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Aldous Huxley predicts Adderall and champions alternative therapies

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Re: Aldous Huxley predicts Adderall and champions alternative therapies

#101

Post by Aeglaecia »

alterom wrote: post #90
Aeglaecia wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

>youre very close to freeing yourself but the speed has an iron grip on your thoughts , i wish you all the best and hope that things may settle down Oh my. I was going to ask if you've drank a glass of methanol to argue that Adderall and speed the same thing, as I suggested... but judging my the content of your comments, you might have had more than one already.

we could choose to produce an environment that handles normal human behaviour , but instead we label normal human behaviour as dissonant , its an idea so simple yet one so violently opposed , such violence only spurs me on to champion the idea

Re: Aldous Huxley predicts Adderall and champions alternative therapies

#102

Post by alterom »

itishappy wrote: post #89
latentsea wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, when you have ADHD and you take stimulants you don't feel any sort of high or however it makes people with normally functioning dopamine receptors feel, you just feel normal.

Oh, I still feel a bit high. Particularly when I start taking them after a hiatus. Or up the dose. Anyway, here's what Huxley's had to say: > ... I have talked to pharmacologists about this matter, and a number of them say that it’s probably quite possible that it may be possible to, by pharmacological means, which will do no harm to the organism as a whole, to increase the span of attention, to increase the powers o…

Interesting if that it works for you that way.

"Upping the dose" of Adderall makes me sleepy. In fact, I take a little before going to bed if I'm feeling restless. Midnight coffee is a thing for me.

I don't have a problem with attention span (ADHD isn't about short attention spans, after all), and stimulants do nothing for that.

Power of concentration? That's where ADHD people excel when that hyperfocus locks in. That's the default, unmedicated. The problem is the lack of control over where that concentration goes.

As you can see, I've been concentrating well enough on writing long enough comments in this thread to exceed the attention span of some of the commentors who respond to them (including, sadly, the author of the article we're discussing, who, while being kind enough to join this discussion, has nevertheless glossed over the points I've made that others haven't missed).

What I should have been concentrating on is sorting out the stuff in the garage from our recent camping trip.

This is what Adderall helps with. It's starting to kick in, so I'll go and do the adulting things it makes far less painful to start doing .

Wouldn't call it an increase in mental efficiency by any measure, but insofar as my spouse is concerned, it gets me off the couch; and insofar as the to-do list is concerned, I'm more productive in ticking off the boxes.

But the items on that list are far from requiring leaps in mental effort. It's things like folding the laundry, or unpacking suitcases, paying bills, making calls to insurance, mopping the floor, doing the oil change, and so on.

In short, Adderall doesn't work like Mentats from Fallout 1/2¹.

But it greatly increases the number of action points I have for Doing Things, while I feel... normal.

That is the much more common experience, and the reason it's prescribed for ADHD.

____

¹ https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Mentats_(Fallout)

Re: Aldous Huxley predicts Adderall and champions alternative therapies

#103

Post by cyberax »

wisty wrote: post #81
luckydata wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Behavioral therapy is only needed to make people feel better about taking amphetamines. It takes only a very cursory review of published reputable papers to realize there's nothing behavioral therapy can do to improve ADHD because as Russell Barkley says ADHD is a disability of doing, not knowing what to do.

Not true. CBT works pretty well for adhd, studies are clear on this. But medication seems even better, as does a combination of therapy and medication. ADHD isn't unusual as far as the effectiveness of therapy, it's unusual in how well the medication is proven to work.

> CBT works pretty well for adhd

No, it doesn't. It _barely_ works and mostly consists of teaching people some coping mechanisms. Medication works _much_ better, especially when using in addition to the CBT.

Re: Aldous Huxley predicts Adderall and champions alternative therapies

#104

Post by alterom »

_yb2s wrote: post #49
alterom wrote: post #10

This article (and the title alone) is harmful. Adderall is not about increasing mental efficiency . What Adderall is about is: - helping with executive dysfunction for people who suffer from it. - allowing people with ADHD like me to function . To do the things that everyone else does, things that we want to do and need to do, but can't do because of the way our brains are wired. - increasing the lifespan of ADHD peo…

Thank you for writing this. There are so many misconceptions about what ADHD is and how it’s treatments work.

Thanks for this comment! Makes it so worthwhile to write <3

Re: Aldous Huxley predicts Adderall and champions alternative therapies

#105

Post by halper »

FooBarBizBazz wrote: post #56
Melatonic wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say something with the intensity of weed (relatively low) along with the effects of MDMA. Essentially "MDMA lite" Marijuana often seems to promote thinking "outside the box" which is probably not what the Brave New World people would want for their population

I think he was inspired by Valium and other benzos. They put people into a docile, low-anxiety state, and they were popular around the time the book was written. That's also more-or-less consistent with the implied literary reference to the Lotus Eaters, who I think are usually imagined as opium users. Opioids are different but are also downers that reduce anxiety. Benzos later featured significantly in one of Adam C…

If we are talking about BNW, which was written in 1931, then that book predates benzodiazepines by 25 years or so. Perhaps you are thinking about barbiturates?

Re: Aldous Huxley predicts Adderall and champions alternative therapies

#106

Post by pfannkuchen »

Spivak wrote: post #43
gwbas1c wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seem to think marijuana is more about sedated pleasure than MDMA. Granted, it's been about 30 years since I read Brave New World.

It is, you're right, and it's super weird what happens on the internet when you suggest weed isn't some gateway to enlightenment. I love cannabis, but it's a depressant that increases dopamine, it's not that complicated. Stoners on the internet sound exactly like alcoholics—they say it makes them more creative, helps them sleep, deal with anxiety too. We do such a shit job teaching about signs of psychological addict…

It definitely doesn’t help sleep quality, but it could plausibly help with creativity in people who have the capacity to have good creative ideas. This is because it seems to produce a feeling that all (or at least more) of one’s ideas are good.

If someone has a problem with idea development because they decide early that the idea isn’t worth exploring, perhaps due to low self confidence in ideation etc, then simply producing the feeling of it being a good idea could help them go further than they would otherwise with it. Of course it also makes dumb ideas feel like good ideas too, so for someone who doesn’t have the capacity to have good creative ideas or who doesn’t have this problem in the first place, it probably won’t help.

Re: Aldous Huxley predicts Adderall and champions alternative therapies

#107

Post by superice »

Aeglaecia wrote: post #37
logicprog wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you so much for this. I'm REALLY tired of anti ADHD medication propaganda, it's anti intellectual nonsense.

I'd argue that it is nonsense to treat symptoms instead of the cause (of an issue) , but actually doing just that is quite intellectual when a bunch of money stands to be made

I suppose that's true, in much the same way that chemotherapy treats the symptom of cells spontaneously deciding to replicate in your body. That does not mean we judge people battling a cancer diagnosis and tell them to pursue non-medicated approaches because it's "just treating symptoms".

If you encounter a bit of bitterness from the ADHD community online, let me provide some perspective: I have been called lazy my entire life, I have wondered why everybody could just do stuff and apply themselves. Why couldn't I just clean my house, do my homework, keep on top of chores, or even find the energy to play games after a day of work? I only found out as an adult I have a disability which makes all of that an uphill battle for me, INCLUDING finding the motivation for the fun stuff. There is an easy fix for this, some meds that take care of SOME of the problem. They don't fix it in much the same way that a wheelchair doesn't fix the legs of a crippled person, but it sure is like playing life on easy mode if you're used to dragging yourself around by your arms. And now I'm stuck explaining this to people who have done the barest minimum of research and who say 'oh it only is treating symptoms'. They have the audacity of calling me lazy (again!) for not training my arms more to overcome my disability that way. And my response is simple: You can take my metaphorical wheelchair over my dead body, and if you were in my position you would feel exactly the same way.

Re: Aldous Huxley predicts Adderall and champions alternative therapies

#108

Post by cluckindan »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #106
Spivak wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is, you're right, and it's super weird what happens on the internet when you suggest weed isn't some gateway to enlightenment. I love cannabis, but it's a depressant that increases dopamine, it's not that complicated. Stoners on the internet sound exactly like alcoholics—they say it makes them more creative, helps them sleep, deal with anxiety too. We do such a shit job teaching about signs of psychological addict…

It definitely doesn’t help sleep quality, but it could plausibly help with creativity in people who have the capacity to have good creative ideas. This is because it seems to produce a feeling that all (or at least more) of one’s ideas are good. If someone has a problem with idea development because they decide early that the idea isn’t worth exploring, perhaps due to low self confidence in ideation etc, then simply…

It definitely helps sleep quality in some people.

Re: Aldous Huxley predicts Adderall and champions alternative therapies

#109

Post by temp0826 »

kragen wrote: post #99
temp0826 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a mix of 4 different amphetamines

Two, but those are just the enantiomers dextroamphetamine and levoamphetamine. Neither has any atoms extra or missing. It looks like four amphetamines because those two cationic isomers are in salts with two different anions.

Each enantiomer exhibits different effects so I don't know if that is relevant. (Even if you count dextroamphetamine sulfate and amphetamine sulfate as one, I'd still probably call it 3 because dextroamphetamine saccharate and amphetamine asparate monohydrate (the other two parts of adderall) do indeed have different forumlas).

Re: Aldous Huxley predicts Adderall and champions alternative therapies

#110

Post by notepad0x90 »

amphetamines feel a lot like people putting NO2 on their cars, or overclocking their computers. You might just fine in the end, but the likelihood of wear & tear catching up to you increases. It should be treated just like any other medicine, don't use it unless you really have to, and expect adverse effect (known or unknown).
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