When Ronald Graham, a concerned friend and fellow mathematician, bet him [Erdos] $500 that he couldn’t stay off his drug of choice for a month, Erdos accepted and easily won the challenge. When the 30 days was up, Erdos said to Graham, “You’ve showed me I’m not an addict. But I didn’t get any work done. I’d get up in the morning and stare at a blank piece of paper. I’d have no ideas, just like an ordinary person. You’ve set mathematics back a month.” Erdos resumed taking amphetamines and did so for every day of his life until his death 17 years later.
Does this amphetamine use constitute abuse? Drug abuse is typically defined as use that creates negative effects to the person's social and/or personal health. It seems to me his drug use gave him the ability to work at a high level and allowed him to derive self-worth from that work. He was also able to discontinue the drug use at will. Even if there were some negative health side-effects, I wonder if abuse should be the term used here.
"Use" vs "abuse" is generally an ideological choice, not really related to the actual use of a substance. If someone uses the word "abuse" in situations like that, it's clear that they are a prohibitionist, to whom all use is abuse.
Of course, egregious examples can very well be classed as abuse. But if someone classifies examples like the one you reference as abuse, then they're a prohibitionist, plain and simple.
I tried to read it but didn't get the answer, I did get the good question: WTF happened in 1971?
I have a dark suspicion that it has something to do with the rise of computers, of information economy. When some people can take advantage of computers and others can't that leads to income disparity.
:) When someone on what is essentially an IT forum links world happenings to IT it is a good time to sit back and reflect.
The information economy has had a big effect - a silly amount of power is concentrated in US software houses. But it is more plausible that the major trends are slow financial decay as markets get further divorced from reality and truth. Tech has resulted in massive productivity gains; but productivity gains previously resulted in pay increases.
I hazard that sensible investment isn't being rewarded and wages are decaying because of that. In a world where WeWork and Uber are considered great ideas someone who is investing in boring-and-steady infrastructure or basic food & comfort services is not going to get the capital allocations they deserve. That is finance and politics, not tech.
Also the site thinks the answer is moving off the gold standard - I like the gold standard, but moving off it was probably a symptom and not a cause.
Primarily the site implies moving off of the gold standard in 1971 was main trigger. This decouples the growth of money, value of assets, wages, productivity, etc. which all tracked together in the preceding thirty years.
The years around 1970 are one of those inflection points that is a lot like the causes of the Industrial Revolution: it can't be summed into a few easy factors.
For me the defining thing is the emergence of the USA from the postwar politics and policies and into more of an assumed administrator of the globalization project, a status that it retained until just recently.
Besides the information systems, international containerization standards were settled around this time and jet travel was becoming more affordable. A lot of pieces were in place to renegotiate trade and labor deals. And there was a break with numerous social policies; the calls from think-tanks to reinstate a stratified society started coming out at this time too. Big public infrastructure projects mostly died out in the 70's, and the narcotic drug trade from Mexico and the resulting "drug wars" picked up in the late 60's, conveniently just in time for amphetamenes to fall out of favor.
So, the move away from gold is just one of numerous things that changed in a surpisingly short time frame.
Gold was the inflection point. It wasn’t just the US economy you will find a similar inflection point around the world. Even if all the other factors remained the same but the world had stayed on Breton Woods, the economic change that could have occurred since 1970 would have been orders of magnitude less.
I would think move away from Gold is part of the "informationization" of the world. A bit like crypto-currency. Bitcoin is not "real", it is information.
One thing I hardly find documented is: what is the daily usage of the hard core users? How does it compare to the 10-60 mg daily dosages prescribed for ADHD
For what its worth I've had good luck switching to Modafinil (And extra caffeine) on the weekends, to keep my tolerance down. I also like to take ~4+ day breaks every ~3 months or so, which helps a ton.
I know it affects everyone differently, but I was prescribed Adderall for ADHD and at 30mg my heartrate was elevated by 25bpm, I didn't feel tired for ~28 hours and I was unable to drive because my brain would get convinced that I was standing still and the road was moving towards me.
I didn't take it a second time, and am now on Focalin.
It's difficult to tell since so many street users of amphetamine are taking 200-500+mg of "street speed" per dose, which could be anywhere from 10-50%+ in purity.
Hi Everyone, Thanks for the insight. More than I have seen in the many articles I have scanned. I have seen quite a few suggestions to take a break periodically from AHDH meds to help keep tolerance down in other places, but I always wondered what the heavy users were doing.
Interesting read. I've always assumed that prescription drug pushing and addiction problems were a modern phenomenon, so it's interesting to read about drug companies developing and pushing addictive drugs almost a century ago.
It’s always interesting to me how illegal drugs wax and wane in popularity.
We like to blame opioid over-prescribing for the surge in opioid use, but there was also a heroin “epidemic” in the 1970’s that slowly petered out as cocaine became the focus in the 80’s.
They are pretty similar events. Cheap opium started coming in from Southeast asia in the 70s in the wake of Vietnam.
Over-prescribing led to dependency, and the higher cost and other difficulties in getting prescriptions drove many users to cheaper, more dangerous black market alternatives. (especially synthetics like Fentanyl.)
Do you want to reduce drug addiction? Make the world a better place. Everyone suffers so much. Loneliness, depression and anxiety and becoming more prevalent. These are increased risk factors for addiction.
Are you familiar with the rat park experiment? You’re making claims directly supported by its findings.
One of the most interesting was that happy rats who had pleasant quarters and social interaction would choose not to take drugs (morphine, iirc) even if they had used them previously. Pretty interesting stuff.
Johann Hari has written extensively on the subject in his book Connections. I am a little nervous to link to joe rogan here but fuck it, here's a good interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDpjvFn4wgM
I do not 100% agree with Hari, who focuses almost exclusively on environmental factors. They are important but not the complete picture, IMO - there are physiological components too; alcohol dependency to me appears to be a clear-cut malfunctioning of the brain's reinforcement-based learning system. Environment exacerbates this, yes, but is perhaps not the root cause, or at least is not the sole actor in what is a pretty complicated drama.
Parrotting Hari I see. I like him, but it's more complicated than his series of picture-perfect anecdotes and name-dropped professors in every country he could persuade his publisher to send him to.
Naltrexone has substantially resolved hundreds of thousands of alcohol addiction presentations worldwide. Pharmacological remedies do exist. Connection is important, yes, but it is far from the whole picture. I do like Hari, like I said, but I feel like he is interested in selling himself and his story more than any particular desire to actually help.
(throwaway just in case, although i do not keep it a secret from friends)
tl;dr; No, amphetamines are not pleasant/euphoric for everyone. Not everyone get high/wired/"sped up" on it. Not a wonder drug for everyone. May help with depression induced by anxiety induced by not getting shit done (not necessarily by getting something done, but instead switching attention away from things not done).
My whole life I was not able to do much of mental work during the day, with my most productive time being around midnight +- 3-4 hours. I kinda just lived with it considering it being due to the way I grew up. I got my first full time job at around 25 yo (before that it was freelancing) and got hit hard with a "normal" schedule (be at work at 8am, leave office at 5pm, try to fall asleep at 11pm to be ready to wake at 7am next day). That was a time I started drinking coffee. It used to give me goosebumps, even at a small sip from a typical office low-end brewing machine. Did not really helped much, but I think it gave me that initial boost and I stuck with it. Nowadays I almost never drink tea (used to be my exclusive brewed beverage) and mostly drink coffee.
Fast forward in my earlier 30ties. I get quite regularly severe depression-like (never diagnosed) periods. Trying different things, reading a lot online. Eventually meeting with psychiatrist explaining what is going on (can't do stuff during the day, getting depressed quite regularly about it, bunch of other shit) suspecting all of that causing anxiety which metamorphosing into depression. Honestly, I wasn't quite sure if it is true physiological condition or just some period in my life where my habits and life stage got in conflicts with each others. I read about ADHD and it seemed quite familiar. I also considered bi-polar condition, but psychiatrist ruled it out.
As for ADHD, psychiatrist was very reluctant to write such a diagnose given that I had relatively good life (good income, lack of destructive impulsive actions affecting life quality, family, job, etc). He started me at 5mg extended release. It did literally nothing. Over months trying he bumped it to 25mg XR and after that failed to produce any noticeable effect, he suggested to try 20mg instant release twice a day. Safe long-term maintenance dose accordingly to FDA is 70mg. At that point I certainly felt some effect, but I am not quite sure it is what everyone think it feels like.
First of all, very counter-intuitive - amphetamine often makes me sleepy and tired. But if I try to take a nap, I almost never can truly fall asleep. Most of the time I just end up laying in the bed with closed eyes. The whole experience doesn't feel energizing or euphoric at all.
Secondly, on many days it appears to reduce anxiety about "getting something done" to the point where I did not experience my regular depression episodes this year.
With instant release, I have to take it twice a day. I often forget to take second pill. Sometimes I forget to take a first one. I tried nicotine vape earlier, and i dont think i ever forgot to take vape mod with me, or keeping it full and charged.
With 20mg instant release I sometimes experienced "locked down" feeling, which I found quite unpleasant. Not sure if it is that "focus" feeling everyone is talking about, but it certainly was different from focus I get when I am "in the zone" (the pleasant one). My solution was to break 20mg in half and take 10mg each 2hrs. Downside - I get more chances to forget about it during the day.
Going higher than 20mg twice a day seems to be pointless, as I already prefer to break 20mg twice a day to 10mg four times a day. It also raises blood pressure noticeably, and I would expect higher dose will do it even more. Effects of it are certainly not pleasant enough for me to even consider taking it recreationally. But it seems to help with depression/anxiety episodes - so far one year, will see how it will feel next spring, as it is the time I had the most of these episodes. So it seems this crutch is helping me somewhat.
Interspersed with all this pedantry is a smarmy judgement towards stimulants and COMPLETE LACK of context of the times, and a lack of any societal or species context that recognizes the BREATHTAKING ACHIEVEMENTS during said times of "Oh so bad bad we should be ashamed it's an epidemic!" There's an undercurrent here that is almost criminal.
The sin is not excess, certainly at 5mg a dose. The sin is not 'euphoria', which often turns out to be psych-speak for 'a simple will to live'. What people crave with caffeine and amphetamine is mental alertness. Caffeine delivers, speed delivers more. And with that people can do, have done, incredible things.
Aside from the specific physiological effects like chronically overbearing hearts that also plagues athletes, the worst mental effects of stimulants are often blamed directly on the drug -- not abusers' lack of discipline -- and result from a LACK OF or DISRUPTION OF sleep. Stimulants do NOT, in themselves, make you crazy.
I dated someone with a meth problem for five years and would disagree with you. Meth completely changes a person's personality.
I think all drugs should be legal and think humans have done amazing things with/on drugs. I've also seen this go horribly awry and witnessed some absolutely insane things from people on speed. There's a lot more to it than simply a lack of sleep.
Not all stimulants are the same. Meth is certainly higher risk than other commonly prescribed amphetamines.
Psychosis comes from abuse...from binges and lack of basic self care. Life crippling drug abuse is USUALLY a symptom of a deeper problem, rather than the problem itself.
Sorry, but that's just one person. In what situation would you trust a study based on one person?
I know, lots of people go crazy on meth. There is also god knows what else in street meth. There are so many people taking amphetamines that are successful and there are people taking prescription methamphetamine as well.
Personally I wouldn't want to be on stimulants, long term, on a daily basis. But just because you know one person(or maybe more) that went crazy and had a personality change on meth, does not mean that there isn't successful use.
There are also plenty of people successfully using opiates as well. So many people use drugs daily and live a normal life.
Proving and disproving a hypothesis are entirely different standards.
For example I have a coin with heads/tails, I hypothesis if I flip it it always lands on heads and we flip it 1 time (n=1), and sure enough it lands on heads that doesn't prove my hypothesis (its very weak support at best), whereas is we flip the coin 1 time (n=1) and its tails that disproves my hypothesis (or at least is strong support my hypothesis is wrong).
I was using a moderate, prescribed dose of Vyvanse/Adderall, I've always basically always had ADHD type symptoms and it was never a huge issue, but I never took any pills until I was an adult in an attempt to focus and get promoted at my big 4 job.
It ended up backfiring as I had a manic/psychotic episode, which led to highly erratic behavior that led to me losing my job, burning all my career bridges, etc. Then I also got diagnosed with heart failure. Almost ruined my life in every sense.
Since then I'm just totally sober, off all meds, and fortunately my brain and heart have both fully recovered. Were there other factors that triggered the episode, sure, did I probably have some predisposition to these issues, sure, but I highly suspect that the ADHD meds played a major role in triggering it all and I would highly caution people against them.
Without context it's hard to conceptualize their experience.
Did they start with 5mg Ritalin/day or 20mg adderal 3x/day? Did they take it exactly as prescribed? Did they get 7-8 hours of sleep every day? If they started with 3x20/day and didn't sleep for 36 hours before before having a psychotic beak, well that's to be expected..
Ok, call me crazy, but I've got this weird pet theory that says that while some drugs can offer benefits, they also carry a risk of harm. I call these “side effects”. Another theory of mine is that drugs that offer benefits such as improvements in mood and energy, these drugs can lead to people wanting more of them, especially if they're physiologically addicting. People might even hoard their drugs so they can use them in larger quantities or they may buy them illegally so they can use them recreationally rather than as medications to correct a professionally diagnosed problem. I call this “drug seeking behavior” and “substance abuse”. Absolutely nothing wrong with the drugs themselves though. Just like opiates. Absolutely nothing wrong with those drugs and the suggestion that there is an opiate epidemic is just trying to tell us all that we should be ashamed of ourselves because of an alleged epidemic.
“COMPLETE LACK of context of the times”
You misplaced “complete” in your sentence. The article may lack complete context, but there isn't a complete lack of context.
“BREATHTAKING ACHIEVEMENTS during said times”
This reminds me of my peers who brag about how great the music was back when we were kids, as though they can take credit for how good the music was that other people played just because we happened to be alive at the time so we could drop doses of things like amphetamines while listening to it. I would concede that some people who were high on amphetamines could do a lot of things – even great things – that isn't quite a proof of them being a net social good.
“There's an undercurrent here that's almost criminal.”
I'd love to read some actual quotes from the article that support your assertion.
“Stimulants do NOT, in themselves, make you crazy.”
Stimulants like speed are highly addictive. With mental alertness also comes euphoria that users chase. It builds tolerance quickly and users resort to taking ever larger amounts that ends up devastating their bodies.
Typically our bladders protect us from meaningful abuse of caffeine.
Amphetamines are super addictive and are prone to abuse. You build a tolerance and chase either euphoria or that increased alertness. In military context, the operations surrounding German conquest of France and allied bombing campaigns meaningfully benefited from speed. But there was a pretty significant and trivially measurable human cost to the soldiers who used them heavily.
Check out the book "Blitzed" for an interesting history of it's use in WW2.
>> What people crave with caffeine and amphetamine is mental alertness. Caffeine delivers, speed delivers more. And with that people can do, have done, incredible things.
Sleeping well, eating well, keeping fit and surrounding yourself with interesting people - those deliver many times more than caffeine and amphetamine without any of the side-effects or the risk of addiction.
How do you measure "strength"? It's probably more euphoric, might result in higher "alertness" (based on some arbitrary test), on the other hand though it probably wouldn't raise your heart rate more than the coffee, or your blood pressure.
It would do all of those things more than a typical cup of coffee; 5mg amphetamine is the lowest common dose (something like a 6-8oz cup of coffee), whereas 10-20mg is more common.
A small 8oz coffee has ~120mg caffeine, and a 12oz cup has ~180mg. a 10mg amphetamine has considerably stronger effects on the CNS than even 180mg caffeine, and a far greater psychoactive effect.
We are of course assuming a "typical" individual; there are those who have extreme jitteryness off half a cup of coffee, as there are those who experience myocardial events off typically therapeutic doses of amphetamine.
Man this sounds like the rant of someone hopped up on goofballs.
Tell me what transpires when society loses the tradition of staying amped on uppers for the sake of success?
Let's say society kind of forgets that all success depends on speed, and the next generation isn't clued in on the reality that all prior achievements were the result of maxing out doses?
They try to do it sober, and can't, and don't understand why.
Most people would think the government is responsible for all these drug epidemics: the DEA jailing minorities on minor infractions or the CIA hustling cocaine between countries (look it up).
But really the true culprit is just the youth, and always has been. Ever since the early 1900s traditional family values and social community/cohesion has been seriously on decline. Say what you will about Ted Kaczynski, but his essay/book Industrial Society and its Future is a wealth of knowledge on this subject (strange I know coming from a Christian woman).
But look at it this way: people resort to drugs because reality sucks. Why does reality suck? Well, we live in a society, and this very society (and its implicit social network) causes our youth to suffer.
Just look at how much the new Joker movie resonated with kids, teenagers and young adults! Heck, my niece of 12 years was itching to put on a mask and march in the street after she walked out of the theater. It was terrifying.
“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”
Youth is not the problem, and I don't agree with the other comment saying that youth has it better than previous generations. People just see all the "good things" and how "easy" it is for young people to do things they weren't able to when they were young. But understand that the young people of today have to deal with all the stupid decisions of previous generations, they have to conform to society like never before, and there is so much pressure and uncertainty about so many things (climate, political non-sense), they are being bombarded with violent and sad information all the time. I can understand why young people go to drugs to find some piece in the middle of this mess.
I'm 29 and I'd gladly throw away some of the modern "progress" we made for more freedom, more privacy, and a society that doesn't flat out reject some type of people for their view, their ideas, or lifestyle which doesn't allign with our single minded society.
None of this is unique to our generation though. We may feel that it is because the 1900s seem impossibly far back, but our great-grandparents faced many of the same issues. Factories polluted like crazy, outright corruption in politics, newspapers filled with propaganda or outright libel, corporations owning entire towns and paying their workers with "company scrip" instead of cash to keep them perpetually indebted. Drugs and alcohol were rampant back then too.
One thing that actually has immensely since then though is that society is measurably more accepting of women, people of color, LGBT people. So while we don't have everything fixed yet, I like to remember that we do have real social progress, so it's possible
Things were not great some century ago, they were often beyond fucked and average joe's life meant nothing, nobody cared, nobody helped apart from close family, which was often not enough.
Young folks are generally pretty stupid and inexperienced (duh). I know damn well, was one of those. Due to peer pressure itching to get wasted, on anything available (luckily there wasn't much). Looking desperately for approvals and doing stupid shit for 15 seconds of fame, risking getting crippled for life or even dying. Generally clueless about life, what I want from it, which direction to go.
But it was OK, everybody was more or less on the same boat, so you didn't feel behind. We talk about east Europe here in 80s and 90s, there were basically no drugs apart from alcohol and nicotine and no organized crime. People had simpler ways to be miserable and waste life. These days, constant exposure to people better off than yourself leave a lot of room for desire. There is always somebody on Facebook having great time on vacation or having time of their life on other way.
This phase will pass. It is part of growing up, rebellion to previous generations, feeling that all and everybody is shit. Some might get stuck there and its usually not so nice story, but that's life. It ain't supposed to be a game on easy difficulty.
It's not a great idea and here's why: it's an almost sure way to create an echo chamber.
How? The point system is the gamification of the forums. It's designed to spur conversation while also an attempt at self moderation. When someone posts a controversial but trailblazing comment, like say "Scrum Agile doesn't work very well for their company and here's why," the barrage of downvotes from the orthodoxy makes that person lose points and disincentivizes them from making any more controversial posts (unless they just don't give a damn).
Ergo, the conversation gravitates towards whatever the herd thinks is best. It's rewarding conventional thinking and discouraging unorthodox thought, which is poison to any technological discussion. Technology and in fact progress itself was built on questioning and even destroying the conventional.
GP is making a bigoted argument with supporting data from a serial killer. If I were to downvote because I disagree with their argument, I would have to downvote twice.
Let’s stop discussing voting now, though. I agree with the mods here that it makes for very boring reading.
I would disagree that today’s youth are suffering because ‘reality sucks’. If anything the youth of today have it better than ever before. In 1950 [at least in the USA] a youth would not have had access to reliable information on possible career choices and outcomes apart from maybe a school counselor, now that information is available instantly on the internet. Likewise reality would have really sucked had the youth had the youth been female or LGBT, as reliable contraception and abortion were not available. Likewise suicide and crises services were not as available. Now we have things like the it gets better project, texting to social hotlines. This has vastly improved the options available to the youth of today for psychological support.
Of course reality will still suck for some, but it is vastly better than 50-70 years ago.
There is more to life than contraception and psychological counselling. A chance at a steady job, the ability to save money, the opportunity to start a family, the prospect of retiring with a Social Security check, and confidence in the ecological future of the planet come to mind.
> I would disagree that today’s youth are suffering because ‘reality sucks’.
I would agree to the degree that reality has always sucked. Life is hard and can be pretty miserable. It's up to an individual to build up resilience and mindset that will allow them to survive and even thrive in spite of this. Of course, having smart parents and other early influencers helps immensely. Otherwise, it's easy to fall prey to drugs and other deviations.
> I would disagree that today’s youth are suffering because ‘reality sucks’.
I would agree to the degree that reality has always sucked. Life in general is hard and can be pretty miserable. It's up to an individual to build up resilience and mindset that will allow them to survive and even thrive in spite of this. Of course, having smart parents and other early influencers helps immensely.
Human’s have a few characteristics that make them prone to seeing things in a distorted way.
The first is thinking they live in unique times - “it’s never been like this before”, when in fact every generation has existential threats.
The second is perspective and looking at the past with rose colored glasses. No, the 1970’s were actually a really depressing time to be living in the US and yes, the boomers had to live through it.
https://turningpointtreatmentcenter.com/why-are-intelligent-...
Of course, egregious examples can very well be classed as abuse. But if someone classifies examples like the one you reference as abuse, then they're a prohibitionist, plain and simple.
I have a dark suspicion that it has something to do with the rise of computers, of information economy. When some people can take advantage of computers and others can't that leads to income disparity.
The information economy has had a big effect - a silly amount of power is concentrated in US software houses. But it is more plausible that the major trends are slow financial decay as markets get further divorced from reality and truth. Tech has resulted in massive productivity gains; but productivity gains previously resulted in pay increases.
I hazard that sensible investment isn't being rewarded and wages are decaying because of that. In a world where WeWork and Uber are considered great ideas someone who is investing in boring-and-steady infrastructure or basic food & comfort services is not going to get the capital allocations they deserve. That is finance and politics, not tech.
Also the site thinks the answer is moving off the gold standard - I like the gold standard, but moving off it was probably a symptom and not a cause.
For me the defining thing is the emergence of the USA from the postwar politics and policies and into more of an assumed administrator of the globalization project, a status that it retained until just recently.
Besides the information systems, international containerization standards were settled around this time and jet travel was becoming more affordable. A lot of pieces were in place to renegotiate trade and labor deals. And there was a break with numerous social policies; the calls from think-tanks to reinstate a stratified society started coming out at this time too. Big public infrastructure projects mostly died out in the 70's, and the narcotic drug trade from Mexico and the resulting "drug wars" picked up in the late 60's, conveniently just in time for amphetamenes to fall out of favor.
So, the move away from gold is just one of numerous things that changed in a surpisingly short time frame.
I'm not sure if others experience the same thing, but I can absolutely feel the effects slipping away, even after just 10 days of continuous use.
I didn't take it a second time, and am now on Focalin.
Great that an alternative seems to be working for you though.
Tolerance builds very fast in a matter of days, so you'll have normal effects.
We like to blame opioid over-prescribing for the surge in opioid use, but there was also a heroin “epidemic” in the 1970’s that slowly petered out as cocaine became the focus in the 80’s.
Well, we know more about this one now, thanks Reagan and Iran-Contra.
Over-prescribing led to dependency, and the higher cost and other difficulties in getting prescriptions drove many users to cheaper, more dangerous black market alternatives. (especially synthetics like Fentanyl.)
One of the most interesting was that happy rats who had pleasant quarters and social interaction would choose not to take drugs (morphine, iirc) even if they had used them previously. Pretty interesting stuff.
I do not 100% agree with Hari, who focuses almost exclusively on environmental factors. They are important but not the complete picture, IMO - there are physiological components too; alcohol dependency to me appears to be a clear-cut malfunctioning of the brain's reinforcement-based learning system. Environment exacerbates this, yes, but is perhaps not the root cause, or at least is not the sole actor in what is a pretty complicated drama.
https://theoutline.com/post/2205/this-38-year-old-study-is-s...
And Johann Hari is universally understood to be an incorrigible charlatan.
Naltrexone has substantially resolved hundreds of thousands of alcohol addiction presentations worldwide. Pharmacological remedies do exist. Connection is important, yes, but it is far from the whole picture. I do like Hari, like I said, but I feel like he is interested in selling himself and his story more than any particular desire to actually help.
Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Alcohol is a very popular form of self-medication.
I might call industrial food in general a drug -- the refined addictive parts of plants mostly like opiates, cocaine, etc
tl;dr; No, amphetamines are not pleasant/euphoric for everyone. Not everyone get high/wired/"sped up" on it. Not a wonder drug for everyone. May help with depression induced by anxiety induced by not getting shit done (not necessarily by getting something done, but instead switching attention away from things not done).
My whole life I was not able to do much of mental work during the day, with my most productive time being around midnight +- 3-4 hours. I kinda just lived with it considering it being due to the way I grew up. I got my first full time job at around 25 yo (before that it was freelancing) and got hit hard with a "normal" schedule (be at work at 8am, leave office at 5pm, try to fall asleep at 11pm to be ready to wake at 7am next day). That was a time I started drinking coffee. It used to give me goosebumps, even at a small sip from a typical office low-end brewing machine. Did not really helped much, but I think it gave me that initial boost and I stuck with it. Nowadays I almost never drink tea (used to be my exclusive brewed beverage) and mostly drink coffee.
Fast forward in my earlier 30ties. I get quite regularly severe depression-like (never diagnosed) periods. Trying different things, reading a lot online. Eventually meeting with psychiatrist explaining what is going on (can't do stuff during the day, getting depressed quite regularly about it, bunch of other shit) suspecting all of that causing anxiety which metamorphosing into depression. Honestly, I wasn't quite sure if it is true physiological condition or just some period in my life where my habits and life stage got in conflicts with each others. I read about ADHD and it seemed quite familiar. I also considered bi-polar condition, but psychiatrist ruled it out.
As for ADHD, psychiatrist was very reluctant to write such a diagnose given that I had relatively good life (good income, lack of destructive impulsive actions affecting life quality, family, job, etc). He started me at 5mg extended release. It did literally nothing. Over months trying he bumped it to 25mg XR and after that failed to produce any noticeable effect, he suggested to try 20mg instant release twice a day. Safe long-term maintenance dose accordingly to FDA is 70mg. At that point I certainly felt some effect, but I am not quite sure it is what everyone think it feels like.
First of all, very counter-intuitive - amphetamine often makes me sleepy and tired. But if I try to take a nap, I almost never can truly fall asleep. Most of the time I just end up laying in the bed with closed eyes. The whole experience doesn't feel energizing or euphoric at all.
Secondly, on many days it appears to reduce anxiety about "getting something done" to the point where I did not experience my regular depression episodes this year.
With instant release, I have to take it twice a day. I often forget to take second pill. Sometimes I forget to take a first one. I tried nicotine vape earlier, and i dont think i ever forgot to take vape mod with me, or keeping it full and charged.
With 20mg instant release I sometimes experienced "locked down" feeling, which I found quite unpleasant. Not sure if it is that "focus" feeling everyone is talking about, but it certainly was different from focus I get when I am "in the zone" (the pleasant one). My solution was to break 20mg in half and take 10mg each 2hrs. Downside - I get more chances to forget about it during the day.
Going higher than 20mg twice a day seems to be pointless, as I already prefer to break 20mg twice a day to 10mg four times a day. It also raises blood pressure noticeably, and I would expect higher dose will do it even more. Effects of it are certainly not pleasant enough for me to even consider taking it recreationally. But it seems to help with depression/anxiety episodes - so far one year, will see how it will feel next spring, as it is the time I had the most of these episodes. So it seems this crutch is helping me somewhat.
Interspersed with all this pedantry is a smarmy judgement towards stimulants and COMPLETE LACK of context of the times, and a lack of any societal or species context that recognizes the BREATHTAKING ACHIEVEMENTS during said times of "Oh so bad bad we should be ashamed it's an epidemic!" There's an undercurrent here that is almost criminal.
The sin is not excess, certainly at 5mg a dose. The sin is not 'euphoria', which often turns out to be psych-speak for 'a simple will to live'. What people crave with caffeine and amphetamine is mental alertness. Caffeine delivers, speed delivers more. And with that people can do, have done, incredible things.
Aside from the specific physiological effects like chronically overbearing hearts that also plagues athletes, the worst mental effects of stimulants are often blamed directly on the drug -- not abusers' lack of discipline -- and result from a LACK OF or DISRUPTION OF sleep. Stimulants do NOT, in themselves, make you crazy.
This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I think all drugs should be legal and think humans have done amazing things with/on drugs. I've also seen this go horribly awry and witnessed some absolutely insane things from people on speed. There's a lot more to it than simply a lack of sleep.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stimulant_psychosis
Who knows what's inside meth/speed/cocaine/weed that you buy in the street ?
Psychosis comes from abuse...from binges and lack of basic self care. Life crippling drug abuse is USUALLY a symptom of a deeper problem, rather than the problem itself.
I know, lots of people go crazy on meth. There is also god knows what else in street meth. There are so many people taking amphetamines that are successful and there are people taking prescription methamphetamine as well.
Personally I wouldn't want to be on stimulants, long term, on a daily basis. But just because you know one person(or maybe more) that went crazy and had a personality change on meth, does not mean that there isn't successful use.
There are also plenty of people successfully using opiates as well. So many people use drugs daily and live a normal life.
Anytime someone else makes a blanket statement with no study (example: amphetamine doesn't make you crazy)...all you need is n=1 to disprove that.
For example I have a coin with heads/tails, I hypothesis if I flip it it always lands on heads and we flip it 1 time (n=1), and sure enough it lands on heads that doesn't prove my hypothesis (its very weak support at best), whereas is we flip the coin 1 time (n=1) and its tails that disproves my hypothesis (or at least is strong support my hypothesis is wrong).
It ended up backfiring as I had a manic/psychotic episode, which led to highly erratic behavior that led to me losing my job, burning all my career bridges, etc. Then I also got diagnosed with heart failure. Almost ruined my life in every sense.
Since then I'm just totally sober, off all meds, and fortunately my brain and heart have both fully recovered. Were there other factors that triggered the episode, sure, did I probably have some predisposition to these issues, sure, but I highly suspect that the ADHD meds played a major role in triggering it all and I would highly caution people against them.
Did they start with 5mg Ritalin/day or 20mg adderal 3x/day? Did they take it exactly as prescribed? Did they get 7-8 hours of sleep every day? If they started with 3x20/day and didn't sleep for 36 hours before before having a psychotic beak, well that's to be expected..
Perhaps. They do, however, have a pretty direct relationship with overly verbose writing and excessive use of all-caps formatting.
But I assume many artistic people take them, and I think that is the Faustian deal with the Devil.
“COMPLETE LACK of context of the times”
You misplaced “complete” in your sentence. The article may lack complete context, but there isn't a complete lack of context.
“BREATHTAKING ACHIEVEMENTS during said times”
This reminds me of my peers who brag about how great the music was back when we were kids, as though they can take credit for how good the music was that other people played just because we happened to be alive at the time so we could drop doses of things like amphetamines while listening to it. I would concede that some people who were high on amphetamines could do a lot of things – even great things – that isn't quite a proof of them being a net social good.
“There's an undercurrent here that's almost criminal.”
I'd love to read some actual quotes from the article that support your assertion.
“Stimulants do NOT, in themselves, make you crazy.”
Such as a quote that claims this.
Amphetamines are super addictive and are prone to abuse. You build a tolerance and chase either euphoria or that increased alertness. In military context, the operations surrounding German conquest of France and allied bombing campaigns meaningfully benefited from speed. But there was a pretty significant and trivially measurable human cost to the soldiers who used them heavily.
Check out the book "Blitzed" for an interesting history of it's use in WW2.
Sleeping well, eating well, keeping fit and surrounding yourself with interesting people - those deliver many times more than caffeine and amphetamine without any of the side-effects or the risk of addiction.
A small 8oz coffee has ~120mg caffeine, and a 12oz cup has ~180mg. a 10mg amphetamine has considerably stronger effects on the CNS than even 180mg caffeine, and a far greater psychoactive effect.
We are of course assuming a "typical" individual; there are those who have extreme jitteryness off half a cup of coffee, as there are those who experience myocardial events off typically therapeutic doses of amphetamine.
Tell me what transpires when society loses the tradition of staying amped on uppers for the sake of success?
Let's say society kind of forgets that all success depends on speed, and the next generation isn't clued in on the reality that all prior achievements were the result of maxing out doses?
They try to do it sober, and can't, and don't understand why.
What then?
But really the true culprit is just the youth, and always has been. Ever since the early 1900s traditional family values and social community/cohesion has been seriously on decline. Say what you will about Ted Kaczynski, but his essay/book Industrial Society and its Future is a wealth of knowledge on this subject (strange I know coming from a Christian woman).
But look at it this way: people resort to drugs because reality sucks. Why does reality suck? Well, we live in a society, and this very society (and its implicit social network) causes our youth to suffer.
Just look at how much the new Joker movie resonated with kids, teenagers and young adults! Heck, my niece of 12 years was itching to put on a mask and march in the street after she walked out of the theater. It was terrifying.
― Socrates
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/01/misbehave/
I'm 29 and I'd gladly throw away some of the modern "progress" we made for more freedom, more privacy, and a society that doesn't flat out reject some type of people for their view, their ideas, or lifestyle which doesn't allign with our single minded society.
One thing that actually has immensely since then though is that society is measurably more accepting of women, people of color, LGBT people. So while we don't have everything fixed yet, I like to remember that we do have real social progress, so it's possible
Young folks are generally pretty stupid and inexperienced (duh). I know damn well, was one of those. Due to peer pressure itching to get wasted, on anything available (luckily there wasn't much). Looking desperately for approvals and doing stupid shit for 15 seconds of fame, risking getting crippled for life or even dying. Generally clueless about life, what I want from it, which direction to go.
But it was OK, everybody was more or less on the same boat, so you didn't feel behind. We talk about east Europe here in 80s and 90s, there were basically no drugs apart from alcohol and nicotine and no organized crime. People had simpler ways to be miserable and waste life. These days, constant exposure to people better off than yourself leave a lot of room for desire. There is always somebody on Facebook having great time on vacation or having time of their life on other way.
This phase will pass. It is part of growing up, rebellion to previous generations, feeling that all and everybody is shit. Some might get stuck there and its usually not so nice story, but that's life. It ain't supposed to be a game on easy difficulty.
I would argue that drug addiction is affecting older adults much more severely than youth.
I can definitely agree that social cohesion in America has been somewhat awful for generations.
pg has explicitly said that downvotes on Hacker News can be used for disagreement.
"Downvotes to express disagreement are part of the ethos of this site; it's a norm Paul Graham established almost a decade ago."
But yes: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
How? The point system is the gamification of the forums. It's designed to spur conversation while also an attempt at self moderation. When someone posts a controversial but trailblazing comment, like say "Scrum Agile doesn't work very well for their company and here's why," the barrage of downvotes from the orthodoxy makes that person lose points and disincentivizes them from making any more controversial posts (unless they just don't give a damn).
Ergo, the conversation gravitates towards whatever the herd thinks is best. It's rewarding conventional thinking and discouraging unorthodox thought, which is poison to any technological discussion. Technology and in fact progress itself was built on questioning and even destroying the conventional.
Let’s stop discussing voting now, though. I agree with the mods here that it makes for very boring reading.
I down voted because it's a comment with unsubstantiated claims, only tangible related to the article.
Of course reality will still suck for some, but it is vastly better than 50-70 years ago.
There’s a disparity of experience out there.
I would agree to the degree that reality has always sucked. Life is hard and can be pretty miserable. It's up to an individual to build up resilience and mindset that will allow them to survive and even thrive in spite of this. Of course, having smart parents and other early influencers helps immensely. Otherwise, it's easy to fall prey to drugs and other deviations.
I would agree to the degree that reality has always sucked. Life in general is hard and can be pretty miserable. It's up to an individual to build up resilience and mindset that will allow them to survive and even thrive in spite of this. Of course, having smart parents and other early influencers helps immensely.
These days those kids would probably have gone to uni but in 1950's company towns they where destined for the mine or blue collar jobs
Homer got drafted and went to Vietnam only later joing NASSA
The first is thinking they live in unique times - “it’s never been like this before”, when in fact every generation has existential threats.
The second is perspective and looking at the past with rose colored glasses. No, the 1970’s were actually a really depressing time to be living in the US and yes, the boomers had to live through it.