61–70 of 223 posts
If you're reading this (and I'd like to think so because Hacker News is no longer a stepchild), 2 things:
1. It sounds like you've turned the corner on this thing. If so, congratulations and best wishes.
Oddly, I just posted my feelings regarding drugs and work earlier today.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5318320
2. You write very well! I look forward to more. Let us know how to follow you. And keep 'em coming (naturally, of course).
There is a smart way to do this and not be a complete moron like the author. I take adderall a few times a year and have been doing so since my senior year (2003) in high school and have never come close to this trainwreck. It's a simple approach: know exactly what you have to do before taking it, eat a meal before (since you will have no appetite), take them in the early morning (so you can sleep by night), and fina…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, tone it up instead. From the comments on that article: My 3rd grade granddaughter has been put on adderall for ADD. This is really scary. It's because of people like her and her self-absorbed, nugatory account of her experiences being featured on a high-profile news journal that we drift into a world where mention of ADHD medicine usage gets you the eye-roll 'wow you druggie' judgement. She's doing a tremendous d…
As an individual who was actually diagnosed with ADHD, I have an axe to grind with a medical industry that sold me amphetamines at 15. The results were ~nugatory~ at best.
I'm sorry to hear that you were diagnosed by an incompetent psychiatric physician, but I would hope you don't use your misfortune as fuel for spreading superstitious, anti-science anti-ADHD-medicine hysteria, there's enough of that out there already.
How do people who've taken it for most of their adult life cope with adderall usage? I mean, how necessary of a drug does it seem to be -- or, to put it another way, how bad are the withdrawals, compared to antipsychotics, painkillers, etc? And if you've lived with adderall usage, do you chronically feel like you have a reduced appetite and all the other kinds of symptoms? I've heard that happens for people who take…
I'm 36 and I've been taking Adderall approximately since I was 32. So I've lived most of my life without it.
I've never smoked and I've never been on antidepressants or any other psychiatric drugs so I have a limited number of reference points as far as addiction/withdrawal goes. I have had an off-again, on-again caffeine addiction. In my experience, Adderall is significantly less addictive than caffeine.
Quitting Adderall is easy in my experience. I take less on the weekends, and on several occasions I've had no problems tapering my Adderall dosage down to zero over the course of 3-4 days just so I could do a little "reality check" and see for myself if I'm truly better off while taking it.
Adderall is not a medication that really lends itself to abuse in the sense that you want to cram mouthfuls of it into your body or anything.
In some ways, Adderall is very comparable to caffeine -- the first few times you take it, you feel a bit of a rush, but your body acclimates to it rather quickly and you stop feeling it. Unlike caffeine, you don't typically get the same sort of "crash" an hour later.
Though I have pretty poor impulse control at times, I've had no problem moderating Adderall usage. My psychiatrist, after a year or two of developing trust in me, actually prescribes me twice the dosage I need (30mg daily instead of 15mg daily) because he knows it will last me twice as long and therefore I can save myself some insurance co-pays for office visits. :)
I've never been on antidepressants but I've watched friends struggle with getting off of antidepressants, and I've also seen what they're like after missing a few doses. They have found themselves in really rough shape unless they carefully taper their dosages down over the course of weeks or even months. From those secondhand observations, I feel Adderall is not even close to being in that league when it comes to withdrawal.
"And if you've lived with Adderall usage, do you chronically feel like you have a reduced appetite and all the other kinds of symptoms?"
It hasn't affected my appetite much. (I kind of wish it had!) The main negative side effect is that Adderall makes me more high-strung. However, falling behind on one's obligations due to untreated ADHD can also negatively one's mood, to say the very least.
edit: grammar/spelling/formatting
How do people who've taken it for most of their adult life cope with adderall usage? I mean, how necessary of a drug does it seem to be -- or, to put it another way, how bad are the withdrawals, compared to antipsychotics, painkillers, etc? And if you've lived with adderall usage, do you chronically feel like you have a reduced appetite and all the other kinds of symptoms? I've heard that happens for people who take…
I have zero withdrawal symptoms when I stop taking it (as I often do when going out of town, going on vacation, long weekend, etc.) and only have a temporarily reduced appetite (i.e. uninterested in lunch). I don't feel that it currently has any negative impact on my life, whatsoever.
The years where I would stay up for 30 hours programming were a lot of fun, and I definitely don't regret them -- but I do feel that they took a bit of a mental and physical toll. Also, in hindsight, it's easy to see that Adderall benders really sap your creativity. It's nothing to rewrite the same code over and over for 30 hours -- if you'd just gotten some sleep like a normal human you would have quintupled your productivity.
This made me sick. I don't know what's worst: the author's self-absorption, the victimization tone, or the fact that her colleagues had to do similar unhealthy shit in order to compete with her. It stinks the whole way. Using drugs to gain an unfair advantage over other people at work has unhealthy emotional side effects? Am I to be surprised by this?
"Using drugs to gain an unfair advantage over other people at work" Perhaps the ABA (American Bar Association) needs to implement a ban on performance enhancing drugs similar to what MLB (Major League Baseball) mandates?
- desmopressin,
- galantamine,
- Phenylpiracetam
How do people who've taken it for most of their adult life cope with adderall usage? I mean, how necessary of a drug does it seem to be -- or, to put it another way, how bad are the withdrawals, compared to antipsychotics, painkillers, etc? And if you've lived with adderall usage, do you chronically feel like you have a reduced appetite and all the other kinds of symptoms? I've heard that happens for people who take…
Someone very close to me had been on it since she was 12. She's 23 now and stopped last fall. Due to her tolerance, she'd been on very high doses for basically a decade. After stopping, sleeping for 16-18 hours a day was the norm for about a month- but just getting to that point, first she had to cope with a weeklong psychotic break. It causes some serious dopamine desensitization after extended use. Depression is co…
I find I can easily stop taking it if I taper my dosage. Going "cold turkey," however, is kind of hard to imagine.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Using drugs to gain an unfair advantage over other people at work" Perhaps the ABA (American Bar Association) needs to implement a ban on performance enhancing drugs similar to what MLB (Major League Baseball) mandates?
I drink coffee every day. Does that give me an advantage over those who don't drink coffee? If there is an advantage, is that advantage unfair?
This made me sick. I don't know what's worst: the author's self-absorption, the victimization tone, or the fact that her colleagues had to do similar unhealthy shit in order to compete with her. It stinks the whole way. Using drugs to gain an unfair advantage over other people at work has unhealthy emotional side effects? Am I to be surprised by this?
Dude, have some compassion. It's upsetting that this is the top voted comment. Not everyone is as well-informed and knowledgeable about things like this as you are, and this first-hand account of her experience will likely help a lot of people experiencing similar issues. >>Using drugs to gain an unfair advantage over other people at work has unhealthy emotional side effects? Am I to be suprised by this? Your claim t…
To the second point, he probably is. This is to be expected. There is very little reason to by sympathetic to someone who abuses prescription drugs in order to achieve success in school or outlast their peers in the working world. The fact that she decried her plight makes it all the more irksome: before she was a "victim," she consciously chose to abuse these drugs, then lied to her physician and continued taking them for months...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As an individual who was actually diagnosed with ADHD, I have an axe to grind with a medical industry that sold me amphetamines at 15. The results were ~nugatory~ at best.
As an individual who was diagnosed with ADHD, but whose parents refused to acquire medicine based on superstitious 'but isn't adderall just basically cocaine?' grounds, I assure you I've got an axe about 3,000x bigger than yours to grind at individuals like those who wrote this NYTimes article. I'm sorry to hear that you were diagnosed by an incompetent psychiatric physician, but I would hope you don't use your misfo…