The world is filling up with people, and that means competition in all kinds of different areas of our lives. But maybe one of the most noticeable, and the most stressful, is the competition that we face in our careers while we're at work. If you're not always on the top of your game and blowing everybody away with your amazing abilities then there's somebody right behind you who ready, willing, and waiting to do just that.

So how do you deal with the pressure? Unfortunately a growing number of working people are looking to boost brain power, productivity, and alertness in all the wrong ways. Sports (most recently baseball) have always struggled with keeping drugs and other unnatural means of performance enhancement out of the picture, but now it seems the trend is moving into the working class. People are doping up in the hopes of doing better at their jobs.Of course they aren't using the same stuff an athlete would use, like steriods or whatever, but they are finding different options that are just as bad. Called "cosmetic neurology" by some, it's a trend that has researchers scrambling to come up with a legitimate "memory pill." Drugs like Ritalin and Aricept are considered stepping stones in the right direction of developing a medication targeted at meeting this demand, but as of yet anything they're coming up with is still in the research and testing stages. So what are people doing in the meantime? Turning to beta blockers like Inderol (quite popular in the classical music field), and ADHD drugs like Provigil and Ritalin.

This isn't an easy problem to solve, as most of these drugs are easily and legitimately come by. Stress at work and the desire of people to be at their best and concentrate as hard as they can is never going to go away -- and drugs, even prescription ones, aren't a permanent solution. I'm all for help through tough times, and in some cases prescriptions are genuinely warranted -- but medicating ourselves just so we can spread ourselves ever thinner in our daily lives? That's not smart no matter how you spin it. It's much better to put some energy into getting enough sleep, getting enough exercise, and eating right every day. Those things aren't easy either, but at least the efforts are going into something that will actually help solve problems, and not just cover them up.