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Steroids for the brain...

Posted By: Jake Jacobs
Date: Tuesday, 27 April 2010, at 2:49 a.m.

In Response To: Steroids for the brain... (Bob Koca)

The idea isn't all that new. Years ago people took amphetamines for the same purpose. Fighter pilots used to be issued them - maybe still are, though it isn't something the government would publicize.

Speaking as someone who was given strong prescription Dexedrine (SKF double dots, the Rolls Royce of speed!) a number of times when I was in junior high and high school (by an endocrinologist, to help me lose weight), I can attest that they made me awake and alert. But one of the withdrawals, though I didn't see the connection until years later, led to profound, suicidal depression. The gains were short term, and the potential downside was huge.

That said, Paul Erdos took them all of his life, and in a profession where 25 is over the hill, he remained productive until he was 85.

Also anecdotal, and results, as they say, may vary, but for me marijuana had serious and insidious effects. The summer I was seventeen I enrolled in a computer school, the Honeywell Institute for Information Sciences. Classes were in the morning, and we'd work on programming homework in the afternoon. At the time I was only smoking dope a couple of times a week. I noticed that, despite waking up in the morning clear headed and well rested, and feeling completely normal and alert, the afternoons after smoking a joint I couldn't focus - the flow charts didn't flow.

I had also - though the connection isn't so clear and compelling - taken an IQ test a couple of years before, when I was still in high school. I was already smoking regularly, though not yet as frequently as I was at seventeen. According to my parents my score had dropped significantly compared to tests administered in first and seventh grades.

Then again, I did no homework and slept through all my classes from seventh grade on, so maybe there were factors besides the pot.

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