firstly, it really *does* work as advertised -- when I take it, I feel like my IQ has jumped by 20 points. My brain feels like a well-oiled machine. Ideas flow, I work WAY more efficiently and with a much greater degree of focus, I'm wittier in conversation... it really is that good. Even if you've gone 24 hrs without sleep, you can take it and be fully functional. You'll still feel physically tired, but your brain will be humming along just fine. It's pretty remarkable. I would take it daily, if not for the side effects.
That's the good... now the bad. You DO (or at least *I* do) crash, when it wears off. For the first 5 hours everything is fine, but then progressively my brain starts to get foggy and I start to feel a bit dizzy and spaced out. By T+ 7-9 hrs, I'm not doing so great, and I just want to sit or lie down someplace and veg. The drug has a long half life, so even though I'm feeling more and more tired as the evening progresses, I do have dificulty falling asleep that night, and when I do sleep, my sleep is crappy. Even the following day (if I haven't taken more), I'm sort of out of it and I'm still feeling foggy. The day after THAT, everything is back to normal.
If not for the side effects, it really would be a miracle drug. As it stands, I take it only when I really have to (important deadline for work, etc.), & often I'll just take 1/2 or 1/4 of a pill.
Disclaimers: YMMV, and in general I seem to be more sensitive than average to any drug I take...
But what if part of that "mental capacity" is really ... measuring how well you can concentrate? That'd be true for a professional poker player, and the same would be true for a student taking an exam. Yes, other mental faculties still matter, but ability to concentrate is an important one (and there is a whole lot of personal difference there).
The same exact thing you said about "mind doping" holds true for "substance abuse" of athletes. Steroids don't magically give you a bulkier body. You still have to work out. You could almost say that all steroids do is compensate for lack of hormonal inclination towards building higher muscle mass. The exact same way caffeine helps you stay awake more and other substances help you concentrate (beyond what you'd "normally" be able to do).
You can draw as many lines in the sand and split as many hairs as you want. There is a definite double standards towards "substance abuse" of athletes and substance abuse of other professions that are, in nearly all aspects, including health of participants, exactly the same.
Unlike the anabolic steroids, human growth hormone and blood-oxygen boosters that plague athletic competitions, the brain drugs haven't provoked similar outrage. People who take them say the drugs aren't giving them an unfair advantage but merely allow them to make the most of their hard-earned skills.
That quote constitutes excellent evidence that you can improve mental performance without actually making people any smarter. Do you think that Barry Bonds connects with that pitch because of steroids? His eye for reading the pitch is as great a natural gift as any natural gift possessed by any poker player. What the steroids do is allow his body to exploit his natural gifts more fully, at a more advanced age than was previously possible.
Ben Johnson had an explosively quick reaction to the starting gun, which had nothing to do with steroids.
False Start Rules May Slow Athletes Down
What would the attitude toward steroids be if a steroid was discovered with far fewer negative side effects? What athlete couldn't claim more complete exploitation of their "hard earned skills"?
Consider the XY karyotype Spanish hurdler Maria Patino who was disqualified in 1985 for not being a woman, despite having a genetic androgen insensitivity (which I presume means that even if she took steroids, it would have no useful effect).
Indeed, there are at least two well-known American movie stars who are XY women, according to researchers in sex differences, although neither of the actresses wishes her condition to be made public.
Careful what you wish for. Some hyper-feminine women are a genetic dead end. This is fair in Hollywood, but not in sports?
Now let's suppose we discover that some males are endowed with a suppressed genetic response to steroids that leads to the negative side effects of roid rage and liver disorder. Should these males, who can take large doses of steroids safely, be allowed to take these drugs? Or not, because other men can't? What exactly are we trying to prove here? Shouldn't the winners win, and the losers lose? Is any sporting event won in this era by an individual who was born with genetic assets that the rest of the population lacks?
One of the consequences of taking steroids is that they allow the athlete to train "their hard earned skills" harder and longer. Of course, the athlete might wear their cartilage to a nubbin by the age of 30, but what's to stop the athlete from having that replaced with the latest miracle Teflon?
Let's suppose a "memory" drug is invented. How does that work? You can memorize an encyclopedia by the age of 25, but by the age of 30 you can't remember what you had for lunch yesterday, because "all circuits are busy"? Maybe this side effect isn't discovered until twenty years later, as the first generation just-add-water-and-stir "geniuses" are never heard from again as they can neither find their car keys nor their cell phones.
There's an age old adage in sport that if you aren't cheating you aren't trying hard enough. What modern competition will become is a battle to have your particular advantage, stimulant, or beneficial genetic abnormality declared competition legal, while your competitor's advantages are restricted.
Our athletes are already groomed more like dancers and supermodels. With improved genetic testing, we'll be able to identify the superior individual (with respect to rules we are concurrently politicking to establish) at a preschool age. Defects in knees or bone structure can be repaired while the child is young enough to rebound quickly. Endorsement defects can be repaired with cosmetic surgery. Competitive drive can be supplanted with neurological enhancers.
And for what? Why do we worship Tiger Woods to begin with? What has he ever done for me, or anyone else here? I personally feel the human race wo
The article is about using psychotropics like amphetamines and methylphenidate (Ritalin) to "improve" brain power. In the short term they do. Then they bring on rebound effects like chronic depression. Continuing after that stresses the dopamine system (that these force to work harder) and can bring on Parkinson's. The Alzheimer's drug does the same, but they consider the long term drawbacks to be less than the immediate benefit. Using these drugs for the purpose stated in TFA is called "off-label use". This (mis-)use has been going on since the first stimulants (cocaine among them) became available over a century ago. These are performance enhancers, not true cognitive enhancers. The distinction is important, and there but buried in TFA.
From TFA:
> "Whatever company comes out with the first memory pill is going to put Viagra to shame," said University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Paul Root Wolpe.
The first company to come out with a memory pill (a true cognitive enhancer) was Sandoz of Switzerland. The name is Hydergine. The person who discovered it was Albert Hoffman. If he hadn't also discovered LSD and become (in)famous for that, he'd probably been nominated for a Nobel for Hydergine (and a bucket full of other highly useful drugs of his day). He mentioned he takes Hydergine 4 or 5 times a day -- at his 100th birthday party.
There have been many such drugs (nootropics; noh'-oh-troh''-pics) created since then. All of them are owned by companies that are owned by people not from the U.S. and so no U.S. companies can make profit from them. Thus, the FDA won't approve them, and pretend they don't exist. As evidence I point to recent Nobel recipient Eric Kandel (for his work on the dopamine system) who claimed he'd use his award money to create the first cognitive enhancing drug (nootropic), essentially publicly and purposefully ignoring Hoffman's discovery and the subsequent inventions.
On my way to a PhD in neuroscience, I got a master's in healthcare administration. I learned way too much about the FDA and big pharma to ever be comfortable with them again. The above statement is only one reason for that. An excuse given for not approving it is that it can cause one to become dizzy if they stand up fast. In other words, it's an effective anti-hypertensive -- it lowers blood pressure. That's more a benefit than a drawback, and is more harmless than the "acceptable" side effects from recent drugs being advertised. Hydergine and the other nootropics have far fewer negative side effects than most drugs and virtually no interaction with any other drugs, and have beneficial side effects besides. These are approved in part by the FDA, but only for advanced brain degenerative diseases, where their benefit is fairly negligible and unrecognizable. Use by those without such disease is not approved, and actively discouraged.
The good news is that due to the 1989 AIDS drug law, one can import from overseas 90 days worth at a time of any drug approved there for the on-label use. The bad news is that the USPS will try to confiscate any drugs coming from outside the US -- even those allowed by the 1989 AIDS law. This is due to pressure from the FDA, the corporate welfare office for big pharma.
I myself took Hydergine and Nootropil for 2 years, instead of the levodopa prescribed for Parkinson's. After that I no longer needed the levodopa (and still don't, a decade later), which itself has a rebound effect, causing permanent and progressive degeneration of motor control. If it weren't for these nootropics I probably would never have been able to finish my PhD. They cost me about $150 per 90 days, sent from Portugal. I consider that to be the best value for money spent in my entire life.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
The canonical example is of course good old alcohol.
anybody else up for a no-holds-barred olympics where people can do whatever they like to themselves in order to win?
If medicine were ever perfected, we'd all be the same.
Surprised I haven't seen any mention of kava. In the western Pacific it is used as a very light social stimulant and sometimes even as a complete replacement for alcohol. Said to have a very mild sedating effect with light euphoria and talkativeness. I've read some studies from around the web which have even suggested that kava might be a suitable replacement for antidepressant medications which lacks the usual side effects and dependency. (Word of warning: I also read this drug has contraindications against certain kinds of brain drugs, so do your own research first!) The only known serious side effect is liver damage, but further research indicates that this only results in poorly-harvested kava which includes the aerial parts of the plant; traditionally, kava is prepared using only the root which doesn't seem to contain the liver toxins present in other parts of the plant.
I've not tried it myself, but I've got a batch on the way. According to reports on Erowid, the effect is very subtle and is more like a gentle nudge in the right direction as far as thinking clearly and without anxiety. Sounds right up my alley, personally.
You are right about the influence of millions of dollars. Lao Tzu would agree with you. One of the verses in Tao te Ching cautions against, "Holding up that which is hard to attain." because doing so will engender competetion and people going to extremes to oppose each other to attain it. If you haven't read the book, I highly recommend it. Despite being nearly 1000 years old the insights it presents into life are timeless.
The inhabitants of Easter Island (the one with with those large stone faces) cut down all the trees on the island, destroying their environment and dooming their civilization. It is silly to think that only Western culture can be environmentally reckless--there are many counterexamples. Remember that the "aboriginal" people in Australia and America were thousands of years behind the Old World, technologically. They didn't have the ability to drastically alter their environments. Eventually, they would have gained such technology, and would have followed the pattern every other animal (yes, humans are animals) follows--consume until the environment can no longer support the population.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Piracetam and vinpocetine are just unverified dietary supplements.
Adrafinil is fancy caffiene.
Methylphenidate, also known as Ritalin, is primarily used for people with ADHD or in ordinary individuals who have sleeping and fatigue disorders.
If you are healthy (which after that cocktail you may be sitting with quite an over active heart) might I suggest in all manner of kindness, you might find better results if you not work like a maniac and instead devote an hour of overtime to excercise and healthy eating. You may find that all those pills are just an expensive placebo.
Now that I think about it, that second part of your comment seems more sarcastic than I had thought...
Nihilism means nothing to the dancing peasants