What hardly anyone seems to realize is that people's inability to pay attention to their work is the product of two things: (1) their work isn't actually that meaningful, and/or (2) their own emotional baggage is preoccupying their entire organism such that they can't fully engage with the present.
Emotional baggage is the product of repressed emotions. It's the hurt we carry (like baggage) inside of ourselves but were too afraid to face up to at the time that it occurred, so we could never healthily experience and process these emotions. Thus, repressed emotional pain stays with us, rooted in our unconscious, stored in the cells of our bodies. Most of this pain is most fundamentally rooted in the ways our own parents were too insecure to really be able to love us for who we were, and still fundamentally are today and always will be. Their insecurity is ultimately rooted in the relationship they had with their parents, and the cycle goes way, way back into history.
Our bodies will always remind us of the truths of our own personal histories, be it through symptoms of chronic health malfunctioning, through addictions, strange behavior we look back on in shame that we were so compelled to engage in, or even...in our ability to concentrate in the present on the homework before us.
In this technological age, machines are coming to dominate life. Robots are not attacking us with guns (not yet at least. Though I've seen what the U.S. military has in development), but machines are overtaking the work place and much of society.
Why are birth rates lower and lower in developed countries? Because kids are so freaking expensive to raise and train before they can finally be productive in this world. They take years of educational fees before they have the expertise to finally become of value to this world and start making money on their own. That's because machines are increasingly taking over the work we used to do for ourselves.
Well, as machines do things with such pace and efficiency, humans themselves are increasingly asked to be like machines. This barrage of inhumane pressures is part of what makes modern life feel so inhuman, so alienated from meaning and rewarding experience. Emotional baggage piles up, and we find ourselves unable to sleep without Ambien, to socialize without alcohol, marijuana, or Zanex, and unable to do work without Adderrall or Provigil. If your trade is major league sports, then add "unable to compete without Human Growth Hormone" to the list as well. The pharmaceutical industry is built around this increasingly humane process, and they will drug us into machinehood if we let them.
Which we probably will. And when the structures of modern day global society truly crumble 100 years from now, we might look back on specials like this and see them for what they really represented: the rejection of our own humanity, and the horrible price we have to pay as a result in the form of emotional baggage.
These drugs are just a band-aid to keep the whole thing together today, but they only do what most of modern medicine does: treat the symptom, without resolving the fundamental problem, one that will bring humanity to its knees, sooner than most of us realize.
I am a college student at UC Berkeley, though i am not aware of any ADD drug use on campus (though i rack that up to general ignorance) this excerpt did make taking the drugs seem like a good idea. I agree with "cnet_really_sucks" this was an irresponsible presentation of ADD drugs that could have serious side effects down the road. What good are a bunch of "smart" people if they are all addicted to drugs and suffering the ill effects in the future?
Hi,
I was sadden to see the report on 60 minutes...like others have stated there needed to be more of the negative effects: (sorry for spelling I am dyslexic.
Ritlan became a gate way drug for me. I snorted it in college (Hobart) and then went on to snort the desiegner drug ectacy. I became very sick from this drug (like Ritilan it is anphetimine based)
I had tremors,twithing, numness and mood swings..went to a Nurolgist and he said I had PArkisonian syptoms. Have under control now. wrote a book about it called Train Wreck MY life as an Idoit (simon and shuster)they also made it into a movie by same name starring Sean William Scott And Jeff Garlin. Jeff Nichols
For years, I have been very impressed with the depth and comprehensive reporting of 60 minutes. ?Therefore, I was shocked at the irresponsible report and advertisement of this story. The manner in which it was presented, implied that it's probably okay to take Adderall or Ritalin and, it will give students an edge. Many of the very serious side effects were minimized or, completely ommitted. ?The repercussions will be enormous and cannot be undone. The use of these drugs for performance enhancement is also used in high schools. News stories like this, increase the knowledge base not only to more college and high school students around the world, but to junior high and grade school kids, as well. Ritalin and Adderall are stimulants. Even parents whose children are diagnosed with ADHD carefully consider side effects and closely monitor their child when trying these drugs. For young people with other disorders such as anxiety, depression and bipolar disorder, stimulants can increase irritability, aggression, impulsivity and suicidality. They are very ill-prepared to cope with these feelings. As discussed in so many other comments, there are a long list of other very detrimental side effects. Shame on CBS for the role they are playing in prescription drug abuse.
It's Cheating! Taking performance enhancing drugs is cheating! Doesn't matter weather it's for sports or tests, it's still cheating! The Universities should crack down on this immediately. Cheating students get thrown out, all these kids need to get out of school and learn what it is to make a living on their abilities, not performance enhancing drugs. DISGUSTED!
Not surprisingly, your Adderall story prompted a variety of opinions, many quite intensely expressed (as seen in the previous 61 posted comments). As a practicing psychiatrist, viewing the piece stirred an unexpected variety of reactions; frustration, surprise, anger, encouragement and delight, to name a few. The sources of my collective reactions are largely addressed,or at least partially so, in various points amongst the preceeding responses from other viewers. In truth, I could produce a treatise or diatribe of notable length in opting to address every seemingly pertinent aspect, detail or issue contained in the relatively short presentation on Adderall. Short of that, one or two issues or elements of the telecast seem worthy of comment.
One of the larger issues for me involved the delicate efforts to portray the story in a manner that seemed to weave back and forth between a seeming critical, judgemental tone and one that at times, almost seemed to all but endorse the Adderall phenomenon or at least portray stimulant (ab)use as the norm in the brave new (competetive)world of tweaking neurochemistry for optimizing one's day to day functioning. Yet, at each point where the ultimate good vs evil decision seemed about to be clarified, an alternative viewpoint is introduced that, for the public at least, served to muddy the waters once again. "60 Minutes" staff managed to maintain a "soft ambiguity", which was well short of a general acceptance, approval, or actual endorsement (despite the perceptions of many responders) yet consistently layering presentations reflecting the negatives associated with Adderall use, misuse, or addictive dependency. Ultimately, the result seemed to represent a nice balance, yet one in which most viewers with a paticular bias could come away with a sense that the production, in the end, did reinforce their viewpoints (with a few exceptions as highlighted in some of the responses).
Psychiatry and neuroscience pursuits of the future would benefit from similar efforts towards seemingly neutral forums fostering open discussions. The development of new brain- and behavior-changing drugs will nearly always be accompanied by new ethical questions. In this case, the producers seemed to maintain a positive expectation bias towards the probability of new forms of brain-enhancing drugs while focusing on a drug or class of drugs that fall short of such a desired goal, a drug that is again being re-popularized and deceivingly touted as a true enhancer of brain and behavioral development or long-term potential
Also, as a mental health clinician, I was hoping to hear a description of post-amphetamine "crashes" (which, as a general phenomenon, was addressed in a nonspecific manner) that included the all too frequent element of depression, sometimes quite severe.
And lastly, as one responder mentioned, the issue of "state-dependent learning" was not portrayed or described regarding usage of stimulants for "efficient" learning. Getting a college paper written in a highly efficient manner is one thing, but processing material that serves as a basis for future advancement in a particular subject or area of study, and thus needs to be retained, is another. Information encoded or "learned" under the influence of a stimulant often can not be accessed very well(though usually, not fully forgotten) unless the student is once again under the influence of the stimulant, where recall is generally improved.
As noted, there a many, many aspects of the "60 Minutes" story on the use of Adderall or other stimulants as normative behavior on "most" college campuses that could be fodder for lengthy and meaningful discussion. Would CBS consider revisiting the issue, perhaps as a follow-up to examine the longer-term status of many of the Adderall proponents (for off-label use)?
There are reasons that these types of medications are available by prescription only and not over the counter. They are called side effects and contraindications. Visit https://online.epocrates.com/noFrame/showPage.do?method=drugs&MonographId=359&ActiveSectionId=5 to learn what Aderall can do to you. IMO it is irresponsible journalism not to point out these issues when reporting on the abuse and frivolous use of these medications, nor to mention that all prescription medications should only be taken under the supervision of a doctor. Doctors who prescribe medications of this nature irresponsibly should be subject to investigation.
Very irresponbsible article. This show is so blatantly an advertisement for the drug companies. It is very sophisticated. But if you watch closely to all of Katie's interviews, you will realize that they are using psychology to work on the viewer's perceptions that the use of these drugs, namely Adderol, are commonplace, not proven harmful, and will make you smarter, harvard professors do it, will help you win at poker, score better on exams, etc. This is an engineered endorsement. Wake up people.
Are the "enhanced learning/performance effects" long term? Do these drugs promote sound-bite living/lives? Doesn't one need the mental capacity in the first place to have it enhanced?
What addiction does is rob one of the capacity to make choices. As long as a person can still make an intelligent choice in regards to using one of these drugs is there a problem? I think the verdict is still out until studies are done to show long term performance enhancement. Education/learning cannot/should not be viewed a sporting event.
This show is so blatantly an advertisement for the drug companies. It is very sophisticated. But if you watch closely to all of Katie's interviews, you will realize that they are using psychology to work on the viewer's perceptions that the use of these drugs, namely Adderol, are commonplace, not proven harmful, and will make you smarter, harvard professors do it, will help you win at poker, score better on exams, etc. This is an engineered endorsement. Wake up people.
Wow! This segment sure took me back. I was expecting to see a report on experimental drugs that actually boost brain function in some way, but what I saw--what took me back to my college daze in the 70s--was kids on speed! There were some differences. When I was in school, they called us "dopers" and our suppliers were "pushers". And none of us would have admitted to this activity on TV without bags over our heads, since, given the mores of Michigan in those days, you might still be in prison (I'm not exaggerating!) if you showed your face and talked about dropping speed. You definitely would have ended up on a watch-list, and you could have been involuntarily "hospitalized" indefinitely. Or, leaving aside TV exposure, you could have ended up flipped out and dropped out, like a few of my friends. On the other hand, I also took speed to study--but never to party--and ended up graduating Phi Beta Kappa. Ah, memories!
But, back to the show. At least two things were missing from this chirpy segment. 1) Amphetamines are a controlled substance for a reason. There are many conditions and, god forbid, other medications, that contraindicate the use of speed. It can be a real life-changer, or ender, for someone with a predisposition to certain conditions. When I was in school, we were very well-informed about the side-effects and interactions of various drugs (but fairly ignorant of potential psychotic effects). Nevertheless, there were casualties. Have these kids done their pharmacological "homework", as we did back then? 2) When I studied Bio-Psych I learned about "state-dependent learning". After discussing it with my professor (Google, and the Web, hadn't been invented yet), I learned that it was very possible, depending on dosage, that information "learned" on speed might be accessible again only when the student had ingested the same dosage of speed. Of course, with their 24/7 4G access to the Web, these kids don't really need to remember anything anymore, anyway, and Americans are no longer expected to be very creative, so maybe it doesn't matter whether they actually *learn* anything in college.
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Emotional baggage is the product of repressed emotions. It's the hurt we carry (like baggage) inside of ourselves but were too afraid to face up to at the time that it occurred, so we could never healthily experience and process these emotions. Thus, repressed emotional pain stays with us, rooted in our unconscious, stored in the cells of our bodies. Most of this pain is most fundamentally rooted in the ways our own parents were too insecure to really be able to love us for who we were, and still fundamentally are today and always will be. Their insecurity is ultimately rooted in the relationship they had with their parents, and the cycle goes way, way back into history.
Our bodies will always remind us of the truths of our own personal histories, be it through symptoms of chronic health malfunctioning, through addictions, strange behavior we look back on in shame that we were so compelled to engage in, or even...in our ability to concentrate in the present on the homework before us.
In this technological age, machines are coming to dominate life. Robots are not attacking us with guns (not yet at least. Though I've seen what the U.S. military has in development), but machines are overtaking the work place and much of society.
Why are birth rates lower and lower in developed countries? Because kids are so freaking expensive to raise and train before they can finally be productive in this world. They take years of educational fees before they have the expertise to finally become of value to this world and start making money on their own. That's because machines are increasingly taking over the work we used to do for ourselves.
Well, as machines do things with such pace and efficiency, humans themselves are increasingly asked to be like machines. This barrage of inhumane pressures is part of what makes modern life feel so inhuman, so alienated from meaning and rewarding experience. Emotional baggage piles up, and we find ourselves unable to sleep without Ambien, to socialize without alcohol, marijuana, or Zanex, and unable to do work without Adderrall or Provigil. If your trade is major league sports, then add "unable to compete without Human Growth Hormone" to the list as well. The pharmaceutical industry is built around this increasingly humane process, and they will drug us into machinehood if we let them.
Which we probably will. And when the structures of modern day global society truly crumble 100 years from now, we might look back on specials like this and see them for what they really represented: the rejection of our own humanity, and the horrible price we have to pay as a result in the form of emotional baggage.
These drugs are just a band-aid to keep the whole thing together today, but they only do what most of modern medicine does: treat the symptom, without resolving the fundamental problem, one that will bring humanity to its knees, sooner than most of us realize.
I was sadden to see the report on 60 minutes...like others have stated there needed to be more of the negative effects: (sorry for spelling I am dyslexic.
Ritlan became a gate way drug for me. I snorted it in college (Hobart) and then went on to snort the desiegner drug ectacy. I became very sick from this drug (like Ritilan it is anphetimine based)
I had tremors,twithing, numness and mood swings..went to a Nurolgist and he said I had PArkisonian syptoms. Have under control now. wrote a book about it called Train Wreck MY life as an Idoit (simon and shuster)they also made it into a movie by same name starring Sean William Scott And Jeff Garlin.
Jeff Nichols
One of the larger issues for me involved the delicate efforts to portray the story in a manner that seemed to weave back and forth between a seeming critical, judgemental tone and one that at times, almost seemed to all but endorse the Adderall phenomenon or at least portray stimulant (ab)use as the norm in the brave new (competetive)world of tweaking neurochemistry for optimizing one's day to day functioning. Yet, at each point where the ultimate good vs evil decision seemed about to be clarified, an alternative viewpoint is introduced that, for the public at least, served to muddy the waters once again. "60 Minutes" staff managed to maintain a "soft ambiguity", which was well short of a general acceptance, approval, or actual endorsement (despite the perceptions of many responders) yet consistently layering presentations reflecting the negatives associated with Adderall use, misuse, or addictive dependency. Ultimately, the result seemed to represent a nice balance, yet one in which most viewers with a paticular bias could come away with a sense that the production, in the end, did reinforce their viewpoints (with a few exceptions as highlighted in some of the responses).
Psychiatry and neuroscience pursuits of the future would benefit from similar efforts towards seemingly neutral forums fostering open discussions. The development of new brain- and behavior-changing drugs will nearly always be accompanied by new ethical questions. In this case, the producers seemed to maintain a positive expectation bias towards the probability of new forms of brain-enhancing drugs while focusing on a drug or class of drugs that fall short of such a desired goal, a drug that is again being re-popularized and deceivingly touted as a true enhancer of brain and behavioral development or long-term potential
Also, as a mental health clinician, I was hoping to hear a description of post-amphetamine "crashes" (which, as a general phenomenon, was addressed in a nonspecific manner) that included the all too frequent element of depression, sometimes quite severe.
And lastly, as one responder mentioned, the issue of "state-dependent learning" was not portrayed or described regarding usage of stimulants for "efficient" learning. Getting a college paper written in a highly efficient manner is one thing, but processing material that serves as a basis for future advancement in a particular subject or area of study, and thus needs to be retained, is another. Information encoded or "learned" under the influence of a stimulant often can not be accessed very well(though usually, not fully forgotten) unless the student is once again under the influence of the stimulant, where recall is generally improved.
As noted, there a many, many aspects of the "60 Minutes" story on the use of Adderall or other stimulants as normative behavior on "most" college campuses that could be fodder for lengthy and meaningful discussion. Would CBS consider revisiting the issue, perhaps as a follow-up to examine the longer-term status of many of the Adderall proponents (for off-label use)?
What addiction does is rob one of the capacity to make choices. As long as a person can still make an intelligent choice in regards to using one of these drugs is there a problem? I think the verdict is still out until studies are done to show long term performance enhancement. Education/learning cannot/should not be viewed a sporting event.
But, back to the show. At least two things were missing from this chirpy segment. 1) Amphetamines are a controlled substance for a reason. There are many conditions and, god forbid, other medications, that contraindicate the use of speed. It can be a real life-changer, or ender, for someone with a predisposition to certain conditions. When I was in school, we were very well-informed about the side-effects and interactions of various drugs (but fairly ignorant of potential psychotic effects). Nevertheless, there were casualties. Have these kids done their pharmacological "homework", as we did back then? 2) When I studied Bio-Psych I learned about "state-dependent learning". After discussing it with my professor (Google, and the Web, hadn't been invented yet), I learned that it was very possible, depending on dosage, that information "learned" on speed might be accessible again only when the student had ingested the same dosage of speed. Of course, with their 24/7 4G access to the Web, these kids don't really need to remember anything anymore, anyway, and Americans are no longer expected to be very creative, so maybe it doesn't matter whether they actually *learn* anything in college.