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Adderall Addiction: The Last All-Nighter

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com

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Re: Adderall Addiction: The Last All-Nighter

#161

Post by thelogos »

A large part of the blame lays on her.

IMO adderall's mechanism is much more severe on neurons than methylphenidate. It's very well proven that amphetamine/methamphetamine increases the level of free dopamine in the cytosol which are prone to auto-oxidation to quinones. This wreaks all sort of havoc over the long-term.

Methylphenidate(ritalin) and its stereoisomer stay cleanly outside the presynaptic neurons and only blocks NET and DAT from pumping NE and DA back inside the cell. Unlike amphetamine, it doesnt disrupt the pH gradient of the vesicle membrane and cause an abnormal amount of dopamine to leak and accumulate in the cytosol.

Personally, I would never take adderall/vyvanse/dexedrine.

As a counterexample, let me give you my experience. After being prescribed focalin, my gpa shot through the roof. This stuff actually improved my health.

How?

Instead of pulling all nighters and procrastinating like I used to, this stuff allows me to get work done weeks early and go to sleep on time.

I learned calculus in 1 week, bought a piano and taught myself how to play moonlight sonata 1st mvt and kiss the rain in 3 weeks (working on bach air in d major at the moment).

Oh yea, I also read the entire lehninger biochem book and bernard milller's advanced organic chemistry for fun in my own time. Then a whole world of research papers were discovered through the uni library subscription :>

This stuff allows you to learn at an alarming rate if used properly.

I don't drink alcohol on days of studying because it prevents LTM formation, you're basically wasting your time studying if you do this. Also I never waste my time with people while medicated. This stuff can make you socially awkward and kill your sense of humor. Take it only for the singular purpose of learning and getting work done.

I took extra care with my health, ate blueberries, avocado, eggs, brocoli, meat, etc., lots of lycopene, astaxanthin, R-lipoic acid, melatonin and 8 hours of sleep.

Tolerance will go up very slowly with frequent breaks and essentially goes back to zero with a month break. For adderall, this will take much longer, some people will even develop permanent tolerance that will never go away.

On days when I dont take focalin, I sit around, sip on a beer and browse HN ;)

Re: Adderall Addiction: The Last All-Nighter

#162

Post by lsc »

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…

what I find interesting is that when I use the ADD medication, I'm far more likely to go to bed and get up at a semi-reasonable time. Unsurprisingly, (as it's a stimulant) it also makes it far more likely that I'll work out.

But yeah. Frictionless organization. and don't hesitate to hire things out. I mean, think about what you want to do yourself and what you want to hire out, but don't think about it from a cultural acceptability standpoint. Think about it from the perspective of "how do I get a reasonable return for my time?"

A whole lot of my coping consists of changing my lifestyle to fit how I act (which is shockingly easy compared to changing how I act.)

When I'm not medicated, I simply have to plan my life so that what needs to get done gets done in fewer hours of effort. I'm going to screw off some of the time; medication aside, I haven't figured out how to change that. So, do I clean out the office? or do I pay someone else to do that? cleaning out the office will take just as much effort on my part (well, really, rather more effort) than configuring the routing and scheduling downtime for the move to the new datacenter.)

The other thing I've found is that I'm way better at context switches and unexpected emergencies than most people. I mean, it's not so much that I do well during those situations as that I don't do any worse than I normally do in those situations. I mean, I'm distracted as-is, right? so the pager going off isn't really that big of a deal. (and, well, the 'emergency rush' is one way to get non-medicated me off my ass.)

So yeah; I mean, if I was in a McDonalds kind of situation, where peak performance didn't matter... where I just had to perform at a minimal level, but show up on time and always meet that minimal standard? I would really, really struggle, no matter what tricks or drugs I used. So I spend a lot of effort trying to construct a lifestyle and a workstyle where my weak points don't hurt me so much, and where my strong points really help.

Re: Adderall Addiction: The Last All-Nighter

#163

Post by revelation »

MartinCron wrote: post #59
smoyer wrote: post #47

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?

Unless you are drinking more of it every day, there is probably nothing more than placebo by now.

Anyway, caffeine works in vastly different ways. It blocks adenine receptors (which keeps your heart rate and blood pressure high), it does not flood the brain with neurotransmitters used in parts of the brain responsible for learning, retention and the reward system.

Re: Adderall Addiction: The Last All-Nighter

#164

Post by petercooper »

MartinCron wrote: post #59
smoyer wrote: post #47

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?

It shouldn't. At least, if you believe all the reports of geeks who've "quit" caffeine. They nearly all say they feel more energetic, sleep better, etc.

Re: Adderall Addiction: The Last All-Nighter

#165

Post by oxide »

jpxxx wrote: post #87
clicks wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

pretty clear you haven't the faintest idea that amphetamines are among the most well researched drugs on the planet.

Re: Adderall Addiction: The Last All-Nighter

#166

Post by kristofferR »

chimpinee wrote: post #155
nikatwork wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the fact that her colleagues had to do similar unhealthy shit in order to compete with her 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? > the author's self-absorption, the victimization tone She had a substance abuse problem. She's warning others that it's a slippery slope. Show some compassion.

>She had a substance abuse problem This is true. However, a lot of people will take away the message 'stay off adderall' whereas (1) some people apparently benefit from it, (2) some people whom doctors wouldn't prescribe to may benefit (e.g. the mathematician Paul Erdös took ritalin, a similar drug), (3) all people who abuse drugs do so because of personality problems -- thus if she hadn't taken adderall then she may…

She isn't saying that people should stay off adderall, she is saying that people should be careful and not think of it as something totally harmless and risk-free. Obviously adderall can be very useful both on- and off-label, but that doesn't mean it can't be harmful too.

And saying that "all people who abuse drugs do so because of personality problems" is obviously quite ignorant. Genetical factors are often important of course, no doubt about it, but to suggest that everyone physically addicted to really addictive substances do it purely because of personality problems, and not the addictiveness of the drugs, is really strange.

You seem to think that being addicted is a simple choice. That might be true for psychological addictions (although I doubt it), but it is certainly not true for physical addictions.

Re: Adderall Addiction: The Last All-Nighter

#167

Post by run4yourlives »

bduerst wrote: post #16
hxrts wrote: post #11

It's unfortunate the author was not able to manage the drug properly. Adderall is a potent substance that, when used in the correct fashion, can be an effective aid for those who need it. It's also highly addictive so must be combined with a healthy lifestyle and coupled to good habits in order to be kept in check. I would highly recommend that anyone who feels themselves falling into a routine similar to that descri…

Exactly. The tone of the article made it seem like the Author was a victim here, when in reality I think this comment sums it up: >The writer tells us she was "23" when all this happened, as if to say, "Really, I was just a kid." But, really, she wasn't a kid. The brain is quite mature at age 23, but she didn't explore, evidently, the possibility that she was making a mistake.

Nobody older than thirty looks back and sees themselves as anything but a 'kid' at 23. Brain development or not.

To be honest I think most people consider the change that happens in the latter 20's/early 30's to be 'reaching adulthood'

Re: Adderall Addiction: The Last All-Nighter

#168

Post by intended »

etrain wrote: post #120
nikatwork wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I had a friend whose grandfather was a hot shot lawyer at one of the largest international firms of his day in the 60s/70s/80s. She told me that he was a speed addict for close to 20 years. Long story short he got into a situation where he had to quit cold turkey and did, successfully. Substance abuse to get ahead is nothing new. Drugs are not as new as we pretend they are, and it's been common practice to abuse them…

This is a scale error.

The industrial revolution was a shift in the curve. You could successfully argue that automation to get ahead is nothing new, but it would miss the importance of the scale of the new changes.

Adderal and its ilk are a similar shift in the curve. People with access used to be people rich enough to afford speed.

Now almost all school kids are entering the work force and know someone or have themselves used performance enhancers.

Re: Adderall Addiction: The Last All-Nighter

#169

Post by intended »

lsc wrote: post #157
jpxxx wrote: post #51

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.

meh, I am in a similar situation, and have mixed feelings. My parents were for it, but I was against it (because of the values my parents instilled in me... I'm pretty shocked they thought it was acceptable... but I think they were really scared that I was going to be a failure. I mean, I was a failure, at school.) Anyhow, I'm only the second person in my extended family to not have gone to college. If I performed in…

Well by your own admission and logic its essentially a fluke that things worked out for you.

If you were born 2-3 years later you would have been writing a thoroughly different comment.

As a matter of fact, there is very likely someone who made a similar choice like you, only his time line was shifted forward a few years.

His outcomes would be remarkably worse than yours. Not only would he have never gone to college, he would also have an non-competitive start in a tough environment.

Re: Adderall Addiction: The Last All-Nighter

#170

Post by n3rdy »

thelogos wrote: post #161

A large part of the blame lays on her. IMO adderall's mechanism is much more severe on neurons than methylphenidate. It's very well proven that amphetamine/methamphetamine increases the level of free dopamine in the cytosol which are prone to auto-oxidation to quinones. This wreaks all sort of havoc over the long-term. Methylphenidate(ritalin) and its stereoisomer stay cleanly outside the presynaptic neurons and only…

> A large part of the blame lays on her.

I'd say all the blame lays on her.

When you know your gaming a system by either buying a drug from a dealer, using a crooked doctor to write your prescriptions, taking more than your prescribed dosage, and not reading the warning label on the bottle every time you take a dose out of it, its hard to believe that you didn't understand the consequences of what you were doing.

I'm prescribed adderall and your comment dissuades me from taking it 100x more than this article does, even more than the warning label does.

Even if you were exaggerating anything, I found more keywords to research from just the first paragraph than I would get out of 10 of these types of NY Times articles.

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