Though it may seem like a dire one, Chatterjee’s prediction is not unique. Another expert who agrees with him is Erik Parens, a behavioral scientist at the ethics think tank The Hastings Center. He says that the epidemic of stimulant use in America is simply a symptom of modern life: on your game 24/7, tethered to your email, needing to perform better today than you did yesterday. But that doesn’t mean this lifestyle, nor the stimulant use required to support it, is a good thing. As we’ll soon learn, drugs or no drugs, performing in this nonstop manner without sufficient rest is suboptimal at
...more