ArticleCulture, medicine and psychiatry2015
Pursuing Pleasures of Productivity: University Students' Use of Prescription Stimulants for Enhancement and the Moral Uncertainty of Making Work Fun.
Article in Culture, medicine and psychiatry, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed.
- Exploring the use of cognitive enhancement substances among Portuguese university students.Exploratory research in clinical and social pharmacy · 2022Article
- Students' use of caffeine, alcohol, dietary supplements, and illegal substances for improving academic performance in a New Zealand university.Health psychology and behavioral medicine · 2021Article
- The off-prescription use of modafinil: An online survey of perceived risks and benefits.PloS one · 2020Article
- Developing expertise, customising sleep, enhancing study practices: exploring the legitimisation of modafinil use within the accounts of UK undergraduate students.Drugs (Abingdon, England) · 2019Article
- Gaming under the influence: An exploratory study.Journal of behavioral addictions · 2018Article
- "It Was Me on a Good Day": Exploring the Smart Drug Use Phenomenon in England.Frontiers in psychology · 2016Article
- Enhancement, ethics and society: towards an empirical research agenda for the medical humanities and social sciences.Medical humanities · 2015Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
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Abstract
This article presents ethnographic data on the use of prescription stimulants for enhancement purposes by university students in New York City. The study shows that students find stimulants a helpful tool in preventing procrastination, particularly in relation to feeling disinterested, overloaded, or insecure. Using stimulants, students seek pleasure in the study situation, for example, to get rid of unpleasant states of mind or intensify an already existing excitement. The article illustrates the notion that enhancement strategies do not only concern productivity in the quantitative sense of bettering results, performances, and opportunities. Students also measure their own success in terms of the qualitative experience of working hard. The article further argues that taking an ethnographic approach facilitates the study of norms in the making, as students experience moral uncertainty-not because they improve study skills and results-but because they enhance the study experience, making work fun. The article thereby seeks to nuance simplistic neoliberal ideas of personhood.
Indexed as
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25956594What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.