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).
Isn't the whole point of amphetamine based treatement for ADHD to correct(or beneficially alter, depending on your point of view) an non-standard brain chemistry?
AFAIK some neurodivergent brains deal with amphetamines differently and the baseline levels of chemical affected by amphetamines is different.
Wear and tear might be a thing, i don't know, but the analogy of putting NO2 in their car feels a bit off.
It'd be more like finally putting premium unleaded in your car after years of "back of the lorry" pseudo-unleaded.
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 pay attention like a "normal" person.
Amphetamines are safe, well-studied and non-addictive at prescribed doses. On the other hand, untreated ADHD VASTLY increases likelihood of addiction and many mental disorders.
Definitely DO use this medication if you need it - it's the first medication your doctor will likely ask you to try precisely because an extensive body of research says it's the most effective way for treating ADHD.
Is that based on a rigorous PhD level understanding of the neurobiology of the brain and the chemistry behind that particular medication, or just something you absorbed though popular culture, eg movies and Instagram reels?
I agree, soma definitely parallels weed much more closely, but I don't think it's a perfect match. Huxley imagines a drug a bit more insidious, without obviously negative side effects, and with somewhat unrealistic(imo) intended effects.
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 Curtis' film-essays -- maybe Century of the Self, maybe another one. I'd view those films as being in a similar spirit to Brave New World.
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?
It is, you're right, and it's super weird what happens on the internet when you suggest weed isn't some gateway to enlightenment. I love cannabis, but it's a depressant that increases dopamine, it's not that complicated. Stoners on the internet sound exactly like alcoholics—they say it makes them more creative, helps them sleep, deal with anxiety too. We do such a shit job teaching about signs of psychological addiction.
It definitely doesn’t help sleep quality, but it could plausibly help with creativity in people who have the capacity to have good creative ideas. This is because it seems to produce a feeling that all (or at least more) of one’s ideas are good.
If someone has a problem with idea development because they decide early that the idea isn’t worth exploring, perhaps due to low self confidence in ideation etc, then simply producing the feeling of it being a good idea could help them go further than they would otherwise with it. Of course it also makes dumb ideas feel like good ideas too, so for someone who doesn’t have the capacity to have good creative ideas or who doesn’t have this problem in the first place, it probably won’t help.
The sedation is psychological - soma suppresses discomfort and boosts easy pleasure. It’s not introspective at all, which makes it much closer to MDMA than to cannabis.
pure racemic MDMA has very little stimulant effect. street MDMA can feel stimulating because it is either intentionally mixed with caffeine/speed/meth or contains residual precursor from clandestine synthesis.
my major state was one of deep relaxation ... MDMA does not work like Dexedrine ... I feel totally peaceful.
Shulgin used dozens (hundreds?) of these compounds. I do wonder if some of his better subjective observations might be due to simply relieving withdrawal symptoms.
Just want to echo someone else's sub-thread:
Adderall is not at all similar to Huxley's description of Soma. Soma was about feeling good and not having to think of the evil things that make the BNW society possible, not efficiency.
> ... I have talked to pharmacologists about this matter, and a number of them say that it’s probably quite possible that it may be possible to, by pharmacological means, which will do no harm to the organism as a whole, to increase the span of attention, to increase the powers of concentration, perhaps to cut down on the necessity for sleep, and the various other things which may lead to a very considerable increase in general mental efficiency.
That's also what I thought - Wasn't Soma more of a way to make people question less and just remain in a blissed out but maybe sort of out of it state at all times ? Seems very different than amphetamines
The link (including the transcript of Huxley’s lecture) doesn’t seem to be about Soma, unless I’m missing something. Huxley produced a lot of work outside of Brave New World, lots of it concerned with drugs and altered states of consciousness (so much so that personally I don’t think I’ve done enough drugs to understand his perspective, as I find him distinctly, and almost uniquely among such high-profile authors that I’ve tried, unreadable)
You are vey correct—the talk and link have nothing to do with Soma.
I can only presume, based on timing of the talk being 1960, that his thoughts here link to mescaline and the practical utopia he talks of in Island, whose inhabitants make use of a local psychedelic. So whatever he must have said here had more to do with his later perspectives than his feelings around the island.
Fair enough, but I have read Island, The Doors of Perception, and BNW, and none of those books described using uppers or anything about efficiency. Island was psychedelics (fantastic book in my opinion).
Everybody who could afford it adopted psychostimulants in WW2. Go pills have been part and parcel since then. Some countries have adopted modafinil, but the US still uses amphetamine.
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.)
Just a note for anyone passing by. The side effects are rare, except diarrhea and you need to watch your liver enzyme levels if I remember right. Everyone I know who's taken that had diarrhea the entire time (manageable with meds), and it will screw your liver long term.
I think the GI effects are basically the same between any of the -afinils, FWIW.
I wouldn't recommend them in general, but mostly because they last too long to really work with a normal 16/8 sleep cycle and the other stimmy effects can detract from things other than focus work.
I never took any long-term, but I've actually napped (purposefully) the afternoon after taking one in the morning, which is impossible on amphetamines.
Which is to say, they seem better to me, but maybe long-term use is different.
> In 1919, the Japanese discovered a more potent version of the drug — methamphetamine. The new drug was a crystalline powder soluble in water. In this form, it can be smoked, injected, snorted or taken orally. Users get an intense but brief high when they inject or smoke the drug, but if it's snorted or taken orally by capsule, the high lasts longer.
There was also a drink with same name hiropon that was generally available for some time.
I tried googling for more info but I haven't been able to find much in English and my Japanese isn't good enough to read at that level. I've only heard about it from my wife and a few other people in Japan. I've seen a few old posters for it at old bars.
An army of tweakers. I don't think that this aspect of the War and the Holocaust are discussed enough. Certainly no excuse, but it is very interesting.
> Chronic Meth users have deficits in memory and executive functioning as well as higher rates of anxiety, depression, and most notably psychosis. [0]
In more recent times of horror:
> After the fall of the al-Assad regime in Syria, large stockpiles of the illicit drug captagon have reportedly been uncovered.
> The stockpiles, found by Syrian rebels, are believed to be linked to al-Assad military headquarters, implicating the fallen regime in the drug’s manufacture and distribution. [1]
Im sure eventually whatever pills the Germans were taking back then were bad for you but I would imagine smoking huge doses of not so pure street meth is quite a bit different than something created in a lab.
That being said if anyone uses drugs to avoid sleeping for many days straight I would imagine it's quite horrible for your mental health
Highly recommend the book "Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich" by Norman Ohler, a podcast promo led me to get the book from the library and I really liked it!
Two, but those are just the enantiomers dextroamphetamine and levoamphetamine. Neither has any atoms extra or missing. It looks like four amphetamines because those two cationic isomers are in salts with two different anions.
Each enantiomer exhibits different effects so I don't know if that is relevant. (Even if you count dextroamphetamine sulfate and amphetamine sulfate as one, I'd still probably call it 3 because dextroamphetamine saccharate and amphetamine asparate monohydrate (the other two parts of adderall) do indeed have different forumlas).
Benzedrine (an amphetamine inhaler) was the first antidepressant marketed (although at the time I believe they used the term "psychic energizer" for antidepressants)
You've probably also heard of 3,4-Methylenedioxy-N-methylamphetamine, though its abbreviated name (MDMA) is likely more familiar.
It's a huuuuuge family of substances though, particularly if you go one step more generic and start with Phenylethylamine as the backbone (amphetamine is a shortening of alpha-methyl-phenethylamine), the family includes hallucinogens like mescaline, empathogens like MDMA and its close cousins, the whole 2C family, the cathinones and their derivatives ('mephedrone' had a cultural moment 10-15 years back). And some real nasties like PMA, PMMA and bromo-Dragonfly.
Why does a space engineering lecturer believe he has novel thoughts on ADHD treatment inspired by an author from a medical era he didn’t bother to do cursory research of?
The title is missing context, the full sentence would be "In his final speech, Huxley predicts Adderall". The context anchors the time frame, so "predicts" is present tense at the time of the speech.
"In his 2006 paper, Roubini sees an upcoming global financial crisis"
Journalists love to do things like this - cut out the context - as it makes the headlines seem more vivid, immediate and often alarming.
"Roubini sees an upcoming global financial crisis"
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 people who don't get help. Women with ADHD die about 9 years younger than those without ADHD [1].
- making our lives less painful, since every small task incurs pain, resulting in 3x depression rates [2] and alarmingly high suicidal ideation rates (50% of ADHD adults [3]).
Please, please, educate yourself about ADHD and medication for it before writing something like this title.
No, Aldous Huxley didn't. "predict" Adderall.
To understand more, I've put together a resource which, I hope, will be easy enough to digest. Here's my experience of getting prescribed Adderall for my ADHD:
If I have attention deficit and I could write it, I hope you (and the author of the text we're discussing) could spare some attention to it before talking about Adderall, amphetamines, and other stimulants prescribed for ADHD.
It's long, but I listened to this podcast a while back with Peter Attia and Trenna Sutcliffe discussing Autism, ADHD, and Anxiety, and found that it really reduced the stigma I associated with medication for treatment of ADHD. In particular, understanding the risks of not effectively treating ADHD, in comparison with with the potential risks/benefits of the medication. That's not to say that we should only rely on medication - behavioral therapy (with parents involved too) should also play a part.
You could draw a parallel with GLP-1 agonists: people like to grandstand about how you shouldn't need it and how it's somehow cheating. As if it's not addressing a condition that people are suffering from right now, today.
The stigma also seems to accidentally admit that things like executive function and food noise aren't equally distributed, thus some people could benefit from intervention.
For example, if you've never been fat or you never binge eat or you've never procrastinated 15min of homework until 2am despite, then you're missing the irony when your solution for people who deal with these things is to try harder and to jump through hoops that you don't need to.
Behavioral therapy is only needed to make people feel better about taking amphetamines. It takes only a very cursory review of published reputable papers to realize there's nothing behavioral therapy can do to improve ADHD because as Russell Barkley says ADHD is a disability of doing, not knowing what to do.
If medication alone has worked for you, that's great! But I don't think your opinion matches the medical consensus.
> For children with ADHD younger than 6 years of age, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends parent training in behavior management as the first line of treatment, before medication is tried.
> For children 6 years of age and older, the recommendations include medication and behavior therapy together—parent training in behavior management for children up to age 12 and other types of behavior therapy and training for adolescents. Schools can be part of the treatment as well. AAP recommendations also include adding behavioral classroom intervention and school supports. [1]
No, it doesn't. It _barely_ works and mostly consists of teaching people some coping mechanisms. Medication works _much_ better, especially when using in addition to the CBT.
Therapy, and most of all, understanding how our brains work make all the difference in the world.
It's like realizing that the reason you've been getting stuck in the mud is not that you're a bad driver.
It's just that people who don't are driving 4x4 trucks, and you've had a Nissan Z series sports car.
Turns out, farms and off-road are simply not the right environment for your vehicle, and when that environment has some accomodations, like the paved surface of a highway or a race track, you're literally running circles around people in the most common vehicles.
One profound effect of taking Adderall was feeling the clarity to understand that difference, and seeing the road instead of the endless mud fields in front of me.
It does help to get things done, but around 30% of ADHD'ers aren't responsive to it.
Understanding that you're getting stuck because your brain wasn't meant for that kind of driving, however, is universally useful.
That's why I made that ADHD wiki [1], and keep posting links to it.
It's an compilation of information that has helped me tremendously to understand the above; and I know this resource was helpful to others too in their journeys.
My perspective is that of a late-diagnosed adult who's been completely unaware of what ADHD is, and thought that they can't possibly have an attention deficit because to get anything done, they have to hyperfocus on it.
Again, learning that hyperfocus is a symptom of ADHD and understanding how it works)l had a profound impact. And medication helped with that too: it's easier to not get stuck hyperfocused on the wrong thing with Adderall.
Getting Adderall was like spraying WD-40 into rusty steering components. The immediate effect is that I can go where I want to go to, not the random direction my vehicle happens to face.
The long-term effect though was understanding what makes it difficult to steer, and how to maintain it better.
And even if I don't have power steering all the time like everyone else, I'm still better off with that experience.
My point here that it's never about medication VERSUS therapy and knowledge.
Medication is not an alternative, it's a BOOSTER.
When it works, it's just dropping the difficulty from Nightmare to Medium/Hard. It doesn't play the game for you.
The said, I'm very much happy the Nightmare mode days are behind me, and I'm very sad that the only reason I've been living my life that way is stigma and lack of information.
When I took Adderall, I unexpectedly had to grieve the future I'll never get to have after being held back by all the pain I've been needlessly subjected to over the preceding three decades.
That grief, too, is a common experience in ADHD late-diagnosed adults.
Thank you for sharing that link, and contributing to the discussion and awareness <3
I'm sorry that has been your experience, but I have had very different experiences - I'd encourage you to give it another shot, there is a lot left on the table for you
Yes, that image is so funny, because it really is the difference between me being able to make a meal for myself vs needing something immediate.
It also helped do wonders for my anxiety, which I previously treated with sertaline.
I'm not the hyperactive sort of individual who has ADHD so I didn't get diagnosed until late in life, around a year or so ago, I'm just the "Inattentive" type.
But finally I can take my meds, and do things that other people do without feeling like it's mental torture. And I can also remember to do important things, like my taxes, on time!
It's so weird comparing my days on it to off it, when I happen to run out. I start getting a backlog of little things that my brain decided it couldn't take one minute to knock out.
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 stuff is that, if you forget for a minute that it's literally just how life is for you, it reads like some fantastical fiction comedy. I avoid telling anyone I deal with that I have ADHD because I feel like if I tell them they'll lump me in with some crappy mental model, and I avoid telling anyone I deal with about these problems because they sound completely absurd.
The author of this piece—which I am—is reporting on Huxley’s MIT talk. He predicted a drug that improves mental efficiency/focus. And the talk discusses alternative non-pharmacological approaches.
You are welcome to either actually read my piece or, better, listen to his talk. There is no judgment against the substance but a call for additional approaches to enhance a person.
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.
The thing is, when you have ADHD and you take stimulants you don't feel any sort of high or however it makes people with normally functioning dopamine receptors feel, you just feel normal.
Oh, I still feel a bit high. Particularly when I start taking them after a hiatus. Or up the dose.
Anyway, here's what Huxley's had to say:
> ... I have talked to pharmacologists about this matter, and a number of them say that it’s probably quite possible that it may be possible to, by pharmacological means, which will do no harm to the organism as a whole, to increase the span of attention, to increase the powers of concentration, perhaps to cut down on the necessity for sleep, and the various other things which may lead to a very considerable increase in general mental efficiency.
No high mentioned. Remarkably accurate to my experience.
"Upping the dose" of Adderall makes me sleepy. In fact, I take a little before going to bed if I'm feeling restless. Midnight coffee is a thing for me.
I don't have a problem with attention span (ADHD isn't about short attention spans, after all), and stimulants do nothing for that.
Power of concentration? That's where ADHD people excel when that hyperfocus locks in. That's the default, unmedicated. The problem is the lack of control over where that concentration goes.
As you can see, I've been concentrating well enough on writing long enough comments in this thread to exceed the attention span of some of the commentors who respond to them (including, sadly, the author of the article we're discussing, who, while being kind enough to join this discussion, has nevertheless glossed over the points I've made that others haven't missed).
What I should have been concentrating on is sorting out the stuff in the garage from our recent camping trip.
This is what Adderall helps with. It's starting to kick in, so I'll go and do the adulting things it makes far less painful to start doing .
Wouldn't call it an increase in mental efficiency by any measure, but insofar as my spouse is concerned, it gets me off the couch; and insofar as the to-do list is concerned, I'm more productive in ticking off the boxes.
But the items on that list are far from requiring leaps in mental effort. It's things like folding the laundry, or unpacking suitcases, paying bills, making calls to insurance, mopping the floor, doing the oil change, and so on.
In short, Adderall doesn't work like Mentats from Fallout 1/2¹.
But it greatly increases the number of action points I have for Doing Things, while I feel... normal.
That is the much more common experience, and the reason it's prescribed for ADHD.
You can't talk about Adderall without talking about ADHD just like you can't talk about allergy pills without talking about allergies, or talk about eyeglasses without talking about myopia.
> It also happens to treat ADHD
NO. Please reconsider sharing this sentiment.
Adderall is a drug for treating ADHD that also happens to be abused by people thinking it'll have the "effects Huxley predicted" (enhancing thinking efficiency).
It does not; that's the reason why it's a controlled substance. When abused, it will wreck your brain.
As an analogy: glasses make people with myopia see better, but wearing glasses without prescription is a very bad idea.
>I believe it's being used here in the former capacity.
I understand this, and it's a misconception I'm trying to dispel.
With evidence and scientific understanding, mind you, and not just with vibes about thinking what Adderall is.
Speaking of which, I forgot to take it, which means I'm about to have my breakfast at 5PM because I couldn't bring myself to do the eating task earlier.
This is what Adderall is for.
>The title is perhaps a bit unfortunate.
The title is repeated verbatim in the article, whose author has kindly replied in this thread and re-stated it twice (as did you), as if I weren't directly addressing the fallacious point that the author employed to attract attention to Huxley's lecture (which doesn't need such advertising in the first place).
It's not the title that's a bit unfortunate.
It's the mention of Adderall, and the myth that it's a "brain-enhancing" drug.
If it were, it'd be given to everyone already, and perhaps there'd be fewer people spreading vibe-based falsities in post titles, but I digress.
The point is:
==============
Adderall does NOT enhance mental efficiency, as Huxley's fantasized drug would.
Adderall HELPS people with ADHD overcome EXECUTIVE DYSFUNCTION.
That's what it's for. That's what it DOES.
If you take it for ANYTHING ELSE, you will NOT get the intended result, and you will likely FUCK YOURSELF UP.
Spreading the MISCONCEPTION that Adderall is a "brain-enhancing” drug (as the author opined in the comments here) drives the ABUSE of this medication, which HARMS people and makes ADHD harder to obtain for people who NEED it to function.
========
I hope I've succeeded in bringing your attention to this issue.
If this hasn't changed your point of view, please let me know what else I can elaborate on.
Adderall has no positive relationship to my mental efficiency. It can in fact be a negative once your passed the 8 hour windows where its still in your system.
At the end of the day, it makes it easier to not bounce between different things. It doesn't help me be smarter. It helps me drive to work without needing to listen to music and be on my phone.
Here here. I also have ADHD though I couldn’t use stimulant medications due to bad reactions to it, but I’ve had success with non-stimulant medications (Straterra aka atomoxetine [1]).
A big thing I struggled with prior to medical treatment that I don’t often hear discussed about ADHd was rejection sensitivity.
For those unfamiliar: imagine a time someone said something that hurt your feelings or caused a strong emotional reaction.
Now imagine that as a routine emotional response to day to day interactions. Feeling intensely sad, irritated, insulted, etc. to extents completely o it of proportion to whatever was said or even implied.
It’s brutal. It contributes to a lot of depression and social anxiety for folks with ADHD. It doesn’t matter if you’re aware of the response being disproportionate—you get to go on that emotional roller coaster whenever somebody says they don’t care for your favorite food, accidentally cut you off in a conversation, or the day just turns out differently than you were expecting.
Medical treatment makes a huge difference—in my particular case the difference between feeling like I had the emotional regulation of a toddler and not needing to constantly question every emotion I felt prior to responding to things I was reacting to.
Stimulant medications didn’t work for me, but they do this for most people with ADHD (more effectively, too!) and like alterom it saddens me whenever FUD like this crops up.
Adderall also treats excessive daytime sleepiness associated with narcolepsy and I'd be a shambolic zombie without it. It's downright insulting when people think pharmaceuticals are some kind of shortcut to avoid some more disciplined approach. It's medicine to treat illness. Any medicine can be abused or misused but some of us just really need it to correct dysfunction.
I'd argue that it is nonsense to treat symptoms instead of the cause (of an issue) , but actually doing just that is quite intellectual when a bunch of money stands to be made
I suppose that's true, in much the same way that chemotherapy treats the symptom of cells spontaneously deciding to replicate in your body. That does not mean we judge people battling a cancer diagnosis and tell them to pursue non-medicated approaches because it's "just treating symptoms".
If you encounter a bit of bitterness from the ADHD community online, let me provide some perspective: I have been called lazy my entire life, I have wondered why everybody could just do stuff and apply themselves. Why couldn't I just clean my house, do my homework, keep on top of chores, or even find the energy to play games after a day of work? I only found out as an adult I have a disability which makes all of that an uphill battle for me, INCLUDING finding the motivation for the fun stuff. There is an easy fix for this, some meds that take care of SOME of the problem. They don't fix it in much the same way that a wheelchair doesn't fix the legs of a crippled person, but it sure is like playing life on easy mode if you're used to dragging yourself around by your arms. And now I'm stuck explaining this to people who have done the barest minimum of research and who say 'oh it only is treating symptoms'. They have the audacity of calling me lazy (again!) for not training my arms more to overcome my disability that way. And my response is simple: You can take my metaphorical wheelchair over my dead body, and if you were in my position you would feel exactly the same way.
i understand your perspective viscerally and as such i understand the push back ... the argument is that there is nothing wrong with someone labelled 'adhd' , rather that the modern western system both a) does not handle adhd behaviour properly and b) exhibits conditions where non-adhd individuals exhibit adhd behaviour ... when taking into account that speed will motivate anybody (both adhd and non adhd) , and that demotivation is a natural response to a hopeless scenario , i do not see adhd as a disability in and of itself ... recommend to look up the effect of hope on drowning rats ...
Even if you were 100% correct and the world is broken, fully causing ADHD as a disorder: Please fix the world FIRST and only once proven ADHD is caused by what once was the shape of western society and no longer applies, THEN you get to take the metaphorical wheelchair away.
The alternative is that you prevent millions of people in managing their disability while asking them to bet on your view of the world AND on our collective ability to change it. In the best case scenario where we manage that shift, that's what, 10 years of my life gone while society adjusts? Will you write my kids a nice letter explaining them their dad is going to be a deadbeat the next 10 years while we fix society, because somebody on the internet thinks daddy shouldn't be on stimulant medication?
You're just not presenting an attractive deal to anyone, whilst very politely telling disabled people making the best of their shit situation that their crutches should not exist. Hell, maybe they shouldn't need to exist, but how is that my fault? And while I can't tell if you stand on the side of 'using meds to manage ADHD is a failure of self discipline and morality', but if you do: I promise you most people with ADHD have more self discipline in their little toe than others do in their entire body. But self discipline doesn't make a cripple walk, as much as it doesn't make my brain make the chemicals I need to put my body into action. I've spent enough time of my life flogging myself into action, believing I was a fundamentally lazy human, I'll take the meds.
That is nonsense, it makes perfect sense to treat symptoms when it works and lessens those symptoms. Most of medicine works that way- our understanding of biology is primitive, and we often cannot identify or treat underlining causes.
>I'd argue that it is nonsense to treat symptoms instead of the cause (of an issue) , but actually doing just that is quite intellectual when a bunch of money stands to be made
What specifically are you talking about here? It appears to me that your comment is an expression of vibe with zero information content.
There's no dichotomy between treating symptoms and cause even when the cause is treatable (which isn't the case with ADHD; it's a neurotype, with differences showing on brain scan levels) — and that's setting aside the discussion of whether it's something we need to "treat" in the first place.
We still have painkillers for people who need them while they are getting treatment.
We still have meds for runny noses, we still have Tylenol for fever, even though these are merely symptoms.
We still have pills for allergies.
And on that note: the symptoms (such as fever and allergic reactions) can and do kill people.
>modern western society exhibits a plethora of conditions that are likely to result in the manifestation of adhd behaviours in non adhd individuals
Maybe.
>a brain scan is not part of the diagnostic criteria for labelling adhd
Correct.
>taking speed makes anyone more productive, not just those with adhd
We arent talking about productivity gains.
>for me to reconsider my comment you would have to provide a convincing argument that doping up the populace is objectively the best path forward
"Doping up" is intentionally emotive language and a misrepresentation.
>to me it seems that this is not the best path forward, rather one that serves to minimize societal friction
You dont even clearly state your complaint. Its about patient outcomes, not "society" but you are implying they are also a social good. Great.
The best path forward is to reduce the severity of peoples illnesses. These drugs, reduce the severity of peoples illnesses. People with these illnesses, have a better life due to the medication. Why that upsets you is a deeply internal problem to you, not a problem with society or medicine.
Well it would be a net social good. But I expect I will see a different account with vastly the same posting style back here next time ADHD comes up, spewing the same nonsense.
So, instead of reading what I wrote, you choose to remain willfully ignorant.
I am not responding further for your sake, but for the sake of those who read this thread.
> taking speed makes anyone more productive, not just those with adhd.
Speed (methamphetamine) has the same relationship to Adderall (dextroamphetamines) as methanol does to ethanol; a difference in methyl group.
Ethanol (aka alcohol) is commonly used for recreational purposes.
If you think Adderall is the same thing as "speed", I hope you wouldn't mind drinking a glass of methanol to prove the point that chemically similar substances have similar effects.
> modern western society exhibits a plethora of conditions that are likely to result in the manifestation of adhd behaviours in non adhd individuals
Which is why the diagnostic criteria for ADHD require a lifelong manifestation of ADHD symptoms.
Notice how you say behaviors, not symptoms or traits, i.e. how people act, and not how they feel, which difficulties they face, what cost they bear, and so on.
The behavior of an ADHD individual might be no different from one without ADHD. We can be on time, for example.
It is just immensely more difficult for us, just like it's difficult for someone with a broken leg that didn't quite heal to walk.
And yes, anyone can bump their toe on a table leg and experience pain for a while. That doesn't mean that people with broken legs don't exist.
>a brain scan is not part of the diagnostic criteria for labelling adhd.
It isn't, because we have cheaper and more reliable ways.
The difference is there though.
> you would have to provide a convincing argument that doping up the populace is objectively the best path forward - to me it seems that this is not the best path forward, rather one that serves to minimize societal friction.
Believing that "doping up the populace" is what's taking place is a delusion that I can't address in the same way that I can't address the belief that the Loch Ness monster caused the 2019 Coronavirus pandemic.
Unfortunately, your worldview seem to be as strongly detached from reality as you are convinced about the veracity of your unshakable beliefs.
But again, if you sincerely believe people taking Adderall are taking speed, you really could save a lot on booze by drinking methanol instead.
>youre very close to freeing yourself but the speed has an iron grip on your thoughts , i wish you all the best and hope that things may settle down
Oh my. I was going to ask if you've drank a glass of methanol to argue that Adderall and speed the same thing, as I suggested... but judging my the content of your comments, you might have had more than one already.
we could choose to produce an environment that handles normal human behaviour , but instead we label normal human behaviour as dissonant , its an idea so simple yet one so violently opposed , such violence only spurs me on to champion the idea
ADHD behavior is normal human behavior, because we're all human.
And indeed, some quite reasonable accommodations and changes in the way the society functions and forms expectations of ourselves and others would go a long way towards making ADHD folks living fulfilling lives without pain.
All that said, executive dysfunction is still a thing, and ADHD folks routinely find themselves struggling with their own goals and lives, apart from the society and its expectations.
Technology can and does help a lot (electric kettles that turn themselves off, washer-dryer combo machines that don't require remembering to take clothes out, etc).
But then there are still things that I struggle with on my own, like wanting to send postcards to friends and taking literal years to get to it.
I really can't blame it on the society.
That's where the meds can make a big difference in one's life.
In some ways, ADHD is an advantage. We fare better than others in emergencies. Hyperfocus is an asset. Having a million hobbies is a plus.
But in other ways, it's something that makes us need support.
The meds are one of the ways the society accommodates us and gives us that support.
if you took an adhd cunt and threw him in the bush he would be fine ... but if you threw him into a cookie cutter hyper capitalist no-hope no-wife no-friends no-third-space doomscroll-to-death sealed box , that man wouldn't be fine! the man in question never changed , only his environment did. ergo , societal amphetamines are about as supportive as me handing you a set of crutches after i broke your legs. but trying to blame adhd on society is basically a copout as it reflects the way that society treats individuals ("here, take this speed and wreck your heart so that you fit better into the box we designed for you"). the only way forward is to through honest questioning as to why adhd diagnoses are thousands of times greater in the west, eg. maybe if we didn't get forced into a 9-5 schedule and instead had a bit more freedom , people would be more happy to devote energy to their work ...
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).
Isn't the whole point of amphetamine based treatement for ADHD to correct(or beneficially alter, depending on your point of view) an non-standard brain chemistry?
AFAIK some neurodivergent brains deal with amphetamines differently and the baseline levels of chemical affected by amphetamines is different.
Wear and tear might be a thing, i don't know, but the analogy of putting NO2 in their car feels a bit off.
It'd be more like finally putting premium unleaded in your car after years of "back of the lorry" pseudo-unleaded.
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 pay attention like a "normal" person.
Amphetamines are safe, well-studied and non-addictive at prescribed doses. On the other hand, untreated ADHD VASTLY increases likelihood of addiction and many mental disorders.
Definitely DO use this medication if you need it - it's the first medication your doctor will likely ask you to try precisely because an extensive body of research says it's the most effective way for treating ADHD.
Is that based on a rigorous PhD level understanding of the neurobiology of the brain and the chemistry behind that particular medication, or just something you absorbed though popular culture, eg movies and Instagram reels?
I read champignons and it kind of fit even better. Adderall (Brave New World) and mushrooms (Island).
Soma in BNW is more analogous to MDMA as it's about sedated pleasure, not mental clarity/performance.
MDMA isn't sedated pleasure, it's very stimmy pleasure.
I seem to think marijuana is more about sedated pleasure than MDMA. Granted, it's been about 30 years since I read Brave New World.
I agree, soma definitely parallels weed much more closely, but I don't think it's a perfect match. Huxley imagines a drug a bit more insidious, without obviously negative side effects, and with somewhat unrealistic(imo) intended effects.
I'd say something with the intensity of weed (relatively low) along with the effects of MDMA. Essentially "MDMA lite"
Marijuana often seems to promote thinking "outside the box" which is probably not what the Brave New World people would want for their population
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 Curtis' film-essays -- maybe Century of the Self, maybe another one. I'd view those films as being in a similar spirit to Brave New World.
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?
It is, you're right, and it's super weird what happens on the internet when you suggest weed isn't some gateway to enlightenment. I love cannabis, but it's a depressant that increases dopamine, it's not that complicated. Stoners on the internet sound exactly like alcoholics—they say it makes them more creative, helps them sleep, deal with anxiety too. We do such a shit job teaching about signs of psychological addiction.
It definitely doesn’t help sleep quality, but it could plausibly help with creativity in people who have the capacity to have good creative ideas. This is because it seems to produce a feeling that all (or at least more) of one’s ideas are good.
If someone has a problem with idea development because they decide early that the idea isn’t worth exploring, perhaps due to low self confidence in ideation etc, then simply producing the feeling of it being a good idea could help them go further than they would otherwise with it. Of course it also makes dumb ideas feel like good ideas too, so for someone who doesn’t have the capacity to have good creative ideas or who doesn’t have this problem in the first place, it probably won’t help.
It definitely helps sleep quality in some people.
The sedation is psychological - soma suppresses discomfort and boosts easy pleasure. It’s not introspective at all, which makes it much closer to MDMA than to cannabis.
mdma is pleasureful but extremely non-sedated
I meant the psychological role in the book - soma as a tool to melt away discomfort or disturbing feelings, not its literal pharmacology.
pure racemic MDMA has very little stimulant effect. street MDMA can feel stimulating because it is either intentionally mixed with caffeine/speed/meth or contains residual precursor from clandestine synthesis.
my major state was one of deep relaxation ... MDMA does not work like Dexedrine ... I feel totally peaceful.
- Alexander Shulgin, PIHKAL
https://www.erowid.org/library/books_online/pihkal/pihkal109...
Shulgin used dozens (hundreds?) of these compounds. I do wonder if some of his better subjective observations might be due to simply relieving withdrawal symptoms.
The street drug Ecstasy is MDMA usually mixed with speed. MDMA doesn't have a stimulating effect.
Just want to echo someone else's sub-thread: Adderall is not at all similar to Huxley's description of Soma. Soma was about feeling good and not having to think of the evil things that make the BNW society possible, not efficiency.
Not Soma! From a talk by Huxley:
> ... I have talked to pharmacologists about this matter, and a number of them say that it’s probably quite possible that it may be possible to, by pharmacological means, which will do no harm to the organism as a whole, to increase the span of attention, to increase the powers of concentration, perhaps to cut down on the necessity for sleep, and the various other things which may lead to a very considerable increase in general mental efficiency.
https://www.organism.earth/library/document/realizing-human-...
Sounds more like opiates (5000 BCE) or benzos (1950s).
That's also what I thought - Wasn't Soma more of a way to make people question less and just remain in a blissed out but maybe sort of out of it state at all times ? Seems very different than amphetamines
The link (including the transcript of Huxley’s lecture) doesn’t seem to be about Soma, unless I’m missing something. Huxley produced a lot of work outside of Brave New World, lots of it concerned with drugs and altered states of consciousness (so much so that personally I don’t think I’ve done enough drugs to understand his perspective, as I find him distinctly, and almost uniquely among such high-profile authors that I’ve tried, unreadable)
You are vey correct—the talk and link have nothing to do with Soma.
I can only presume, based on timing of the talk being 1960, that his thoughts here link to mescaline and the practical utopia he talks of in Island, whose inhabitants make use of a local psychedelic. So whatever he must have said here had more to do with his later perspectives than his feelings around the island.
Guess more of us should have read the link more carefully..... oops !
Fair enough, but I have read Island, The Doors of Perception, and BNW, and none of those books described using uppers or anything about efficiency. Island was psychedelics (fantastic book in my opinion).
So kind of like our social media feeds then?
I would've said like marijuana.
Dune also predicted it. The spice must flow.
There's a schizophrenic vandal here in Austin that spray paints SOMA© all up and down Riverside Drive.
Substituted amphetamines were already very popular in the 1950s.
Methamphetamine was invented in Germany in 1937 and the German military at the time was very quick to adopt its use.
Everybody who could afford it adopted psychostimulants in WW2. Go pills have been part and parcel since then. Some countries have adopted modafinil, but the US still uses amphetamine.
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.)
Adrafinil is straight up unregulated in the US and is metabolized to modafinil in the body if you want to, you know, expand its usage personally.
Just a note for anyone passing by. The side effects are rare, except diarrhea and you need to watch your liver enzyme levels if I remember right. Everyone I know who's taken that had diarrhea the entire time (manageable with meds), and it will screw your liver long term.
But I'm not a doctor either so who knows really.
I think the GI effects are basically the same between any of the -afinils, FWIW.
I wouldn't recommend them in general, but mostly because they last too long to really work with a normal 16/8 sleep cycle and the other stimmy effects can detract from things other than focus work.
I never took any long-term, but I've actually napped (purposefully) the afternoon after taking one in the morning, which is impossible on amphetamines.
Which is to say, they seem better to me, but maybe long-term use is different.
I am not sure if that's still the case, but "go pills," Dexedrine, were certainly used in Afghanistan. Here was a horrible potential side-effect:
https://www.cbc.ca/news2/background/friendlyfire/gopills.htm...
> In 1919, the Japanese discovered a more potent version of the drug — methamphetamine. The new drug was a crystalline powder soluble in water. In this form, it can be smoked, injected, snorted or taken orally. Users get an intense but brief high when they inject or smoke the drug, but if it's snorted or taken orally by capsule, the high lasts longer.
There was also a drink with same name hiropon that was generally available for some time.
I tried googling for more info but I haven't been able to find much in English and my Japanese isn't good enough to read at that level. I've only heard about it from my wife and a few other people in Japan. I've seen a few old posters for it at old bars.
An army of tweakers. I don't think that this aspect of the War and the Holocaust are discussed enough. Certainly no excuse, but it is very interesting.
> Chronic Meth users have deficits in memory and executive functioning as well as higher rates of anxiety, depression, and most notably psychosis. [0]
In more recent times of horror:
> After the fall of the al-Assad regime in Syria, large stockpiles of the illicit drug captagon have reportedly been uncovered.
> The stockpiles, found by Syrian rebels, are believed to be linked to al-Assad military headquarters, implicating the fallen regime in the drug’s manufacture and distribution. [1]
[0] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3764482/
[1] https://theconversation.com/what-is-the-drug-captagon-and-ho...
There were also reports about widespread use of captagon during the attacks of October 7th 2023.
I had not heard that, but I can believe it.
Im sure eventually whatever pills the Germans were taking back then were bad for you but I would imagine smoking huge doses of not so pure street meth is quite a bit different than something created in a lab.
That being said if anyone uses drugs to avoid sleeping for many days straight I would imagine it's quite horrible for your mental health
Considering the soldiers were already extremely high risk for lead poisoning, might have been low on the list of concerns.
So…not that different.
Highly recommend the book "Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich" by Norman Ohler, a podcast promo led me to get the book from the library and I really liked it!
Yep. There’s a video of Adolf rocking back and forth looking like he was tweaking
Adderall is just regular amphetamine, not even a substituted amphetamine.
It's a mix of 4 different amphetamines
Two, but those are just the enantiomers dextroamphetamine and levoamphetamine. Neither has any atoms extra or missing. It looks like four amphetamines because those two cationic isomers are in salts with two different anions.
Each enantiomer exhibits different effects so I don't know if that is relevant. (Even if you count dextroamphetamine sulfate and amphetamine sulfate as one, I'd still probably call it 3 because dextroamphetamine saccharate and amphetamine asparate monohydrate (the other two parts of adderall) do indeed have different forumlas).
And had been researched treat symptoms of depression and what would eventually be called ADHD in the 1930's.
Benzedrine (an amphetamine inhaler) was the first antidepressant marketed (although at the time I believe they used the term "psychic energizer" for antidepressants)
... and I didn't know about them:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substituted_amphetamine
The most famous in that family seems to be meth(amphetamine)
You've probably also heard of 3,4-Methylenedioxy-N-methylamphetamine, though its abbreviated name (MDMA) is likely more familiar.
It's a huuuuuge family of substances though, particularly if you go one step more generic and start with Phenylethylamine as the backbone (amphetamine is a shortening of alpha-methyl-phenethylamine), the family includes hallucinogens like mescaline, empathogens like MDMA and its close cousins, the whole 2C family, the cathinones and their derivatives ('mephedrone' had a cultural moment 10-15 years back). And some real nasties like PMA, PMMA and bromo-Dragonfly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substituted_phenethylamine
Why does a space engineering lecturer believe he has novel thoughts on ADHD treatment inspired by an author from a medical era he didn’t bother to do cursory research of?
"predicts" must be a variant of standard english which projects the past tense into the present tense because .. reasons?
He predicted. Absent an Ouija board, he isn't predicting any more.
The title is missing context, the full sentence would be "In his final speech, Huxley predicts Adderall". The context anchors the time frame, so "predicts" is present tense at the time of the speech.
"In his 2006 paper, Roubini sees an upcoming global financial crisis"
Journalists love to do things like this - cut out the context - as it makes the headlines seem more vivid, immediate and often alarming.
"Roubini sees an upcoming global financial crisis"
Shakspear writes his next big drama.
Germany invades Poland on trumped-up pretext.
Shock murder in Roman forum. Details to follow.
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 people who don't get help. Women with ADHD die about 9 years younger than those without ADHD [1].
- making our lives less painful, since every small task incurs pain, resulting in 3x depression rates [2] and alarmingly high suicidal ideation rates (50% of ADHD adults [3]).
Please, please, educate yourself about ADHD and medication for it before writing something like this title.
No, Aldous Huxley didn't. "predict" Adderall.
To understand more, I've put together a resource which, I hope, will be easy enough to digest. Here's my experience of getting prescribed Adderall for my ADHD:
https://romankogan.net/adhd/#Medication
If I have attention deficit and I could write it, I hope you (and the author of the text we're discussing) could spare some attention to it before talking about Adderall, amphetamines, and other stimulants prescribed for ADHD.
Thank you in advance.
[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/01/23/nx...
[2] https://add.org/adhd-and-depression/
[3] https://crownviewpsych.com/blog/adhd-increased-risk-suicide-...
It's long, but I listened to this podcast a while back with Peter Attia and Trenna Sutcliffe discussing Autism, ADHD, and Anxiety, and found that it really reduced the stigma I associated with medication for treatment of ADHD. In particular, understanding the risks of not effectively treating ADHD, in comparison with with the potential risks/benefits of the medication. That's not to say that we should only rely on medication - behavioral therapy (with parents involved too) should also play a part.
https://peterattiamd.com/trennasutcliffe/
You could draw a parallel with GLP-1 agonists: people like to grandstand about how you shouldn't need it and how it's somehow cheating. As if it's not addressing a condition that people are suffering from right now, today.
The stigma also seems to accidentally admit that things like executive function and food noise aren't equally distributed, thus some people could benefit from intervention.
For example, if you've never been fat or you never binge eat or you've never procrastinated 15min of homework until 2am despite, then you're missing the irony when your solution for people who deal with these things is to try harder and to jump through hoops that you don't need to.
This is an excellent parallel.
Behavioral therapy is only needed to make people feel better about taking amphetamines. It takes only a very cursory review of published reputable papers to realize there's nothing behavioral therapy can do to improve ADHD because as Russell Barkley says ADHD is a disability of doing, not knowing what to do.
If medication alone has worked for you, that's great! But I don't think your opinion matches the medical consensus.
> For children with ADHD younger than 6 years of age, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends parent training in behavior management as the first line of treatment, before medication is tried.
> For children 6 years of age and older, the recommendations include medication and behavior therapy together—parent training in behavior management for children up to age 12 and other types of behavior therapy and training for adolescents. Schools can be part of the treatment as well. AAP recommendations also include adding behavioral classroom intervention and school supports. [1]
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/adhd/treatment/index.html
Not true.
CBT works pretty well for adhd, studies are clear on this.
But medication seems even better, as does a combination of therapy and medication.
ADHD isn't unusual as far as the effectiveness of therapy, it's unusual in how well the medication is proven to work.
> CBT works pretty well for adhd
No, it doesn't. It _barely_ works and mostly consists of teaching people some coping mechanisms. Medication works _much_ better, especially when using in addition to the CBT.
Therapy, and most of all, understanding how our brains work make all the difference in the world.
It's like realizing that the reason you've been getting stuck in the mud is not that you're a bad driver.
It's just that people who don't are driving 4x4 trucks, and you've had a Nissan Z series sports car.
Turns out, farms and off-road are simply not the right environment for your vehicle, and when that environment has some accomodations, like the paved surface of a highway or a race track, you're literally running circles around people in the most common vehicles.
One profound effect of taking Adderall was feeling the clarity to understand that difference, and seeing the road instead of the endless mud fields in front of me.
It does help to get things done, but around 30% of ADHD'ers aren't responsive to it.
Understanding that you're getting stuck because your brain wasn't meant for that kind of driving, however, is universally useful.
That's why I made that ADHD wiki [1], and keep posting links to it.
It's an compilation of information that has helped me tremendously to understand the above; and I know this resource was helpful to others too in their journeys.
My perspective is that of a late-diagnosed adult who's been completely unaware of what ADHD is, and thought that they can't possibly have an attention deficit because to get anything done, they have to hyperfocus on it.
Again, learning that hyperfocus is a symptom of ADHD and understanding how it works)l had a profound impact. And medication helped with that too: it's easier to not get stuck hyperfocused on the wrong thing with Adderall.
Getting Adderall was like spraying WD-40 into rusty steering components. The immediate effect is that I can go where I want to go to, not the random direction my vehicle happens to face.
The long-term effect though was understanding what makes it difficult to steer, and how to maintain it better.
And even if I don't have power steering all the time like everyone else, I'm still better off with that experience.
My point here that it's never about medication VERSUS therapy and knowledge.
Medication is not an alternative, it's a BOOSTER.
When it works, it's just dropping the difficulty from Nightmare to Medium/Hard. It doesn't play the game for you.
The said, I'm very much happy the Nightmare mode days are behind me, and I'm very sad that the only reason I've been living my life that way is stigma and lack of information.
When I took Adderall, I unexpectedly had to grieve the future I'll never get to have after being held back by all the pain I've been needlessly subjected to over the preceding three decades.
That grief, too, is a common experience in ADHD late-diagnosed adults.
Thank you for sharing that link, and contributing to the discussion and awareness <3
[1] https://romankogan.net/adhd
I'm sorry but therapy does NOTHING for ADHD. I wish it did, it would be very useful to me, but it's just not the case.
I'm sorry that has been your experience, but I have had very different experiences - I'd encourage you to give it another shot, there is a lot left on the table for you
I felt that it was useless too.. You’re probably better off reading Getting Things Done.
The only things I’ve foung that actually works, is a daily combo of Vyvanse and dexis
Yes, that image is so funny, because it really is the difference between me being able to make a meal for myself vs needing something immediate.
It also helped do wonders for my anxiety, which I previously treated with sertaline.
I'm not the hyperactive sort of individual who has ADHD so I didn't get diagnosed until late in life, around a year or so ago, I'm just the "Inattentive" type.
But finally I can take my meds, and do things that other people do without feeling like it's mental torture. And I can also remember to do important things, like my taxes, on time!
It's so weird comparing my days on it to off it, when I happen to run out. I start getting a backlog of little things that my brain decided it couldn't take one minute to knock out.
I could second every word of what you just said (as you already know after reading that page, of course).
Just wanted to reiterate it for anyone who's reading this thread.
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 stuff is that, if you forget for a minute that it's literally just how life is for you, it reads like some fantastical fiction comedy. I avoid telling anyone I deal with that I have ADHD because I feel like if I tell them they'll lump me in with some crappy mental model, and I avoid telling anyone I deal with about these problems because they sound completely absurd.
The author of this piece—which I am—is reporting on Huxley’s MIT talk. He predicted a drug that improves mental efficiency/focus. And the talk discusses alternative non-pharmacological approaches.
You are welcome to either actually read my piece or, better, listen to his talk. There is no judgment against the substance but a call for additional approaches to enhance a person.
You are contributing to the stigma associated with ADHD medication, and you should feel bad about that.
I read your piece. Your title is clickbait, and you know it.
[flagged]
Thank you for writing this. There are so many misconceptions about what ADHD is and how it’s treatments work.
Thanks for this comment! Makes it so worthwhile to write <3
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.
The thing is, when you have ADHD and you take stimulants you don't feel any sort of high or however it makes people with normally functioning dopamine receptors feel, you just feel normal.
Oh, I still feel a bit high. Particularly when I start taking them after a hiatus. Or up the dose.
Anyway, here's what Huxley's had to say:
> ... I have talked to pharmacologists about this matter, and a number of them say that it’s probably quite possible that it may be possible to, by pharmacological means, which will do no harm to the organism as a whole, to increase the span of attention, to increase the powers of concentration, perhaps to cut down on the necessity for sleep, and the various other things which may lead to a very considerable increase in general mental efficiency.
No high mentioned. Remarkably accurate to my experience.
Interesting if that it works for you that way.
"Upping the dose" of Adderall makes me sleepy. In fact, I take a little before going to bed if I'm feeling restless. Midnight coffee is a thing for me.
I don't have a problem with attention span (ADHD isn't about short attention spans, after all), and stimulants do nothing for that.
Power of concentration? That's where ADHD people excel when that hyperfocus locks in. That's the default, unmedicated. The problem is the lack of control over where that concentration goes.
As you can see, I've been concentrating well enough on writing long enough comments in this thread to exceed the attention span of some of the commentors who respond to them (including, sadly, the author of the article we're discussing, who, while being kind enough to join this discussion, has nevertheless glossed over the points I've made that others haven't missed).
What I should have been concentrating on is sorting out the stuff in the garage from our recent camping trip.
This is what Adderall helps with. It's starting to kick in, so I'll go and do the adulting things it makes far less painful to start doing .
Wouldn't call it an increase in mental efficiency by any measure, but insofar as my spouse is concerned, it gets me off the couch; and insofar as the to-do list is concerned, I'm more productive in ticking off the boxes.
But the items on that list are far from requiring leaps in mental effort. It's things like folding the laundry, or unpacking suitcases, paying bills, making calls to insurance, mopping the floor, doing the oil change, and so on.
In short, Adderall doesn't work like Mentats from Fallout 1/2¹.
But it greatly increases the number of action points I have for Doing Things, while I feel... normal.
That is the much more common experience, and the reason it's prescribed for ADHD.
____
¹ https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Mentats_(Fallout)
>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 dysfunction:
https://romankogan.net/adhd/#Executive%20Dysfunction
You can't talk about Adderall without talking about ADHD just like you can't talk about allergy pills without talking about allergies, or talk about eyeglasses without talking about myopia.
> It also happens to treat ADHD
NO. Please reconsider sharing this sentiment.
Adderall is a drug for treating ADHD that also happens to be abused by people thinking it'll have the "effects Huxley predicted" (enhancing thinking efficiency).
It does not; that's the reason why it's a controlled substance. When abused, it will wreck your brain.
As an analogy: glasses make people with myopia see better, but wearing glasses without prescription is a very bad idea.
>I believe it's being used here in the former capacity.
I understand this, and it's a misconception I'm trying to dispel.
With evidence and scientific understanding, mind you, and not just with vibes about thinking what Adderall is.
Speaking of which, I forgot to take it, which means I'm about to have my breakfast at 5PM because I couldn't bring myself to do the eating task earlier.
This is what Adderall is for.
>The title is perhaps a bit unfortunate.
The title is repeated verbatim in the article, whose author has kindly replied in this thread and re-stated it twice (as did you), as if I weren't directly addressing the fallacious point that the author employed to attract attention to Huxley's lecture (which doesn't need such advertising in the first place).
It's not the title that's a bit unfortunate.
It's the mention of Adderall, and the myth that it's a "brain-enhancing" drug.
If it were, it'd be given to everyone already, and perhaps there'd be fewer people spreading vibe-based falsities in post titles, but I digress.
The point is:
==============
Adderall does NOT enhance mental efficiency, as Huxley's fantasized drug would.
Adderall HELPS people with ADHD overcome EXECUTIVE DYSFUNCTION.
That's what it's for. That's what it DOES.
If you take it for ANYTHING ELSE, you will NOT get the intended result, and you will likely FUCK YOURSELF UP.
Spreading the MISCONCEPTION that Adderall is a "brain-enhancing” drug (as the author opined in the comments here) drives the ABUSE of this medication, which HARMS people and makes ADHD harder to obtain for people who NEED it to function.
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I hope I've succeeded in bringing your attention to this issue.
If this hasn't changed your point of view, please let me know what else I can elaborate on.
Thank you <3
> 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 individual. I think you'd find it's points quite agreeable!
> you will likely FUCK YOURSELF UP.
To be fair, there's evidence it does the same to us.
Exactly.
Adderall has no positive relationship to my mental efficiency. It can in fact be a negative once your passed the 8 hour windows where its still in your system.
At the end of the day, it makes it easier to not bounce between different things. It doesn't help me be smarter. It helps me drive to work without needing to listen to music and be on my phone.
Modafinil... maybe.
Here here. I also have ADHD though I couldn’t use stimulant medications due to bad reactions to it, but I’ve had success with non-stimulant medications (Straterra aka atomoxetine [1]).
A big thing I struggled with prior to medical treatment that I don’t often hear discussed about ADHd was rejection sensitivity.
For those unfamiliar: imagine a time someone said something that hurt your feelings or caused a strong emotional reaction.
Now imagine that as a routine emotional response to day to day interactions. Feeling intensely sad, irritated, insulted, etc. to extents completely o it of proportion to whatever was said or even implied.
It’s brutal. It contributes to a lot of depression and social anxiety for folks with ADHD. It doesn’t matter if you’re aware of the response being disproportionate—you get to go on that emotional roller coaster whenever somebody says they don’t care for your favorite food, accidentally cut you off in a conversation, or the day just turns out differently than you were expecting.
Medical treatment makes a huge difference—in my particular case the difference between feeling like I had the emotional regulation of a toddler and not needing to constantly question every emotion I felt prior to responding to things I was reacting to.
Stimulant medications didn’t work for me, but they do this for most people with ADHD (more effectively, too!) and like alterom it saddens me whenever FUD like this crops up.
Thanks for writing this comment and raising awareness!
Rejection sensitivity is neurodivergent trait that's not exclusive to ADHD, but the way it manifests with ADHD can be truly life-derailing.
Learning about it helped me a lot to deal with it (in particular, externalizing that emotion as a trait and not what me is).
I wrote about it too in that wiki. Here's my experience with rejection sensitivity in the ADHD context:
https://romankogan.net/adhd/#Rejection%20Sensitivity
Adderall also treats excessive daytime sleepiness associated with narcolepsy and I'd be a shambolic zombie without it. It's downright insulting when people think pharmaceuticals are some kind of shortcut to avoid some more disciplined approach. It's medicine to treat illness. Any medicine can be abused or misused but some of us just really need it to correct dysfunction.
Thank you so much for this. I'm REALLY tired of anti ADHD medication propaganda, it's anti intellectual nonsense.
I'd argue that it is nonsense to treat symptoms instead of the cause (of an issue) , but actually doing just that is quite intellectual when a bunch of money stands to be made
I suppose that's true, in much the same way that chemotherapy treats the symptom of cells spontaneously deciding to replicate in your body. That does not mean we judge people battling a cancer diagnosis and tell them to pursue non-medicated approaches because it's "just treating symptoms".
If you encounter a bit of bitterness from the ADHD community online, let me provide some perspective: I have been called lazy my entire life, I have wondered why everybody could just do stuff and apply themselves. Why couldn't I just clean my house, do my homework, keep on top of chores, or even find the energy to play games after a day of work? I only found out as an adult I have a disability which makes all of that an uphill battle for me, INCLUDING finding the motivation for the fun stuff. There is an easy fix for this, some meds that take care of SOME of the problem. They don't fix it in much the same way that a wheelchair doesn't fix the legs of a crippled person, but it sure is like playing life on easy mode if you're used to dragging yourself around by your arms. And now I'm stuck explaining this to people who have done the barest minimum of research and who say 'oh it only is treating symptoms'. They have the audacity of calling me lazy (again!) for not training my arms more to overcome my disability that way. And my response is simple: You can take my metaphorical wheelchair over my dead body, and if you were in my position you would feel exactly the same way.
i understand your perspective viscerally and as such i understand the push back ... the argument is that there is nothing wrong with someone labelled 'adhd' , rather that the modern western system both a) does not handle adhd behaviour properly and b) exhibits conditions where non-adhd individuals exhibit adhd behaviour ... when taking into account that speed will motivate anybody (both adhd and non adhd) , and that demotivation is a natural response to a hopeless scenario , i do not see adhd as a disability in and of itself ... recommend to look up the effect of hope on drowning rats ...
Even if you were 100% correct and the world is broken, fully causing ADHD as a disorder: Please fix the world FIRST and only once proven ADHD is caused by what once was the shape of western society and no longer applies, THEN you get to take the metaphorical wheelchair away.
The alternative is that you prevent millions of people in managing their disability while asking them to bet on your view of the world AND on our collective ability to change it. In the best case scenario where we manage that shift, that's what, 10 years of my life gone while society adjusts? Will you write my kids a nice letter explaining them their dad is going to be a deadbeat the next 10 years while we fix society, because somebody on the internet thinks daddy shouldn't be on stimulant medication?
You're just not presenting an attractive deal to anyone, whilst very politely telling disabled people making the best of their shit situation that their crutches should not exist. Hell, maybe they shouldn't need to exist, but how is that my fault? And while I can't tell if you stand on the side of 'using meds to manage ADHD is a failure of self discipline and morality', but if you do: I promise you most people with ADHD have more self discipline in their little toe than others do in their entire body. But self discipline doesn't make a cripple walk, as much as it doesn't make my brain make the chemicals I need to put my body into action. I've spent enough time of my life flogging myself into action, believing I was a fundamentally lazy human, I'll take the meds.
That is nonsense, it makes perfect sense to treat symptoms when it works and lessens those symptoms. Most of medicine works that way- our understanding of biology is primitive, and we often cannot identify or treat underlining causes.
>I'd argue that it is nonsense to treat symptoms instead of the cause (of an issue) , but actually doing just that is quite intellectual when a bunch of money stands to be made
What specifically are you talking about here? It appears to me that your comment is an expression of vibe with zero information content.
There's no dichotomy between treating symptoms and cause even when the cause is treatable (which isn't the case with ADHD; it's a neurotype, with differences showing on brain scan levels) — and that's setting aside the discussion of whether it's something we need to "treat" in the first place.
We still have painkillers for people who need them while they are getting treatment.
We still have meds for runny noses, we still have Tylenol for fever, even though these are merely symptoms.
We still have pills for allergies.
And on that note: the symptoms (such as fever and allergic reactions) can and do kill people.
Please reconsider your comment.
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>modern western society exhibits a plethora of conditions that are likely to result in the manifestation of adhd behaviours in non adhd individuals
Maybe.
>a brain scan is not part of the diagnostic criteria for labelling adhd
Correct.
>taking speed makes anyone more productive, not just those with adhd
We arent talking about productivity gains.
>for me to reconsider my comment you would have to provide a convincing argument that doping up the populace is objectively the best path forward
"Doping up" is intentionally emotive language and a misrepresentation.
>to me it seems that this is not the best path forward, rather one that serves to minimize societal friction
You dont even clearly state your complaint. Its about patient outcomes, not "society" but you are implying they are also a social good. Great.
The best path forward is to reduce the severity of peoples illnesses. These drugs, reduce the severity of peoples illnesses. People with these illnesses, have a better life due to the medication. Why that upsets you is a deeply internal problem to you, not a problem with society or medicine.
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youre very close to freeing yourself but the stupid has an iron grip on your thoughts , i wish you all the best and hope that things may settle down
by all means keep jacking up the vitriol , it makes things even funnier when im the one who ends up getting censored
>censored
Well it would be a net social good. But I expect I will see a different account with vastly the same posting style back here next time ADHD comes up, spewing the same nonsense.
There were no personal accusations in the comment you're responding to.
Correctly prescribed stimulants aren't "doping up the populace", and ADHD existed long before it was described.
So, instead of reading what I wrote, you choose to remain willfully ignorant.
I am not responding further for your sake, but for the sake of those who read this thread.
> taking speed makes anyone more productive, not just those with adhd.
Speed (methamphetamine) has the same relationship to Adderall (dextroamphetamines) as methanol does to ethanol; a difference in methyl group.
Ethanol (aka alcohol) is commonly used for recreational purposes.
If you think Adderall is the same thing as "speed", I hope you wouldn't mind drinking a glass of methanol to prove the point that chemically similar substances have similar effects.
> modern western society exhibits a plethora of conditions that are likely to result in the manifestation of adhd behaviours in non adhd individuals
Which is why the diagnostic criteria for ADHD require a lifelong manifestation of ADHD symptoms.
Notice how you say behaviors, not symptoms or traits, i.e. how people act, and not how they feel, which difficulties they face, what cost they bear, and so on.
The behavior of an ADHD individual might be no different from one without ADHD. We can be on time, for example.
It is just immensely more difficult for us, just like it's difficult for someone with a broken leg that didn't quite heal to walk.
And yes, anyone can bump their toe on a table leg and experience pain for a while. That doesn't mean that people with broken legs don't exist.
>a brain scan is not part of the diagnostic criteria for labelling adhd.
It isn't, because we have cheaper and more reliable ways.
The difference is there though.
> you would have to provide a convincing argument that doping up the populace is objectively the best path forward - to me it seems that this is not the best path forward, rather one that serves to minimize societal friction.
Believing that "doping up the populace" is what's taking place is a delusion that I can't address in the same way that I can't address the belief that the Loch Ness monster caused the 2019 Coronavirus pandemic.
Unfortunately, your worldview seem to be as strongly detached from reality as you are convinced about the veracity of your unshakable beliefs.
But again, if you sincerely believe people taking Adderall are taking speed, you really could save a lot on booze by drinking methanol instead.
Do let us know how that goes.
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>youre very close to freeing yourself but the speed has an iron grip on your thoughts , i wish you all the best and hope that things may settle down
Oh my. I was going to ask if you've drank a glass of methanol to argue that Adderall and speed the same thing, as I suggested... but judging my the content of your comments, you might have had more than one already.
we could choose to produce an environment that handles normal human behaviour , but instead we label normal human behaviour as dissonant , its an idea so simple yet one so violently opposed , such violence only spurs me on to champion the idea
You know, I'm with you on that one, actually.
ADHD behavior is normal human behavior, because we're all human.
And indeed, some quite reasonable accommodations and changes in the way the society functions and forms expectations of ourselves and others would go a long way towards making ADHD folks living fulfilling lives without pain.
All that said, executive dysfunction is still a thing, and ADHD folks routinely find themselves struggling with their own goals and lives, apart from the society and its expectations.
Technology can and does help a lot (electric kettles that turn themselves off, washer-dryer combo machines that don't require remembering to take clothes out, etc).
But then there are still things that I struggle with on my own, like wanting to send postcards to friends and taking literal years to get to it.
I really can't blame it on the society.
That's where the meds can make a big difference in one's life.
In some ways, ADHD is an advantage. We fare better than others in emergencies. Hyperfocus is an asset. Having a million hobbies is a plus.
But in other ways, it's something that makes us need support.
The meds are one of the ways the society accommodates us and gives us that support.
if you took an adhd cunt and threw him in the bush he would be fine ... but if you threw him into a cookie cutter hyper capitalist no-hope no-wife no-friends no-third-space doomscroll-to-death sealed box , that man wouldn't be fine! the man in question never changed , only his environment did. ergo , societal amphetamines are about as supportive as me handing you a set of crutches after i broke your legs. but trying to blame adhd on society is basically a copout as it reflects the way that society treats individuals ("here, take this speed and wreck your heart so that you fit better into the box we designed for you"). the only way forward is to through honest questioning as to why adhd diagnoses are thousands of times greater in the west, eg. maybe if we didn't get forced into a 9-5 schedule and instead had a bit more freedom , people would be more happy to devote energy to their work ...
You settle down, ok?
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