So, he took Adderall – something he’d never done before – and suddenly the impossible was possible. With sleep the last thing on his mind, he cranked out paper after paper (three in all) and even made it to class on time. He didn’t get outstanding grades on the Adderall-fueled assignments, but he certainly passed.

All in all, he would probably tell you the $5 for a pill and increased heart rate were worth it.

Welcome to the world of neuroenhancers. On a college campus, just about everyone knows someone who has used neuroenhancers – usually Adderall, Ritalin or their amphetamine-based cousins – to get work done or study long hours they never could have managed otherwise. Meant to treat attention deficit disorders, the drugs are illegal without a prescription. But that doesn’t stop the thousands of high-functioning and “success”-obsessed students who feel a need to be just a bit higher-functioning. An April article in The New Yorker that examined the use and effects of these drugs dubbed them the drug of this generation’s choice, like psychedelics in the ’60s, heroin in the ’70s and cocaine in the ’80s. It cited a 2005 report by a professor at the University of Michigan’s Substance Abuse Research Center, which found that in the previous year 4.1 percent of American undergraduates had taken “prescription stimulants for off-label use.” At one school, the number was 25 percent. Here at the University, Adderall is apparently “bigger than weed” in the residence halls, one student who was quoted in the Emerald said.

Is anyone surprised? Parents increasingly are bent on giving their children every possible edge, enrolling them in enough extracurricular activities to impress even the most exclusive prep schools. In college they must create a portfolio that outshines thousands of others in order just to enter the efficiency-obsessed, always-connected work force, where the daily grind certainly isn’t any less grinding. If you could pop a prescription pill that would give you an extra 12 hours to build your resumé or make a 24-credit term feasible, why wouldn’t you?

Some argue against the “recreational” use of drugs designed to treat physical or psychological conditions. But to call this increased use of neuroenhancers recreational is inaccurate. My friend didn’t have any fun, but rather experienced, as the New Yorker article called it, “a pinched, unromantic, grindingly efficient form of productivity.” In an always faster-paced world that offers more mindless distractions than ever (how long has it been since your last Tweet?), this productivity is becoming a necessity. It’s not about fun, it’s about work.

Then again, many who talk about their use of the drugs say neuroenhancers aren’t miracle workers. “I don’t think people who take Adderall are aiming to be the top person in the class. At the most basic level, they aim to do better than they would have otherwise,” said a recent Harvard graduate in the New Yorker article, who took Adderall regularly to keep up in school.

Yet some information paints a different picture. The journal Psychopharmacology wrote about a 2002 study on modafinil, another neuroenhancer, and said the results suggested that “modafinil offers significant potential as a cognitive enhancer.” Nature, another scientific journal, published a commentary in December that suggested society should cautiously “respond to the growing demand for cognitive enhancement.”

We don’t need to encourage Americans to work even harder than they do, and the idea of an entire generation using amphetamines to succeed makes me more than a little nervous. But, in a competitive field, if suddenly half your competitors are better equipped to do their job and you don’t want to be left behind, what are you supposed to do? If enough people use neuroenhancers, society’s expectations will raise to the level of what the drugs make possible; everyone else will be faced with the choice: compete or not.

The same commentary in Nature argued that we must reject “the idea that ‘enhancement’ is a dirty word.” Most people are afraid to talk about taking neuroenhancers, partly for legal reasons, but largely because they don’t want to be seen as drug users or people who can’t function without help from a substance. But it’s hypocritical for there to be a stigma around using these drugs: People wouldn’t use them, or at least not to the degree that they do, if they weren’t more or less forced to.

I’m not advocating using neuroenhancers. I strongly feel that my body and brain should be good enough the way they are, as long as I take care of them. But I also recognize that I could get more work done if I did use neuroenhancers. And, because it’s highly unlikely our society will stop valuing rock-hard work and superhuman efficiency anytime soon, this is a trend I’m not sure there’s any point in fighting against.

http://media.www.dailyemerald.com

(Indeed, the piece itself had a nice way of pulling this off, since my attention span is so addled by the Internet that it took me about three sittings to finish it.)

But in addition to all sorts of ethical questions — is the appropriate analogy steroids at the ballpark or plastic surgery at the beach? — the existence of productivity enhancing drugs raises a variety of economic questions.

Would we be better off with a world in which we can pop productivity enhancing drugs like they were Flintstones Vitamins?

I’m not sure we would be, though I think it depends on what, exactly, is at stake.

One possibility is that these drugs make people more efficient — that is, they increase the amount of output from each hour of labor. If that’s what these drugs do, then they’re not altogether different from the cotton gin or the microchip: It’s labor-enhancing technological progress. And Talbot’s piece presents ample evidence that this is in fact how users view the drugs: They can get more done in an eight hour day than they otherwise would.

But a second possibility is that the drugs just increase the amount of hours people are capable of working — that is, they increase the labor supply. And it’s not obvious to me that this is a good thing. From Talbot:

Recently, an advice column in Wired featured a question from a reader worried about “a rising star at the firm” who was “using unprescribed modafinil to work crazy hours. Our boss has started getting on my case for not being as productive.”

I share the anxiety. It’s great for me if I can take one of these smart pills and work 80 hours a week.

It is likewise great for me — to take the econ 101 example — if I can graze my sheep on the town common.

But it’s great only if I’m the only one doing it. When everyone grazes their sheep, we no longer have a common. And when everyone takes the smart pills and works 80 hours a week, we end up with a world in which no one has the competitive advantage and everyone has less free time.

Output would be higher, but I’m not sure that means life would be better. It would be question of weighing the increased output against the lost free time (if you took the pills) or lost wages (if you didn’t).

One of the interesting claims in Greg Clark’s A Farewell to Alms is that standards of living were equally high in hunter-gatherer societies as they were in 17th and 18th century pre-industrial societies. Productivity gains from agriculture and trade were dissipated by larger population sizes — a Malthusian trap that was broken only by the industrial revolution — even as the hours of labor steadily increased. I don’t think the neuro-enhancer situation is perfectly analagous, but I do think it means there’s no necessary reason to believe that a world in which we work longer hours is better than one in which we don’t. But maybe I would come to a different conclusion if I had the smart pills.

http://business.theatlantic.com

Buy MODALERT without prescription

A survey conducted by Varsity revealed that students have been using non-prescription drugs to improve their concentration and alertness.

A third-year student who started using a concentration-enhancing drug several weeks ago said: “Modafinil has undoubtedly aided my concentration.”

Since then she has been taking a 100mg tablet every day and she complained that “after a Modafinil-fuelled library day I find it very hard to engage with people socially”.

Despite this side effect, the popularity of this drug has risen as it increases alertness, motivation and the ability to concentrate on degree studies for a prolonged period of time.

Prescription-only medication such as Adderall, Modafinil and Ritalin are usually prescribed to patients who suffer from narcolepsy or chronic sleep disorders but the survey showed that many students have now started using them too.

The Home Office has warned that it is “a serious criminal offence” to possess such prescription-only drugs but it is becoming easier to obtain them as various online pharmacies sell it without a prescription and also offer generic variants of the drug, known as Modapro and Modalert.

The survey also revealed that a third of the respondents would take such stimulating drugs if given the opportunity.

http://www.gairrhydd.com

Buy MODALERT without prescription

According to statistics there are around 15 million Americans regularly taking prescribed pain-killers, and a lot of them have a dependency to the pills they take, and whether they will admit it to themselves, or not.

To put things firmly into perspective, that outnumbers the totals for heroin, cocaine and meth users combined.

Top of the pile regarding abused prescription medication has to be OxyContin.

OxyContin contains oxycodone, a very strong narcotic pain reliever similar to morphine.

OxyContin is designed so that the oxycodone is slowly released over time, allowing it to be used twice daily.

You should never break, chew, or crush the OxyContin tablet.

This causes a large amount of oxycodone to be released from the tablet all at once, potentially resulting in a dangerous or fatal drug overdose.

Whilst we talk about American facts and figures there’s no doubting this pill epidemic is going to hit the UK, and hit it hard, and we need to be ready to deal with it.

If you are unfamiliar with OxyContin, here are the answers to some of the more pertinent questions.

1. Question #1 of 10 – What Kind of Medicine Is OxyContin?
2. Question #2 of 10 – What Kind of Pain Is Appropriate To Treat With OxyContin?
3. Question #3 of 10 – How Do I Know If My Pain Is The Right Kind For OxyContin?
4. Question #4 of 10 – What Activities Should Not Be Performed If Using OxyContin?
5. Question #5 of 10 – Can I Take Other Medicines While I Am Using OxyContin?
6. Question #6 of 10 – Can I Drink Alcoholic Beverages While I Am Using OxyContin?
7. Question #7 of 10 – Will I Become Addicted To OxyContin If I Take It Every Day?
8. Question #8 of 10 – What Should I Do When I No Longer Need OxyContin?
9. Question #9 of 10 – Haven’t There Been Reports About The Misuse of OxyContin?
10. Question #10 of 10 – Are There Special Precautions I Should Take With OxyContin?

OxyContin Q&A courtesy of http://arthritis.about.com

Concerned with your own, or a loved ones prescription painkiller intake?

Check this out and read the signs.

http://www.provigil-RX.Info

While governments around the world spend obscene amounts of money on keeping the relatively benign cannabis out of reach for the great unwashed, it seems the pharmaceutical industry is extremely well connected in political circles, as anyone with a hotmail or yahoo mail account will pay witness by the amounts of junk mail which ‘ghost’ through layer upon layer of anti-spam filters.

There isn’t a drug on the market which you cannot purchase online, and without the need for a prescription.

But unlike cannabis, a drug which is yet to be credibly linked to a single death (ever), some of the lotions and potions available via shady online pharmacies, can and will kill at the first time of experimentation.

Heavy-duty, industrial strength opioids such as OxyContin and Tramadol are at the forefront of a global epidemic which is without a doubt, being fueled by a pharmaceutical industry which knows no bounds in the lengths it will go to in a bid to peddle its wares, increasing sales (and profits) at the expense of a generation which no longer needs to leave home to score its next high.

And while Police use every tool in their arsenal to keep the Dutch and Spanish cannabis vendors offline, it seems the flood of online prescription drug sellers is so strong, even if the authorities do manage to take an online vendor offline every once in a while, there seems always another 10 such business’s to take its place.

So it would seem online pharmaceuticals appears to be THE growth business model at a time when all other business is tightening the purse strings.

http://www.provigil-rx.info

Which is a frightening thought if the doctor in question is “hopped up” on amphetamines as a result of a busy morning general practice diagnosing coughs, colds and flu’s, followed by an afternoon of house-calls, and finishing the day by undertaking an over-night heart or liver transplant at the local private hospital.

A scenario which happens all too often in these days of chronic doctor shortages.

Prescription drug abuse used to be the soul domain of the college student who was looking for a cheap high out of mum or dads medicine cupboard in the bathroom, or perhaps someone looking to find some extra hours at the end of the day for more studying, or as is often the case, more partying.

Then we got to hear about housewives who were using amphetamine-based drugs to lose weight without the effort and the will-power normally involved.

Simply take a few tablets every day and you’re good-to-go. Ready to run round like a madman or woman after your 2.6 kids, without worrying about stopping for doughnut & coffee refuelling stops every ten minutes for the caffeine, sugar and carb hit this provides.

But worse was to come as it was announced in Japan recently, parents are actually buying Ritalin and Adderall ‘off-label’ for their children to use as they approach examinations. And we wonder why it is the world is strung out on prescription drugs?

But in April 2008 we heard of a new demographic turning to using the new, ‘pharmaceutically enhanced’ calendar, in which every day has 36 hours instead of the regulation 24.

Which all begs the question “Is your doctor whacked on Amphetamines?”

Drugs in Sport
British gold medal winning sprinter Dwain chambers is all over the news currently, publicising his book in which he chronicles his own career whilst using using all sorts of performance enhancing drugs. And its fair to say Chambers was not alone. He was just the unfortunate who got caught, and then stripped of his gold medal and banned from competitive athletics.

But he didn’t go down alone, as in his book, “Race Against Me: My Story”, he outs a number of prominent American atheletes who were also using performence enhancing drugs, in the best traditions of a kiss & tell biography.

But its not just athletics. Apparently cycling is awash with steroid abusers, and a news report out of France recently exposed the fact random tests on the hair of French professional footballers and top-level rugby players have revealed frequent use of illegal, muscle-building steroids.

One in five footballers tested, and one in six rugby players, showed signs of having used banned steroids – mostly the anti-ageing hormone DHEA.

Similar, but less widespread, signs of steroid use were found in hair samples taken from French athletes and cyclists.

Blimey.

So will the London 2012 olympics be sponsored by Glaxo SmithKline?

Thankfully when all else fails we can turn to our family doctor, right?

Wrong!

Drugs & Doctors?
An online poll from the ‘British Science Magazine’ didn’t ask readers how they felt about professional athletes using drugs to enhance their physical performance. But when asked how they felt about professional thinkers using drugs to enhance their cognitive performance, nearly 80% said it should be allowed.

And while only a fifth of the poll’s 1,400 respondents admitted to drug use to improve concentration, nearly two-thirds said they knew of a colleague who did. And if there was only “a normal or lower risk of mild side effects,” nearly 70% of the scientists & doctors said they’d boost their brain power by taking a “cognitive-enhancing drug.”

The most popular drug was Ritalin, used by 62% of responders. Provigil was the drug of choice for 44% of those polled, which would suggest that many of the users take more than one drug.

Beta-blockers, such as Inderal, accounted for 15% of the drug use.

Most of those polled said they took the drugs to improve concentration or to improve focus for a specific task. Counteracting jet lag was also a popular ‘reason’ for drug use. And not only are these doctors taking these drugs, they’re doing so regularly.

The results were an even 4 way split with about 25% of users saying they took the drugs daily, weekly, monthly, or once a year.

Drugs & Children
The truly alarming statistic to come out of this, was with regard to giving children a brain-enhancing elixir.

When asked whether children under age 16 should be allowed to use cognition-enhancing drugs, 86% of respondents said they should not. But a third of respondents said they would feel ‘pressure’ to give such drugs to their children if other children at school were taking them.

Drugs are everywhere
Its a frightening indictement of the world we live in today, and its growing dependence on pharmaceutical drugs.

So before you ask your doctor if you can have a prescription for Provigil as a treatment for your “narcolepsy”, have a look into his or her eyes first. To see if you can see any tell-tale signs of lack of sleep.

If you do, chances are you’re onto a winner.

Generation (R)X
With so much information being thrown around in the press its hard to know exactly who to believe.

But Provigil-RX.Info is a website which has been set up to hopefully answer some of the questions you may have regarding the effects of the worlds favourite “go-pill”, so check it out, and do your home-work before deciding to embark on a journey which includes 36 hour days and 9 day weeks.

http://provigil-rx.info – Common sense drug news & information for a world living its life at 150 miles an hour.

Sprinters Kelli White, Chryste Gaines and Alvin Harrison, all of whom were busted for doping and served suspensions, are all mentioned when Chambers recounts his ties with BALCO founder Victor Conte.

“He kept telling me to talk to the other athletes, talk to my coach Remi (Korchemny), Chryste Gaines and Kelli, Alvin Harrison to name a few. I told him I would,” Chambers writes in the book “Race Against Me: My Story.”

On Wednesday, The Associated Press obtained a portion of the book, which is set to be released Monday.

Chambers, who won the 100-metre gold medal at the 2002 European Championships, tested positive for THG in 2003 and was banned for two years. He was the first athlete with connections to Conte to test positive for the previously undetectable steroid.

“In time I became fully aware of Victor’s role and his purpose in recruiting the best athletes in the world,” Chambers writes. “Victor was a pharmacologist with a living to make.”

Chambers says he started taking THG, also known as “The Clear,” and other drugs such as HGH and EPO, in 2002 after meeting Conte in the United States while training.

“As time went on, I became more and more familiar with associating certain athletes with certain drugs … I made Kelli White my main confidante and the attraction grew by the day,” writes Chambers, who says he dated White for more than a year.

White won the 100 and 200-metre races at the 2003 world championships in Paris, but both her medals were stripped after she tested positive for modafinil.

Gaines and Harrison never tested positive for drugs. The pair, along with fellow sprinter Tim Montgomery, were banned based on evidence gathered in the BALCO criminal investigation.

“Everybody knew that nearly all the athletes with Remi were on the program with Victor too …” Chambers writes.

In 2007, Korchemny agreed to permanently stay out of elite-level coaching, marking the first time a US Anti-Doping Agency case has led to a coach being banished for doping violations.

Although Chambers says both he and White “agreed that we hated having to cheat to win,” he later says he didn’t know THG was on the World Anti-Doping Agency’s list of banned substances.

“If THG was on there I was out of America on the very next flight and Victor Conte was history!” Chambers writes, but then later in the book adds, “I printed the list off. It ran to nearly eight pages. I went over it three times and found no reference at all to THG. Victor was right: it wasn’t on the banned list.”

“In my own mind, I wasn’t cheating.”

In earlier excerpts from the book printed in the Daily Mail, Chambers says he was a “walking junkie” and took “more than 300 different concoctions” of performance-enhancing drugs that cost him $30,000 a year.

“It wasn’t a problem. I was earning big money at the time,” Chambers writes.

And despite saying he had severe stomach cramps that even caused him to pull up in the 100 final at the 2002 Commonwealth Games, Chambers says “not once did I hesitate to take anything prescribed to me.”

Chambers also recounts a phone conversation with agent John Regis, implying that he knew the sprinter was considering an offer to use drugs.

“’Be careful,’ he said as I thought about tomorrow and what lay ahead. ’Be very careful,’ he repeated,” Chambers writes, referring to Regis.

Regis severed ties with Chambers after he tested positive, and reportedly is now considering taking Chambers to court.

Andy Parkinson, the acting head of Drug Free Sport at UK Sport, said his group was going to talk to Chambers about the book.

“If there is anything in there that will give us cause for concern, we will address that,” Parkinson said. “We have an eight-year statute of limitations within the code to act.”

Chambers, who says he still considers Conte a friend, says he passed 10 doping tests during his time using the drugs.

He returned to running after a two-year suspension and won a gold medal with Britain in the 4×100 relay at the 2006 European Championships. His 100 gold medal from the 2002 Europeans was stripped.

In 2007, Chambers tried playing American football, joining the Hamburg Sea Devils in NFL Europa. But he returned to sprinting after the league folded and won a silver medal in the 60 at the 2008 indoor worlds.

Chambers also tried to get his lifetime Olympic ban revoked ahead of the 2008 Beijing Games, but lost his court case against the British Olympic Association.

Chambers is due to compete for Britain in the 60 metres at this weekend at the European indoor championships in Turin, Italy, and plans to run at this summer’s world championships in Berlin.

http://www.thetimes.co.za

Kennewick police arrested a 55-year-old Richland man accused of pretending to be interested in buying a home to search medicine cabinets for prescription drugs to steal.

Donald “Rocky” Semmern Jr., is suspected of stealing the prescription drugs after attending open houses of homes for sale between Dec. 14 and March 15, Sgt. Ken Lattin said.

Semmern targeted owner-occupied homes that were for sale.

As he pretended to check the houses, the first places he’d hit were the bathrooms, where he’d rifle through the drawers and medicine cabinets looking for prescription medications, Lattin said.

Semmern is suspected of stealing medication from two Kennewick homes — 8623 W. Bonnie Ave. and 416 S. Roosevelt St. — and four houses in Richland.

Kennewick police arrested Semmern after several real estate agents confirmed seeing him at their open houses and catching him going through the medicine cabinet, Lattin said.

Semmern was booked into the Benton County jail on suspicion of six counts of attempting to possess a controlled substance.

“They’ll pretty much take anything from a medicine cabinet without knowing side affects or what they’ll do,” Heartland Coalition Director Kellie Rubbel-Henrichs said. “The ones we hear more about are going to be the real strong pain killers.”

Painkillers like Vicodin and Hydrocodone; these drugs can are considered controlled substances and if misused can lead to addictions and even death.

“Some people will find the first time they use a prescription drug they might be addicted where others find it takes a little bit longer so there’s a risk of never knowing which person you’re going to be,” Rubbel-Henrichs said.

Local police departments, Leadership McLean County and the Heartland Coalition are taking action. Instead of throwing away or flushing your old controlled substances, you can take them to secure drop boxes. Those drop off locations include Bloomington and Normal’s police stations and Illinois State University’s pharmacy.

“We feel as though we’re one of the only agencies in town who can handle those types of substances,” Assistant Bloomington Police Chief Robert Wall said. “We obviously don’t want them getting in the wrong hands and on top of that we don’t want them in our drinking water.”

“We thought it was a good idea to jump on board and join a host of locations and police departments across the country to give the public a place to dispose of them.” Normal Police Chief Kent Crutcher said.

This way, the drugs will not find their ways into our drinking water or into the wrong hands.

“The drug of choice sometimes is exactly what’s in the medicine cabinet at home, so it’s very important that people are aware in the community and that we all engage in this proper disposal and get these drugs secured,” Leadership McLean County member Sue Necessary said.

http://centralillinoisproud.com