I’m not here to tell you that many students are taking study drugs to pack more work into the average day – that’s old news. Most will have heard of Modafinil and know there’s little point in me looking into whether it works, because it really does expand your mental capacity. It won’t make you Einstein, but it is a sort of chemical equivalent of Hermione’s time-turner: it will help you get through that stack of articles you were meant to read but couldn’t quite squeeze in between lectures.

Maybe you don’t feel like you need it right now but it goes without saying that during exam term many change their stance on study drugs, being stuck in the maths library at 2am desperately trying to cram more revision into their day, powered by black coffee and Modafinil. I’ve been there, too. 

“It doesn’t feel like there are many alternatives but to keep our eyes open with chemical assistance.”

You can buy Modafinil legally at the moment in the UK, but it is illegal to sell it without a prescription. Although it has been called the “world’s first safe smart drug” by Harvard and Oxford university researchers, scientists don’t fully know what its long-term effects might be. In the short term, users often report a loss of appetite, headaches, and heightened feelings of jitteriness and anxiety as some of the side effects. Thing is, it’s not really that interesting to think about how it works, what it is, where to get it or who takes it. What is interesting, though, is the culture we operate within that tells us that we, on our own, are not quite enough.

First thing: Modafinil is used for people with narcolepsy. But students are using it just to focus that bit extra on their work. What does this say about the standards that are expected of us? Every time we take a study drug it is as though we are saying to ourselves: “I am physically incapable of achieving what this University wants of me on my own.” It says that waking hours are not enough time or that, by the middle of the term, we become so sleep-deprived that it doesn’t feel like there are many alternatives but to keep our eyes open with chemical assistance. It is to studying what steroids and protein powder are to bodybuilding. But when our degrees cost £9K, excluding the interest in accrues and maintenance loans, finding a way to ensure a grade at the end that makes the debt worthwhile is completely understandable.

All this harks back to the deep structural problems within the Cambridge system that are putting strain on our mental and physical states. These issues range from the unrealistic demands placed on us by supervisors and other members of staff to the impossibility of juggling packed academic timetables alongside extracurricular activities. Not to mention the fact that the university experience, beyond studying, comes with its own set of new experiences and personal struggles that can make facing a weekly essay seem like the most unachievable task. Then to top it all off there’s the full dirty clothes basket in the corner of your room screaming at you to be washed.

At the heart of it all is the deadly eight-week term, offering little in the way of breathing space. Like academic automata we hop from lecture to library to seminar to supervision to dinner and then to bed, only to repeat it again the next day. We are only human after all and, in many cases, ones that have only just come out at the other end of their teen years. Some might be bored with hearing people complain about the eight-week term but, frankly, we will continue to do so until the University takes the complaints seriously. The fact that we’re taking study drugs just to be able to cope is a telling sign that something should change.

Study Drugs: Yes or No?

When seen in these terms, the decision to take a study drug seems logical. Our workloads are unbearable and we, as students, often feel inadequate. Taking Modafinil is an attempt to make the endless list of tasks we face become manageable. Some think drugs like Modafinil will become even more prominent in our futures, transforming us all into an unstoppable workforce. It is as though we all become Bradley Cooper in our own version of Limitless. But I’m not sure this is a culture I’ll be greeting willingly. 

It’s not hard to imagine the daily takeaway coffee in the morning being replaced with a ‘smart drug.’ Businesses globally would be overjoyed at the increased productivity levels, higher profits and more efficient workforce it would generate, but it’s at the expense of making dystopian science fiction become a sort of reality. It doesn’t require you to be a passionate Marxist to see that we’d start looking like robots, and where’s the lasting satisfaction in that? Modafinil might be helping many to get through their degrees, but hopefully the drug and the lifestyle that comes with taking it doesn’t feature too heavily in our futures.