Smart Drugs: Penn Professor Martha Farah Speaks to Students about Adderall and Ritalin

How do stimulants work? What is their effect on the body, both long term and short term? In Provost Tower on Wednesday, March 13, Professor Martha Farah answered such questions and led a discussion about the nonmedical use of stimulants, or “smart drugs,” like Ritalin and Adderall. Farah, the Annenberg Professor of Natural Science and Director of the Center for Neuroscience and Society, said that according to data collected in 2001, 7% of students have used a stimulant nonmedically in college. This number has likely increased since then. Some factors that increase the frequency of use by the student body include Ivy League or elite institutions, coastal location and fraternity members. “B” students are more likely to use smart drugs than “A” or “C” students due most likely to a desire to excel without having to sacrifice extracurriculars and other activities. On some campuses, usage rates are as high as 25%.

Many people think of drugs like Adderall and Ritalin as cognitive enhancers but Farah debunked this myth. She explained that their main effect is to keep the user awake and improve his or her attitude. Thus, it is mainly a motivational factor, especially because it improves one’s evaluation of their own work while they are under the influence. These drugs work by directly acting on dopamine neurons, which, due to their role in the reward pathway, also give the user a high. This makes such drugs carry the risk of dependence for nonmedical users. Medical users, like patients with ADHD on the other hand, tend to bear less risk of addiction. In patients with ADHD, Farah said “drug treatment seems to do nothing but help patients.”

It is difficult to study the long term effects of stimulant use but Farah said that for the most part, long-term use is probably fine for medical users. Nonmedical users on the other hand bear the risks associated with self-medicating and dependence. She explained that “1 out of 10 non-medical users of stimulants have symptoms of physical dependence.” Despite advocating for medical Adderall and Ritalin use, she did mention an animal study that showed shorter swim times for adult rats using those drugs long term. This is a sign of decreased psychological health. Such risks are due to the effects of dopamine which include not only focusing attention but possibly schizophrenia and psychosis as well.

Despite knowing much about the different studies done on Ritalin and Adderall use, Farah was unable to come to many concrete conclusions about long term their effects. This is due to many factors including the difficulty of determining who actually has ADHD (“There is no lab test,” Farah said) and the self-selection inherent in experiments on long term stimulant users. The short term effects of dopamine, which is increased in concentration by stimulants, are much easier to determine. One of the main purposes stimulants are used for is to fight off sleep; Farah said this is terrible because sleep deprivation is not only bad for memory consolidation and mood, but it is bad for the immune system and related to cancer as well. Stimulants also have the possible side effects of heart attack, sudden death and psychosis. Farah described the nonmedical use of Adderall and Ritalin as “playing a little bit of a Russian roulette.” With millions of people addicted to a weaker stimulant, caffeine (which acts indirectly on dopamine neurons), where is the line drawn between acceptable and unacceptable stimulant use? What is risk is staying awake worth? Farah, despite being a long time coffee drinker, exclaimed that is much safer to just “get your eight hours of sleep!”