MT, you didn't answer the question about aspirin, so I looked at it myself. Aspirin is, it seems, pretty nasty stuff if you take it over a long period. That's why people commonly take paracetamol these days, and "an aspirin" is no longer a term for a trivial bit of medication.
Here's the info about the side effects of Ritalin, from the second link I posted:
Side effects
Common reported side effects are: difficulty sleeping (which can lead in turn to other problems); loss of appetite (thus its use as an appetite suppressant); irritability; nervousness; stomach aches; headaches; dry mouth; blurry vision; nausea; dizziness; drowsiness; motor tics or tremors. Up to 5% of children experience disturbing hallucinations often involving worms, snakes, or insects (New Scientist, 31 March 2006).
Less common side effects are: hypersensitivity; anorexia; palpitations; blood pressure and pulse changes; cardiac arrhythmia; anaemia; scalp hair loss; toxic psychosis.
There have also been reports of: abnormal liver function; cerebral arteritis; leukopaenia; death. There have been at least 19 cases of sudden death in children taking methylphenidate, leading to calls by the Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee to the FDA to require the most serious type of health warning on the label, but this advice was rejected (New Scientist 18 Feb. 2006).
Medline lists a number of side-effects of unquantified frequency.
Risk of death
As mentioned above, methylphenidate has been implicated in cases of sudden death by heart failure. The FDA decided against requiring warning labels, even though its advisory committee voted in favor of this. (bold from me)
Illicit use
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American psychiatry's infatuation with the brain coincides with a drug industry more than happy to contribute funds for research that only counts symptoms and pills. If only family counseling or special education rewarded stockholders the same way Ritalin or Prozac [fluoxetine hydrochloride] does. (Diller, West J Med, Dec. 2000)
Street names for ritalin include: diet coke, kiddie cocaine, kiddie coke, vitamin R, R-ball, poor man's cocaine, rids, skittles, and smarties.
(end of quote)
I've now quoted so much from medic8 that I had better give their link again!
www.medic8.com/medicines/Ritalin.html
On the subject of the second article, do you really, honestly believe, that a wonder drug exists, that lets you re-design your life to exclude sleep?
Just the other day, I was reading a piece about how lack of sleep could harden your arteries, according to new research. Will the wonder drug protect us from these sort of effects, or will yet more drugs be required for that?
I read both the articles originally linked, and find them both extremely biased. The NS one is candy floss, based upon the nature study that is subscription only, I think, as I can't see it. The title of the nature article is hardly unbiased though: "Towards responsible use of cognitive-enhancing drugs by the healthy", ie the conclusion is in the title, that these drugs are good things.
You havent either answered my original question: it may seem like a great lark at university, to take ritalin, party all night and get good finals results.
But when you have to produce the goods, day in, day out, in a job - what then? Will you rely on the ritalin for that, too? Do you envisage taking ritalin all your life?