What's troubling to me about this drug is that broad-spectrum improvement of memory formation /does not/ seem to be a clear positive in many cases. It's certainly great for, say, studying for medicine, but it strikes me as an enormous liability in the event of trauma, or with respect to the many psychological difficulties that are associated with bad memories.

As I recall (and it's been years, so please forgive me if I'm mistaken), Charlie's increased intelligence lead directly to increased unhappiness. While literature obviously does not constitute any sort of conclusive evidence, I think that the point is well-taken: for all the merits of human intelligence, it also fucks us up pretty good.