Most students are at Dartmouth to learn. And most of us want this "learning" to be represented at the end of 10 weeks by the letter "A." Whether it's for personal satisfaction, parental appeasement, graduate school acceptance or a springboard into the glorified casino known as Wall Street, grades are important to most of us. "Success" is important to most of us. And as a result of this competitive spirit, for the past three years I have listened to Dartmouth students carp and cavil over their fellow students' (ab)use of the prescription drug Adderall. They claim the ADHD medication is now perverting a once-healthy competitive atmosphere.
Taking a psychostimulant like Adderall which students often do without a prescription ("Some students turn to medicine as study aid," April 23) translates into more time (and more productive time) spent studying. The obvious analogy often conjured up by Adderall naysayers is that of steroid use in baseball: individuals who gain an unfair advantage through the use of a specific substance should not be tolerated. And so the argument goes: if a student cannot adequately focus if he or she does not have the attention span to be at a school like Dartmouth then maybe he or she should be somewhere else. Maybe the arduousness of Ivy League academia is not the right place for these folks, in the same way that Yankee Stadium is not the right place for those with pencil-thin biceps.
Well, I disagree.
This popular disdain for Adderall hinges on a notion of academic parity, which is simply false. Hostility towards Adderall implicitly claims that any sort of personal advantage is inherently unfair and should not be allowed. But this doesn't make any sense. Let's think about how each of us got to a school like Dartmouth. Some of us went to private schools. Is this unfair? Should we all go to the exact same high school and study the exact same curricula? In addition, most of us have had a tutor at one point or another. Is seeing a tutor academically dishonest?
Granted, Adderall's effect is much more direct than that of these previous examples. But what about caffeine? Should students not be allowed to drink six cups of coffee to stay awake and study? What about sleeping aids? Do I gain an unfair advantage in the classroom if I take Ambien to sleep better the night before an exam?
The fact of the matter is that there are countless inequities and inconsistencies in our lives: socially, athletically and yes, academically. No college will ever be entirely "fair." In fact, I challenge those who oppose Adderall to define the word "fair," for it is a matter of ontology that we are all different: all good and bad, fast and slow, at different things. There is nothing wrong with these differences. But there is also nothing wrong with minor enhancements, so long as the risks involved do not outweigh the advantages. So, if you're short, stand on a stool ( la Mr. Sarkozy); if you want to run a marathon, drink some electrolytes; and, yes, if you need to focus, take some Adderall.
At this point, Adderall opponents tend to offer up some sort of slippery-slope argument: What if everyone started taking Adderall? As a society, do we really want to condone the constant manipulation and transformation of our biochemistry?
But we have already reached that point. How is taking Adderall any different from taking Advil? How is it any different from getting a boob job or LASIK eye surgery? If Adderall has to go, so too does almost everything in CVS painkillers, makeup, weight-loss pills, antidepressants both on the shelves and behind the counter. We already rework, revise and refine that which is "natural." I would much prefer a slippery slope that encourages us to enhance our abilities to a backward-looking, stagnant plateau in which medical innovation and artificial augmentation are taboo because they are viewed as too "unfair."
The only real concern left with Adderall is its potential health risks. And I can't imagine Adderall being any worse for you than cigarettes or alcohol. Maybe, then, the outrage over Adderall doesn't stem from its use, but from its limited availability. Maybe medical researchers need to get a firm enough grip on potential adverse reactions to Adderall so that when those who seek an increased attention span (i.e. pilots, soldiers and, yes, students) go buy some Adderall, it will be both regulated and legal.
