Ethics of Intent Applied to Adderall: My Philosophical Basis for Not Taking Study Drugs. Keith Rose

Transcription

1 Ethics of Intent Applied to Adderall: My Philosophical Basis for Not Taking Study Drugs Keith Rose

2 Upon arriving at campus for the first time, college students across America are thrust into a new realm of academic, vocational and social responsibilities. Tasked with juggling non-academic duties on top of striving for a 4.0 grade point average, some college students have turned to study-drugs for a quick fix. Adderall, a leading prescription to patients for ADHD, influences chemicals in the brain that contribute to impulse control. The effect is increased focus towards a single task and less desire for the mind to wander. There are no definite negative side effects to using Adderall over dosage could be fatal and the drug could be habit forming, however, these precautions hardly stick out from the usual slew of precautions that come with any prescription drug. This has led to some people embracing Adderall as a miracle drug, and rationalizing their non-prescribed usage of it. Students are thus faced with a moral dilemma. Within considerations for taking Adderall for non-prescribed purposes, the effects of the drug are weighed against the purpose of the drug and the intent of the user. I am a sophomore at Fordham University, where I study philosophy and international political economy. Being a double major is in itself extremely time consuming. Beyond my academic focus, however, I also spend a considerable amount of time applying for internships, interviewing, writing my personal blog and searching for an apartment. My situation is not atypical. Seemingly every student that I speak with agrees that excelling at all of these tasks while also remaining involved in clubs and retaining a healthy social life is difficult, at times impossible.

3 My main focus is my schoolwork. I have found that even when I allocate nearly all my available time to studying, I still have difficulties achieving A s. Most college classes calculate student grades based on a predetermined distribution. This means that only a certain number of students have the possibility to receive each letter grade. In a class size of 25, only a few will receive an A, a couple more an A-, a few more a B+ and so on. Thus, students are not only judged on the merit of their own work, but are in direct competition with fellow students to receive the coveted, limited amount of high grades. For the person who is both an ambitious student and stressed out over final exam studying, the temptation to take Adderall is at its highest. I must admit, these temptations were at the forefront of my mind while I was preparing for three final exams in a two-day period. In my most difficult class, Italian, I had to study verb conjugation tables, article and gender agreements and vocabulary lists. I was in the library mulling over charts and tables for hours trying to memorize what my tired eyes saw. The pros and cons of Adderall were flashing through my head like the bright, digital billboard signs that line the street outside. The first obvious con that sticks out is that Adderall is illegal to have if you are not prescribed it by a physician. For most people, this fact is the strongest deterrent away from the drug. Yet, caught between the nexus of desiring better grades and self-diagnosing, students have taken to rationalizing their usage of the drug by claiming to have symptoms of ADHD. If the law does not deter you, the unstudied factors of the drug very well should. The long-term effects of stimulants of this nature have not been studied. More so, an active ingredient in Adderall is

4 amphetamine, a stimulant that has highly addictive qualities. Modern addiction studies often find that addiction does not exist within any substance alone, it is the combination of substances and personal attributes that leads to addiction. Thus, again, students rationalize their usage by claiming to not have an addictive personality. Although the cons include many indefinite warnings, the pros are known. If you take this drug, you will have increased focus for a longer period of time. Thus, I sympathize with students who have taken the drug, because I was almost one of them. Sitting at a library desk with my head thrown to the palms of my hands, just moments before midnight on the night before two final exams, I looked to my philosophical education as the strongest deterrent to misusing Adderall. I realized that I was simply weighing the effects of Adderall considering pros and cons without inquiring into the nature of the drug itself. Rationalizations often stem from face-value, surface analyses. I decided to consider Adderall in a genuine, truth-seeking manner. An ethical premise that I first learned from studying Immanuel Kant s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals states that an evaluation of actions or effects is morally grounded by an evaluation of intent. It is not fair to judge somebody based solely on the consequences of their actions. The ethics of intentions state that the effects of an action or a substance are amoral, or unconcerned with rightness or wrongness. Intent has moral worth because through intent we can justly judge an action. The ethics of intent are best illuminated via an example. For

5 instance, consider if I baked my best friend a cake for his birthday. Upon eating the cake, after blowing out the candles of course, my friend becomes extremely ill with food poisoning. My action, gifting a homemade cake, had damaging effects because it directly led to my friend becoming sick. However, my friend ascribes to the ethics of intention. Therefore, he has no anger towards me because I intended to do a loving deed. His illness was an accidental occurrence, not something worth destroying a friendship. If I intended to harm my friend by putting substances in the cake that I knew would cause food poisoning, then the effects would still be damaging, but the intent of the of the action would also be malicious. If that was the case, my friend could rightfully consider the action and myself to be malign. When applied to Adderall, the ethics of intent has a two-sided approach, both the purpose of the drug and the intent of the user. First, the purpose of the drug, or the intent of its prescription, is to limit the symptoms of ADHD. To be morally righteous and to take Adderall constitutes having ADHD, which I do not. My personal rationalizations are no match for a doctor s professional opinion, and no doctor has ever considered prescribing Adderall to me. Second, the intent of the user must be considered in reference to the purpose of the drug. If I was to take Adderall, my intent would be to boost my focus levels in hope that it would have a positive effect on my grade point average. However, my intent does not align with the purpose of the drug. When the intent of an individual does not align with the purpose of a substance society rightfully deems the usage of this substance as a misuse, or in the case of Adderall, possibly an abuse of a substance.

6 Sitting in the library, now staring at the blurs of lights as cars fly past the window adjacent to me, I decided to never misuse Adderall regardless of my circumstances. The rationalizations that clouded my early judgements were all circumstantial that this was a special occurrence in which I really needed a study drug. The ethics that I employed do not bend for circumstances. Although ethical decisions are often complex, layered and debatable due to circumstances, a belief in universal truths justified my choice. There is a definite just path in this case to do my work from my own natural energy and drive. I accept that I will be extremely tired sometimes and that achieving high letter grades throughout all my courses will be difficult, but these issues stem from being human. Altering the balance of my body s chemical compounds to study for a couple more hours is as unnatural as it is risky and unstudied. The growing issue of misusing ADHD prescribed drugs in America summates to the philosophical issues of individual rationalizations and an ignorance of ethics of intent. For some individuals, this ignorance may be willful. For others, it is due to lacking a philosophical and ethical education. Like righteously studying for exams, there is no quick fix to the issue of study drugs in America. However, I believe it starts at a personal level with a solid ethical education. I am a testament to this suggestion. Without my ethical education, I would have had no foundation for the choice that I made.