Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

25% of students age 16-32 take Adderall 1-7 times per week, not prescribed

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 121 posts

Re: 25% of students age 16-32 take Adderall 1-7 times per week, not prescribed

#11

Post by teeray »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #6

Some fraction of this is almost certainly due to taking them as an "academic steroid" rather than having a diagnosis for a condition that needs amphetamines. The abuse of these drugs is a very real problem in schools, but some students legitimately need them so it's hard to come up with a blanket policy. Edit: according to the tweet, all of this is due to recreational or performance enhancing use.

Anecdotally, I remember classmates in college using Adderall as a performance enhancing drug prior to taking exams. You could randomly drug test a subset of students and check against prescriptions, but that might get onerous.

Re: 25% of students age 16-32 take Adderall 1-7 times per week, not prescribed

#12

Post by luckylion »

nso wrote: post #5

Could anyone here tell us about their experience with "study drugs"? When did this start to become a phenomenon, because it certainly was not in the time and place I studied.

I can tell you about my experience with modafinil / armodafinil. For the record, I'm 40. I've never been diagnosed with anything, and I wasn't terrible in school, but I was never really able to concentrate for too long.

I kind of tumbled into IT after school and it worked for me, if I got 2 hours of concentrated work in per day, I'd get by.

A friend of mine had taken modafinil and recommended it to me like three years ago. I tried it and it was extreme, I was able to sit down and just work on stuff and get it done without getting distracted every few minutes. I took it once or twice a week because of all the propaganda surrounding all drugs.

I've switch to armodafinil because I found it to work more reliable for me. About two years ago, I started taking armodafinil each & every day, and it's great. I have no negative side-effects that I attribute to it (well, I've gained weight, but weight has been up & down for me my whole life), I sleep well, and it allows me to get into the flow quickly, remain there for hours, and stay productive. I still have the occasional day where I don't get anything done, but it tends to be because I'm subconsciously avoiding some task, and recognizing that helps me get over it.

These past two years were easily more productive than the previous 8-10. I wish I had known about it earlier. Looking back, it feels like I've wasted a lot of time before.

Re: 25% of students age 16-32 take Adderall 1-7 times per week, not prescribed

#13

Post by _dain_ »

snvzz wrote: post #7
BrianOnHN wrote: post #2

> I just learned from a colleague and it was confirmed by every student I asked, that 25% of students age 16-32 take Adderall 1-7X/week (not prescribed). And 5-10% do the same w/Modafinil or Armodafanil; 30-35% of students are on amphetamine Modafinil isn't an amphetamine. Source is seemingly "anecdata." And this was posted on Twitter. Probably not much to see here other than some outrage for attention.

>Modafinil isn't an amphetamine. Yeah, it isn't. It's a nootropic like caffeine. Similar effects, lasts longer, doesn't create a dependence. It's arguably better than caffeine, and I can understand its use. Amphetamine being popular like that is, however, insanity.

It lasts too long for me. I would take it early in the morning, and I'd still be wired at 2am the following night, unable to sleep. Made it unusable.

Re: 25% of students age 16-32 take Adderall 1-7 times per week, not prescribed

#14

Post by MontyCarloHall »

nso wrote: post #5

Could anyone here tell us about their experience with "study drugs"? When did this start to become a phenomenon, because it certainly was not in the time and place I studied.

I tried Adderall once, in college, for a final exam I had ill prepared for. It increased my working memory by a factor of 2 or 3; the most concrete thing I remember being able to do was hold 8 (sparse) 3x3 matrices in my head (Gell-Mann matrices, [0]) and effortlessly manipulate them, all without ever writing anything down.

However, the crash afterwards was so brutal that despite the extraordinary effect on my short-term memory abilities, I never wanted to try it again.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_matrices

Re: 25% of students age 16-32 take Adderall 1-7 times per week, not prescribed

#15

Post by kongin »

BrianOnHN wrote: post #2

> I just learned from a colleague and it was confirmed by every student I asked, that 25% of students age 16-32 take Adderall 1-7X/week (not prescribed). And 5-10% do the same w/Modafinil or Armodafanil; 30-35% of students are on amphetamine Modafinil isn't an amphetamine. Source is seemingly "anecdata." And this was posted on Twitter. Probably not much to see here other than some outrage for attention.

>Modafinil isn't an amphetamine.

The last time I went on a modafinil bender I didn't sleep for a week and ended that with a 12 hour masturbation session involving a lot of blood.

That's not really that much different to what happened the one time I did meth, apart from there being a lot less violence.

Modafinil should be way more regulated than it is.

Re: 25% of students age 16-32 take Adderall 1-7 times per week, not prescribed

#16

Post by kongin »

nso wrote: post #5

Could anyone here tell us about their experience with "study drugs"? When did this start to become a phenomenon, because it certainly was not in the time and place I studied.

Modafinil in the mid 00s university.

Pretty useless as a study drug, great for a party drug and sex enhancer. You can easily stay up for a week on it. A lot like meth in that way.

Re: 25% of students age 16-32 take Adderall 1-7 times per week, not prescribed

#17

Post by _fat_santa »

nso wrote: post #5

Could anyone here tell us about their experience with "study drugs"? When did this start to become a phenomenon, because it certainly was not in the time and place I studied.

Yeah I can share some thoughts. Graduated with a BCS degree in 2017 for context.

I had friends then on all sides of the spectrum (in terms of "study drug" usage). Two most common drugs going around were Adderall and Vyvanse. Lot of people took them but I would divide them into 3 groups

* Group 1: These folks are prescribed it, they usually take it as prescribed or cut back their intake so they can sell the excess.

* Group 2: These folks were not prescribed it but took them all the time. Because there are so many people in Group 1 on campus, finding these study drugs was really easy. This group took them for every test, every remotely hard thing, and this was largely the same group that abused them outside of class (don't take an Addy and go drinking, bad things happen)

* Group 3: These folks are also not prescribed it, but they take them very seldomly, usually for finals. I was in this group, taking a handfull over the course of 2-3 semesters as a Junior and Senior. Often times when taking them you're not taking them to "study" or "concentrate" but to just get work done and stay awake.

As someone who took them every now and again, I could never understand how someone could take them regularly or even semi regularly. I had the usual side effects, loss of appetite, feeling like (very awake) zombie, and just the general feeling like you're on a drug bender even though you took just one.

Re: 25% of students age 16-32 take Adderall 1-7 times per week, not prescribed

#18

Post by MontyCarloHall »

tokai wrote: post #9
MontyCarloHall wrote: post #3

Are there any studies speculating on long term health effects of kids being addicted to low grade amphetamines? This is a new enough phenomenon that I don’t think there are sufficient data to draw definitive conclusions from.

Is it new though? Erdős famously took amphetamines all his life. The only drug Tarn Adams (Dwarf Fortress creator) ever tried was meth during his Maths degree. Stims and academia seems like a classic combination to me.

Certainly academics have used amphetamines since their discovery, but it was my understanding people like Erdős were anomalies. Assuming the tweet is true, stims are being used by an unprecedentedly high proportion of students. Perhaps there are no ill health effects at mild to moderate doses, but I just don’t think they’ve been used widely enough until recently to definitively draw conclusions either way.

Re: 25% of students age 16-32 take Adderall 1-7 times per week, not prescribed

#19

Post by dragonelite »

snvzz wrote: post #7
BrianOnHN wrote: post #2

> I just learned from a colleague and it was confirmed by every student I asked, that 25% of students age 16-32 take Adderall 1-7X/week (not prescribed). And 5-10% do the same w/Modafinil or Armodafanil; 30-35% of students are on amphetamine Modafinil isn't an amphetamine. Source is seemingly "anecdata." And this was posted on Twitter. Probably not much to see here other than some outrage for attention.

>Modafinil isn't an amphetamine. Yeah, it isn't. It's a nootropic like caffeine. Similar effects, lasts longer, doesn't create a dependence. It's arguably better than caffeine, and I can understand its use. Amphetamine being popular like that is, however, insanity.

Tried it once took half pills effect was quite nice imho just to check it out. half a pill was good for like 6 hours of concentrated/focused work.

Re: 25% of students age 16-32 take Adderall 1-7 times per week, not prescribed

#20

Post by LinuxBender »

As a side note I do something not as powerful as what is described here but it helps me focus. I combine the non-essential amino acid L-Theanine (from green tea) with caffeine to give me a more calm focused mind. Again, nowhere near as powerful as these drugs but there are also no side effects that I know of. Maybe this could be an alternative for some folks?
Post reply on HN