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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

#141

Post by FooBarBizBazz »

halper wrote: post #105
FooBarBizBazz wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Oof! Thank you for the correction. I should have checked the publication date. I thought it was from the late '50s; I was wrong.

(By contrast, turns out 1984 -- which is always paired with BNW -- came out later than I thought, in '49. Yet BNW seemed more forward-looking. I always imagined it was written partially in response. It wasn't.)

There goes my benzo theory.

Though they remain what I imagine when I read about soma.

Re: Aldous Huxley predicts Adderall and champions alternative therapies

#142

Post by potato3732842 »

notepad0x90 wrote: post #110

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).

To continue the analogy, a Dodge Challenger with a 50-shot of nitrous on it that gets used once a day is gonna still come out looking better at any milage/age than the same engine in a Promaster van because you can't drive around at 17k gross in a Challenger so the area under the abuse curve is way lower even if it peaks ever so slightly higher.

An office worker on meth-lite (or whatever you want to call it) is still accumulating less wear and tear than a laborer, something the human body is clearly capable of being for a lifetime if you're somewhat smart about it.

Adderall, caffeine, heck cocaine based stimulants, are probably all fine if you're not over-using the living crap out of them and stacking large amounts of them on top of other things that'll beat the body up over time.

Re: Aldous Huxley predicts Adderall and champions alternative therapies

#143

Post by walletdrainer »

alterom wrote: post #66
itishappy wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The title is perhaps a bit unfortunate. I don't believe this is specifically about ADHD. Adderall is a stimulant with the effects Huxley predicted. It also happens to treat ADHD. I believe it's being used here in the former capacity.

>Adderall is a stimulant with the effects Huxley predicted. That's exactly my point: it is NOT. Not for the people Adderall is prescribed to and was developed for . See: https://romankogan.net/adhd#Medication >I don't believe this is specifically about ADHD. There's nothing to believe in here. Adderall is a drug that's specifically about ADHD . It's a stimulant that helps people with ADHD overcome executive dysfuncti…

> was developed for.

For… weight loss? Adderall was developed as a diet pill. It was never modified in any way to better suit ADHD treatment.

Re: Aldous Huxley predicts Adderall and champions alternative therapies

#144

Post by elcritch »

nradov wrote: post #57
sqircles wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am an adult with ADHD and have never been able to get past the side effects that I have to drugs such as amphetamines and SSRIs. I was prescribed Modafinil for a short period for "Shift Work Disorder" when I worked shift work as a Stationary Engineer and it was glorious in regard to my ADHD symptoms with effectively zero side effects. I wish the US would expand its usage.

Modafinil is only a Schedule IV controlled substance so it's usually possible to find a doctor who will prescribe off label if you want it. (This isn't medical advice.)

It’s also noted as an off label treatment for ADHD as well by some doctors.

Re: Aldous Huxley predicts Adderall and champions alternative therapies

#145

Post by alterom »

Arch-TK wrote: post #116
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…

Amazing website. One thing I noticed is that while I hate being told what to do, and my partner hates being told what to do, and we understand deeply how we feel when someone tells us what to do, we still tell each other what to do (which goes especially badly after a long day). Edit: I am glad you wrote this, so I didn't have to. It feels like reading my own autobiography. But the problem with reading about this stu…

Thanks for this comment! You describe a very relatable situation :)

> I am glad you wrote this, so I didn't have to.

My hope was that this website would fulfill this goal, and I'm very glad you think so <3

Re: Aldous Huxley predicts Adderall and champions alternative therapies

#146

Post by modo_mario »

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…

I've had similar experiences to you. I never can quite get that normalcy. I now just take rilatin but it is finnicky. Getting enough sleep and eating the right amount of the right stuff just before ingesting is extremely important so I don't even take it all that much even tho i struggle.

I wonder if you tried lisdexamfetamine? I can't get it prescribed easily here since it's not covered the way the alternatives are but someone i know had amazing success with it. Seemingly because it's a prodrug. I can't help but be hopefull that I'll get to try it one day and that it ends up being what I always needed.

Re: Aldous Huxley predicts Adderall and champions alternative therapies

#147

Post by alterom »

walletdrainer wrote: post #143
alterom wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Adderall is a stimulant with the effects Huxley predicted. That's exactly my point: it is NOT. Not for the people Adderall is prescribed to and was developed for . See: https://romankogan.net/adhd#Medication >I don't believe this is specifically about ADHD. There's nothing to believe in here. Adderall is a drug that's specifically about ADHD . It's a stimulant that helps people with ADHD overcome executive dysfuncti…

> was developed for. For… weight loss? Adderall was developed as a diet pill. It was never modified in any way to better suit ADHD treatment.

Figuring out what the drug is actually effective for, doing the lab trials, getting the FDA approval, etc is all part of R&D in the pharmaceutical industry.

A rather costly part, at that.

There's a heckton of it that needs to be done before doctors can prescribe drug X for condition Y.

Adderall was developed for helping ADHD folks, not for helping everyone else get a boost of "mental efficiency" (and particularly, without adverse consequences).

Not in the least because it doesn't do that.

Re: Aldous Huxley predicts Adderall and champions alternative therapies

#148

Post by alterom »

itishappy wrote: post #86
alterom wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Adderall is a stimulant with the effects Huxley predicted. That's exactly my point: it is NOT. Not for the people Adderall is prescribed to and was developed for . See: https://romankogan.net/adhd#Medication >I don't believe this is specifically about ADHD. There's nothing to believe in here. Adderall is a drug that's specifically about ADHD . It's a stimulant that helps people with ADHD overcome executive dysfuncti…

> You can't talk about Adderall without talking about ADHD... Huxley never mentions Adderall, and neither Huxley nor the article mention ADHD. I'm not trying to argue with your points about how Adderall relates to ADHD. I agree! I empathize! I'm arguing that this is not about how Adderall relates to ADHD. I don't think our experience is the intended context. The talk is mostly about tailoring learning to the individu…

> I'm arguing that this is not about how Adderall relates to ADHD. I don't think our experience is the intended context.

Then whose experience is the "intended" context?

> To be fair, there's evidence it does the same to us.

Same for every prescription medication out there.

This is why they require a prescription.

This is why spreading the idea that Adderall is a pill that will boost your "mental efficiency" WITHOUT ADVERSE CONSEQUENCES, as Huxley said in his talk, is harmful and dangerous.

Adderall is very much known to not be that kind of stimulant.

Of course, same applies for e.g. nicotine. But we also know the outcome of nicotine being touted as a consequence-free stimulant.

The fact that one is widely available to anyone over 18 no questions asked, while the other requires a thousand hoops and a costly diagnosis is, of course, a bizarre travesty...

...which is only exacerbated by people promoting the abuse of this medication, as the author of the piece does (by saying that it is anywhere close to Huxley's utopian drug at population scale).

Re: Aldous Huxley predicts Adderall and champions alternative therapies

#149

Post by walletdrainer »

alterom wrote: post #147
walletdrainer wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> was developed for. For… weight loss? Adderall was developed as a diet pill. It was never modified in any way to better suit ADHD treatment.

Figuring out what the drug is actually effective for, doing the lab trials, getting the FDA approval, etc is all part of R&D in the pharmaceutical industry. A rather costly part, at that. There's a heckton of it that needs to be done before doctors can prescribe drug X for condition Y. Adderall was developed for helping ADHD folks, not for helping everyone else get a boost of "mental efficiency" (and particularly, wi…

Adderall was definitely developed as a diet pill, the decision to seek approval for use as ADHD medication happened decades later when stimulants were already a widely accepted treatment.

Yes, there’s certainly research involved in getting an existing drug approved for a new condition. That’s not development.

> not for helping everyone else get a boost of "mental efficiency" (and particularly, without adverse consequences).

While that’s not what Adderall was recently approved for, that and dieting were the primary purposes driving stimulant development (and also the development of Adderall/Obetrol specifically).

The suggestion that Adderall would only benefit folks with ADHD diagnoses is also fundamentally weird, given that ADHD is not a specific identifiable condition. We can’t scan a brain and identify whether or not that brain belongs to an individual with ADHD, so an ADHD diagnosis is necessarily subjective and not objective.

Re: Aldous Huxley predicts Adderall and champions alternative therapies

#150

Post by raducu »

modo_mario wrote: post #146
raducu wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I've had similar experiences to you. I never can quite get that normalcy. I now just take rilatin but it is finnicky. Getting enough sleep and eating the right amount of the right stuff just before ingesting is extremely important so I don't even take it all that much even tho i struggle. I wonder if you tried lisdexamfetamine? I can't get it prescribed easily here since it's not covered the way the alternatives are…

> lisdexamfetamine.

It's not legal where I live also, I did try 2-FMA and it felt better in certain scenarios -- like following a hard course, but I also felt the tolerance ramps up much faster in releasers than re-uptake inhibitors so methylphenidate still is a wonderful tool.

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