Blair Tindall, in the October 17th New York Times, revealed the "dirty little secret" of classical music: a majority of world-class classical musicians use performance-enhancing drugs.
In this case, it's beta-blockers, most frequently propanolol.
These drugs slow the heart and calm the mind, quelling anxiety with little in the way of apparent side effects.
The question in the minds of many is, if it's not OK for athletes, how come musicians can get away with it?
Some experts even believe musicians - classical variety - should undergo mandatory drug tests.
I headed this post "Cosmetic Psychopharmacology" as opposed to "Cosmetic Neurology" because the latter carries a connotation of Botox use or some sort of injected procedure with neurological sequelae.
What we're dealing with here is, rather, internal rearrangement of the nervous system.
I don't like either term, to tell you the truth.
"Cosmetic Psychiatry" isn't any better.
I'm gonna put on my thinking cap and see if I can come up with something more descriptive.
Here's the Times story.
- Better Playing Through Chemistry
The growing debate over pharmaceutically enhanced classical music
Ruth Ann McClain, a flutist from Memphis, used to suffer from debilitating onstage jitters.
"My hands were so cold and wet, I thought I'd drop my flute," McClain said, remembering a performance at the National Flute Convention in the late 1980s.
Her heart thumped loudly in her chest, she added; her mind would not focus, and her head felt as if it were on fire.
She tried to hide her nervousness, but her quivering lips kept her from performing with sensitivity and nuance.
However much she tried to relax before a concert, the nerves always stayed with her.
But in 1995, her doctor provided a cure, a prescription medication called propranolol.
"After the first time I tried it," she said, "I never looked back. It's fabulous to feel normal for a performance."
McClain, who was then teaching flute at Rhodes College in Memphis, started recommending beta-blocking drugs like propranolol to adult students afflicted with performance anxiety.
Article comments
1 - bhw
There's a difference between performance and competition. So I don't know why it would matter if half the Boston Pops took Inderal before a performance. As long as the music is good, who cares?
But I can see why it might matter if some musicians took it before an audition -- a competition -- and some didn't, but only if does improve performance on a technical level. [I'm not sure how you'd measure that, though. Isn't it arguable that the anxiety was inhibiting the performance and that the drugs just enable the musician to do what s/he is capable of doing when no anxiety is present? Dunno.]
Do people use beta-blockers for other types of anxieties? Are lots of people walking around with their betas blocked?
2 - Victor Plenty
Other frights soon will be beta-blocked, I predict, even if these beta-blockers aren't being used for them right now.
Just think of all the highly lucrative applications this could have! (Lucrative for the pharmaceutical companies, of course. Everybody else will pay and pay and pay.) Better performance in any situation that might make you jittery. No matter what you're nervous about, the same pill will help you stay calm and smooth.
Big job interview?
Crucial presentation to the VP of the whole division you work for?
Taking a polygraph test to get the SEC off your back about all the insider trading you've been doing?
Asking that really hot co-worker out for a date?
No problem! Just pop this pill and you'll be cool as a cucumber!
I'd be dismayed by all this, if I couldn't see the long-range implications of it. Eventually, calm cool collectedness all by itself will become a justifiable reason for suspicion. Nobody will trust anybody who isn't painfully nervous in any public situation.
And that, dear reader, will be the long-anticipated day in the sun for people like me.