Adderall as Cheating

The comment to yesterday's post about cheating techniques on YouTube asks if students taking performance-enhancing drugs like Adderall is cheating. Taking drugs to enhance performance is nothing new (see, e.g., methamphetaine and cocaine), but its prevalence, which had dropped for a while, seems to be back up. There's some evidence that today's teens and college students don't equate prescription drug abuse with "street drug" abuse. Unfortunately, many of the studies that track drug use still only focus on non-prescription drugs, so Adderall and other use is probably underreported and, therefore, probably largely still under the radar.

Another thing that seems to be different is the perception among classmates that drug use is a form of academic dishonesty. Until the comment yesterday, it had honestly never occurred to me that taking drugs to enhance academic performance was cheating. To me, it always seemed like the down-side, i.e., "this is your brain on drugs," far outweighed the upside of performing well on a single exam or even a whole degree. But now, it may be the case that student priorities are so dramatically out-of-whack that all non-drug-abusing students see is the performance enhancement. It's an interesting perspective to think that it's "unfair" that a classmate has such poor judgment that she is willing to fry her brain permanently for short-term gain. Of course, if their priorities are that skewed, it's almost certainly the result of parental pressure to perform.

What hasn't changed is the "I can stop anytime I want" justification for taking the drugs. A student in a recent story about Adderall use at University of Wisconsin says she thinks she'll stop using Adderall when she has kids. That's a good plan, since we all know that you don't need any additional energy or concentration to raise children.

What other novel forms of cheating have Millennials come up with, I wonder.


Postscript: My colleague Brett Gilbert, Director Extraordinaire of Touro's Career Services Office pointed out this excerpt from the Wikipedia entry for Adderall:

Adderall is also reportedly widely used as a "study drug" at many American universities. Adderall is reported to help focus energy and concentration to a much higher level than normal. It enables the user to focus and stay awake.[19] Stories of students writing papers for an unusual number of continuous hours [e.g., 14 hours], or cramming all night for an exam with no loss of energy or concentrations are common. However, the user reportedly can suffer from drastic side effects the following day if Adderall was used to avoid a normal sleep pattern. These reported side effects include temporary loss of vision, sleeping over 14 hours, muscle spasms, vomiting, mental confusion, etc. William Frankenberger, psychology professor at University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire, led at a study at the university in 2004 that reported 14% of the campus had abused some form of ADHD drug, including Adderall.[19]. College campuses known to be highly competitive or have a high rate of binge drinking had up to 25% of students who misused an ADHD medication within one year, a survey of students at 119 colleges across the country concluded.[19].

Also in the Wikipedia entry is a notation about one of Adderall's medically accepted uses: senile apathetic behavior. Watch for deans to start putting it in the water served at faculty meetings . . . (I kid because I love.)