Why I don't use drugs | Part 2
Of the performance enhancing variety
When the majority of people hear the phrase performance enhancing drugs they often link this with testosterone injections, steroid, insulin, and growth hormone use. All of which are to aid in some physical performance benefits. Yes yes yes, I've been active and training my whole life but as indicated in my post on why I don't take pre-workout, this never has been my bag. Rather, the performance enhancing drugs I'm speaking of here are of a different variety. Those that enhance the performance of your mind. Like, a pill you can take that makes your brain work...um...better.
When I first became aware of this was in my early twenties. Actually, unbeknownst to me back a little further even. To my college days at my alma mater. A place I applied to based on word of mouth alone having heard it was a really really good school. Which had what I wanted to study. Was hard to get into. Therefore it's gotta be good...right? Well, turns out my hunch was correct.
During my time there, everything seemed normal to me. The rigors, the workload, the high standards I had all had experience with before from my own household since birth. So really, I was just doin' my thing on campus for it was what I was used too. And, what I asked for. However, there were times when I realized other students did not feel the same. Some seemed perturbed. Likely because they were the smartest ones at their small high schools and couldn't handle the fact that everyone on campus was just as academically gifted, if not more. Thus, I've seen some very interesting hair raising freak-outs from those that got their back sides handed to them come exam time.
Since my university had/has very well respected applied science and engineering departments, some of the attending students did adhere to, let’s say, a mad scientist stereotype. Certainly not the majority, but, certainly not invisible at the same time. On occasion I can remember seeing examples of this in real time, in real life. Like hearing what I thought was a conversation among several people coming from around a corner as I walked about campus. Yet once those voices got closer and turned the corner toward my direction, coming to the eerie realization that oh no...it's just someone having a moment talking to imaginary people in their heads. Because they were walking alone. It was like something out of the movie A Beautiful Mind (a true story about a mathematician struggling with schizophrenia).
For sure, some people dealt with the academic and social pressures better than others. These behaviors I witnessed no doubt were a result of a dormant madness having been tickled out some as a result. For others, they simply got surprised by the level of competition we were all surrounded by. Of this latter variety, they simply didn't last. Around 40% of one of my localized peer group at this school had to leave due to insufficient performance by the end of our second year. Their grades were not high enough. One of whom I became close with.
It is competitive environments like these that act as a crucible for experimentation with performance enhancing substances. For those wanting a competitive edge. Or to at least to stave off exclusion from an education that comes with a lot of weight behind it. In this case, my particular universities academic and industry reputation. In short: an education that can provide a really nice career for all us go getters once we graduated.
Now that the stage is set, allow me to continue.
As a Physics student, we were required to take a major lab class our sophomore year. Which was a whole two years earlier than other Physics departments at similar universities. A fact that would send other peers of mine at said other schools into a proper freak-out in disbelief. A further illustration of the standards we were expected to meet.
In said lab class, I had two lab partners. Very cool dudes whom were very easy to get along with. This made the rigorous work between us go very easy. But, there was one issue... THEY NEVER SLEPT.
Well to clarify, they did sleep some. Whereas I was clocking in around 6+ hours a night, these dudes were doing a fraction of that. And to be honest, studies have shown the more sleep a college student gets, the higher their GPA tends to be. Not with these wonders... Them boys were barely getting any rest while bangin', and I mean BANGIN' out A's like they were goin' out of style. Recounting my memories in this moment almost has the hair on my neck and arms standing on end. What I witnessed from them was nothing less than an extremely raw display of absolute power and dominance. Such high performance, such little rest. It was honestly breathtaking, confusing, and frustrating at the same time.
To be specific, one of them averaged about 2 hours per night. He used to talk about how he would study until 5am, and go back to his dorm about the same time his roommate would wake up for crew practice. And, he would show up to our 8am lectures no problem.
The other one was a double major in Physics and Computer Science. In four years, he earned a B.S. in Physics, B.S. in Computer Science, and a M.S. in Computer Science with a 4.0 GPA, aka as straight A's. A bad bad boy in our world for sure. When we would work on said lab reports as a trio, this guy would have another lab partner from one of his Computer Science classes meet up with him. He would work on BOTH projects SIMULTANEOUSLY. All at the wee hours of the morning. While I'm not sure about his sleep patterns during this time, I did manage to see him a few years later prior to finals week our senior year. And let me tell you he didn't look so hot. When I asked him what was up, he admitted to me that he had not slept in SEVEN DAYS.
Back to the sophomore lab class. During some of our bigger lab reports we were putting together, I tried to hang with them by drinking two 32 oz cups of coffee in the evening so I could stay awake all night. And although I did manage to stay up until the sun came up and work along side them, my result was honestly gibberish. The grades on these missed the mark a bit. All the work prior to the all-nighter was spot on which saved me a bit, however, the over all execution was riddled with careless errors. Not for them though, theirs were sparkling clean achieving top marks.
Frustrated by their edge over me, I did all I could to scrape every last of the points that represented the edge they had over me. And we're talking about maybe 5-6 points here and there. These would make a HUGE difference to the final grade on our transcripts which is why it was so important to gobble them up. Being the potential difference between the oh so coveted A, where as a B was relegated to those 1st place losers. We all needed A's, we all wanted A's. Yet no matter what I tried, it didn't work. The capabilities these two possessed I could not understand at the time. It did not seem human. It didn't seem remotely natural. But they were pulling it off. So clear minded, so little slumber.
As a result of my frustrations, once during that semester me and the 2 hour sleep a night guy were on the verge of a very heated argument when I essentially stopped and told him, 'Dude, I don't know how your doing it, but I can't perform like you on such low sleep.' I'm paraphrasing. He responded with a disposition and tone that indicated he was offended. I didn't care. I had to let it be known.
In general, I've seen many people do some very super human things at my alma mater. At this university. These are just the strongest example that I have to my memory.
Over time, it is something that I acclimated too. Witnessing these things just became normal. Seeing people perform at such a high level with relative ease became common place. At the time, I still didn't know how they were doing it. I would tell myself that it was because these students had been top performers their whole lives. Personally, I didn't care about school until mid high school, therefore I felt like I didn't have as strong of a fundamental base as they had. And sure that's true to a certain extent. But then I learned something new.
When I was a few years removed, after graduation, I was watching MTV. Still a staple among us Gen-X'ers even in our early 20's at the time. It was a day off, I was trying to relax. Then a documentary series came on about the use of attention deficit disorder drugs on college campuses. The take-aways were it was thought that nearly one third of students at competitive universities use these drugs for performance enhancement. And a rule of thumb was that one would get one full letter grade increase with systematic use. Students that were interviewed for this documentary were explaining how they can stay up way late and study without losing focus. One after the other after the other. As these confessions unfolded, I was like oh wow...! That's how them dudes were doing it...!
And man when I tell you this put a lot of things in perspective for me... Roughly a third of campuses using these drugs to get ahead...? It explained a lot...! Not only how these two lab mates of mine could perform tip top on such low sleep, but how everyone else on campus seemed to be able to pull the same amount of performance here and there. It made me question everything about what I saw. All of a sudden, I began to suss out who I suspected were using these aids, and who were not.
Although it explained a lot, this still didn't make me want to use these drugs. Even given the fact that I knew I was going to return for graduate school. In fact, many years after graduate school I remembered this documentary and how it opened my eyes. So I revisited this topic, now armed with a very robust internet filled with an exponentially elevated amount of information. This is when I found a New York Times article about this very same phenomenon. The use, or abuse, of attention deficit disorder drugs in universities. And, this article was armed with scores of people chiming in on the comments section. Young and old. With stories of how some started using these drugs to effectively get ahead starting from as early as high school. Keeping use up well into middle age to enhance their careers. It was honestly astounding.
At this time, my curiosity fueled a short 5 minute deep dive on the internet to learn more about these drugs. What I found was that basically they are comprised of two other drugs, in one pill, with a specific brand name that you may know of. One drug is a stimulant which allows you to stay awake. The other drug is one that allows you to focus. For people that genuinely suffer from A.D.H.D., or A.D.D., this pill will be administered in hopes to bring them back to normal. To people that are already normal, these two components are EXACTLY what the doctor ordered to fuel their competitive desires. Or, for people who knew about their use, unlike myself, and just wanted to be able to keep up.
All I'm going to say is that if I was able to stay awake through the night, AND focus... Dude... My academic/scientific career in general would have been way way different. I got fairly far au natural, but on this stuff I would have been on another level entirely. Just like those others that I witnessed. Perhaps even more, who knows.
The problem for me lies in the fact that those of us who know, or knew (like I did during graduate school), about the use of these performance enhancing drugs on campus simply were not willing to put ourselves or our health at risk for an intellectual performance gain. I've always been about wellness after all, and that seemed risky to me. But the fact that these existed at all made an already competitive environment more about US and THEM. Those of US that did not want to take these drugs to hang meant that, effectively, our performance would be capped. In all these classes we were taking, not everyone's going to get an A or B. And I argue that a large percent of A's on campus was, and currently is, gobbled up by THEM. Of course, THEM being those that chose to use these drugs. The level of performance an already bright and talented student can achieve is going to be very high. On any given college campus, everyone will be on the same plateau of talent and capabilities. Once a person like this chooses to artificially raise their performance envelop, they will perform on another level entirely. A professor in any class is going to challenge the best brightest students. This means the bar is raised to such an extent that will be just out of reach to those that are not on these drugs. More or less, meaning this is not absolute. There will always be outliers.
I once read that for the Tour De France (a top bicycle race in France) competitors believed that at one time, just to compete at that level, one had to be on some form of performance enhancing drugs. Doping as they called it. Lance Armstrong himself used blood transfusions to gain a competitive edge. And that's extreme, isn't it...?
Anyway, not long after my last realization from reading that NYT article, I watched the move LIMITLESS. I've always felt that films are always trying to tell people what goes on behind closed doors of certain subsets of society. To me, this film was clearly trying to tell people about A.D.H.D. or A.D.D. drug abuse by those in power.
As of writing this, we are in the dawn of a new age. The Artificial Intelligence one. Which is high speed computers working in tandem, or parallel, executing machine learning algorithms at an extremely fast pace, much faster than humans. All while never making mistakes, and never getting tired. IE, never sleeping. These performance enhancing drugs allow humans to get as close to AI as possible.
Like most controlled substances, short or long term use is not the way to go. There are severe physical and mental health risks. Being dependent on a drug to gain some normal state of existence is not what one needs in their life. But for me, it's a little deeper than that. For once you’re on these type of drugs, and reap all the professional benefits and accolades due to its use, you'll be stuck. That level of performance will be expected of you wherever you go. At some point you may want to get off due to it wrecking your physical and mental health, but can't. For if you do, you'll just be normal again. Like everyone else.
I'm fine with being like everyone else personally. My whole life I've been saddled with impossible expectations. I don't need any others.
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