281–290 of 363 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cocaine was isolated long before current drug laws, so I'm not sure I buy the argument "if it were invented today". Cocaine wasn't invented today and was banned.
It was banned because people associated it with "scary black people"
https://www.nytimes.com/1914/02/08/archives/negro-cocaine-fi...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocaine_in_the_United_States
I sort of fell down the rabbit hole of nootropics over the past year, of which Modafinil is a frequent recommendation. I don't know if I would really recommend nootropics to the average person (because there is risk involved, and many of these substances have had very little in the way of human studies), but it's been an interesting journey. It was kind of a pandemic hobby I picked up. My favorites are Aniracetam and…
The only thing that bothers me about nootropics is that so much of the conversation is about productivity . What a weird thing to focus on, especially when we're talking about un-researched brain chemistry impacts. The best combination I found was magnesium, ashwaganda, and green tea extract. It caused massively vivid, lucid dreams. I've never had more fun sleeping, and my sleep health was never better. It had nothin…
What's remarkable to me is that modafinil is less toxic than caffeine[0], and possibly even less addictive[1], but we all know which is illegal for recreational use and which is coffee. Regulations are sticky. The FDA follows the precautionary principle. Political game theory incentivizes restricting what the electorate can do rather than giving them more freedoms, and being blamed for whatever harm may fall upon the…
I doubt that people consume coffee because of its cognitive enhancing effect though. I don't really believe there are no side effects, ritalin and coffee certainly have some. I also wouldn't want to use cognitive enhancers to solve problems. That said, I think it shouldn't be illegal.
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Capitalist life is a competition with winners and losers. The losers are basically debt-slaves, and the winners are modern royalty.
ALL LIFE is competition regardless of whether it's capitalistic or not. People need it or they're miserable. Competition is not a bad thing.
Not all life is competition. Ecosystems in general are a complex web of cooperation. One could say that all life is cooperation with equal merit.
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I took it heavily in grad school. Prescribed off label for adhd. You can be in any state of exhaustion, take a modafinil, and an hour later feel like you just woke up on a Sunday morning after sleeping in. It’s nuts. The military uses it for fighter pilots. You can take it for days and only lose minimal amounts of reaction timing. At my peak, I stayed up for finals for a week straight with maybe 2 hours of sleep tota…
Small correction: adrafinil is a prodrug to modafinil and is less potent, it turns into modafinil after liver action. It also makes your pee smell more, if anything. I expect you're thinking of armodafinil, the isolated r-isomer. I've taken it a few times, it's more potent by weight than modafinil but I'm unconvinced the chiral group is anywhere near so decisive as it is with amphetamine, where the laevo-rotary molec…
I was prescribed Vyvanse but quit it (flushed the remainder of the pills in the bottle down the toilet), I had to stop when I felt the clammy hands, cold sweat and heart palpitations. On top of that, it made me feel like a zombie.
Modafinil provided me with the calmness to concentrate and ability to stick to something for hours on end without the feeling of depletion after hours of taken an amphetamine, with the only adverse reaction being a foul smell in urine.
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I have a friend who can't stand the taste of coffee but of course likes caffeine as do we all, and had to import it via mail drop to Denmark in order to get his espresso-equivalent shot in the morning.
Import what? Caffeine? Where do you live? I just assumed you could buy that anywhere. I can’t imagine buying caffeine for its own sake. The effects aren’t good enough. If I didn’t drink coffee/tea I just wouldn’t get any caffeine.
Also as I understand: it is against the rules to import it so it will be stopped if caught but not against the rules to have it so you do not get fines or anything on record. Thus if you buy it abroad you can bring it into country with you unless caught in which case they confiscate it. This used to be the same case with Modafinil / Adrafinil and I suppose it is still the same.
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Maybe school shouldn't be a competition with winners and losers.
That is impossible because there is limited supply of the things you want to achieve with your education, e.g. a tenure track position, and the demand is always higher than the supply.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Capitalist life is a competition with winners and losers. The losers are basically debt-slaves, and the winners are modern royalty.
ALL LIFE is competition regardless of whether it's capitalistic or not. People need it or they're miserable. Competition is not a bad thing.