I was having a conversation with my 6th grader the other day and almost gave my wife an aneurism. We were casually discussing school when the subject of one of his pals came up. This kid used to be a real paste-eater, and I'd be lying if I said I don't enjoy a little schadenfreude at the expense of those parents whose kids are truly a mess, versus mine who are merely aggravating.

Anyway, my kid is bright enough but hates school - something I certainly understand. He particularly struggles in math, so I was really happy for him when he got a 90% on his last math test. I know how much effort it took to get that grade. Then he tells me this other kid, the paste-eater, got 100%. I call bullshit. He then explains to me that he's a completely different kid these days and that he gets straight As and never gets into trouble anymore.

Me: Are you kidding me? What changed?

Son: He got ADD. He takes medicine and he's not hyper anymore.

Me: ADD isn't a thing.

Son: *Blank stare*

Me: Look, his parents are drugging him because he was a little shithead and they got tired of dealing with it. He's taking drugs that make him get good grades, so he's cheating. He'll probably get your spot in college.

At this point my wife loses it and starts yelling at me.

Wife: You can't tell him stuff like that! You know he repeats everything!

Me: I don't give a shit. The kid's transcript should have an asterisk.

Son: What's an asterisk?

Me: It's when an athlete breaks a record but he does it because he took drugs to make him stronger and faster than everyone else. So they put an asterisk on the record so everyone knows he did it, but not really.

Wife: Seriously, Eddie, shut up. He's too young to know these things.

Son: Wait, there's drugs I can take that will make me get straight As? Why aren't I taking them?

He was being completely serious.

The PED Arms Race

At least 1 school-aged child in 10 in the United States is currently diagnosed as ADD and/or ADHD. Which is ironic, because it's a diagnosis that doesn't exist outside the US. The most common treatment for it is prescription drugs, which today means Adderall.

Anyone who has ever taken Adderall will tell you that it's a performance enhancing drug. That's why 1 in 4 American adults are willing to fake ADHD just to get it. Adderall abuse in the workplace has become common enough to lead some doctors to call it an epidemic.

Adderall is not a benign drug. It increases your heart rate and affects your neurotransmitters like norepinephrine and dopamine, not unlike cocaine. Coming down can be awful too, which is why many users never stop taking it. Of course I have no problem with adults taking whatever they want to take (I'm a huge fan of nootropics), but you can understand why any reasonable parent would hesitate to put their kid on speed.

But there are plenty of unreasonable parents out there. Parents who have no qualms about risking their kid's wellbeing if it means they get better grades and higher test scores. Who cares if my kid's a zombie? He got into Stanford!

Unfortunately for the rest of the kids, they're forced to compete on this uneven playing field. Kids who are solid "B" students lose ground to the "C" and "D" students who are juiced to get straight As. Which is why we need to put an asterisk on those transcripts.

The Asterisk

How would the game change if the transcripts of kids who used performance enhancing drugs came with an asterisk? I imagine an admissions committee coming together with two separate stacks of applications, one "natural" and the other "juiced". At least then there would be some accountability.

Think about it: how would it change the K-12 landscape if colleges capped the "juiced" pile at 10% of total admissions? How many parents would risk their kid's health and wellbeing for those odds?

What about on the job? Imagine hiring managers having an increased appetite for those applicants who are naturally gifted versus those who took drugs to get there? I know I'd rather hire somebody who checked all the boxes without ever taking any PEDs. (I'd have a bottle of Adderall waiting for them in their cubicle, too, just to see what kind of production they were really capable of.)

Obviously a lot of this is tongue-in-cheek, but it's a real issue. Parents of school-aged kids are forced to make a decision about the kind of childhood they want for their children. When you're competing against kids who are juicing, you either have to juice your kid to keep up or accept the fact that they're going to lose opportunities.

For me it's a no-brainer. My kids are assholes, but I'm not about to change who they are for a better shot at a target school. I know a lot of parents who really struggle with it, though, especially with today's focus on standardized testing. Which is ironic, because the very purpose of standardized testing is to measure everyone against the same standard.

So what's the answer? Should we put an asterisk on the juicers? Or should every kid be drugged to level the playing field?