The XX Factor: What women really think.

Brain Waves

If I were an Adderall popper, I probably wouldn't have veered from my Slate tasks today to read Margaret Talbot's fascinating piece about neuroenhancers in the latest New Yorker. But I'll please my employers by turning an afternoon distraction to good use: a blog post!

Margaret points out that "every era, it seems, has its own defining drug," and astutely assesses what makes stimulants like Adderall and Ritalin, the newer Provigil, and a drug called piracetam—touted for dispelling foggy-headedness and promoting productivity—such a good match for our moment. "Neuroenhancers are perfectly suited for the anxiety of white-collar competition in a floundering economy," she writes. "And they have a synergistic relationship with our multiplying digital technologies: the more gadgets we own, the more distracted we become, and the more we need help in order to focus."

It struck me that the era helps shape the media portrayal of that defining drug, too. The quest for the cognitive edge: Not so many years ago, I could imagine that a piece about a surge in cosmetic neurology might well have had a romanticizing bent—or at any rate might have sent readers scurrying off to score some pills, eager not to miss out on what go-getters were doing. For all I know, there were such pieces. Without demonizing these drugs, Margaret does something that I can't help thinking is a lot more useful and, when you stop and think about it, better suited to these already stressful times of ours. Her account makes the blinkered drive for focus and hyper-efficiency—in the face of what sounds like phenomenally little research on the drugs' long-term effects—sound strikingly narrow-minded. It's not that she romanticizes unadulterated genius, either; her piece is a reminder, in all ways, of the virtues of calm reflection.