“Riding lightning. That’s the best way I can describe taking Adderall.”
Retired NFL offensive lineman Eben Britton wrote this during his reflection on his use of performance enhancing drugs to keep up with the other players. But giants in the NFL aren’t an anomaly when it comes to abusing amphetamines. On my way to class every weekday I pass people on campus who take Ritalin, Adderall, and Vyvanse without a prescription - people who understand these chemicals as a way of “evening the playing field” when it comes to academics. Take Your Pills is a documentary that highlights the performance enhancing drug lust found in American culture and how much harder it is to get by today without these aids.
Take Your Pills begins its commentary through a series of interviews that hits close to home: interviews with college students just trying to pass their exams. Disturbingly, the kids interviewed didn’t seem to take notice of the fact that they were committing a crime by taking somebody else’s pills. They pointed out that kids would openly ask in group chats if anyone was selling their Adderall. Most people had a system laid out where they would go to the library, place everything on their desk, and crank through hours of homework on an amphetamine high. This practice isn’t new: a 1937 news article mentions college students using amphetamines to get ahead in school.
After a few short interviews with people my age, the documentary switches gears and begins a brief history of the production of narcotics by the pharmaceutical industry. For the first half of the 20th century, nobody knew of the adverse effects of these chemicals. Benzedrine, the first marketed name for amphetamine was sold everywhere. To test these pills, one pharmaceutical company simply went to a school and asked the principal if they could just start giving them out to children. The principal was happy to let a drug company give out experimental pills to the children if it meant they would calm down and do their work more effectively.
The documentary then introduces its final subjects: a young programmer, an aspiring artist, a financial analyst, and two young CEOs of a nootropics company. Of these people, the aspiring artist and the financial analyst were unhappy about having to take cognitive enhancers. Of course, the nootropics CEOs would be very supportive of the pills, and the young programmer sees it as the only way he can keep his job. The only negative side effect discussed by any of these people was the seizure that the financial analyst’s coworker had after two and a half days of uninterrupted work. This is a very serious medical emergency, but since it took two and a half days of no sleep and a constant dosage of Adderall, it can’t necessarily be used as evidence for cognitive enhancers being exceptionally deadly. This brings up an interesting problem with the documentary: there wasn’t much discussion about the negative effects of small doses of amphetamines. One kid mentioned getting a headache and a college girl said it made her feel less fun to be around, but other than that, the pills these people took helped them get their work done faster. Why is it that every argument to stay away from drugs is centered on the negative side effects? If there were no negative side effects to taking cognitive enhancers, would there still be a moral dilemma attached to their use? Where is the line between taking fish oil pills in the morning with omega-3 fatty acids to keep your heart healthy and taking a healthy cognitive enhancer to help your brain work more effectively? The documentary only began to answer some of these questions at the very end, posing the idea that not being enhanced is what it means to be human. To take away someone’s creativity or liveliness as a side effect of a drug takes away some part of their being. As for me, I haven’t and will continue to not take pills like Adderall or Ritalin, but I feel like the only thing keeping me from doing so is the danger that comes along with them. If these pills were safer, maybe then “riding lightning” would be suitable for everyone.
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