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Amphetamine use in America's workforce

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Re: Amphetamine use in America's workforce

#171

Post by reitanqild »

robohamburger wrote: post #168
Vraxx wrote: post #9

I think this is a little bit sensationalized at the very least. This excerpt in particular caught me off guard. "Abuse by young professionals is distressingly common—Wall Street traders, software engineers, dentists, nurses, and lawyers, all cracked out of their minds trying to keep up with the competition." Yes, I was diagnosed with ADHD as a child, and yes I have an Adderall prescription. But I'd hardly call myself…

I use Ritalin to treat my ADHD and that was my reaction as well. I have developed a thick skin over the years to the FUD around amphetamines. I can also see how dangerous it could be taking a drug like this without getting the dosage calculated right. Interestingly a pretty prolific mathematician, Paul Erdős used amphetamines [1]. Not sure which one(s) though. I don't think he had a prescription but I think it worked…

And why was this downvoted? There certainly is a whole lot of FUD around drugs, even completely legal ones like R.

Re: Amphetamine use in America's workforce

#172

Post by reitanqild »

taxicabjesus wrote: post #149
api_or_ipa wrote: post #147

I think this quote sums up the article's heavy handed, decidedly outdated view on mental health. > ADHD drug abuse had become so commonplace on college campuses that Wesleyan University, among other prominent institutions, has tried to ban it altogether. ADHD is a diagnosed medical disorder that affects millions of people in America. Why do we still stigmatize it in the modern age?

> ADHD is a diagnosed medical disorder that affects millions of people in America. Why do we still stigmatize it in the modern age? ADHD is a meaningless psychiatric diagnostic [1] of symptoms, not cause. The diagnosis is used to put millions of people in America on maintenance doses of addictive psychotropic drugs. Routine use of amphetamines almost always causes people's mental conditions to worsen, eventually. Ton…

Did you ever stop to think if possibly it could have been worse without R or whatever?

Oh, most likely not R, because it doesn't cause addiction if taken according to prescription.

Re: Amphetamine use in America's workforce

#173

Post by rlt »

shermanyo wrote: post #121
dcosson wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another bit of sensationalism I noticed, the article mentions people have died after mixing adhd meds and alcohol. But the link was to an article about a person who died after mixing adhd meds, narcotic painkillers, and alcohol. It's well-documented that mixing narcotic painkillers & alcohol on its own is very dangerous. There may also be dangers of mixing adderall and alcohol, but it does everyone a disservice to ca…

My doctor told me to redose in the evening if I'm going to a social gathering, and it changed my interactions completely. Instead of writing myself off with shots until I can handle the social side, I am able to carry conversations, am not overwhelmed by the stimulus (imagine trying to have a conversation, while playing pinball and reading a book in a loud room). It was a huge factor in breaking a drinking problem, w…

May I ask which meds you take now?

You sound similar to me. I'd like to know what to ask my doctor about.

Re: Amphetamine use in America's workforce

#174

Post by sandstrom »

eridius wrote: post #111
llamataboot wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

#1) Let's get specific about our dosages then. I know people prescribed 60mg of adderall a day. And lots of people prescribed 40mg. I guarantee if you give a person with no amphetamine tolerance 40 mg of adderall (yes, even if you split it into two doses) they are going to know they are on some speed. In fact, most people I know that use adderall "recreationally" (whether for pleasure or productivity -- that is they…

#1) Yes, if you give someone with no prior experience 40mg, that's going to have a significant effect. Someone who's prescribed that amount is done so because they've built up a tolerance. Just because 40mg may be an appropriate therapeutic dosage for one person doesn't mean it's considered a therapeutic dosage for everyone. Also, you said this was the amount per day that was prescribed; are they taking one dose of X…

Doesn't 80% of normal people also seeing an improvement (on a bunch of attributes) after taking it?

Re: Amphetamine use in America's workforce

#175

Post by WhyIsTriangle »

Lewton wrote: post #46
ta_339393 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a myth, the effects are the same regardless of whether or not you have ADHD otherwise we'd be able to test for ADHD by simply giving someone amphetamines and seeing how they respond. Almost anyone who takes low-dose amphetamines will experience enhanced cognition. It just happens that this enhancement also alleviates symptoms of ADHD. As you pointed out the problem with the article is that it makes no distinc…

I thought giving people adhd meds and seeing whether it relaxes them was a pretty good (not perfect) indicator? Am I wrong?

That depends on the the type of ADHD being treated and the type of medication prescribed. I take extended release tablets which work very well for my needs. When i was prescribed instant release tablets I was cracked out for a few hours then desperately wanted to sleep until the end of the world.

Re: Amphetamine use in America's workforce

#176

Post by konradb »

shermanyo wrote: post #121
dcosson wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another bit of sensationalism I noticed, the article mentions people have died after mixing adhd meds and alcohol. But the link was to an article about a person who died after mixing adhd meds, narcotic painkillers, and alcohol. It's well-documented that mixing narcotic painkillers & alcohol on its own is very dangerous. There may also be dangers of mixing adderall and alcohol, but it does everyone a disservice to ca…

My doctor told me to redose in the evening if I'm going to a social gathering, and it changed my interactions completely. Instead of writing myself off with shots until I can handle the social side, I am able to carry conversations, am not overwhelmed by the stimulus (imagine trying to have a conversation, while playing pinball and reading a book in a loud room). It was a huge factor in breaking a drinking problem, w…

Presumably if you re-dosed in the evening you would be up very late the next morning, or did it not affect you like that?

Re: Amphetamine use in America's workforce

#177

Post by programmarchy »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #115
md224 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I was struck by the same line, "cracked out of their minds"... very biased. I don't know if "abuse" used to have a coherent meaning, but these days it boils down to "used in a way I don't like". Drug use is certainly a mixed bag but it deserves a balanced treatment, not scare tactics. The article even goes on to list great accomplishments that were made possible (or at least supported) by drug use. Talk about…

Wonderfully contrarian? I'd disagree, in fact I'd maintain that what the lady does is not science. How can you argue medical ethics, a subject firmly rooted in observable, shared reality, from first principles and then disregard outcomes? If you intend to do science uou can't omit to check dogma against reality, perhaps those dogmata are no good at all to describe the world. Very telling is another publication of her…

Economic liberties means choice and competition in a market without state-enforced monopolies. US healthcare costs are an outlier because the state enforces insurance cartelization. Obamacare was a gift to insurance corporations, forcing everyone to buy their product. It's inelastic demand at gunpoint, so of course prices are going up.

Look back at the history of healthcare to see economic liberty in action when we had a workers' self-organized healthcare. People formed friendly societies, worker cooperatives, and lodges creating a welfare system that was organized from the bottom up. It was well-organized, affordable, and voluntary.

That all started to change as progressive legislation was introduced in the guise of social reform, which built up the state capitalist bureaucracy and slowly eroded people's rights to self-organize and provide each other with mutal aid. Instead people were forced to depend on the centralized state/corporate welfare system. And here we are today, and things are only getting worse.

The healthcare crisis is a problem of artificial scarcity, enforced by the state regulatory regime which upholds the insurance monopoly and suppresses people's rights to self-organize.

> The large corporation and centralized government agency do not exist just as discrete individual organizations. Beyond a certain level of proliferation, such large organizations crystalize into an interlocking system. Even the small and medium-sized firm, the cooperative, the non-profit, must function within an overall structure defined by large organizations. [1]

[1] https://c4ss.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/C4SS-The-Healthc...

Re: Amphetamine use in America's workforce

#178

Post by goldenkey »

Throwaway23412 wrote: post #153
goldenkey wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately you can pretty much nanny-pick a study that supports your view for just about any purported topic and view relating to drug use. Secondly, that study is flawed because it fails to acknowledge what is known as the 30%-30%-30% jump. The difference in intelligence between a retard and a normal person is the same difference of intelligence between a normal person and a genius. Different boosts account for d…

>it fails to acknowledge what is known as the 30%-30%-30% jump Known by who? Did you just respond to a peer-reviewed study with made-up pseudo-science? Also, I should point out that the psychiatric term is ADHD, not ADD.

Oh no, I offended the scientific valour, better shoot me some rigor-mo'roll.

I didn't say the study is bunk. I said that looking at performance differences as significant without reference to the 30/30/30 effect is extremely misinformed. What I should have said is that the study's "interpretation" is flawed. That would have sounded more rigorous.

Re: Amphetamine use in America's workforce

#179

Post by tlrobinson »

taxicabjesus wrote: post #164
SolaceQuantum wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Routine use of amphetamines almost always causes people's mental conditions to worsen, eventually. I've not heard this before..do you have a source? Quite interested.

I don't have a specific source, it's just the impression that I get from having talked to a few people who had trouble with meth amphetamine. One friend's husband brought cocaine home. That was nice, but it got expensive, so they switched to Meth. After a while she realized she didn't like what it was doing to her personality, so she quit. Then the anxiety started. Xanax helped her not care, then she discovered Alcoh…

Are you really comparing meth to ADHD drugs?

Re: Amphetamine use in America's workforce

#180

Post by taxicabjesus »

tlrobinson wrote: post #179
taxicabjesus wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have a specific source, it's just the impression that I get from having talked to a few people who had trouble with meth amphetamine. One friend's husband brought cocaine home. That was nice, but it got expensive, so they switched to Meth. After a while she realized she didn't like what it was doing to her personality, so she quit. Then the anxiety started. Xanax helped her not care, then she discovered Alcoh…

Are you really comparing meth to ADHD drugs?

Whoever wrote the Wikipedia page on Ritalin [1] conflates Amphatamine and methylphenidate. "Amphetamine" appears on 24 times on Ritalin's page, 5 times as "amphetamine and methylphenidate"

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methylphenidate

Adderall [2] is an amphetamine.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adderall

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