[poultron]

Agree - as someone who took Adderall in highschool and college, and has started taking it again as an executive in my career, I always took it to be able to handle multitasking more efficiently with less distraction, and to motivate an action to be performed vs procrastinating. A test in which you HAVE to get a job done and you're being monitored and timed - I wouldn't expect a large improvement in results with 'smart drugs'. I think it would be much more interesting to watch study or work habits while under the influence of these smart drugs, measured in pages reviewed/written or emails sent or slides created or phone calls made, etc. True measures of productivity without knowing someone is looking over your shoulder.

Also notice as I take my "smart drugs" my ability to focus in meetings is increased, and therefore allows me to better recall information in subsequent days... vs when not on meds I'm constantly distracted and my memory is much more foggy, especially specifics or details.

[Aurornis]

> and to motivate an action to be performed vs procrastinating

I’ve watched several peers go down the path of trying to use stimulants for motivation starting in college and again later in my career. There’s no denying that it works at first. They are stimulants, after all, and they stimulate people especially well when they first start taking them.

The problem is that the motivation from stimulants is famously prone to tolerance and rebound effects. It’s also very prone to habit-forming associations. I’ve noticed several people try to use prescription stimulants in an “as needed” fashion when they need to get a lot of work done quickly and they don’t really want to do it. It doesn’t take long before it’s obvious to their friends and coworkers when they’re having an off day or an on day, even though they might deny any rebound effect. It gets scary when they do this so long that they forget how to self-motivate without taking stimulants because they’ve built such a strong mental association between “I have a lot of work to do” being a trigger for “I should take another pill today” or even “I’ll save this work until tomorrow when I can take a pill”. It gets even scarier when tolerance sets in (to the motivating/stimulating effect, not so much the intended attention-enhancing effect) and they’re now flirting with escalating doses, double doses, combinations with ‘nootropics’ to boost effects or ‘reduce tolerance’ and other slippery slopes.

The short-term productivity boost shouldn’t be denied, but I think it’s also short-sighted to hold these drugs up as a free lunch productivity boost. Let’s be honest: A little experimenting here and there isn’t going to show tolerance, extensive rebound, psychological associations, or other effects, but that’s also what gets people in trouble when they start to think it’s a free lunch. There’s a reason the traditional ADHD treatment approach involves taking the same dose every day rather than encouraging the patient to build psychological associations between taking the drug to alter their mood state.

The strange part about this conversation is that if I wrote all of the above text about drinking 2 energy drinks at the start of a work day, few people would argue with it. The tolerance, rebound, and dependence effects of caffeine seem to be well known in pop culture. For some reason people with a little exposure to prescription stimulants seem to think that the normal rules don’t apply to them, at least at first.

A lot of people who have minimal or sporadic experience with stimulants seem to think they’re no-strings-attached productivity boosts, but there’s no free lunch. The brain will adapt over time.

[saiya-jin]

Very good summary of long term situation, I hope OP and similar folks would realize the drawbacks. Indeed, concept of 'free lunch' simply doesn't exist in reality, especially when it comes to drugs. Our bodies and minds constantly adapt and what caused a certain reaction before will gradually cause less of it the more its used. Some folks fare better, some worse, some have very low threshold for addictions.

A very US-centric view I think, i never knew a single person in my University who took these 'enhancing' drugs, we just got wasted from alcohol and smoked weed. And I went through rather stressful University where 2/3 of people who started were thrown out of school in first 2 years in one or the other filtering hardcore courses with slightly psychotic professors (still not getting why by far the hardest course from 5 years for studying freakin' Software engineering had to be 'Theoretical electrotechnics' with some hardcore math way beyond our actual math courses, of course never used any of that, not even on rest of studies).

Anyway, any substance you abuse will eventually kick back quite hard, if it didn't yet give it some time (or take a bit harder look in the mirror next time). Same for bad habits.

[nikkwong]

I could see someone making the exact same arguments that you're making about caffeine: you need to increase the dose over time, it's habit forming, people are not the same when they're not on it, etc; but many would argue that they drink coffee successfully for entire lifespans and are better off for it. You're demonstrating a 'spiraling out of control' reaction that happens when people habituate to stimulants but—well, I'm not sure how many cases this actually occurs in.

Stimulants may be used by individuals with true deficiencies in an effort to get to baseline. Many people who start using stimulants in their 20's and 30's report being able to express healthy, practical behaviors that they couldn't summon themselves to express before: cleaning the house, making it to meetings on time, paying attention in conversations. The caution that you're expressing is warranted with any substance, but I'm sensing a bit of fearmongering which I think could possibly stop individuals from trying a substance through which they could possibly receive benefit.

[WalterBright]

I would get a short term productivity boost with caffeine, and then a remarkably unproductive time when it wore off. I deduced that the "up" part of the curve was cancelled out by the "down" part.

So I switched to decaf. I'll still enjoy regular coffee now and then as a special treat.

[pookha]

I get distracted easier if my diet is awful (which it has been in the past)... Refined carbs, sugar, tap water (fluoride in tap water is insane:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5285601/) and highly processed foods. Switch to a diet high in nitric oxide and run and I'm a much better problem solver. And I have no desire to work "for fourteen straight hours" and I'll find another job if I'm being asked too.

[satellite2]

The study on fluoride level is basically garbage. It's pure randomness and the IQ level is probably only correlated to the affluence of the region.

Just look at the results

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5285601/table/T...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5285601/figure/...

[poultron]

Agreed - when I dont take Adderall, the closest I feel to it is when I do intermittent carb-free fasting paired with high water intake. If I eat shitty, I have what feels like a severe mental hangover every single day with significant impacts to motivation and productivity.

[FFP999]

> I think it would be much more interesting to watch study or work habits while under the influence of these smart drugs, measured in pages reviewed/written or emails sent or slides created or phone calls made, etc. True measures of productivity...

I think you've confused "productivity" with "bulk". Do you evaluate engineers by how many lines of source code they write in a day?

[n8cpdx]

Lots of jobs do actually involve bulk reading and writing with relatively low quality targets. Lawyers and assistants being the prime examples. Also, almost all of undergrad for many, many degrees.

[breakfastduck]

I think you're missing the point. If you struggle with ADHD / executive dysfunction, there is a material benefit to measuring by those in that kind of job. Ultimately it is not that you're at a normal baseline and these things just make you do more busy work, it's that you struggle to keep up with so many competing priorities and demands that you end up dealing with none of it. So yes, for this purpose, that measure is worthwhile in this case.

[Slava_Propanei]

Ask yourself what is actually required to succeed in academia