The 'smart' fix

In World War II, drugs like methamphetamines and its pharmaceutical cousins were given to soldiers on both sides of the fence, to give them more “courage” and to keep them alert. It was not enough that they participated in a war that wielded the force to deform nature, communities and souls; they were even given pills to look at that power straight in the eye and endure it. These young soldiers who had minds healthy enough to be scared of war, were given drugs so that they could overcome this natural and healthy feeling of fear. In the end, did this “fix” — this molecular fix — really win them anything in their final mental balance sheets?

I learned of the fact of the drugs given to the soldiers when I was reading Turbocharging the Brain by Gary Stix in the October issue of the Scientific American. I have always followed Stix’s articles because he always draws a very good map of his topic, giving his readers a good historical scope on which to base their understanding. And from that map that had a spot dedicated to field soldiers and their pills, he eventually directed his brain turbo-charging trail to the battles of the 21st techno knight.

Stix gave the WWII information as a historical background to the current rise in the use of pills nicknamed “cognitive enhancers” by people who claim that they need to win their current “mental battles.” These battles are their personal wars with their own work deadlines, their own dates with big examinations, their own skirmishes with the frugal hands of time as they try to concentrate on their next PowerPoint. These people claim that they do get a boost of smarts when they take these pills. We do not know how these claims started but as of this writing, there is no pill that has undergone a study, deep and long enough, to be considered safe and effective to improve a healthy mind.

These pills are by no means approved by the authorities to make you smart but they are approved and prescribed for people with some form of cognitive impairment like ADHD or uncontrolled sleepiness (narcolepsy) or to treat some losses from Alzheimer’s Disease. These pills are Methylphenidate (Ritalin, Concerta and others) and Amphetamines (Adderall and others), Modafinil (Provigil), Donepezil (Aricept). The limited tests done to see if these drugs helped healthy minds improve their mental abilities — be it their concentration, working memory or alertness — were not conclusive. In sum, their findings reveal that while taking these drugs helped some people in some aspects of mental processing, these same people did poorly in some other aspects and some even decreased from the levels they were at before they took these “smart pills.”

Should we really pharmacologically alter our minds to be able to deal with every change that comes our way? If we can, to what extent could we do it without permanently wounding the healthy mind with which we started?

If this digital age which has come to define our current civilization boasts of its accoutrements to make us do a lot more and a lot faster than we ever did before, then why can we no longer wrap healthy minds around the frenzy it has caused?

The answers do not come simple and easy for me right now. I just can’t think of why anyone would want to surrender a whole healthy mind to a pill just to make it to a deadline or a test.

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