LOS ANGELES - FORGET sports doping. The next frontier is brain doping.

Even as the sports authorities struggle to curb drug abuse, people in a range of other fields are reaching for a variety of prescription pills to enhance performance despite potential side effects.

Academics, musicians, corporate executives, students, and even professional poker players, have embraced drugs to clarify their minds, improve their concentration or control their emotions.

'There isn't any question about it - they made me a much better player,' said Paul Phillips, 35, who credited the attention deficit drug Adderall and the narcolepsy pill Provigil with helping him earn more than US$2.3 million (S$3.4 million) as a poker player.The medicine cabinet of so-called cognitive enhancers also includes Ritalin, commonly given to children for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and beta blockers, such as the heart drug Inderal.

The drugs are all just precursors to the blockbuster drug that labs are racing to develop. 'Whatever company comes out with the first memory pill is going to put Viagra to shame,' said University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Paul Root Wolpe.

Unlike the anabolic steroids, human growth hormone and blood-oxygen boosters that plague athletic competitions, the brain drugs haven't provoked similar outrage. People who take them say the drugs aren't giving them an unfair advantage but merely allow them to make the most of their hard-earned skills.

'If there were drugs for investment bankers, journalists, teachers and scientists that made them more successful, they would use them too,' said Charles Yesalis, a doping researcher and emeritus professor at Pennsylvania State University. 'Why does anyone think this would be limited to an athlete?'

The use of cognitive-enhancing drugs has been well documented among high school and college students.

Sharon Morein-Zamir, a psychologist at the University of Cambridge in England who writes about the ethics of brain enhancement, tried Provigil which helped her focus as she worked at her computer for hours.

That's why Sarah Tuck, a veteran flautist with the San Diego Symphony, also takes drugs to stave off the jitters that musicians refer to as 'rubber fingers'. 'When your heart is racing and your hands are shaking and you have difficulty breathing, it is difficult to perform,' said Ms Tuck, 41, who discovered them when she began performing professionally 15 years ago.

Prescriptions for Inderal and other beta blockers can be readily obtained from doctors. Ms Tuck said some doctors have told her they use the drugs themselves to calm their own nerves before making presentations at medical meetings.

But cosmetic neurology, as some call it, has risks. Ritalin, Adderall and other drugs can cause headaches, insomnia and loss of appetite. Provigil can make users nervous or anxious and bring on headaches, while beta blockers can cause drowsiness, fatigue and wheezing.

No one has conducted studies about how brain boosting drugs would affect healthy people after weeks or months of continual use, experts said.

'If there were drugs that actually made you smarter, good Lord, I have no doubt that their use would become epidemic,' Mr Yesalis said.

'Just think what it would do to anybody's career in about any area. There are not too many occupations where it's really good to be dumb.'

ASSOCIATED PRESS