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Modafinil is a hot topic these days
Peter said he thought he needed modafinil. Why is it a hot topic now? His thought way back was that it was everything he needed at the time--mood regular, stimulant.
Most programmers, scientists, people in finance and startups I know take a lot of stimulants. I take a lot of stimulants.
[Edit - as others have pointed out, there's a strong selection bias going on here. I actively seek out people who I know take stimulants, and we naturally congregate socially based on a bunch of subtle and explicit cues that signal we are safe to talk to about this kind of thing. My experience is not a random sample - I'm just responding to the request in the OP]
I have pretty severe ADD, so I take ritalin. Initially it was on prescription, but then I realised it was actually easier and cheaper to just get it from other sources.
I was pretty productive before because I developed a bunch of working practices that mostly contained the ADD, but with ritalin... I feel superhuman. And to be honest I can output an order of magnitude more and better than most people when I'm up. I recently moved to Berlin, where everyone is up all the time. Like, I know people who founded or are working for hundreds of businesses. Everyone, every single person, is up all the time. Adderall, dexedrine, ritalin, plain old speed paste, cocaine, kratom, modafinil. LSD or MDMA microdosing. Everyone works best when they are up. Then on the flip side, xanax, zopiclone, diazepam help control the wiredness and allow you to sleep when you want. Everyone is doing this. I know it's the same in London and New York.
If I have a good week, I generally will take perhaps 30mg Adderall IR a day, or 50mg Ritalin IR. If I need to brainstorm or deliver something with someone we order whatever (stimulants are delivered within 15-30 min by taxi here) and work through the night to get stuff done. This is normal. It's strange to me to see this being described as a problem because... it's not a problem. It is fairly low risk (compared to e.g. binge drinking) and it completely transforms your ability to work. It's so normal to me that I don't hide it from anyone and nobody ever complained. I meet random people, like undergraduate students from the USA who are visiting, and they are in exactly the same routine. Everyone works best with stimulants.
Modafinil is a hot topic these days
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Peter said he thought he needed modafinil. Why is it a hot topic now? His thought way back was that it was everything he needed at the time--mood regular, stimulant.
It said to have characteristics of a holy grail stimulant: increased performance without the crash or heavy tolerance build.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yup. I used adrafinil(prodrug of modafinil) regularly during university and found it particularly useful in my programming classes. It helped me get "in the zone" while avoiding the euphoria, BP issues, and recovery periods/withdrawals that stronger stuff does. Plus it doesn't show up in most drug tests.
Do you still use that now? or other stimulants? Or did you find you didn't need it after college?
I use it because I am not naturally suited for the work. I have a genetic variation(gs224) that makes me tired all of the time and stimulation-deprived. However in our current economy, it seems like the only career path I can take that will work with my abrasive, likely autistic personality while still providing long-term career growth opportunities.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any chance you can explain why? Not enough hours in the day kind of thing? Is the only route to success in software engineering to work 24/7?
I think a human being is really only capable of like 6 hours of solid mental work throughout the day. And even that is tough, with all the distractions of modern life. When you take something like Adderall, that doubles to, say 12 hours and enables you to get hyper-focused on the task at hand. Sure, you can still get hyper-focused on the wrong thing , but if you can reign that in you're golden. Not only that, the amo…
Edit: What I see a lot of is people who think they are super productive while churning out lines and lines of garbage.
Postdocs and young faculty, in particular.