Mental Enhancement

Abstract

This chapter explains how people’s nonmedical substance use, particularly that of prescription stimulants, was understood as “enhancement” or “brain doping” since the early 2000s. In both the academic debate and popular media, it was frequently claimed that ever more people, in particular students, were using such drugs to increase their cognitive performance. This chapter illustrates that this was not a new phenomenon and that even “moral enhancement”, the idea to use substances, and neuroscientific technology to improve people’s moral behavior already existed in the 1960s and 1970s. The actual present prevalence of brain doping is then discussed in detail, with an emphasis on other motives to use drugs besides cognitive enhancement. Indeed, much of the use turns out to be rather emotionally motivated and to cope with stress, particularly in competitive environments, or to be even self-medication of psychological problems. This shows how difficultly the distinction between medical and nonmedical use can be drawn. Finally, nonpharmacological alternatives to improve one’s mental health are presented. The chapter concludes that the academic debate on cognitive enhancement was not very informative and that a general theoretical framework for people’s instrumental substance use should be preferred, which is introduced in Chap. 4.