Hey :) I'm a researcher with a project on the line, looking to make your aquaintance!

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Hey :) I’m a researcher with a project on the line, looking to make your aquaintance!

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October 21, 2014 at 10:15 am

#682674
1

CuriousAboutSpeed

@curiousaboutspeed

Member
Hello everyone Its very good to meet you all.

I’m a final year university student, working towards my final research project for my degree. My research so far, and my general experience at university, has taught me a lot about drug using cultures. I’ve come to Partyvibe because I’d love to share some of this knowledge with you guys and maybe tap into some of your expertise for a future research project. In particular, I’m interested in the use of so-called “performance enhancing” drugs at work. Why do so many students feel they have to take drugs like Ritalin just to get through work at university? Could it be because there are unrealistic expectations placed on students? How does Ritalin use by students compare with stimulant use in other high pressure work environments (cocaine use by city workers, for instance)?

At some point in the near future, I’ll probably post a thread in the ‘Drug Studies’ section and start looking for participants for a research project about these issues. In the mean time though, it seems like a good idea to go about getting to know you all a bit first. In that respect, I’m interested in a whole bunch of topics to do with the social life of drugs and drug taking – drug policy and policy reform, how we use drugs to form social bonds, the relationship between drugs use and subculture, recovery from addiction, and how we can bring a more compassionate perspective towards drug users (especially young people) into social research. If anyone else out there has similar interests, feel free to hit me up some time for a chat! Also, if there are specific threads or forums on here that are relevant to me – I would really appreciate any recommendations .

Thanks for having me, C
October 21, 2014 at 11:05 am

#830789
1

tryptameanie

@tryptameanie

Participant
I think you misspelled Party-vibe, you spelled it bluelight.
October 21, 2014 at 11:08 am

#830783
1

CuriousAboutSpeed

@curiousaboutspeed

Member
Aw yes I’ve been caught out :P.
Sorry guys, really. No disrespect meant, I’ve just been hosting similar threads on a few different drugs forums.
All Best,
CAS
October 21, 2014 at 11:12 am

#830790
1

tryptameanie

@tryptameanie

Participant
Good luck
October 21, 2014 at 11:14 am

#830784
1

CuriousAboutSpeed

@curiousaboutspeed

Member
Thanks 🙂
October 21, 2014 at 12:49 pm

#830781
6

General Lighting

@general-lighting

Moderator
Staff
a lot of us are in the UK / Europe. Ritalin is only legally prescribed for children and young adults with genuine diagnosed health problems such as ADHD.

The “official” use of now controlled stimulants by university students was stopped in Europe before I was born in the 1970s. Ironically I got put out of University in 1992 for amongst other things using JANET (the IT network you are using) to discuss drug use and get info via the first web server at info.cern.ch (having got a connection via the a German uni;this idea came about as I had been pilled up one night before and then was at my aunts house looking for some minutes at a testcard on satellite TV that was marked “DBP” and had a message “three level testsignal, Deutsche Bundespost…”. The next day I thought “what happens if I pick the name of a German uni and put DBP and DE in the connection info where it would be BT and UK?” :laugh_at:

City workers including IT/tech staff often get drug tested nowadays as excessive stimulant use does not improve performance and can lead to bad decisions and even people being put in danger.

I expect some of the newer stimulants do get used by students and adults to give them more energy/focus and Ritalin may be used in the UK via diversion of prescriptions to younger teenagers but its only in USA where the doctors collude in prescribing them.

My viewpoint (from personal experience having never been a parent) is that it is at high school you often first start with drugs and it is as much a coping measure with the stress of formal examinations; if this stress were reduced there may well be less drug abuse across younger people. I wasn’t even interested in taking drugs (even though my Dad did them which has the opposite effect of making them uncool to a teenager) until I was in my mid teens and was put under a lot of pressure to do well in education.
October 21, 2014 at 2:09 pm

#830791
1

tryptameanie

@tryptameanie

Participant
OK after reading GL;s reply I’ll post one but it might not help. When you say performance enhancing, I’m taking your question to bed more about the mind and mental focus than steroid use and while I’ve used many different types of stimulant I’ve never been a student. While I could understand people who wish to take them because they think they can focus more or study harder or whatever but it’s just not that easy. You do get focus/concentration at lower doses but does that improve your ability? I don’t think so, it does give you a lot more hours in a day to do things though.

srry bowt the gramm3r, psyentist must be on holyday
October 21, 2014 at 6:29 pm

#830785
1

CuriousAboutSpeed

@curiousaboutspeed

Member
@General Lighting 571184 wrote:

a lot of us are in the UK / Europe. Ritalin is only legally prescribed for children and young adults with genuine diagnosed health problems such as ADHD.

That’s right. You’d be surprised though, how easily it gets around. I’ve interviewed people from the U.S. and U.K. about this, and, although it seems like its a bigger deal in Canada and the US, you can definitely get hold of it in Europe if you really want to. I’m at university in Scotland and around here people seem to get it mostly either from the internet or from friends who were prescribed as children.

I’m really interested in the role of stress in this, as you mention. One of the main things that drew me to the project is noticing the gap between my own experience of university and the way performance enhancement is portrayed in the media and among academics. It’s often assumed students do this to get ahead of their peers in a competitive work environment. When I can to uni, though, and experienced how wildly stressful it can be, it made me wonder whether performance enhancement might have a lot more to do with the way people cope with the particular pressures of university life.

So yeah, in some ways our experiences of this are similar.

All Best,
CAS
October 21, 2014 at 6:37 pm

#830792
1

tryptameanie

@tryptameanie

Participant
Well how many people need drugs to finish a degree? Are all your professors raging speed freaks? Probably not. Your also not competing like athletes, where you need to run faster every year to be the best. A benchmark was set, achieve said benchmark and you pass, you don’t need to do better than someone else, just to do what’s required. If you need drugs then you’re p[robably spending time you should be studying doing other things. Like taking drugs.
October 21, 2014 at 8:58 pm

#830786
1

CuriousAboutSpeed

@curiousaboutspeed

Member
@Tryptameanie 571194 wrote:

You do get focus/concentration at lower doses but does that improve your ability? I don’t think so, it does give you a lot more hours in a day to do things though.

So, you bring up an interesting point here that I’m also trying to get at with my research i.e. what does performance enhancement actually mean? As far as I can tell, most people who take these drugs take them to help out when they’re coming up to a deadline, or when they feel they’re behind on something. In this context, it seems to be a lot more about just staying up long enough to get the assignment finished, rather than trying to out do other people. (Of course, this probably isn’t true for everyone, it’s just the case in the majority of cases I’ve seen/heard of so far). Does that count as performance enhancement? And if it does, doesn’t that make the way people usually use caffeine also performance enhancement?

And yeah, I agree that the idea that it’s purely competitive is silly. Even students who do it to improve the quality of their work, rather than just cramming for essays/exams, I think, do it mostly out of wanting to make the whole experience of university more interesting/enjoyable/less stressful. Or just to get a greater sense of achievement out of their work 🙂

All Best,
CAS
October 21, 2014 at 9:02 pm

#830787
1

CuriousAboutSpeed

@curiousaboutspeed

Member
I don’t wanna seem like I’m talking too much for other people here. It’s just some initial observations. I welcome people to disagree with me. 🙂
October 21, 2014 at 9:26 pm

#830793
1

tryptameanie

@tryptameanie

Participant
@CuriousAboutSpeed 571353 wrote:

I don’t wanna seem like I’m talking too much for other people here. It’s just some initial observations. I welcome people to disagree with me. 🙂

If you could talk too much on here I’d be banned.
October 22, 2014 at 12:15 am

#830782
1

Digital Buddha

@digital-buddha

Participant
really bad fopaux copying and pasting your thread from bluelight but i’ll throw you a bone anyways: i think ADD/ADHD medicine abuse is muuch more common in US universities than in Europe just because of the ease of scoring an adderall prescription, demand also really spikes at the end of the semester when kids need to get ready for F.I.N.A.L.S aka fuck i never actually learned stuff/shit. doubt that is a ton of help but whatever.
October 22, 2014 at 8:45 am

#830788
1

CuriousAboutSpeed

@curiousaboutspeed

Member
Aw well, like I say, I’m sorry about that. It wasn’t done in bad faith!

And yeah, it definitely is more common, but that doesn’t mean people don’t use it here too. And in fact, I prefer to think about performance enhancing drugs in a broader sense too. Some people use street speed for instance. I’m pretty sure that most people have tried energy drinks. Even cigarettes y’no?

Anyway, thanks for your perspective 🙂
CAS
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