Adderall Addiction: The Last All-Nighter • Hacker News Board

Re: Adderall Addiction: The Last All-Nighter

#141

Post by trosen42 » Tue, Mar 05, 2013, 6:26 AM UTC

danso wrote: post #5

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've taken adderall on and off for 7 years, and I'm 27. In my opinion, ADHD is often a fuzzy diagnosis, but I would say that I'm legitimately classified as someone with mild ADHD. Many of my closest friends have also been people with ADHD, and we've talked a lot amongst ourselves over the years about the effects of the drug. I've noticed a lot of patterns, and determined my own set of best practices:

- Take your adderall in the morning. If you take adderall later in the day, it can affect your sleep schedule. If you don't sleep well, you may find yourself wanting to take more adderall to compensate for your lack of sleep the next day, and so begins a snowball effect that inevitably ends with a crash, and a net a loss of productivity.

- Extended release works better for me, and it has much less addictive potential than "instant release."

- Determine your personal minimum effective dose. Don't trust what the doctor happens to prescribe you to be the precisely perfect dose for you. There is most certainly a point of diminishing returns for net productivity gains. Higher doses have higher side effects.

- There are social consequences. If you'll allow me a moment of hippie speak, I'd say that adderall makes your mind resonate at a different frequency than that of regular humans. It's not so easy to establish rapport when you're not even operating on the same frequency.

- Long-term productivity gains for what I'll call production tasks is questionable. For boring work that just needs to get done, suck it up and just do it. Learn the Pomodoro technique, and improve your general capacity to focus by practicing meditation (if you have mild ADHD like me - I can't speak for people who have moderate or severe ADHD).

- Adderall works for me as an excellent tool for expanding production capability. If you have a repetitive business task that you can potentially automate, adderall works very well to help you think through automating it.

Due to the social side effects and my dislike for the inevitable down cycles (end of the day or off days) associated with regular use, I currently limit myself to use once a week. I use it ONLY to organize my week ahead of time, and to increase my production capability (learned this phrasing from Stephen Covey) by automating repetitive tasks. This is the system I've settled on after 7 years of trying different routines.

I could really say a lot more my experience with this drug, but alas I'm not on it right now :) If anyone has more questions I'm happy to follow up.

Re: Adderall Addiction: The Last All-Nighter

#142

Post by kragen » Tue, Mar 05, 2013, 6:31 AM UTC

nikatwork wrote: post #114

AnIrishDuck wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are asserting that the law firm's long working hours were caused by her med use. Do you think you might have that backwards? It probably becomes a vicious cycle / race to the bottom. You take more drugs to work longer hours and compete with your colleagues, who start taking more drugs so they can work more hours to have the edge over you...

The long working hours of many law firms existed before the widespread availability of adderall. Drugs have absolutely zero to do with it. They are merely a symptom of the underlying workaholic culture.

Can you be more specific about the time frame you're thinking about? Adderall has been widely available since the 1940s.

Re: Adderall Addiction: The Last All-Nighter

#143

Post by kragen » Tue, Mar 05, 2013, 6:38 AM UTC

sneak wrote: post #24

danso wrote: post #5

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…

Did she quit cold turkey, or taper off?

Re: Adderall Addiction: The Last All-Nighter

#144

Post by rdl » Tue, Mar 05, 2013, 6:43 AM UTC

j_baker wrote: post #130

jpxxx wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this is an op-ed being run by a web tabloid, there's no superstition or anti-science on display that I can sense. So let's find some quieter common ground: A class of prescription psychoactive drugs are increasingly being used by tens of millions. They substantially alter the motivation systems of the human brain, have a poorly understood method of action, are extremely easily and inexpensively sourced from the…

> have a poorly understood method of action Where did you get this from? Using psychostimulants to treat ADHD is one of the most researched treatments in psychiatry. We've been prescribing Adderall for almost 100 years now. We know it works, and it works well when prescribed correctly. Either way, if you want drugs to get up in arms about, better choices are SSRIs and atypical antipsychotics. Those are the drugs with…

Using amphetamines to treat depression has a longer/safer history than using SSRIs for depression, too.

Re: Adderall Addiction: The Last All-Nighter

#145

Post by kragen » Tue, Mar 05, 2013, 6:45 AM UTC

JohnBooty wrote: post #77

throwaway54-762 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't describe it like that to "sound edgy" or provide "shock effect." It's just pointing out that these drugs are very similar chemically and biologically, and that people should examine their own biases that divorce adderall (medicine!) from meth (evil drug!) in their minds — they are not so different substances.

However small the chemical difference, there is an enormous practical difference. Meth can produce an intense high. Adderall, not so much. I don't have any experience with meth so I can't compare Adderall and meth directly. However, I'd compare the extremely limited "high" from Adderall with... what a person with no caffeine tolerance feels when drinking a medium latte from Starbucks. And, like caffeine, you quickly…

I think you're naïve.

Experienced amphetamine users are not able to distinguish the effects of amphetamine (Adderall) and methamphetamine (Desoxyn) in double-blind "taste tests". The main difference is that the effective dosage is different.

It's easy to abuse amphetamine in the catastrophic ways that methamphetamine is abused: you crunch it up and snort it instead of taking a slower-releasing pill, and you take higher dosages than you'd take to focus on your homework.

Re: Adderall Addiction: The Last All-Nighter

#146

Post by carlisle_ » Tue, Mar 05, 2013, 6:45 AM UTC

JohnBooty wrote: post #82

The comments to this article mainly focus on the medical benefits and side effects of Adderall. I don't want a larger truth to get lost here... While I've been prescribed Adderall for part of my adult life, and feel Adderall has benefited me, I'd like to say that there's far more to successful ADHD treatment than medication: - Proper environment - Getting enough exercise - Getting enough sleep - Support and understan…

I would highly recommend people interested in learning more about ADHD itself to read Delivered from Distraction: http://www.amazon.com/Delivered-Distraction-Getting-Attentio...

It's a fantastic book that explains the condition extremely well and has tons of useful information on not only how to cope with the condition, but for how family members and relatives of somebody with ADHD to best support them.

Re: Adderall Addiction: The Last All-Nighter

#147

Post by rdl » Tue, Mar 05, 2013, 6:48 AM UTC

X-Istence wrote: post #23

danso wrote: post #5

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 taken Adderall now for about a year, and while I have reduced appetite it is not all that bad, I still eat the necessary amount of food, in reality it has been helping me lose weight healthily since I stopped eating while bored ... since I am bored less and can focus on the task at hand. I take 10 mg twice daily. I can go on and off Adderall with minor issues. The only issue when I go off Adderall for a day or…

Is that 10mg IR or 10mg ER?

10mg b.i.d. isn't a very high dose, which is probably why side effects are relatively low. It certainly sounds like it's helping you.

Re: Adderall Addiction: The Last All-Nighter

#148

Post by kragen » Tue, Mar 05, 2013, 6:49 AM UTC

JohnBooty wrote: post #90

throwaway54-762 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However small the chemical difference, there is an enormous practical difference. Meth can produce an intense high. Adderall, not so much. This just isn't true. Adderall is several amphetamines and the drug definitely produces a high. The medical application of the drug is this rush of dopamine and seratonin allows users to focus and ignore distractions. The high is an amphetamine high, much like meth, actually. Yo…

Your body acclimates itself to just about anything - the weather, sugar, MSG, even frequent shampooing or Chap-Stick usage. That doesn't mean those things are comparable to meth. Nobody I know feels that Adderall provides much of a high. Anecdotal, sure, but it seems like a heck of a statistical anomaly. Then again, I don't know anybody that's experimented with unsafe doses of Adderall. I'm sure that at dangerously h…

No, large doses of different drugs have very different effects. Massive doses of caffeine will make you anxious, shaky, and give you heart palpitations, but it won't make you have sex all night long or hyperfocus like amphetamine.

The reason large doses of methamphetamine have very similar effects to large doses of amphetamine is not that in large doses, all drugs are similar; it's that methamphetamine is very similar to amphetamine.

Re: Adderall Addiction: The Last All-Nighter

#149

Post by eitland » Tue, Mar 05, 2013, 6:50 AM UTC

georgemcbay wrote: post #115

hcarvalhoalves wrote: post #104

The amount of comments here claiming being diagnosed with ADD and taking pills for it made my head explode. ADD can't be a real condition if suddenly everybody is diagnosed with it, can it? Because if it is, we have an epidemy going on.

"ADD can't be a real condition if suddenly everybody is diagnosed with it, can it?" Sure it can be a real condition, one that is superficially easier to treat by giving everyone meds rather than admit that the modern "American" society we've created is full of all manner of unnatural stressors that we haven't evolved to deal with.

Bias. Many of those who discuss in this thread do because they actually know something.

(Thid is still HN)

Re: Adderall Addiction: The Last All-Nighter

#150

Post by rdl » Tue, Mar 05, 2013, 6:55 AM UTC

JohnBooty wrote: post #77

throwaway54-762 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't describe it like that to "sound edgy" or provide "shock effect." It's just pointing out that these drugs are very similar chemically and biologically, and that people should examine their own biases that divorce adderall (medicine!) from meth (evil drug!) in their minds — they are not so different substances.

However small the chemical difference, there is an enormous practical difference. Meth can produce an intense high. Adderall, not so much. I don't have any experience with meth so I can't compare Adderall and meth directly. However, I'd compare the extremely limited "high" from Adderall with... what a person with no caffeine tolerance feels when drinking a medium latte from Starbucks. And, like caffeine, you quickly…

From a former tweaker I know: smoked meth (or even hotrails) is in an entirely different class, but swallowing methamphetamine powder (capped or in a paper "parachute") isn't noticeably different in peak intensity from the 30mg IR adderall pills, but the meth lasts much longer.

Insufflated meth is higher peak than comparable by weight adderall powder (crushed up pills), but just increasing the adderall quantity makes up for that.