Do “smart drugs” really work?
Ever met somebody smart who said, “I owe it all to drugs?”
They sure helped that guy in the Flowers For Algernon story.
Wait, that might have been a surgical operation?
Hell if I remember.
Come on, you all remember “smart drugs”! They were all the rage when the whole rave thing started in early '90s – although the term did NOT encompass substances we think of as “rave drugs,” such as ecstasy. It’s all bound up with the whole cyberpunk/information age thing. I believe “Wired” magazine had some stories abou “smart drugs.” A rave’s focus is supposed to be sensual, not intellectual, of course. Nevertheless, at the original raves one could often buy a “braino” or amino-acid shake – and there was a whole group of other substances, most of them legal, which were supposed to enhance intellectual functioning – and then, for some reason, we haven’t (or at any rate, I haven’t) heard much about “smart drugs” for the past few years. If the brain is a kind of biochemical computer (a debatable assumption), and if there are chemicals which will temporarily change the way it works, usually for the worse (an established fact), then it doesn’t seem unreasonable there are also chemicals that will make it work better. But I don’t know if the claimed effects of any “smart drug” have ever been scientifically verified or debunked. Do any of you know?