151–160 of 261 posts
No mention of modafinil/armodafinil (provigil/nuvigil)?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unfortunately you can pretty much nanny-pick a study that supports your view for just about any purported topic and view relating to drug use. Secondly, that study is flawed because it fails to acknowledge what is known as the 30%-30%-30% jump. The difference in intelligence between a retard and a normal person is the same difference of intelligence between a normal person and a genius. Different boosts account for d…
What about people diagnosed as adults? People no longer affected by their parents will?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not sure I'm ready to accept that this is a myth. From "Prescription stimulants in individuals with and without attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: misuse, cognitive impact, and adverse effects", published in Brain and Behaviour (2012): "In sum, the evidence concerning stimulant effects on working memory is mixed, with some findings of enhancement and some null results, although no findings of overall performan…
Unfortunately you can pretty much nanny-pick a study that supports your view for just about any purported topic and view relating to drug use. Secondly, that study is flawed because it fails to acknowledge what is known as the 30%-30%-30% jump. The difference in intelligence between a retard and a normal person is the same difference of intelligence between a normal person and a genius. Different boosts account for d…
Known by who? Did you just respond to a peer-reviewed study with made-up pseudo-science? Also, I should point out that the psychiatric term is ADHD, not ADD.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> states are morally required to provide citizens with access to affordable health care There may be other indications (I haven't checked), but that statement doesn't sound even remotely libertarian. The moral requirement to provide affordable health care is a positive right (something that obliges action). Contrast this to a negative right, something that obliges inaction, such as free speech or private property. Li…
I didn't check much either, but "economic liberty" is amongst the libertarian shibboleths.
"we also have to consider the observable phenomenon of decision fatigue"
Are we just talking about random things now?
No mention of modafinil/armodafinil (provigil/nuvigil)?
I think this quote sums up the article's heavy handed, decidedly outdated view on mental health. > ADHD drug abuse had become so commonplace on college campuses that Wesleyan University, among other prominent institutions, has tried to ban it altogether. ADHD is a diagnosed medical disorder that affects millions of people in America. Why do we still stigmatize it in the modern age?
> ADHD is a diagnosed medical disorder that affects millions of people in America. Why do we still stigmatize it in the modern age? ADHD is a meaningless psychiatric diagnostic [1] of symptoms, not cause. The diagnosis is used to put millions of people in America on maintenance doses of addictive psychotropic drugs. Routine use of amphetamines almost always causes people's mental conditions to worsen, eventually. Ton…
I've not heard this before..do you have a source? Quite interested.
I have treated several hundred individuals with amphetamine, methylphenidate and related compounds, primarily for ADHD in adults and adolescents. Everyone should know that ADHD is a very common disorder, affecting >=4% of all adults. It is a disabling condition in many, perhaps the majority, of those who manifest its symptoms.
A troubling aspect is that only about 1/5 of sufferers seek treatment, and often treatment is suboptimal for a variety of reasons. Staying on topic, the most effective medication strategies remain the "stimulant" drugs.
The article contains errors re: drug effects and history. First of all amphetamine was synthesized well before 1929. What we now call amphetamine was created by a Romanian chemistry Ph.D. candidate, Lazăr Edeleanu, in Berlin, in 1887. It was rediscovered in 1927 by Gordon Alles who was unable to patent the compound because of Edeleanu's work 40 years earlier.
Amphetamine was initially marketed in the 1930's as Benzedrine. Significantly the remarkable efficacy of amphetamine in what's now call ADHD was described in 1937, and to this day no other class of drug has been demonstrated to be as effective as the stimulants.
As commented here, stimulant class medications have different effects in those who need them. At the optimal dose, ADHD patients are not "amped up", in fact typically feel calmer, thoughts and actions more controlled and deliberate. In people who don't have ADHD may indeed experience "stimulating" effects.
Furthermore, ADHD adults perform much better with appropriate treatment, whereas unaffected users experience a boost only with simple tasks. Stimulant use will cause decreased performance on cognitively demanding tasks. While college students are known to seek out amphetamines in order to "study better" for their final exams, in fact it's much more likely to decrement their results, myths notwithstanding.
Not to say that drug abuse is not a serious matter. Ethical practitioners prescribe stimulant class medications with great care to assure correct diagnoses and appropriate prescribing practices. No question that not everyone with a license is ethical. I firmly support taking steps to put those deliberately contributing to drug abuse out of business, and into jail.
It's imperative to avoid throwing babies out with the bathwater. Stimulant medications are an extremely useful tool when used along with due vigilance for misuse. Patients in my practice were carefully monitored, and were informed drug misuse could not be taken lightly. Over the years there were a few who were deemed too irresponsible to continue treatment with the medication.
I can't be the only one thinking that this can not be good in the long run. I still remember my friend who had a prescription for ADHD -medication, and they cut off this medication, and he couldn't do nothing but sleep for 3 weeks almost. What kind of state does prolonged use of amphetamines put the user ? Constantly being pushed to focus on one task, what kind of thought patterns does that create in the long run ? I…
Prior to taking the meds, I could not tear myself away from some tasks (basically anything really interesting to me)[1]. One of the side effects is supposed to be reduced appetite, but I find I actually am eating more often because now I can get up from my desk when I'm hungry.
This sounds great and all, and it's actually useful when the task that catches my attention is also one I am supposed to be working on. However, interruptions don't work, and the minutia end up not happening (e.g. self assessment for performance review, answer question a customer or technical writer had about how X works, &ct.). Often times even writing down a note to do something later was not possible for me when I was in the middle of a task.
The worst, of course, is when a problem catches my attention that has zero value for my employer.
Today I had a similar interruption, I asked for a couple minutes to finish up the part I was working on, and two minutes later, I hit the stopping point I was anticipating and looked into the more urgent matter. Previous to the meds, I would have either completely forgotten about the more urgent matter, or would just have had to work for "just five more minutes" for an hour or two.
1: https://xkcd.com/356/ understates if anything what that's like. Though there is a 50-50 chance I don't even see the sign because I'm still thinking about whatever I was working on when I left work.
The comments in this thread seem to suggest a reasonable subset of people here partake. Is there any reason you feel the need to? I went to a pretty rough college where I had standard 24 hour straight homework sessions once or twice a week. And I used caffeine maybe once a week at most. I work at a startup where the work culture isn't as competitive as what I feel is the norm, but even listening to friends at there d…
I think this quote sums up the article's heavy handed, decidedly outdated view on mental health. > ADHD drug abuse had become so commonplace on college campuses that Wesleyan University, among other prominent institutions, has tried to ban it altogether. ADHD is a diagnosed medical disorder that affects millions of people in America. Why do we still stigmatize it in the modern age?
> ADHD is a diagnosed medical disorder that affects millions of people in America. Why do we still stigmatize it in the modern age? ADHD is a meaningless psychiatric diagnostic [1] of symptoms, not cause. The diagnosis is used to put millions of people in America on maintenance doses of addictive psychotropic drugs. Routine use of amphetamines almost always causes people's mental conditions to worsen, eventually. Ton…
Second of all, here is a comprehensive list of peer-reviewed studies defending the existence of ADHD and the efficacy of amphetamines for ADHD (much better than some random anecdote of an improperly diagnosed taxi passenger):
https://www.reddit.com/r/ADHD/comments/3at2u2/psa_the_existe...
Admittedly, psychologists seem to have a problem properly diagnosing it, but let's not diminish a disorder suffered by millions every day.