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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

#131

Post by mikkupikku »

Melatonic wrote: post #30
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.

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

> Marijuana often seems to promote thinking "outside the box"

Hard disagree. Cannabis induces a sensation of profundity. It makes ordinary mundane thoughts feel insightful and novel. The ideas you have when on cannabis seem like insightful out of the box ideas, but that's a perceptual illusion created by the drug. The best it can do is provide you the encouragement to see ideas through to the end, but of course this is tempered by the way it generally has a negative effect on motivation, so most often users are left thinking of ideas they think are wonderful, but not actually executing on those ideas. End result is usually a couch potato lost in unproductive thoughts.

Re: Aldous Huxley predicts Adderall and champions alternative therapies

#132

Post by jon-wood »

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 is effective in treating people whose problems mostly stem from an inaccurate view of themselves or the world around them, because CBT is training people to take a step back and reassess what they're seeing. If you're suffering from some forms of OCD for example it can be incredibly effective, it helps to reframe things.

It is not effective, and I would argue actively worsens, situations where you're feeling bad about your accurate view of things, such as when you're depressed because you're unable to ever get any of the things you need to do done despite knowing they need to be done. CBT is unable to help in that situation because most people can't simply go "oh, well its ok, its a mental health condition" - employer, while sometimes supportive, aren't going to continue employing someone who doesn't do the work they're being paid for, and reframing that would eventually result in losing their job.

Re: Aldous Huxley predicts Adderall and champions alternative therapies

#133

Post by mistersquid »

ggm wrote: post #74

"predicts" must be a variant of standard english which projects the past tense into the present tense because .. reasons? He predicted. Absent an Ouija board, he isn't predicting any more.

> "predicts" must be a variant of standard english which projects the past tense into the present tense because .. reasons?

Literary criticism and philosophy cast actions in and from recorded media in the "eternal present" (a term of art that should yield search results).

So, if Huxley (contemporary tense) wrote about a drug that resembles Adderall then a sentence cast in the eternal present would express "Huxley _writes_ about Soma in Brave New World which…".

Re: Aldous Huxley predicts Adderall and champions alternative therapies

#134

Post by Fr0styMatt88 »

raducu wrote: post #127
DonaldPShimoda wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe parent commenter was referring to recreational use, i.e., use by people without such diagnoses who want a "performance boost". I heard about that sort of thing being popular when I was in college — people would take Adderall to cram for an exam or to study late into the night. You're right that, for people with ADHD and related disorders, stimulant medication sort of just adjusts their baselines so they can…

> You're right that, for people with ADHD and related disorders, stimulant medication sort of just adjusts their baselines so they can pay attention like a "normal" person. I have ADHD and take metylphenidate(I've tried many kinds of stimulants as well) -- and the NO2 analogy is an imperfect but better analogy than saying stimulants simply adjusts the baseline of people with ADHD to function like "normal" persons. I…

Watching a good friend of mine struggle with this after diagnosis for a few years now and I feel this really captures the nuance and complexity of this struggle well. Stimulants are an incredible tool but also an incredibly imperfect one.

Re: Aldous Huxley predicts Adderall and champions alternative therapies

#135

Post by cassepipe »

Nursie wrote: post #93
cassepipe wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... and I didn't know about them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substituted_amphetamine The most famous in that family seems to be meth(amphetamine)

You've probably also heard of 3,4-Methylenedioxy-N-methylamphetamine, though its abbreviated name (MDMA) is likely more familiar. It's a huuuuuge family of substances though, particularly if you go one step more generic and start with Phenylethylamine as the backbone (amphetamine is a shortening of alpha-methyl-phenethylamine), the family includes hallucinogens like mescaline, empathogens like MDMA and its close cous…

Interesting, I didn't know they were cousins !

Re: Aldous Huxley predicts Adderall and champions alternative therapies

#137

Post by NaomiLehman »

loeg wrote: post #61
greekrich92 wrote: post #17

Just want to echo someone else's sub-thread: Adderall is not at all similar to Huxley's description of Soma. Soma was about feeling good and not having to think of the evil things that make the BNW society possible, not efficiency.

Sounds more like opiates (5000 BCE) or benzos (1950s).

Also, Huxley's Soma is very close to the medicine Soma (Carisoprodol), in my experience. It's a beautiful, relaxing, euphoric high. Probably highly addictive.

Re: Aldous Huxley predicts Adderall and champions alternative therapies

#138

Post by lukan »

mfro wrote: post #11
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.

I agree, soma definitely parallels weed much more closely, but I don't think it's a perfect match. Huxley imagines a drug a bit more insidious, without obviously negative side effects, and with somewhat unrealistic(imo) intended effects.

Disagree. Weed is somewhat psychadelic ... and makes people enjoy the colors and not work so much. Soma made people numbless working with a feeling of glow. So I always understood it as antidepressant and moodlifter with some amphetamine compoments.

Re: Aldous Huxley predicts Adderall and champions alternative therapies

#139

Post by _yy01 »

greekrich92 wrote: post #17

Just want to echo someone else's sub-thread: Adderall is not at all similar to Huxley's description of Soma. Soma was about feeling good and not having to think of the evil things that make the BNW society possible, not efficiency.

I was surprised to see the mention of ritual drink of Vedic people.

It turns out to refer to a drug in fiction which is named after the Vedic ritual drink.

Original Vedic "soma" is indeed more like a drink of inspiration and ecstasy, with myths similar to the norse "Mead of poetry".

"somasya tA mada indraS cakAra" - "In the exhilaration of soma, Indra has done these great deeds" - is a rig-vedic refrain.

Re: Aldous Huxley predicts Adderall and champions alternative therapies

#140

Post by machinate »

d4mi3n wrote: post #20
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…

Here here. I also have ADHD though I couldn’t use stimulant medications due to bad reactions to it, but I’ve had success with non-stimulant medications (Straterra aka atomoxetine [1]). A big thing I struggled with prior to medical treatment that I don’t often hear discussed about ADHd was rejection sensitivity. For those unfamiliar: imagine a time someone said something that hurt your feelings or caused a strong emot…

Rejection sensitivity may be the reason I detest to-do lists. The lists inevitably languish and slowly turn into a perpetual reminder of who I haven't become, i.e. a rejection from past-me.
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