In his study of nonmedical use of prescription stimulant medication for cognitive enhancement, Scott Vrecko seeks to provide an empirical account of "real-world, everyday" users' "actual experiences, practices, and meanings," which he claims is currently lacking within the available bioethics literature (2012, 5). Based on his analysis of qualitative data gathered from interviews with university student users, Vrecko argues that conceptualizing nonmedical stimulant use as cognitive enhancement, which he defines in terms of raw intellectual power, "may fail to adequately capture the perspectives and experiences of individuals who use stimulant drugs as study aids" (4). More specifically, he contends that use of the term "cognitive enhancement" fails to capture significant changes in nonmedical users' emotional states. I show that there are two main problems with Vrecko's analysis that weaken his specific contention, and propose a solution to these.
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