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

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

#111

Post by chii »

0x_rs wrote: post #50
tomtimtall wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, it sure is concerning that many consider abusing prescription drugs with possibly severe, long lasting side effects to attempt to improve studying effectiveness Not getting through an education and being saddled with a heavy student debt without a well paying job is an extremely severe, extremely long lasting and quite horrible at times life destroying side effect of not doing everything the two people nex…

That's absolutely true. Academia and education in general is a nonforgiving environment for many people, requires many sacrifices to get through (more in some countries than others) and is generally socially expected to participate in for a "worthwhile" career in life. Needless to say, it's unfortunate that some need — or believe they need — to self-administer drugs in general. The main, root issue has not been addre…

> root issue has not been addressed in years

what is this root cause? Are you saying that people should not compete?

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

#112

Post by chii »

luckylion wrote: post #103
david_allison wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's similar to issues with performance enhancing drugs. If your course is graded so the top x% get an A, and people are using drugs to get ahead, then there's pressure to take study drugs to level the playing field with your peers. The end state is everyone taking drugs, and nobody being any better off academically.

> The end state is everyone taking drugs, and nobody being any better off academically. Will society be better off though? I mean, the same point can be made for using any new technology. I use a computer so now you need to use a computer to stay competitive. Now we both use a computer, so we're at a stale mate once again. But we're both working much more efficiently on a much higher level, and society is definitely…

> the same point can be made for using any new technology.

The difference is that some technology don't harm the user, while others do. Drugs tend to harm your biology, usually - that's why taking steroids isn't recommended.

So is society willing to sacrifice (some people' s) health for such progress?

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

#113

Post by cbozeman »

luckylion wrote: post #48
cbozeman wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried adrafinil at any point, or any other nootropic drugs?

Pretty much only modafinil and then armodafinil. I've taken piracetam for a while (because hey, why not, maybe it does something), but didn't get any noticeable effect. The same goes for supplements, no noticeable effect. I'm far from an expert on any of this. I found something that works very well for me, but I'm not making any claims that it'll work for anyone else. I personally know two others who take modafinil,…

I've found that with Piracetam (800mg), I need to also take Alpha GPC, around 500 mg. I've tried many of the racetam family and I had the most success with phenylpiracetam.

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

#114

Post by triggercut »

As an adult recently diagnosed with a marginal attention defficit, who has recently started a perscription of dexies, I really think I'm missing some trick even more now. The only results I've seen so far are extremely subtle (general feelings of lethergy have reduced slightly, generally a little more content / less depressed, can read for longer periods of time during the day without falling asleep) only after weeks of taking concistently, the first few days I didn't notice anything. Nothing like the sudden surge of focus and energy described here after taking a single dose. What quantities are these kids/young adults taking to get this effect?

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

#115

Post by joveian »

jvanderbot wrote: post #86
mlboss wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was also not able to sleep properly after taking modafinil. Which in turns affected my concentration. In my opinion, the best drug is good sleep and less stress.

Your story is hard to believe, but your conclusion is correct. Sleep, exercise, caffeine and theanine (mild nootropics) are the best supported performance enhancing drugs for intellectual work. Modafonil is good for alertness when you cannot sleep, but doesn't really help with the 'good mania' unless your main blocker is mental exhaustion.

It should be very easy to believe considering the half life of R-modafinil is 15 hours (armodafinil and half of regular modafinil). Even a single dose could cause sleep disruption for multiple days and longer if the initial disruption leads to circadian disruption. But it is interesting that both somnolence and insomnia seem to be in the "very common" category (1-10%) of side effects. Sleep disorder is in the "uncommon" (.1-1%) category, which is quite a few people developing sleep disorders taking modafinil.

https://www.drugs.com/sfx/modafinil-side-effects.html

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

#116

Post by snvzz »

_dain_ wrote: post #13
snvzz wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

I'm not exactly promoting its use. Just saying I can understand. I use plain old coffee/tea.

I do hear that some people are super sensitive to modafinil, and that these people often divide a standard pill in 4 slices and take just one such slice. I did try it in the past and, as far as I can tell, I am one of these people (took 1/4 from the very start, and yet so strong).

It was very good at helping with being awake (and not sleepy) and making it slightly easier to focus.

But it also had this annoying "higher threshold for finger movement" that absolutely killed automatic finger movement and thus playing rhythm games (deresute/mirishita/sif/...)

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

#117

Post by kamaal »

ryandrake wrote: post #87
FooBarBizBazz wrote: post #30

Apparently we have constructed a society in which everyone, including children, has to spend all day doing things they can't care about without pharmaceutical help. When this last happened under the Qin dynasty, it ended in the Taiping Rebellion, and produced nothing of value except those little canned oranges. I hear pornographic performers are on Viagra too. Meanwhile nobody actually has children, and CO2 PPM keeps…

You bring up a good point that this definitely doesn't end when you get out of school. I've worked with more than one person who admitted their high workload in the office could not be achieved without pharmaceutical[2] help. Magic pill = hours of intense focus = keeping your job (at worst) and career growth/promotion (at best). It kind of reminds me of Vernor Vinge's A Deepness In The Sky [1] where the antagonists u…

>>Yes, not just coffee. Ritalin/Adderall use to cope with workload is not unheard of in offices I've worked.

The most obese person I knew drank like a large latte every 45 minutes, smoked more than 10 cigarettes a day.I thought he was addicted to coffee, but it was actually a combination of both sugar and coffee. Eventually I saw that spillover to him eating bowls of desserts every day at lunch. Cans of beers by eod. The office free food just made that worse.

He made lots of money, but he had to retire early, he was like close to 160 kgs or something and would breath heavily just standing 5 minutes during the daily stand up. He had troubles using the rest room. And it was pretty clear he was just months away from a heart attack.

He just had to quit and fix his health.

Another manager I knew had similar problems, eventually it took him a lot to quit smoking. For coffee addiction he would keep a small quantity of black coffee decoction around and would just feel the taste on his tongue by taking an occasional sip. By his own admission it was next to impossible to get rid of this. He wasn't obese but being a chain smoker and coffee drinker does as equal damage to your health.

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

#118

Post by luckylion »

chii wrote: post #112
luckylion wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The end state is everyone taking drugs, and nobody being any better off academically. Will society be better off though? I mean, the same point can be made for using any new technology. I use a computer so now you need to use a computer to stay competitive. Now we both use a computer, so we're at a stale mate once again. But we're both working much more efficiently on a much higher level, and society is definitely…

> the same point can be made for using any new technology. The difference is that some technology don't harm the user, while others do. Drugs tend to harm your biology, usually - that's why taking steroids isn't recommended. So is society willing to sacrifice (some people' s) health for such progress?

> So is society willing to sacrifice (some people' s) health for such progress?

Strong yes. We accept health issues in shift workers, traffic deaths etc because of economic benefits. With moderate use, I don't think stimulants are having worse effects than that, and they have a much higher pay off.

I have a vague feeling that the general rejection is similar to that regarding anti-depressants. People are much more hesitant to use drugs that target what we think of as "the mind" than anything else. Very few people refuse antibiotics, but many refuse to take anti-depressants.

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

#119

Post by fellellor »

imtringued wrote: post #88
fellellor wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not ants, rather societies that can agree on long term, as opposed to short term, economic goals and modify them easily when needed. Most individual humans aren’t able to do this. A society able to achieve it would be truly remarkable. Despotic systems like communism on the other hand only reflect the goals of a chosen few. So by human limitation these goals can never adequately represent the complexity of the govern…

>Not ants, rather societies that can agree on long term, as opposed to short term, economic goals and modify them easily when needed. Most individual humans aren’t able to do this. A society able to achieve it would be truly remarkable. The fact that it is considered remarkable is absurd. From the perspective of a money system that rewards short term thinking it is easy to fall into the trap of believing that short t…

I’m not a specialist in these issues, first of all.

The value of money goes down because of inflation, which is why you are incentivised to earn more when you’re younger, so after accounting for decay, you have enough saved up for your eventual retirement.

But a deflationary system like gold, btc etc. are a tad unfair because the early adopters in the founding generation accumulate “a fortune for generations” for say an x amount of work, whereas an individual born in an established crypto or gold system will only accumulate an exponentially low fortune for a similar kind of effort. So this locks in permanent inequality like in the old days.

By activity trap I mean things that

- prevent science from moving forward

- prevent society from expanding its social space for everyone (ie every society has outcasts who don’t have a place in the current system)

- invent activities that keep obsolete arrangements relevant etc

Given such a broad definition I admit I’m not in a position to say what is an activity trap and what isn’t. It could all just be necessary drudge work to get to a better situation. But right now it “feels” like an activity trap.

Your solution, if I understand correctly, is to have some type of money that decays back into the system, if left accumulated and unspent after some time.

But there is still nothing here to stop someone from gathering enough quantum of value to force some sort of gate-keeping type situation. People will always be incentivised to save what they earn. Maybe for tomorrow, a bad season or the next 10 generations. It isn’t people who are thinking short term. People in large groups behave in ways that suggest to the observer that short term benefits trump long term goals.

While money seems like a good tool for societies to manage social behaviour perhaps we are looking at it wrong when we think it can easily be used to set the kind of long term goals that can easily avoid activity traps. The obsession with money and monetary system, maybe distracting attention from avenues where much greater improvements can be made.

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

#120

Post by raxxorrax »

stackbutterflow wrote: post #53
api wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody planned this. It’s the result of emergent behavior in complex systems and feedback loops. We are still absolutely at the mercy of such forces. They rule us. We sort of understand them (game theory, complexity, evolutionary dynamics) but have yet to come up with any reliable way of controlling them. Totalitarian government force is the best we can do, and it comes with equally large downsides and is itself subj…

Like ants? All for the colony. We would already be on Mars if we behaved like ants but what kind of life is that.

Ants are amazing, had a colony as a child for years. Spend hours watching them. But while it often seems they manage the impossible, I think their way of life is pretty restricted and there is little development. So don't expect them on mars anytime soon.
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