I just read a fascinating article called “Brain Gain” in the most recent New Yorker. At first blush, one might not connect the stories of college students (or professional poker-players) taking “neuro-enhancers” like Adderall for a cognitive boost with concerns over memory loss. But raising for bar for “normal” cognition creates greater pressure and worry over “normal” age-related memory loss. Peter Whitehouse has been talking about this link for years, particularly in his critique of the pharmaceutical industry. And Carol Elliott’s Better than Well makes a similar point – that we find ourselves where people feel cheated if they are just “normal.”
“Brain Gain” author Margaret Talbot makes an explicit link to aging and memory function – deep in the article she mentions a 30-year old man who takes neuro-enhancers because he worried “he ‘didn’t have the mental energy, the endurance, the–I don’t know what to properly call this–the sponginess that I seem to recall having when I was younger.’”
He later makes the link directly when he talks about his wife, who is 9 years younger – “‘She’s twenty-one, and I want to stay young and vigorous and don’t want to be a burden on her later in life.’ He didn’t worry about visible signs of aging, but he wanted to keep his mind nimble and healthy for as long as possible.’” (41)
Will we soon all be taking Adderall? Will this become such a universally accepted right (to be alert and cognitively focused) that neuro-enhancers will go over-the-counter? Their common use in a generation defined with the label ADHD might point to a new normal of enhanced cognitive expectations just when the boomers head into normal, age-related memory loss.
