Debunking the Study Drug Myth

one night

in the midst of an especially chaotic

finals week during my sophomore year of

college

i found myself in the library trying to

cram as much physics knowledge into my

head as i possibly could in the next

eight hours

i texted a friend about it venting my

struggles and he told me he had just the

thing for me

saying that he’d recently faked an adhd

diagnosis to his doctor so he could get

adderall

and that he could lend me some so i

could potentially really lock in

over the course of the week i was

puzzled

i knew on one hand that i had the hard

work and grit necessary to pull off the

grade

but i also knew that the call of the

unknown had me absolutely stumped

what if there’s an extra edge that i’m

missing out on i thought to myself

what if everyone else but me is in on it

and what if i’m missing out on potential

i was incredibly close to caving in and

i stopped right before hitting send on

the message telling him to go ahead and

get me some

i ultimately decided that i’d rather not

take the chance in the absolute crunch

time

of the semester now to all the students

out there watching this

perhaps this story sounds similar to one

of your own

or maybe you’re one of the up to 30 of

students who have used adderall outside

of a prescription to study

in the hyper-competitive world of today

adderall is now a normalized part of

college life

however it shouldn’t be because those

that use the drug thinking it’ll work as

a quick fix for bad studying habits

could not possibly be farther from the

truth

but first to understand where we’re

going with this it’s necessary to talk

just a bit of relevant science

so dopamine is the feel-good

neurotransmitter in the brain

responsible for the reward system and

motivation for goal-oriented tasks

people with adhd have a deficiency of

dopamine

making it really difficult to do things

like stay concentrated and motivated

adderall helps by returning these levels

back to normal

however when individuals without adhd

take adderall the brain is absolutely

flooded with dopamine

in a high sense of self-confidence

alertness and well-being wash over the

brain

after a few precious hours of

productivity the inevitable crash ensues

and dopamine levels tank lower than

before causing the

exact opposite feeling natural dopamine

levels are so low after adorable misuse

that a study in primates showed a

decrease

of about 30 to 50 percent from natural

levels

this is how addiction starts not to

mention a plethora of mental health side

effects such as

anxiety depression paranoia and even

suicidal ideations

and with adderall addiction is not out

of the question

adderall is classified as a schedule two

drug putting it in the same category as

cocaine

and meth but hey if it makes you do

better in school get better grades

and get that perfect gpa well maybe it’s

all worth it

maybe this is all just a small price you

have to pay to become that

optimal version of yourself well

and this is the reason why we’re here

today what if i told you

that nearly every single study ever done

on this has completely disproven that

exact

idea what if i told you that this

pervasive notion that somehow

illicit amphetamine use will boost

memory focus and learning

has really always just been a giant myth

see sarah and i are part of a student

research team at binghamton university

called be smart also known as the

binghamton student managed adderall

research team

and we’ve actually found that across the

board in nearly every single study we’ve

either conducted or reviewed

illicit adderall use strongly correlates

with lower gpas

i’d like to repeat that illicit adderall

use

strongly correlates with lower gpas time

and time again in our surveys we see

that the very same students who claim to

use adderall for the purposes of

boosting cognition improving memory and

achieving a better gpa

most often will get the exact opposite

results

so taking a step back from all this it

becomes

evident that there’s another factor at

play here that causes people to have

higher gpas and get

and be more productive overall it has

absolutely nothing to do with what drug

they’re taking

in fact we believe that what causes

people to consider using adderall to

study in the first place

is a much deeper condition known as

learned helplessness

so this term describes a person who

feels completely powerless in their

day-to-day life

never giving themselves either the blame

or the praise for anything that happens

to them

and that’s just it life is viewed as

happening to

people with learned helplessness so

let’s do a little self-test

i want you all to think back to a time

where you took a difficult exam

picture yourself sweating feeling

anxious or whatever you felt in that

moment

now when you got your test back and you

saw your score how did you feel

individuals with learned helplessness

who did poorly likely blamed the teacher

for making the

test too hard individuals with learned

helplessness who did

well on the exam likely credited their

high mark to good luck

conversely for all of you who did poorly

on this exam and thought that maybe this

was a reflection of your lack of

preparedness

this would be a representation of

mastery orientation mindset

mastery orientation mindset is quite

literally the opposite of learned

helplessness

this is a growth mindset where

individuals attribute their successes to

their hard work

and believe that their abilities can be

increased through effort

hamsa and i believe that those that use

adderall illicitly

view the world through the lens of

learned helplessness

countless studies support the notion

that those that misuse drugs

have thought patterns associated with

learned helplessness in the case

of illicit adderall use individuals use

this drug because they don’t have the

confidence to perform

well enough on their own this thinking

was the basis for a study conducted at

the university of pennsylvania

this study took 47 subjects and tested

the working memory of them all

these individuals were either given a

placebo pill or adderall

those that were given adderall were more

likely to report that the pill had

enhanced their performance

this is interesting because there was

absolutely no statistically significant

difference

in performance between the two groups on

top of this

both groups performed better than

baseline measurements leading the

researchers to conclude

that their success was a result of their

confidence

this being said there is absolutely

nothing given to you by this pill that

you don’t have already

it really just makes you more confident

in what you do have working as little

more than a glorified placebo effect

it gave you a taste of what you could

potentially achieve if only you have the

confidence

now if these subjects only needed a

little bit of belief

in their capabilities to make these

improvements then imagine

on a broader scale all the achievements

they have robbed themselves of

over the course of their lifetimes so

taking a step back let’s take it as a

lesson to stop

experiencing the world passively as if

things are simply happening to you

without any real input of your own

while life is guaranteed to throw you

some nasty curveballs along the way

a learned helplessness mindset prevents

you from rising to the occasion

and becoming the best version of

yourself in response to all of it

it’ll strip you of your motivation your

ability to take action

and ultimately your self-confidence in

insisting that you can never change your

situation or improve on a specific

ability

you fall into a brutal self-fulfilling

prophecy

now we understand that a lot of this

might be pretty difficult to hear but

there’s plenty of scientific research to

back

all of it up a study at vanderbilt well

we mentioned dopamine earlier as the

neurotransmitter associated with

motivation

and the reward system in the brain well

a study at vanderbilt actually found

that in the prefrontal cortex which is

the area of the brain associated with

higher order executive functioning

slackers have lower dopamine levels than

go-getters

in a nutshell animal models on rats have

found

that learned helplessness correlates

with lower densities of dopamine

receptors in the brain

essentially what this means is that the

attitudes associated with high and low

levels of motivation

literally show up on the biochemical

level however

while some neurological conditions can

absolutely

absolutely require medication to be

fixed it’s also true that you can plant

a seed in your mind

to allow that same dopamine we talked

about to be built

over time barring any substantial

neurological setbacks

it’s absolutely true that a lot of the

wiring of your brain is up to you

and its chemistry is by no means set in

stone

so the brain itself is plastic meaning

that it can adapt to the needs of its

environment

every time you think about a specific

topic or perform a specific

task the neuronal connections in your

brain that allow you to think about this

topic or perform this task

are strengthened conversely for topics

that you don’t think about that a lot

that often

the neuronal connections weaken the

longer they go unused

these thought processes become less

automatic and take more work to remember

right now you might have strong neuronal

connections for a learned helplessness

you might automatically feel like you

have absolutely no control over your

successes or your losses

however over time if you try to reject

these thoughts associated with learned

help assist and actively tell yourself

that you are capable

you have control and so forth these

thoughts will become automatic because

their neuronal connections will have

been strengthened

so this concept that our mindset has an

immense control over every aspect of our

lives can actually be seen in recent

studies

one study was conducted by researcher

alia crum and it revealed how much our

mindset can manifest into

into the physiology of our body

so this study took housekeepers and

split them into two groups

one group was shown a presentation about

how their work was really good exercise

while the other was not

a few weeks later when the researchers

came back they found that the

housekeepers that had been shown this

presentation

had a reduction in body fat

had a lower blood pressure and had lost

more weight than those that had not been

shown this presentation

so what changed these housekeepers

didn’t work any harder than they did

before

their mindset changed and their body

physically responded to this change

this study is a great example of how

responsive our minds are to changes in

thought patterns

using this think about how much of a

difference instilling a sense of

capability will make

the truth is in many many areas of our

lives we are a lot

like the housekeepers in this study and

the fact that a lot of us have fooled

ourselves into thinking we need adderall

to study is but a small piece of

evidence in the grand picture

when many of us were younger it seemed

as though our potential was limitless at

some point though as we got older and

the world got more complicated

we lost that sense of possibility for

ourselves

take it from me i was one of the former

gifted children in early elementary

school who never

ever lived quite up to that in high

school

but just because we forgot about that

potential doesn’t mean that it ever

really went anywhere

and even if we never felt that potential

to begin with you know maybe we didn’t

have the best childhood

that doesn’t mean that we or those

around us ever perceived our abilities

accurately at all

finding our lost potential and trying to

feel capable is an ongoing battle

i too find myself falling down a hole of

learned helplessness thinking at times

this happens most often when i’m feeling

completely overwhelmed with my

assignments

however i’ve been able to overcome this

by breaking down the seemingly

impossible task into significantly

smaller ones

i reward myself for any accomplishment i

make on my way to achieving my larger

goal

and by giving myself these little wins i

increase myself my sense of self

efficacy

and it motivates me to keep going it’s

definitely the furthest thing from a

linear and smooth process

but it works and you can never see it

through if you abandon

all hope at the first sign of struggle

in the less glorious moments this can be

very hard to remember

but sticking to it will but staying

faithful to it

will pay off in the long run as long as

you continue to work hard

and you work smart which is very

important but

as you outdo yourself little by little

the progress should inspire you to keep

going

so bottom line is the next time you come

across a setback or a difficulty in

learning something

don’t see it as a sign that you should

just give up or that it isn’t for you or

that you should pop a pill

understand though that it’s simply a

very necessary rite of passage in

getting to where you need to be

if you’re struggling you’re doing

something right and there’s no drug in

the world that can change this

fundamental fact of progress

to all the students watching this you

owe it to yourselves to bring

to light that same potential that we

keep going on about

perhaps it’s better this way without the

existence of some miracle drug

in the process and the struggle of one

upping each and every one of your

individual goals

no matter how big or how small you

continue to grow and impress yourself

and realize

just how competent you truly are

we wish you the very very best of luck