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Psychopharm Going 'Mainstream' In Schools?
PizzaFace writes "Back in the day, college was a place where a lot of kids tried recreational drugs. Now the world's more competitive, psychopharmaceuticals are better targeted, and millions of students are routinely using drugs to work better and longer. Stimulants developed for attention deficit and narcolepsy are giving mentally healthy students an edge like athletes get from steroids or human growth hormone. These psychotropics seem fairly safe, but should they be banned in the interest of fairness, perhaps with enforcement by urine tests before exams? Or do we tell our kids that, if they want to compete in this brave new world, they better find some Adderall and jack their brains up like their classmates'." If college students are doing it, how many programmers are? What say you?
90% of current programmers probably do not use those drugs, since they're overkill for Visual Basic coding...
Karma cannot be described by words alone.
Two wrongs don't make a right. If you are going to punish someone, punish the parents (for minors). How are these kids getting drugs, anyway?
Maybe we need to get Nancy Reagan out of the 80's closet just tell everyone to say NO to the drugs. It's bad enough in California that you have to show ID to buy cough medicine and be limited to two packages, while I can walk into a cloud of pot smoke at my apartment complex even when the police are nearby.
I'd imagine recreational drugs would be far more appealing to programmers, in order to unwind after a long day at the codeface.
Nothing new here, at least for Uni students. Back in the fifties and earlier, when amphetamines were over-the-counter andcould even be baought in vending machines in some places in Europe, Uni students cramming for an exam used to pop quite a lot of those. These new drugs may not come with the unpleasant side effects now, but we'll see what effects long-term use will have in a few years when use becomes widespread.
I'll stick with colas. Guess I'm old fashioned
Like, I'm sooo stoned right now. It's totally, like, helping me write a Google Homepage plugin for checking your MySpace notifications. That way I can keep in contact with the people who do my homework for me! I tried a few drugs to help me as a programmer, but pot is the best. I tried coke for motivation and to focus, but like, I totally ended up foaming at the mouth playing WoW online. I tried LSD, then tried to program my cat to feed itself. I tried snorting my Mom's Zoloft, but I felt so good about my programming, I totally like, stopped tweaking it and it's still full of bugs. But when I smoke pot, I lay around playing XBox until the last minute when I drink an entire pot of coffee and my panic driven code is the best I could ever hope to write sober. Like pharmies are so pill-popping '80's. Sounds like something babyboomers would worry about, like, for reals.
7h3$3 4r3n'7 7h3 Ðr01Ð$ ¥0 4r3 £00|{1n9 f0r. M0v3 4£0n9. --OB1
Where would you draw the line?
Coffee?
No-Doz?
Decongestants with pseudoephedrine?
And if the smart kids start taking as much as Adderall as the doping suburbanites, aren't we all back where we started anyway? Fallacy of the collective anyone?
at one time, long ago, amphetemines were given to the troops to keep them alert. Students used them too for similar reasons. It's just different drugs now
Drugs are no substitute for reading a lot, tinkering, listening to others and keeping classifying things with respect to what you already know. Learning is a very long-term process, certainly little understood, and no drug can kick you on that time scale. What drugs can certainly do is to make you think you are smarter and temporarily relieve the pain of learning. The problem is that anything that makes you different, smarter or otherwise, is painful in some way.
I've tried many "performance enhancing" drugs over the years. From caffeine to adderall, riddlin, cocaine, and methamphetamines. All these things have been reported to allow one to think and work faster and longer.
My experience? I perform much worse on these substances. Sometimes I'm jittery and cannot focus. At times I think and work so fast that I make many carless errors that end up taking me more time to fix than if I had done the work slower and did it right the first time. The drugs that kept me up and allowed me to work longer just took more of me the next day.
I can tell you all, from personal experience, that taking stimulants to try and help you through the day is a waste of money, is a health risk, and may actually decrease your overall monthly or yearly performance. Not to mention the fact that our over-reaching government would be more than happy to put you in jail for a very very long time for posessing many of these substances.
I am a viral sig. Please help me spread.
While they drugs may appear "relatively safe" today, we have to remember that we often haven't been able to sufficiently study the long-term effects. Indeed, what we might find is that these drugs can inhibit brain function if used for years on end. Even occasional use may prove to be damaging.
Personally, I think the best negative of these effects would be impotency. While the stupid often don't know they are stupid, the impotent almost always know they are impotent. An inability to get an erection past the age of 30 would be the best payback for students who sought to use such drugs to gain an advantage over their peers. Sure, they might have a high-paying job and financial security, but without the ability to get a boner even the typical hobo is above them.
it helps me get through my windows coding experience.
When you hear people talk about the "war on drugs", what they really mean is the "war on some drugs".
If the only people who use the drug are rich and white and productive, then it must not be a problem, right?
These are amphetamines we are talking about. They're a lot less healthy than the recreational marijuana use favored by other students. Just because they have a brand name, doesn't mean they're safe.
What's the ugliest part of your body? Some say your nose, some say your toes, but I think it's your mind. -Zappa
Sure, go to school to get smarter, but don't use the products thoose smarts helped you make to get even smarter.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
They still do it; not always with good consequences.
You can't buy curiosity.
Someone who is curious continues to mull over material long after the test has been passed. Someone who only cares about the grade will forget about it after the test.
Smart employers can tell the two apart.
I do it. I have ADHD, but the Adderall does a heck of a lot more than keep my ADHD in line. It has been extremely beneficial to me at work and in my personal projects with programming and coming up with ideas. It is like caffeine x 10 without the jitters and with the ability to focus that amazing energy at whatever you want. Then again, since I have ADHD, maybe that is just normal to everyone else but something new to me? I think it has given me an edge over the average person. However, that is a side effect of the drug. I don't think I should be discriminated against for that. I am not abusing it, and it is working as the doctor hoped at keeping my ADHD in line. Before I found Adderall, nothing I had tried worked in terms of meds. I would not want to get out of bed and I had no energy, focus, or drive. I don't like the thought of people without actual medical need taking it to get ahead. I look at that as the same thing as teens smoking pot. Cancer patients smoking pot to alleviate pain and keep their food down is a hell of a lot different than Harold and Kumar getting stoned so the sliders at White Castle taste wicked and so they can "feel" the music.
Why are the schools pushing material so boring that students need drugs to pay attention to it in the first place?
EversinceI'vebeenusingAdderallI'vegottenmuchmorewo rkdone.Moreworkthanever.Ithinkeveryoneshouldtryit. Imeaneveryone.Regularol'coffeejustwon'tcutitintoda y'soutsourcedworld!Yougottatakewhateveredgeyoucanf indnowadays.Gottago.Morecodetobewritten!
Reaganisms aren't a suitable way of dealing with such problems. Face it, the "War on Drugs" failed. It failed for a number of reasons, but it mainly has to do with the fact that "drugs" aren't an enemy that can be beaten via a war.
This is a case of people using drugs to bring them some sort of an advantage over their peers. That is often done for economic reasons. Instead of cracking down in a police-state fashion, the best way to deal with these problems is to make them unfeasible in an economic sense.
First of all, if a company wants their staff to be fuck-buzzed on some stimulant, then so be it. That company may see benefits in the short-term, but in the long-term their income will suffer. In the world of software, they may be the first to get their product out there, but it will likely be a piece of shit. Most companies can't pull that sort of stunt off. Chances are people will end up having a very negative image of that company, and will likely avoid their future products. Of course, such future iterations of products will be building on a base of dung, and will likely be of a very low quality themselves. Soon enough, companies will realize it is better to hire employees who aren't high on various substances. There's no need for government regulation when the free market will punish those who wish to partake in such drug use.
Two things are getting overlooked in the comments so far:
One, the comparison to pro athletes is flawed because in those cases the steroids are in addition to hard training. Same way, none of these drugs replace the problem that you can't know what you never read. So no, the dumb kid won't beat the smart kid. It'll just score a-little-not-quite-so-dumb.
Two, aside from what medicine tests (and currently denies) in side-effects, there's always one to be aware of: Habit. If you go into every test pumped up, you will lose your ability to pass a test without your little helpers. Which means that since most higher-up jobs nowadays are essentially continous crisis management, you'll never be without them until retirement.
I'll add a third: You probably miss out on the incredible drugs your body can produce on its own...
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I've a standing approach to legal and recreational drugs. I don't touch anything new to the market until it's been in wide use for at least 5 years. Let the military, professional jocks and paid lab rats take the initial risk. Drugs might jack you up but it's still rigorous logic and imagination that get the job done. A few years ago when a doctor asked me to write some tests I scored a 161 in a standard IQ test. I know 161 isn't first string but I also got an above average memory and I find I can move across most problem spaces. I very much doubt any drugs are going to improve on what I do now.
Meth amphetimine is dangerous cheap and plentiful. Long term use includes symptoms very like schizophrenia. I can't imagine why it's so widely used.
Recreationally beer, pot and mushrooms keep me amused and their long linage pretty much tell me what I need to know about harmful side effects.
just my loose change
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
theres lots of new players out there too. i'm bipolar+etc. and part of how I discovered this was that I started to go wacko when I was taking speed to be able to work 100+ hour weeks. unfortunately I just about nuked my brain in the process, but thats another story completely. now I need to very carefully control my dopamine levels with several different medications, but thats life as I know it.
But I did this at one time, taking amphetamine and methamphetamine as well as ritalin, modafinil, adderal and any number of other substances at work in order to be able to work longer and care less about doing other people's bidding. Don't forget the flipside, the taking B-vitamins to deal with the burnout, tyrosine to fix the receptor loss, benzodiazepines to deal with fact that you can't really sleep properly anymore. counselling to deal with the psychosis and the weird mental states you get into from the fact that your brain can't cope with being up for many days straight.
The slant of this post was that there is something inherently UNFAIR about this, that "we" need to test against people doing this. There isn't a big worry because the people doing this all end up at one time or another like me, running on borrowed time means massive burnout. I aged biochemically about 10-15 years in the space of 3 years. Mileage may vary, but its not a smooth move. Ironically taking amphetamines to study isn't even a great strategy. Just going to class and paying attention is a better plan. Being on amphetamines reduces memory retention so much that its not worth the effort.
The big issue here, to me - is that people feel the need to self improve just so they can put out like whores for other people. Learn to live cheap and work less. Why do people feel the need to work harder and longer? I'm not sure why I did it, most of the money I was making was just going into the very drugs I was taking just to make more money for more drugs. Now I live on almost nothing and what unhappiness I have is mostly from the things lacking from my life from when that lifestyle caught up to me. Living on borrowed time catches up to a person. And when your employer finds out you're not just an eccentric hard working savant and really you're tricked out on speed you find out just how little they really care about you.
--- ask me about nihilism, I will have nothing to tell you.
There was a recent article about drugs to keep you going in our uni newspaper. Ritalin was the one going around and it seems quite a few would use it... if it ever gets updated it would appear somewhere here.
, , , , , karma elon
The drug that does marvels for me is practicing judo twice a week. Nothing worked better for being able to focus attention in a very short time on something important and going to the core at once. Mind will serve you only if you are the one that controls it. However, it took several years to be a nidan.
a small dose (20mg) of methylphenidate (ritalin) does give you a noticeable edge, it allows better concentration and I find faster thinking.
anyway... what about google gulp?
Damnit! That's how those more nerdy than me nerds got better grades in my CS classes. I demand that they have an asterisk placed next to their GPA!
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Bawls.
I tried Adderall a couple of times to see if it makes a difference. Yes, it does.
It probably wouldn't help most programmers when writing code (look up "hyperfocus"), but for mundane tasks like reviewing documentation, etc., it really does help. I could feel it kicking in and I could feel it fading away; if I could be like that all the time I probably would've gotten straight A's in college.
First thing to do is make sure you're eating a diet which provides everything your body and brain needs. The western diet is... abysmal... mostly; mediterranean isn't bad.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4511759.stm
The body and brain are chemical machines, they need certain quantities of certain substances to run at their maximum potential and if you're not consuming the right substances, they'll be artificially limited to a lower performance. So you're wasting your time if you eat crap then try to boost your performance with drugs.
Deleted
They give themselves big cocktails of stimulents to the point when they start going crazy and then supliment them with anti-psychotic drugs to try to control those symptoms. And then they go work on patients.
I smoke a lot of pot when I'm burning the midnight oil, but I don't think it's making me smarter, just keeping me conscious. I get the work done though.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
I like at the end of this article Kandel is talking about how it doesn't understand why people are taking pills, then the last sentence. "at the end of the article In normal mice, he says, his stuff improves memory -- only by 20 percent to 50 percent." yeah that might be the reason, I don't take pills but after reading this I may consider it during finals week
I'm not yet qualified to have a sig
Hey, at least drugs are a tangible target for a war, as opposed to a war against a tactic or ideology. Granted I've never seen a crop of marijuana plants piloting a jet fighter, driving a tank, or wielding an AK-47, but at least with a "war on drugs" there's something you could (if you really wanted to) shoot, bomb, or burn.
I can't imagine who on Earth could possibly be dumb enough to wage a tar against something intangible.
All you really need is coffee. A real man's upper. --John
You could probably get the same results with a little time management and hard-work. However nowadays there is the prominent attitude that you don't have to work hard for a long amount of time to get the results you want. So they pop some pills and study for 10 hours straight to ace a test. However of course they forget 75% of it the next day. Instead you could study a little bit everyday for a month straight and remember 90% of it.
This is why less and less credence is being given to a standard BA. Maybe it's time to rethink Standardized Testing.
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
Programmers using drugs to enhance their abilities... Nahhhh.....
Thank goodness caffeine is it's own food group and not just a drug....
It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion,
It is by the beans of Java that thoughts acquire speed,
The hands acquire shaking, the shaking becomes a warning,
It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion.
These psychotropics seem fairly safe
Can we put that guy in a room with the drug-control czar who says that meth will make your head rot off? I'm wondering what hoops they'll jump through to avoid saying "it's only good for you if you're buying the chemical from a large campaign contributor; otherwise, it's bad for you."
Just because it's available by prescription doesn't mean it's safer than any illegal drug. (I'm thinking marijuana for comparison here.) Remember, morphine, oxycodone and cocaine have all been legally prescribed at one point. (And are all still occasionally used in specific, rather highly controlled, circumstances.)
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
...dog with a fluffy tail!
For those of you thinking about trying this stuff without the supervision of a doctor after reading this: don't. While they can be a godsend for those with ADHD, those who don't have the problem can have some serious trouble.
In non-ADHD subjects, Ritalin and Adderall are similar to methamphetamine in function. In normal individuals, they cause rapid increase in dopamine, just like amphetamines do. Really. If you don't believe me, this article on Ritalin from the National Institute of Health. The upshot of all of this is that in non-ADHD patients, addiction rates are very high due the increased dopamine levels.
Disclosure: my wife is a substance abuse counselor and deals with people addicted to this stuff all the time.
My blog
You want the drugs made in your body instead. Running or any other proper endurance sport and the fitness imparted can make a huge difference (I find) to your ability to focus and deal with heavy workloads. Apparently cocaine and other similar drugs mimic the effect of endorphines, the drugs produced by the body under heavy excercise load. Why not cut out the expensive middle man and manufacturer your own?
YMMV of course!
Charlie
Messing with your brain seems fairly safe to you? People used to think that XTC isn't addictive and doesn't have long term effects. Well, we know better now. Drugs are bad for you. ALL drugs. Medication is for curing illnesses. Human beings function just fine without drugging them. If it seems that a healthy human being functions better with medication, then you just haven't recognized the negative effects yet.
Piracetam seems to have few if any side-effects, and someone I know that took it says it really helped him cram info in before a tough Cisco exam.
(No, it wasn't me.)
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Mr. Ben Stanfield, it is with regret that I write to inform you that someone else has been chosen for the position you were interested in. In fact, we have told every other company we know not to hire you.
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I don't know how Adderall affects people who do not have ADD/ADHD, but for me, it has nothing to do with wanting to stay awake for hours working on code. I'm not sure if there is a good way to describe this, but for me ADD without the medication means my mind is moving a mile a minute, and I can never make meaningful connections or focus on one idea. Adderall slows everything down, so I can study things carefully and form complex ideas.
I'm not saying Adderall is a miracle drug. I only take it a few times a week, because if I take it every day, I become anorexic and sleep-deprived. Also I had to get a lot of health tests last year after a few people in Canada died of sudden heart attacks from taking Adderall. If another student wanted to borrow some of my pills, I would say no, because it is a drug, and its dangerous. But I would fight for my right to take it at college, because I probably wouldn't be able to attend college at all without it.
I guess what's interesting is this question of "how much are you willing to pay to be educated?" or how much are you willing to pay to get an advantage? I've been surprised to discover how many people go to math/science camps over their middle and high school summers to get an edge in their training.
on one hand, i think everybody likes the "democratic" idea of giving the good jobs to smart people... but once you have that kind of job, i think people tend to support the "aristocratic" we want our kids to get the same jobs. it seems that schools in the US have sort of allowed this to happen by spending money on things that ostensibly look like good ideas but in the end cuts the motivation of kids to *actually* learn the stuff. for example, if kids become too reliant upon technology to get their homework done (i learned how to integrate sin(x) last month so now i'm just going to use the TI-89), or become reliant upon cheating (this test isn't important, so i don't want to study), manipulation (pleeeeasssseee give me the A+), a feeling of entitlement (i deserve this grade since I studied for a couple minutes), and generally a lack of effort (i'd rather play basketball or i'd rather play WoW) then in the long run they're guaranteed to progressively do worse in school. you can only feel sorry for the high schooler who is would fail his classes (except that parents complain "my kid is a good kid and shouldn't fail") because he never actually learned the material in middle school because he never actually learned the material in elementary. it's really sad to hear high school teacher friends of mine talk about these kids.
it's all a question of responsibility.
the way i see "performance enhancers" playing a role is this. i think it's similar to using a TI-89 or Mathematica in calculus class. assuming no harmful side effects, it's great cause it will help you do things faster or better or whatever. but in the end, it's not *you* who did it, it was the machine or chemical that did it. so what's the problem with that? well, i think that in the end, it will only lend itself to students accepting less responsibility and accepting fewer or easier challenges. e.g. i don't have to study now or start my homework right now because i really want to finish this ; and it's ok because i can just pop a pill and do it later.
in the US at least, it seems that people have this feeling of entitlement. as i see it, having some chemical they can take would only serve to enhance that misconception.
Pharmacutical spedd, but still just speed: DESCRIPTION ADDERALL XR® is a once daily extended-release, single-entity amphetamine product. ADDERALL XR® combines the neutral sulfate salts of dextroamphetamine and amphetamine, with the dextro isomer of amphetamine saccharate and d,l-amphetamine aspartate monohydrate. Try Modafinil instead.
I work too long and too hard already.
This might have been fine in University so I could get better grades, but the only reason for better grades is getting a better paid job where I work LESS.
People that believe in their opinions don't post AC.
We know now that ritilin is a the gateway drug of certain schools. Kids who need it sell it instead of taking it. Paxil and the like are the number one drug at many other schools. Some kids toke a jay to self medicate. So I suppose that we are now in a world where no one earns anything, but just takes shortcuts, just like the lame atheletes. In both cases I agree with south park. Such drug use is like cheating in the special olympics.
What is funny is that the article treats this as it is something new. It is like the new generation thinks they invented drugs, sex, and music that is unintelligible to the parents. It is just funny. But not learning from the past means that you are doomed to repeat the mistakes. What two to three generations of rampant drug use has taught many people is the issue is all about dosage and quality. And the difference between the drugs that are prescribed in the US and the drugs that are bought off the street is that there is no way to determine the proper dosage of the later, since thier is no way to know the quality.
What I have been told by people who have into this for longer than I have been alive is the drug world is different. The pot is much more potent, and much less reliable. Other drugs are often of unknown composition. The situation, I am told, is that modern street drugs are much less predictable. So, even if the drug has no theoretical effects if taken a safe dosage, that has no bearing on the safety of the particular compound a particular person might take.
So, while the summary might be correct in fantasy land where all dealers are selling what they say they are, or in a case where a sympathetic doctor is prescribing these drugs for off lable use, I do not agree that 21st century street drugs or safe, nor do they benifit the long term academician. Certainly if an adult wants to risk his or her life for the sake of a goal, that is thier choice, but we should not assume they are safe. After all, even with proper medical advice, people die from these things.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
A lot of people I know use drugs which aren't stimulants, such as hallucinogens, when doing activities that require out of the box thinking and creative solutions, such as code exploitation. While they may be becoming more mainstream for common tasks like school, seems like they already are mainstream on the underground.
Yeah that’s cliché. However it’s true no matter the circumstance. You see, I’m a diagnosed narcoleptic, and for those who’ve seen “Deuce Bigalow” she had cataplexy which is a complication of narcolepsy. Thankfully I don’t have that.
I used to take Provigil which is a popular drug among college students who want to cram all night and still be “fresh” the next day for an exam. Coincidentally I’m also a college student. The reality is that while this drug does have short term benefits to academic performance, I can’t lie about that, the reality is that in the long-term I did not realize that the drug was affecting my ability to cope with stress and emotions. I would have mood swings and behave in ways that were harmful to myself and others, not physically, but mentally. When I realized that my marriage was in jeopardy I decided it was a good idea to approach my narcolepsy from a different perspective. I stopped taking the medication, started exercising, ate better, and regulated my daily routines. I still have persistent tiredness but now I can cope with it. The reality is that I feel a lot better today not taking the medication than I did while on it, despite the tiredness.
The sobering truth is that these medications alter your perceptions and despite the short-term benefit the people who take them for granted are gabling their futures. It's unfortunate that people are so naive.
I am currently attending one of the top Universities in the midwest. (a major research school, 50,000+ students) A few years ago, I would have scoffed at a story like this as being alarmist and overgeneralizing. I can honestly attest to the fact that I know students who abuse drugs, especially Adderall, in order to perform academically. In general, I've mostly seen average students do so to keep up with the really brilliant ones. The competition is so intense that they will do anything to improve their GPA. It's really sad.
The ability to continue functioning in, for example, a sleep-deprived state might help a student in college, but it is by definition a short-term augmentation. Programmers, who might work on a project for months, prove their worth not by their ability to work extreme hours, but by their innate cognitive abilities. Their is no pill that will make you a great puzzle-solver. Alternatively, these drugs might do wonders to enhance the ability of a person to spend hours memorizing facts and figures, but those same people will fail to grasp the fundamental underlying science or concept.
As an example, I could teach a four year old that e^(i*Pi) + 1 = 0 (Eulers Formula) - furthermore, given a week or two, I could probably even get that same four year old to be able to repeat the entire series of steps to arrive at this formula. That child could then wow people with his "knowledge". But the child would have no idea who Euler was, what Euler's Formula means, etc.
At best, you'd end up with a person in your workplace who exhibits extremely erratic behavior.
There is no smart pill. Sorry.
Local doctor.. We live in a pill pushing world, its not hard to have a doctor perscribe this stuff. its like candy.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Posting AC because of drug talk.
I go to a college well-known for its drug culture (Ithaca). The most prevalent drug on campus is, by far, marijuana. But the second most prevalent is adderal/generic knockoff (adderal has 4 amphetamine salts, most generics are just amphetamine sulfate). Kids will rail addies to stay up to study, to stay up and be able to drink more, or before finals. (Other drugs make appearances too... psychadelics and opiates mostly, to my knowledge there isn't a very large coke/coca market at all.)
I'll preface this by saying that yes, I've done speed to do work, and even to party. I've found it to be an incredibly useful tool, if used well, though I very much dislike the effects of the drug. Speeding isn't very pleasant -- you're totally unable to relax or chill out, but rather you have enough energy to do whatever it is that needs to be done. 20-page term papers become 4-hour fodder... or 10,000 lines of code, or a semester's worth of reading for a class.
What could be better? Literally -- you eat a pill and have 6 hours of pure work-ethic, plus your brain is on overdrive so you're working faster anyway. I know kids who don't do work for about 2 weeks straight, and then rail some addies, and do whatever is owed in one night. I know kids who say "drugs are bad" but will eat 30mg before studying for finals. I also know kids who are addicted to amphetamines.
I can't say whether any drug is bad or not -- I firmly believe that a drug is what you make of it and how you use it. But the people who should be taken to task for the prevalence of these drugs on college campuses are the pharmaceutical industry, for its aggressive campaigns claiming far more people have ADD/ADHD than actually do, and the doctors who take the rhetoric and perscribe the pills the companies tell them to. Anecdotal evidence is a buddy of mine who is convinced he doesn't have ADD/ADHD, and yet has an 80mg/day perscription for adderal (he sells the pills he doesn't keep for his own scholastic use).
I'll never use speed to party again (with the exception of ecstasy, which is an amphetamine [methylenedioxymethamphetamine]), but for school I find it a very useful tool. I'm just very careful that I use it sparingly and have a safe place to come down [if you've got more tests to take when you're coming down, the only solution is to do more amphetamines].
As to its fairness... I think it is inherently unfair that one human differs from another -- we're not all on an even playing field physically or mentally. That's just the way it is, fortunately or unfortunately.
Just for reference, Adderal is so prevalent that either I'm handed pills for free, or pay around $2 a pill. During finals week, the price was up to $5, and I heard of people paying upwards of $10.
I'm not sure how many programmers are doing actualy drugs per say. Maybe coffee and caffine and perhaps some of those gas station stackers, but I don't think they're actually resorting to drugs like this. At the risk of sterotyping, and I include my self in this, I think more of the type of person to get the drugs would be young adults and people who work in a factory more than an office type. But that's just my opinion.
That which does not kill me only postpones the inevitable.
I took modafinil for a year and a half. I was put in touch with it thanks to the old Slashdot memory drugs article. As it turned out I do have ADD and some tiredness issues.
I'll be starting it back up when I begin studying my post-graduate degree this year. Money well spent.
and I've been prescribed adderall, but I'm not taking it now because of financial troubles I had a while back and haven't gotten back to the doctor since. I'm also not a student anymore, but know some who take it. At least one thinks that he's supposed to take it and has ADD but the way he takes it is a bunch the night before a test so he can stay up all night and cram. That's not the proper way to treat ADD, even if he has ADD.
Someone else I know took some that a friend of hers had when she was studying for a test and became convinced that she had ADD all this time because she says she studied so much better. She may have, but that doesn't mean she has ADD.
Adderall is addictive and can be very dangerous. Someone should do a bunch of studying on this, and they shouldn't take adderall before they start studying either!
Now consider that I no longer take amphetamines, and tell me why previous recreational should blight my academic record?
In sports it's about competing, deciding who is better. Drugs unballance it. The aim is not to be even faster, even stronger, but to be faster, stronger than the others.
In education the aim is to teach. Doesn't matter if you're best in class or just average, what matters is if you know, understand. Stats like "in top 10 of the exam" twist the idea. The exam is not a competition, it's a test of efficiency of teaching, system feedback to decide "proceed", "improve" or "try again". If you can solve all the tasks using drugs, fine, you can solve all the tasks. If you can't, should you be punished because you might get higher score than a kid who doesn't take drugs, and that would feel unfair, or should you be allowed because you DID learn this all, and you DO understand it - while the drug works.
Education is not a sports discipline. It's not about "who is better" but "who is good enough". Health concerns aside, if you feel -others- would be harmed by -my- advantage from taking drugs, you misunderstand the idea of education.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
If your parents are rich and willing, you can go to college and just study. Otherwise, you work and study.
If you own a portable music player, you can listen to your own playlist of music as you bop around. Otherwise, you don't.
If you have (for instance) a Bowflex and a personal trainer, you now have the opportunity to outperform most of your fellow atheletes in terms of how long it takes you to reach your potential, and how close you are going to get to it.
If you have a car, you drive to school. Otherwise, you walk, sponge, or use pubtrans.
If you have a laptop, you have many performance-enhancing tools. Otherwise, not.
All of these "advantages" have one thing in common: Money; the ability to purchase the advantage.
Here's an example that isn't money related: If I go to class A, and have Mr Smith, who is a pretty lousy, unmotivated instructor who smells bad and has one drippy glass eye, and you go to class B, and have Ms. Hubbahubba, who is not only a great, motivated instructor but compels your constant attention by her manner, intimate knowledge of the subject and clever sense of humor, and you and I have equal intelligence, take just one guess who is most likely to come out of class knowing more?
Here's another: You make it a point to get enough sleep, eat a proper breakfast, and skip the partying during the months of the year that school is in session. You never miss class. Melvin, who is otherwise as smart as you are, behaves almost the exact opposite. Sometimes he doesn't sleep at all, he parties every night, sometimes twice, and he usually arrives in class not quite yet awake, never mind breakfast or brushing his teeth. But he never misses class, either. Who do you think will have performed better by the time the bell rings? Let me clue you in -- it won't be Melvin.
Now, why is it again, that if someone decides to use performance enhancing drugs, which are probably more affordable and/or easier to arrange than any of the other examples I've given you here, that "wrong morals" are encouraged? Are you saying that if you're born stupid, you should live with it, not try to find ways to supercede your condition, never try to better the hand that life gave you if it harms no one else? Or, how exactly do you think it harms others?
Also, more to the point, why is it, exactly, that the "naturally smart kid" is screwed over? Wouldn't that be because that kid decided not to take the performance enhancers? Let's say (just hand waving) that kid A has IQ 105 and kid B has IQ 120. Kid A takes these performance enhancers and for a few hours, operates at IQ 130. Kid B can choose to ignore kid A (because after all, school isn't about competition, it is about learning) or, simply in the interest of learning, perhaps he will choose to also take the drug, driving his IQ higher, presumably past the 130 that Kid A achieved, since he started further ahead. Or maybe he ends up in the same place. Either way, what is the down side, exactly? The "unfairness"? We have two smart kids, and perhaps some of that is temporary. This is bad, exactly how? Remember: "Smart" isn't the same as "knows a lot." For the less smart kid, this is an opportunity.
I think you've been confused by the (absolutely incorrect) idea that using drugs is immoral and/or unethical. The morals and ethics of performance enhancement are context dependent; it is not a simple matter of just ruling them out (unless you're a member of the government, but we know those people act without the interests of the public in mind, being funded by PACs and corporations.) If performance enhancement may be used in the pursuit of knowledge, it seems to me that the only thing that might make it unfair is if some kids can use it, and other kids can't. That would be very sad for the kids who can't.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
About half of the engineers I've worked with have drug problems. On the up side, almost none drink alcohol. The most popular substances tend to be stimulants... ranging from cocaine, methamphetamine, MDMA, Ritalin, and Adderal to the more benign caffeine, ginseng, and cigarettes. Yes... these substances are taken during regular working hours to be effective.
The problem is common enough that many of my former managers look the other way if the "problem employee" can produce results. No one likes making waves. The business benefits are also understood. When you code for 36 hours without as much as a bathroom break, it's obvious that your performance has been "enhanced."
When one of my bosses exploded from a combination of coke-rage and no-sleep, the "official" explanation was related to "personality clashes." Even when after the occasional bathroom break, engineers have white powder under their nose... it's P.C. to implicate powdered donuts even if none exist.
This problem is prevalent... if one considers it a problem. Don't coders have the right to hack their own brain chemistry? People wouldn't use stimulants for working unless they actually did their job. Kids love them at school. Adults love them at work. Being that the federal government can forcably drug children in public school... it's only a matter of time before employers are granted the same rights.
Remember in the X-Files how the government (or the aliens or somebody--I forget) was performing secret experiments on people?
In real life, I've come to realize that whatever "they" are doing to us is nothing compared to the expermients we perform on ourselves. These students are conducting large-scale uncontrolled experiments into the long-term effects of these drugs. No one will compensate them for any damaging side-effects they find. No one has the power to force them to accept this deal, but that's not necessary because they are performing these tests willingly.
I probably sound like a curmudgeon. So be it.
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
Interesting historical tidbit: back in the old days, it was actually routine for nursing students to use amphetamines to stay awake longer. Nearly everybody did it in some places. You could just go get them out of the medicine cabinets. And those things were powerful.
Based on my own volunteer work in school programs, I would say that class sizes should rarely be above 15-20 in total, and should have 1 teacher/assistant competent in the subject for every 5-7 students. I also think kids should be streamed per subject, with some flexibility for when certain groups of kids happen to work well together. (No, that does not mean cribbing the notes.)
The problem with the existing system is that it is geared around people learning as and when the teacher gets round to it, rather than pushing people as far and as fast as they are able. It is no wonder that kids use drugs, but my guess is that its more to zone out the inadequacies of the educational system as it is to improve learning. You can't accelerate much beyond the speed the material is taught.
Based on research that has been caried out, I think that I'd extend this basic concept by throwing in a second or even a third language, as it appears that the complexity of language is such that learning new languages young boosts the growth of neural connections and seems to improve the capacity to learn. Languages, therefore, may provide a safe alternative to these drugs in that they'll boost intelligence and have no risk of later side-effects.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Urine tests before every exam in college? "Sure, we're looking for people using performance-enhancing drugs. Ooh look, another pothead to arrest. How convenient." I think not. I can only imagine the protests that this plan would spark at just about any college stupid enough to try it.
It's pseudoephedrine. That is, apparantly, one of the primary ingrediants in meth. So they decided that any OTC medication containing pseudoephedrine will no long be something you can simply walk in and buy. You still need no perscription, but you have to go to the pharmacist, fill out a form, have your ID checked, and then you may buy one box only.
Fuck that, too much effort. Next allergy season my doctor has said she'll just write me a 4 month perscription of Allegra.
At any rate, that's the only OTC component I know of that has any regulation. Though people can trip on dextromethorphan, I guess it's rare enough that there's not a serious concern about it. I mean hell, people can get high on whip cream propellant if they want. Pseudoephedrine is just a concer because meth is a rather problematic drug. If it honestly can push meth in to the category of too hard to make, I'm ok with the restriction, but I've a feeling it does nothing but inconcenicence most of us and does not deter the meth heads.
Cancer patients smoking pot to alleviate pain and keep their food
I don't have cancer, but I do have chronic pain (caused by MVA, C4-C7 messed up). Just 2 quick points:
1) Some people with pain choose to smoke pot. I could legally smoke pot for chronic pain (I'm in Canada). But there's still a "pothead" stigma that goes with it regardless, which is the main reason why I don't (I couldn't live with myself - although I don't feel great about "doing hard narcotics" either)
2) Most of the drugs that alleviate pain (opiates et al) tend to "slow" you down supposedly. While it probably does (I don't drive because of this, even though my doc said it would be OK most days, I don't think morphine + driving mixes well), it dramatically improves everything IMHO. Energy, concentration, performance in general, you name it. Without that, I couldn't focus away from the pain, I couldn't really think straight, I wouldn't do anything at all (my life would be hell). With it, I manage to have a mostly normal and productive life (even as a single parent)
///<sig
I once tried caffiene tablets to keep going at the office (working 12-16 hours a day for months at a stretch because an employer is too fucking cheap and shortsighted to let a QA director hire ample qualified staff takes its toll) but it didn't help. I felt better for an hour or two then I'd crash harder. I can only imagine that it would be a harder, more painful crash with stronger (and illegal) stimulants.
:)
What does work is exercise and getting more sleep. I've been trying to burn both ends of the candle at my own business, but lately I've been eating fruits for breakfast and bicycling to and from work, so now when I do work long days I still feel tired, but not to the point where I feel totally exhausted. Soon I'll be bringing in more help and knocking back to 5 days a week. I still make sure I get at absolute minimum 6-1/2 hours or so of sleep per night, and I try really hard to get between 7 and eight (any more than that and I end up either groggy or get a migraine).
Do yourself a favor if you need to work long hours: MAKE a way to get exercise into your routine, and lay off refined foods. You'll find yourself able to work longer before you feel tired, and you'll feel better overall, and will probably lose any extra weight you're carrying at the same time.
Drugs (legal or otherwise) might give you a temporary lift, but there is no subtitute for sleep, eating right, and actually getting working your muscles from time to time. If there were a magic bullet, America wouldn't be full of fatties. I'm glad to say I'm no longer a fatty, and while I still have some more weight to lose, the first 25 pounds has made a huge difference and I only have a few more to go.
Need a lift? Eat a banana or drink some herbal tea, or just drink plenty of water.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
I'm a third year medical student.
I can't tell you how many people in my school use adderal or ritalin. I refused to use it myself, but I always felt like I was competing against these people doing these drugs.
When I did well, i felt proud that I could do it without these drugs.
Some needed it, most abused it.
but life isn't sustainable. The laws of thermodynamics forbid it. You will die, your body will grow old. It's only a matter of when, and what you can accomplish in the time you have, and how you choose to live your life.
If someone wants to change the world, but lose their mind and die at 25, drugs might just be the option that they are looking for.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
I think we should deregulate almost all drugs. If you want to mess up your body or your mind with steroids or "smart drugs", that's your business. If you want to feel good through chemistry, that should be your decision. If you die 30 years before your time because of various kinds of drug abuse, that's nobody's business but yours--just don't expect exceptional measures from doctors to try to reverse the effects.
The only drugs that should be far more tightly regulated than they are are antibiotics and antivirals, because incorrect use by one person harms other people.
my old roommate is ADD and had a script...he'd let me have some for when I had to finish up a programming contract and needed to work several days straight. Take one every 8 hours and you can keep going for at least 3-4 days without sleep, without increasing your error rate too bad.
People used to come over and buy them off him for the performance boost...
He's a programmer too, but he needs it to just function from day to day.
Maybe we DID take the blue pill. You wouldn't remember anyway.
but not the fact of usage.
Onpoint 09/2002: College Students and Psychoactive Medication
Never mind the old equation of college and recreational drugs, the parents' old tiptoe through pot and peyote. A new generation is arriving at university heavily armed with prescriptions for Zoloft, Dexedrine, Paxil and Prozac. Xanax, Adderall, Cylert and Ritalin. And it's not about weekend benders. It's about ADD, anxiety, OCD and depression.
Officials say that today that about 40 percent of American college students are on psychoactive drugs. Everybody knows the number is huge. But what exactly does it mean? Up next On Point: the Medicated Generation goes to college.
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And maybe the reason for the increasing levels of usage is that they are learning this from their days in grade school?
Better Living through Chemistry? (Dr. Leonard Sax)
This year some six million children in the U.S.--one in eight-- will take Ritalin. With 5 percent of the world's population, the U.S. consumes 85 percent of this drug. Have we considered the consequences?
and...
Despite their stubborn refusal to medicate their children with Ritalin, these other countries do not lag behind the United States in academic performance. On the contrary: according to the most recent studies, France, Germany, and Japan continue to maintain their traditional lead over the United States in tests of math and reading ability.
---
This article dates to 2000, but it's about the very same crisis that we've been hearing about more and more the last few years. Children are being medicated in order to get them to sit still in school (where 'unproductive' things like things like recess are being cut in favor of more cramming). Maybe a whole generation has been raised to think of 'learning' as something you need drugs to accomplish. And now we are beginning to see the consequences.
What drugs can certainly do is to make you think you are smarter and temporarily relieve the pain of learning. The problem is that anything that makes you different, smarter or otherwise, is painful in some way. - Nonsense.
The fact of the matter is, these drugs do provide a significant and beneficial effect when trying to cram for that next exam, or finish that scientific paper for submission to the journal of your choice. While I can't say anything about the long term effects on memory, it's the near-term deadlines that these drugs are getting used for. Several class-mates and friends of mine have resorted to taking ADHD and narcolepsy drugs during crunch time in grad school and I have seen them produce, in 24-48 hours, high quality work that would have otherwise easily taken a week or more. When you don't need to sleep but 4 hours a day, and you can be at full concentration for 16 hours straight without getting distracted or losing your train of thought, you can certainly get a lot more work done. As one friend described it during an all nighter before a grad-level physics exam, you feel "sharper" and abstract concepts that are otherwise difficult to wrap your head around just make sense. I'd wager that at least 40% of graduate students have used these drugs at some point in their academic careers...
Regarding the concern about drugged students having an edge over other students during tests: I would think that this would be at least somewhat less of a concern if you don't grade on a curve. That dampens the effect of "extra leverage".
Two years ago was the first I had heard of wide use of these kinds of drugs by students. My professor (who was a very down to earth and trustworthy guy) asked his entire class of 500 if anyone there was using adderall that wasn't perscribed to him/her. About 3 or 4 students in the first 5 rows raised thier hands. He talked with a few of them and the general consensus was that it helped them focus and concentrate without notable side effects. He then asked the entire class again who knew someone that was using unperscribed adderall and ten times as many hands went up -- maybe users who were too embarassed to raise the first time he asked or maybe it really was just someone they knew. As for me, would I use drugs to get an edge and be able to study more in less time? Yeah, and I do. Not perscription drugs but I have a hopeless addiction to caffine (Pepsi/Mtn Dew only ... no pills) and I don't really see adderall as much different (except its probably more expensive and has health consiquences.) If I didn't have any caffine all day I would likely be ready for a nap by 6pm or need to go to sleep at 10. I myself don't plan on ever using adderall or other perscriptions -- mainly because I don't want to build a dependance on this (not physical but emmotional.)
Do I care if my fellow classmates are using them? Do I personally feel threatened by adderall using students? Not at all. I have a drive to learn everything that I'm in college for and adderall isn't going to help anyone compete with me in that way unless they already could without it. I'm spending my summer away from home and friends just to keep my tech job on campus and when I get home from work at 5:30 I sit down at my computer and start working on the coding project i'm doing in my free time. I really love doing this stuff. The adderall may give my competition 25% more per mindless studying session but it isn't going to make them want to study computer science in thier free time and spend nights considering the advantages of data structure A over B.
I'll continue abusing caffine, Microsoft will continue to give out free drinks in every building, and a minority of my classmates will continue abusing adderall regardless of what gets posted here.
Easy to think that way at the top, isn't it? Here's a hint: for every one of you who makes it there is a bunch of others who don't. You could easily have been one of them, but you lucked out.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
we've been putting flouride into the water of public schools for decades. Lets get that caffinated coffee out of the breakrooms across America. As long as there are economic benefits to putting these drugs into the hands of students/workers you will see no one stopping their use.
What about the money required to buy these things? There's already an enormous cost required to go to any decent college, barring the less wealthy. Do we want to add yet another expense required to make it through our educational system? I'm not sure what exactly to think of these drugs, but this is just another consideration to add to the pile.
Don't revise until 3am the night before the exam.
On a side note I find it scary that schools (at least here in the UK) seem to spend more time teaching "revision technique" than they do on actual subjects. We're creating a generation that can get A grades in all their exams, but can't write or speak their native language properly.
Pot is different.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
1) War on Drugs. Drugs are bad. Legalizing drugs will ruin our country.
B) Millions of kids on Ritalin. Widespread use of "performance-enhancing" drugs in professional sports. Drug ads on TV.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Most of the commentators have latched on to the drugs are bad conclusion, so maybe it's time for some devil's advocating... Suppose a drug is invented that has almost no adverse side effect - would it be ok to take it?
There's an assumption in most people's responses that drugs must inherently have a bad sideeffect. That the badness of the side effect is in general proportion to the benefits obtained. Hence, it cannot be good to take X, because X must have a hidden side effect that cancels out any advantages it may provide. Such reasoning may be true when we were kids and were having the 'Drugs -just say NO' message drummed into us, but they aren't going to be true forever. And it's not as though the 'healthy' alternatives are really perfect, either. Exercise to improve fitness is fraught with physical risks. Increased study to boost academics hurts social lives, and may well have a greater cumulative harm than impotence 30 years down the line. (At least, if you've been taking drugs, you've actually slept with someone in that time) How many teenage suicides would have been averted if the victim was taking recreational drugs, and kept taking them? (So no withdrawal symptoms...)
If we look at things in a certain way, there is no special evil associated with using chemicals to achieve some effect over carrying out some other activity. As technology improves, the lines are bound to blur even further.
Red.....Bull
I'm a senior in college. I discovered adderall my 3rd or 4th semester and have taken it about twice a year since: at the end of each semester during finals week. A couple of times I have taken it during the semester to pass a test I put off studying for until the night before. Invariably, I can retain much more information and study for much longer periods of time when I study on adderall, and practically always make A's on the tests.
I definitely go through a depression for a few days after a hardcore adderall studying binge, and probably don't retain the information as well as I would if I had studied it in a timely manner throughout the semester. I would consider this problematic if I took the drug more often, but I don't, and I still will work long and hard hours on a project I enjoy.
I thoroughly believe that attending class and doing your studying throughout the semester is the best way to go.
I also have thoroughly been bored by some of my classes. It is these classes that I skip and don't do the work for,
putting it all off until the day before test time - and learn enough of the material to get an A.
I spend so much time battling my ADD on a normal day, that when I'm on meds, I have a lot more focus on the problem at hand. I've found that Adderall has that effect more markedly than Ritalin, but the amphetamine side effects are more pronounced as well (dialated pupils, dry mouth, twitchy hands). Either of them will help lose weight, since you're not jacking up your blood sugar to keep focused.
OTOH, it sucks at a party - someone slipped me some once, and completely killed my buzz. Completely.
Why can't I mod "-1 Idiot"?
Like you, I would probably only take it on doctor's advice. I'm glad for you it's that benefical to you, that's what it is for in the end. And without trying to offend you personnaly, as you having an edge over the average person that I might be, I'm not to worried, I don't have ADHD and I'm not dependant on it in order to focus and direct my energy.
That is where my edge is.
is that drugs can have nasty side effects both short and long term (yes I include caffine in this, but caffine is pretty damn mild as stimulants go).
the worrying bit is that people could feel pressured into using drugs without a proper understanding of any bad side effects they may have, I wonder if this was more of the reason for drug testing in sports than fairness considerations.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
"Meth amphetimine is dangerous cheap and plentiful. Long term use includes symptoms very like schizophrenia. I can't imagine why it's so widely used."
That has to be the dumbest statement moderated up today.
Yea, why is a cheap, habit-forming drug widely used?
"Methamphetamine is a synthetic stimulant drug used for both medicinal and recreational purposes (the latter use is illegal in most countries -- see Legal issues). Like most stimulants, methamphetamine can cause a strong feeling of euphoria, thus creating the potential for addiction"
Hmm. Maybe because it only takes one use to get you onto it, and it's pretty hard to stop. I guess that's why heroin and nicotine are also popular, since they have similar habit forming properties. I hear cigarettes give you a nice, quick buzz.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
but how the hell do you acquire provigil? Through a doctor?
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Even a towel can do it.
Cut to Interier Living Room:
Man: I'm so mad right now I,
Hey, do you have any idea how much money there is in pharmaceuticals to treat kids who consume too much simple carbohydrates? Do you have any idea of the sheer mountains of cash to be made from adult-onset diabetes and obesity? The meat producers certainly don't want us to know that eating too much protein (i.e., more than 5% of your diet) leads to blood acidosis, increased cholesterol, and chronic kidney stress.
And do you know how many tons of soy go into our factory-farmed cattle to make that cheap, taxpayer-subsidized burger on your plate? Somebody has to grow all that soy, you know. And as you may know, petroleum companies own all the seed companies and the petro-chemical companies produce all the nitrogen fertilizers to allow things to grow in depleted soil, so you're stepping on some big toes here. It's like, you want to ruin the whole game, man!
Look, the agro-pharmaceutical cartel is one of the fastest growing industries right now, and they depend on our ignorance and acquiescence. For their sake, if nothing else, we should eat what tastes good as often as possible regardless of nutritional value. Anything else would be anti-capitalist.
And it's not just the pharmaceutical companies and the private hospitals that need our clogged organs to survive. Many of these ADD kids are slated for residency in America's emerging privatized prison system.
If we want these capitalist enterprises to succeed, we must continue to push standardized tests into the core of our educational curricula. We must continue to feed our children the cheapest, fattiest, and most sugar-laden foods we can. And by god, we must get more soda machines into our schools. By these means we can keep them on their poor diets, increase their stress, cause them to lose focus, and peddle more pharmaceuticals to them.
How can anyone be against using such means to increase profits and grow markets? Everyone understands that war and crisis are extremely profitable for those who can offer a little relief at a price. We live in a world where profit is an end unto itself, and corporations don't have to consider any "big picture" beyond their own survival. The stockholder is all who matters. Everyone else is cattle, and we should just take our pills and learn to live with it.
I mean, if people switch to a proper vegetarian diet, how will they ever be made dependent for life on pharmaceutical treatments for diabetes and high cholesterol? If people stop eating too much meat, what will become of all that soy, and what will happen to mom and pop factory farmer?
I shudder to think.
-- thinkyhead software and media
This reminds me of the wonderful The Simpsons episode "Brother's Little Helper", where Bart gets this drug called Focusin.
... WE DRINK RITALIN!
Circumcision is child abuse.
The problem with "performance enhancing drugs" is that they aren't. These drugs have negative side effects. Sometimes they only become apparent much further down the road, but they're always there. In the meantime you just instill the same feeling of inadequacy in other perfectly healthy smart kids. Just read through the comments here. Notice the people who feel "encouraged" by positive anecdotes?
Ultimately society will pay the toll for people who can't accept that someone else is better. I guess that is only fair, because it's the same society which puts the pressure on every kid that the only way to be is to be the best. Unfortunately the victims will hardly be able to realize what's happened to them before it's too late. When the hallucinations come, the memory goes and the anxiety never ends, then they'll be on many more drugs to keep them just functioning enough not to be a danger to their environment.
These new drugs may not come with the unpleasant side effects now, but we'll see what effects long-term use will have in a few years when use becomes widespread.
A large number of people take drugs like Adderall and Ritalin every day, and have been doing so for decades. I'm not a doctor or anything, but I'd imagine there are plenty of data available to make judgments on the long-term physiological effects that these drugs have.
Also, I'd categorize the Adderall shits as a rather unpleasant side effect. :)
I work in a pharmacy and my expierence with the ADHD medications shows how insanely stupid these college kids are being. We had a pharmacist lose his licence for slipping some of the ADHD pills on the sly; there is a reason the FDA classifies them as controlled substances, they are highly addictive. Some of them (Ritalin for sure, maybe Allderal as well) are narcotics which are the most addictive and most highly controlled category of legal drugs. In the state I live in (I'm not going to reveal that because the pill popping pharmacist is still under investigation by the state) controlled drugs are required to be locked in a cabinet that only the pharmacist can access.
Now, for further insight- I am a college student, a soon to be senior political science and history major, I pull 4.0's with nothing more than Earl Gray tea doused in honey to help me write those term papers on Progressive politics until 3:00 am. I equate taking controlled substances illegally in order to gain an "edge" to writing notes on the palm of your hand before stepping into the exam room. I got my high GPA the honest way, I'm going to take my GRE the honest way, and I'm going to persue my PhD the honest way.
Before popping the controls in order to push up those scores realize they are controls because they are highly addictive. If they were safe for use without a prescription then I doubt they would be locked under the counter and subject to an insane amount of paperwork and redundant checks before dispensing. Besides, taking an illegal drug to get your edge reflects badly on you and cheapens the meaning of everything you gained.
quote "You just want to WORK"
gee what an amazing coincidence that the corporate run government really pushes this stuff, and sometimes makes it a requirement for children.
Well, if you have to ask yourself those questions, then the answer, to you, is no. It's the ones that don't ask those questions, push themselves beyond their natural ability, and burn out before they're thirty-five that pay the price. Moral and ethical behavior starts by questioning your own. You're not crazy if you question your own sanity. You're friggin' nuts when you do things without question!
My take on this is, if you have to burn the candle that hard to get ahead, then maybe you're not right for that major, that job, that career. Taking a drug to get an edge, no matter how safe it may appear, is certainly not going to serve you throughout your life. You'll have missed more things that you should have enjoyed along the way. Plus, staying awake that long is bound to cause a psychotic episode. Going that long without REM sleep on a repeated basis is a recipe for disaster.
The short answer is that a corporation doesn't make a profit on pot. Corporations do make a profit in opposing pot.
It was because of some businesses and wealthy people that hemp, aka marijuana, was made illegal to begin with. Prior to it being made illegal Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence on hemp paper. As a farmer he grew hemp on his estate and once wrote that he thought farmers should be required to grow hemp, he never did follow through with this because he knew such a law would be denying farmers the right to grow what they wanted. Rudolph Diesel designed his engine to run on most any vegeble oil including hemp oil. And on his Iron Mountain Estate, Henry Ford designed and built a vehicle that used hemp in the manufacture of it and was powered by fuel made from hemp. It was because of the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 that hemp was made illegal. Several powerful people had pushed congress to have hemp made illegal because they saw it as a threat to their wealth. But even after made illegal the US government encouraged farmers to grow hemp during WWII. They went so far as to make a movie, "Hemp for Victory" to encourage farmers to grow it.
FalconShould there be a Law?
while working or studying.
Yea, believe me, it really delivers.
For the first 1-2 minutes, it relaxes the mood and brain, the caffeine tension little bit goes away, and when you do not pay attention to the music anymore and it falls to the background - voila - youre on one magic journey. Thoughts flow in and away, like you are in the middle of a chorus.
But you gotta find a good selection to listen - preferrably an internet radio that does music for the workdays. One i listen to almost always is the Klassikradio. German, hamburg based. It plays wonderful selection in workday, nothing sleepy, nothing gothic, but right on pitch, and at nights it passes to a nice selections on blues, jazz and soft tunes. Give it a shot, you will be satisfied :
http://www.klassikradio.de/live-stream/
Read radical news here
This sounds a bit corny, and is so out of place on Slashdot that it isn't even funny, but I've found being physically active (like at least 30 mins exercise a day) and maintaining a healthy lifestyle does good things to your concentration and studying abilities. You'll be less tired because your lung capacity improves and more, and there's of course other good side effects beyond the realms of studies, like better looks and health. Many feel they're too tired to exercise, but that's a bit of a vicious cycle in that the reason is often because you haven't.
:-)
So this would be a natural way to hopefully improve the studying situation a bit if you're into that sort of thing.
OK, so I've done it. Posted a health/lifestyle post on Slashdot. Feel free to mod me into oblivion!
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
I've personally known a person, who was addicted to pscychopharmaca and was buying this stuff for half of her income. She looked like a zombie or a droggie. The worst looking person I had direct contact with. She died two years ago at the age around 47. It was better to end it for her and for everybody else. This stuff ( Ritalin, Prozac, Zoloft, ... ) can have long term side effects.
And how do you prove, that your late liver damage or mental problems are not coming from these drugs taken maybe years ago?
Wow, Python was really scary. Chased me around the room for a half an hour.
A co-worker was walking around trailing an IV stand with a caffeine drip.
I ON"
Dilbert: "Have you noticed any side effects?"
Coworker, holding a squishy-looking object: "THISISTHEAORTAOFTHELASTPERSONWHOASKEDMETHATQUEST
I am shocked that no one has mentioned the simple fact that IT DEPENDS on the person taking the drug.
I'll use food for my analogy.
I have a buddy who weighs about 120lbs (skinny), eats like a pig. I'm 205lbs (fatty) and I also have a terrible diet. Yet another friend is pushing 250lbs (fatty+), and he's a lifelong vegetarian. We're all about 6' tall.
I have no interest in splitting hairs between "food" or "drug"; both cause chemical reactions in the body, and these reactions are entirely dependant on any number of factors (diet, lifestyle, age, race, location, gender...I could go on and on and on...).
I for one think it is disgusting that we live in a country (USA) which advertises perscription meds to children every night during prime time, and then locks these same kids up a few years later for smoking dope. This isn't hypocritical; it's fucking asinine.
Call it "free markets", call it "the people", the verdict is in: WE LOVE DRUGS and WE LOVE FOOD. Both will affect each and every one of us in different ways, and legal or not, each must be used in MODERATION and with ALL DUE CAUTION.
barack to the future?
Finals are in 21 hours :(
Its interesting to see people talk about how they did this drug to help study for a test or take that drug to help them code more efficiently. For me, I'd rather fail the class/get fired from my job rather than use drugs. I belive that taking drugs alters one's brain in such a way that one really isn't oneself anymore. When I accomplish something, I want to know it was 100% me and my work habits and ethic that did the job, not some chemical that did the work for me. If I fail, I want to know it was for the same reason.
... but I digress.
... I just wonder if there are others out there like me. We seem to be a decreasing minority these days.
It was my New Year's resolution 2 years ago to not use caffeine. I had a headache for about 5 days and then it went away. Every so often I like to drink something with caffeine in it. I get jittery and nervous in about 10 seconds after I consume the first sip. Something about anything other than me having control over my body doesn't sit well with me
More power to everyone else, though. It is your right to do whatever you like with your body
Nobody said "back in the day."
Was he talking about Sudafed or Robotussin? You assumed Sudafed, which is used to manufacture meth, whereas Robotussin is taken for DXM. Hell, he could even be talking about drinking NyQuil, since that has alcohol. There is a lot more than just Sudafed that can be abused.
I ran out of smack this morning, you insensitive clod!
What's the frequency, Kenneth?
Umm ... no.
Sex has probably does have some health benefits in addition to its more well known health risks. On the whole, it's probably positive for health unless your having sex with a lot of people, but any benefit is orders of magnitude smaller than the benefits of diet and exercise.
Your quote makes about as much sense as,
"Healthy workers are often the most productive workers, and the healthiest workers use ergonomically correct posture when lifting, in addition to having healthy eating and exercise habits."
vi ~/.emacs # I'm probably going to Hell for this.
Who needs discipline and work ethics when you have pills? Post babyboom American students became the weakest link in our society, not to mention ever increasing cost of schooling, depleting higher academic standards, failing teachers to educational system, disappearing stable family environment, etc.
But lets put aside those minor problems. Things like stress from reading too many books, peer pressure to have sex and drink alcohol, debilitating attention deficit syndrome, and bad eye sight, what obsticles must you go through these days?!?! The horror!
What pills won't give you is will, discipline and work ethics. That separates Franklin D. Roosevelt from Adolf Hitler. I'm not calling anyone Nazi here, but hopefully you know what I mean.
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
Many people are seeing these types of drugs as performance enhancing somehow in children and teenagers, but the truth is selective seratonin reuptake inhibitors don't have an immediate effect, or when taken at a 'therapeutic' level, are not that mind blowing in effect. Benzodiazepines such as Xanax, Klonipin, or Valium are not likely to help anyone with their job unless the recreational intake and effect of euphoria 'helps' your job. Those are prescribed for those who have social phobias and panic disorders, otherwise they're not too useful.
Contrary to what the submitter says about Adderall "jacking your brain up", is also another gross generalization. Unless you have ADD/ADHD or narcolepsy its not likely to be helpful on a clinical level, but unlike most amphetamines it doesn't have too many side effects.
Most people who obtain prescription drugs are most likely to benefit from them and are relatively safe, and as far as SSRI's go, for example, recreationally students are better off without the drug due to sexual side effects, so they'd be more prone to be taking it for the actual label use.
You're completely ignorant of even the simplest concepts. I bet you're happy.
I definitely go through a depression for a few days after a hardcore adderall studying binge, and probably don't retain the information as well as I would if I had studied it in a timely manner throughout the semester.
Pretty much all drugs, legal and illegal, are like that. A good diet, exercise and sleep can improve your mind, body and mood long term. All drugs can do is borrow from the future. You can put off payback by taking them regularly, but if you put it off long enough, it'll start taking years off your lifespan.
The research I've seen suggests that streaming is generally bad for students who perform poorly and not helpful for students who perform well. I highly recommend the Goodlad book A Place Called School because it has lots of interesting data and speculation. If only all educators had Goodlad's creativity and willingness to experiment...
Simon's Rock College
Lymond01: 1450
CmdrTaco: 1500*
Zonk: 1240
*Pyschopharm User
I was reading the first paragraph, and immediately jumped to thinking about what you were saying in the second part of your post. I rarely studied more than 3 hours for any 1 final exam. Most of the time it was about an hour. I went over the general material, and anything that I was unsure about, but never really felt that I had to cram. This was because I payed attention during the semester, and stayed awake in class. The classes I didn't stay awake in (Calculus 2, first year physics) were classes that I didn't do very well in. I ended up graduating Magna Cum Lauda, so my approach couldn't have been that wrong. I always grimmaced when I saw the people cramming for final, because they copied the assignments and skipped all the classes, and realized that they'd still have to do well on the 60% final to actually get a good mark in the class.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I use a simple shot of cocaine, seven per-cent solution, to keep my brain stimulated.
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
When I was younger I was diagnosed with ADD and put on ritalin. It worked, for about three quarters of the school year, then effects diminished. They tried several alternatives, but nothing did it. It seems, I can think much better without their "treatment" and wonder if they had been holding me back. Grades are one thing, intelligence is another.
Just thought I'd state that I'd rather have not been given them at all, and you should be careful, especially with children. It definitely wasn't worth it to me, but I was too young to know or refuse.
Speaking from MY personal experience, I can tell you caffeine vastly improves my performance. It lets me sit for hours and work, and concentrate, and all that. Without caffeine, I can barely muster the energy to move, let alone work or pay attention (and I nearly failed to graduate from high school because of that). Does that describe most people? Of course not.
Anecdote is not the singular form of the word data.
Some people don't receive any benefit from stimulants, but most people do. Some people receive enormous, dramatic benefits from them -- like people that have ADD, certain kinds of anxiety disorders , certain kinds of sleep disorders (or who just need to stay awake for 50 hours for some reason). Discounting these drugs' importance just because YOU don't like them is profoundly misguided.
There is a sad part to the popularity and abuse of medications prescribed for ADD and ADHD. When the medication gets a bad name because of those folks who use it to get an unnatural edge on the competition it makes the parents of Kids who would greatly benefit from the medication hesitate when it is suggested by a qualified specialist MD.
When I was teaching in the public and later private schools a few years ago there were always kids who you suspected would benefit greatly from these meds, but their parents decided they shouldn't. Then of course there were a few kids who really didn't need it, but had it. The hesitation of those parents often came down to how others would perceive their kids when (not if) it became public knowlege that they were using... Sad...
Oddly, I also know there is lots of demand for these meds and the kids who have valid access could make out like bandits...
By the way anyone taking the older versions of these meds should look into a new delivery method sold as concerta... well worth it...
Nootropics (smart drugs) have been around for many many years. The original piracetam has been taken by friends daily for 20 years. The effects are they eem to think more, be more intelligent, have more motivation to study/research and digest more from what they do study. A good little FAQ is at http://www.erowid.org/smarts/piracetam/piracetam_f aq.shtml
And for general info on nootropics, just google "nootropics". I.e http://www.google.com.au/search?q=nootropics&start =0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozi lla:en-US:official
The student newspaper "polled over 300 students across the university, discovering that six and a half percent had taken prescription and illegal drugs to keep them awake whilst writing essays."
Although the article points to stress as a factor, it fails to mention that for many students here, the entire degree depends on just a few weeks of exams at the end of the final year. Hardly surprising, then, that some of them are pushed over the edge.
Back when all drugs were legal, the adiction rate is somewhat the same as it is now, close enough for conversational purposes anyway, a couple percent. You can also see addiction rates with alcohol, pre prohibition, during prohibition and after repeal of prohibition, it's remained about te same, maybe 5% of the population is serious alky and another 5% darn close.. If anything prohibition made a lot more hard liquor drinkers out of people because smugglers faced the same penalities for beer as for whiskey, so it was just more valuable to smuggle-and sell/offer whiskey. When nixon started the war on pot, cocaine use skyrocketed, again, it was just more valuable for the smugglers to smuggle it, so that is what they pushed.
Uh no, they're not talking about speed. Please learn to research.
"I won't get high to HAVE good ideas. I'll get high as a REWARD for having good ideas."
i know its somewhat offtopic, but the posters mention of 'fairness' really offended me.
education is not a sport. any way that people individually and collectively can
understand more and be more creative is a win. the idiots who thought the grading
system was the entire point drove me out of teaching university.
and if meth helps, great. although somehow i doubt that in the limit it does.
Plus, if we deregulated all of these drugs, then we could put them in energy drink form.
Badass Resumes
Are you saying that Dayquill doesn't enhance your performance over sitting there with your sinuses plugged, your head pounding, your throat so sore you can hardly speak? Are you saying that a cup of good coffee in the morning doesn't bring your focus tighter, your alertness up, enhance your willingness to face the day? Are you saying that steroids don't increase muscle mass? Are you saying that amphetimines don't decrease reaction time? Are you saying that midol doesn't help a lady get through the day when her body is cranking out a period?
Everything has negative side effects if taken too far. Exercising too much can kill you. Moderation is the key. Further, side effects (such as a mild buzz from dayquill) may be entirely worth the performance gain. It's not for you to decide. It's up to the individual. You were not elected anyone's mother. Nor was anyone else; and for those of you who actually might be a mother (or a father, etc), those rights expire when your kid reaches adulthood, whenever that is.
I utterly fail to see why I should feel "inadequate" because you're taking performance enhancers. Or because you're not. Or because you're naturally better at something, or you have money. Please explain this concept of yours. I am fascinated by your view of the world.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Jesus Christ.
Maybe it's just me, but maybe all us college kids need some more discipline?
I've definately used my fair share of psychotropics to cram. But all they do is simply focus your attention. Knowing that from experience, I don't bother anymore.
Get off the goddamn amphetamines, anduse some discipline! Turn off the fuckin' iPod, yank out the Ethernet cable, turn off the goddamn TV, and GO STUDY! Jesus. It's not that hard. If you need some energy, drink a cup of coffee. I guarantee it'll screw up your brain a lot less.
A drug can't increase your IQ. The damn potential is always there, just learn how to harness it. When I was in elementary school, a psychologist tried to tell my parents I had mild ADD. They didn't believe it, so I was never put on anything for it. Well, he was right, but guess what? You learn to control it. I'm a multitasker extraordinaire, not a amped-out zombie.
Since they're using an analogy comparing it to physical sports, I'll use another: If you're overweight, you can take drugs to suppress your diet and increase your metabolism, or you can eat right and exercize and get the same results. I'm sure you can tell which option will be healthier. The same goes for your mind - train yourself right, and you now have that ability naturally and for life. Pop an Adderall, and you have the same effect - until the drug wears off, and you sleep for 2 days straight.
When I was 15 I was diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed 20mg of Adderall. When we picked up the prescription I recall we wanted to see it's effects. I took one pill at about 6:00pm and I was up the rest of the night laying in bed reading my encyclopedia set. I got to about 'd' before I crashed at 2:30am. It's really an incredible medication, it makes everything boring and tedious become amazingly interesting. You literally 'crave' learning and nothing else, including food or sleep. I stopped taking it because I was losing weight fast because I was never hungry. something around 20 pounds a semester.
I can definetly sempathize or at least understand why college students would be attrached to something of the sort.
Did the Washington Post have to prove Ron White wrong?
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Just how high do you think tuition and/or taxes would go with your system? Or would you rather turn down teachers' salaries?
Based on research that has been caried out, I think that I'd extend this basic concept by throwing in a second or even a third language, as it appears that the complexity of language is such that learning new languages young boosts the growth of neural connections and seems to improve the capacity to learn. Languages, therefore, may provide a safe alternative to these drugs in that they'll boost intelligence and have no risk of later side-effects.
Let me guess... you are a teacher, and you teach some language, right? You could also say that teaching electronics or chemistry or basket weaving boosts the growth of neural connections.
The problem with so-called "research" on education is that it only proves what the so-called "researcher" wants to prove.
Let's admit a simple fact: teaching is not rocket science. It took about fifty years from Goddard's first experiments with liquid rocket motors to the first human landing on the Moon. That's because "rocket" science is a true science. Experiments are done in an objective way, results are measured in an objective way, and research reports are checked by impartial experimenters in an objective way. Due to this objectivity, almost every experiment done in rocket science adds to the experiments done before.
OTOH, teaching and other "human sciences" sadly lack any sort of objectivity. Unfortunately, those researchers tend to avoid using any metrics that could ever be used to proving them wrong, they eschew any sort of quantitative measurement unles the measurement is so vague that no useful conclusions can be extracted from them.
The end result is people bemoaning "decadence". They mention how teaching was so much better in their youth. No one mentions how computers were so much faster in their youth. There is no nostalgia about golf clubs or baseball bats becoming heavier. That's because golf clubs and baseball bats can be weighted precisely and more advanced materials are used all the time. But no one can say for sure that the current teaching methods are more advanced than those used fifty years ago. At least, not from measuring the results.
"...and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter." --Homer Simpson
Seriously though, can you give me some references on this? A few of my friends would find such information very interesting.
Let the athletes do their steroids. They'll die sooner. And the only time I would like to see mandatory drug screening is prior to their qualifying for public health insurance programs. That is to say if they are found to be damaged by their own actions, they should be denied public assistance. The same goes for EVERY smoker out there. Yes, that's right, FUCK YOU SMOKERS for using our public money for crap you do to yourselves. Same goes for OBESITY. If a panel of doctors rule that you got diabetes because you don't eat the right food and you could have, then FUCK YOU -- no public funding for you either. (exceptions should apply such as a reasonable window for "should have known better" and "it's the parent's fault because they were fat kids.")
If people want to blow their brains and nervous systems to bits, let'm do it. Again, if they later suffer from mental retardation or some degenerative nervous disorder as a result, then public funds should be denied to them. (Private health insurance would be their own thing and I don't care... but you can bet if such law were ever written, then you can bet insurance rates would rise for these morons just the same.)
The bottom line is if people want to screw their minds and bodies up, they will. Making up rules for "fairness" won't make that much difference.
For me? When my body feels like crap, I find that eating fresh clean food generally brings me back around again. When I have trouble concentrating, oddly the same remedy helps quite a bit.
The moral? DON'T DO DRUGS and EAT HEALTHY FOOD. You don't really need to exercise all that much either.
Excellent point. Yeah, maybe in 10 years time when they are burnt out on those performance enchanging drugs for intellectual purposes, they'll end up losing their job and having to resort to McJobs.
If they really want to improve their performance, EAT HEALTHIER. Eat a better diet of foods. Stop with the brain fog junk foods. However, since caffeine is a legal drug, I see nothing wrong with downing a 12 ounce can of Coca~Cola before an exam provided there is nothing against the rules regarding that.
You've covered the amphetamines.
But the whole POINT of the "psychedelic" drugs (which turned out mainly to be hallucinogens) was an attempt to increase mental ability - intelligence, creativity, empathy, intuitive pattern-matching, and perhaps obtain access to paranormal abilities (this being before Rhine was debunked).
The very WORD "psychedelic" was coined to reflect this. Means "mind-expanding".
The adolescents of the '60s and '70s were trying very hard to obtain exactly the sort of mind amplification that these new drugs actually produce.
Unfortunately, they only had what was available at the time.
LSD, for instance, apparently reduces the threshold of patten matching - whether it's a real pattern or a false one - but simultaneously reduces the threshold of the "eureka" signal. So the user has a lot of odd thoughts, and every time he has a new one a his mind says: "That's RIGHT!". (You can imagine how this warped the minds of even well-educated and intelligent users, such as the emminent psychology professor Timothy Leary.)
Or amphetamines - which mimic various neurotransmitters, primarily in the fight/flight mechanism. You could achieve more focus and alertness (with some of them - at the cost of deep thought). But you paid for it later, as non-emergency systems (such as cell growth and even immune response) were put on hold to conserve resources for the "emergency".
Some use was also self-medicative. Psychology at the time (before the widespread use of Crack Cocaine led to the recognition of Freud's theories as typical cocaine addict ravings) was largely in a religious and black-art stage, and while there were a number of psychoactive drugs available that were pallative, but often mis-prescribed. People with mental problems often attempted to cadge prescriptions for, or buy on the black market, drugs that they perceived (often correctly) as improving their condition. And the Vietnam adventure resulted in a lot of people with injuries producing chronic pain, which could be alleviated only by narcotics.
And of course once a generation was "distracted" from government-approved "channels" into "self-actualization", the government started an ever-escalating drug war - which meant that the pure, pharmacutical-quality, drugs were supplanted by black-market concoctions of dubious ingredients, strength, and purity. This also warped medical practice, leading to under-medication for pain (which is still with us).
By the '80s the use of drugs in an attempt to increase intelligence had pretty much died out, and the remaining use of the remaining garbage-quality street drugs was mainly hedonistic, self-medicative, and the feeding of addictions.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
What else? *pen and paper get*
Sadly, this is totally true.
This is a true story.
When I was in high school, in Honors English one day we had the standard vocab, some other wordy crap to do, and a picture to color. OMFG. Honors English!!!
So I quickly knocked out all 3 in like 15 minutes (was supposed to take the full 50 or so) and ended up bored out of my wits by 25 minutes. I started to talk to people and got written up. Not because I was talking, but because I refused to do my work. The teacher wouldn't even consider listening that I had it done already. I ended up with after school detention, picking up trash. After I got back from the office I very carefully explained (and showed) that I had finished the work LONG before. She tried to rescind, but the vice principal HATED me (maybe because I'd never been written up in 3 years yet?) and said the punishment would stick.
This should be a real eye opener. I was bored in class because I was good at the work. But the teacher (and later the administration) didn't care jack about that. They were there to keep me occupied (with coloring pictures and picking up trash, if need be) rather than teach me anything.
As another point, my high school had 'dual enrollment' where you could take night classes at college for free. I asked to enroll and they wouldn't let me until Jr year. (That's standard, so I didn't fight it too hard.) My sister DID fight it. She enrolled as a freshman. She did 4 years of highschool and 2 years of college in 3 years. It burnt her out, and she just last year went back to college to finish (almost 10 years later) but she DID manage it. I can only see that they did their best to make each of us just stop bothering them.
I've been hard on that school in this post, but there was about 7 teachers who were AWESOME. For a school with only 400-500 student spread over 4 years, that's a huge number of amazing teachers. I wish more students could have those teachers, even if they have to deal with all the other crap I did.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
If your parents are rich and willing, you can go to college and just study. Otherwise, you work and study.
Or you take out student loans, and pay them off after you've got your degree. So you can work less, or not at all, while you study.
If you own a portable music player, you can listen to your own playlist of music as you bop around. Otherwise, you don't.
This is an advantage? Besides, you can get a cassette player for $20 at Wal-Mart. Or a cheap portable radio from a dollar store. We're not talking uber-expensive, here.
If you have (for instance) a Bowflex and a personal trainer, you now have the opportunity to outperform most of your fellow atheletes in terms of how long it takes you to reach your potential, and how close you are going to get to it.
Or you can use the campus gym, and ask advice of the phys-ed instructors.
If you have a car, you drive to school. Otherwise, you walk, sponge, or use pubtrans.
Or you can take online classes that allow you to do everything at home. (Except the occasional proctored exam.) Speaking from experience, I can tell you this frees up your schedule like you wouldn't believe.
If you have a laptop, you have many performance-enhancing tools. Otherwise, not.
Sure. You can type up your notes in class, and record your lectures. Nothing you couldn't do just as well with a Gregg shorthand textbook and tape recorder. Or bite the bullet and find an old 386 laptop with DOS that someone's trying to get rid of. (And believe me, that works fine for notetacking. MS Edit isn't a bad editor.)
All of these "advantages" have one thing in common: Money; the ability to purchase the advantage.
All of these "advantages" have another thing in common, too: There are cheaper alternatives.
It's not about money, or about the rich keeping the poor down. As for drugs, I won't take stimulants without talking to someone who's willing to prescribe them. There's a reason things like Ritalin and Adderall are perscription medications. They either have side-effects that can harm you, or they haven't been in use long enough to prove that they're generally safe.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
You can't buy curiosity.
Of course, FDA approval will take a bit longer.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
This is a little paper I wrote after a few times using Adderall for cramming/exams. And, I'll note, that I have yet to find any difference (long term) in myself since then. --start article-- I am not an expert on the underground drug community and the black market based thereof. I am, however, aware that prescription drugs have become the new choice for this generation. Rx abuse has grown significantly, and, to me, does not seem a problem. There are people for legalization of marijuana or other drugs, but I can, for once, understand someone abusing a prescription substance. Now, before I get any harsh criticism about drug use, I want to explain my point of view on how it affected me, and why others have endulged as well. This is an account of emotional, mental, and physical effects of the "study buddy" drug Adderall (Amphetamine / Dextroamphetamine) My first time was the best. It always is. No expectations, no ideas. Just a test to see if it works. I took 40mg of Adderall XR. Within the hour, they had an effect. I was attentive to everything. Not i na paranoid state, but in a focused state. I re-organized many things out of sheer boredom. Any notes to take down were taken down with extra, personal side notes. All work was done within less time it normally takes. In fact, it was euphoria. I never felt so painfree. No anxiety or depression, which is commonplace in my normal routine, but the ability to work and converse and be happy. The other, noticable, side effeects included insomnia, hunger supression, a heavy pulse, and pupil dilation. I didn't eat lunch, and for dinner I barely managed to eat a slice of bread. I did not sleep either. I simply laid down for 6 hours, thinking on various thoughts, then closed my eyes and faked sleepiness in the morning. The buzz gradually wore off over the night, so the day after was normal feeling. Then, however, came the crash down period. Though it was rough, the more times I've used it, the less time I spend crashing. The worst symptom is a horrible depression. It is not just emotional, it is physical as well. All the time in euphoria causes the brain to, basically, run out of happiness. For the next week, I felt like complete feces. I wouldn't even talk really, just sit there for a while. After that week, I slowly drifted back to normal. Currently, I only spend a day or so to crash out. It could be tolerance, but I doubt so. Now, as a first hand account, some can see why it is used by 15% of the teenage populace. College students are more prone to abuse. However, in all those stats, I have yet to see one case of a decent dose causing a hospital visit. That's because it would take 400mg-500mg for a toxic dose. However, the circulatory system does get treated roughly. The pulse raises about 40% on average for a healthy person abusing the substance. This means high-intensity exercise could cause cardiac arrest. In all my times abusing it, I have yet to see a reason to stop. As long as you do not become addicted, and only use occasionally, it is, to me, my perfect drug.
"I'm a well-wisher, in that I don't wish you any specific harm."
Wait till you are presented with a bowl of free Adderall when you walk in the office each day, and "marked" when you refuse to take it. It will be the new coffee+sugar.
For those of you thinking about trying sex without the supervision of a doctor after reading this: don't. In normal individuals, it can cause rapid increase in dopamine, just like amphetamines do. Really.
If other reasons we do lack, we swear no one will die when we attack
Quote from GP: I just read "The Omega-3 connection" by Andrew Stoll.
1 90808-3286323?v=glance&n=283155
but just to help out: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0684871386/104-9
http://marriedmansexlife.com/
It seems that I read as well as he does :-)
I honestly can't believe I missed that line. Thank you for pointing it out.
would you like me to remove it?
Please sign petition to restore sanity to our banking system!!!
http://financialpetition.org/
So I quickly knocked out all 3 in like 15 minutes (was supposed to take the full 50 or so) and ended up bored out of my wits by 25 minutes. I started to talk to people and got written up.
Well, that would be part of the problem: distracting other students.
I ended up in a similar situation once during some stupid diagnostic math testing during middle school; they were testing all of the grade levels on the same day. We were given ninety minutes; I finished in twenty, spent three minutes checking my work, and three more minutes taking apart my pen and putting it back together. Then I wandered up the the teacher's desk to quietly (albeit stubbornly) point out the problem.
"I'm finished; now what?" "Check your work."
"I did — twice." (I was a rotten kid: I lied.) "I'm bored." (True.) "Can I please have the next grade's test to work on?"
This got me a full ten seconds stare out of a teacher who normally had an instant response to anything. She then went and got me the test (probably figuring it was an easier way to shut me up than debating me), and I went back to my desk happy. (I like math.) Nineteen minutes later, I was back in her hair, to her overt lack of amusement. It took a few minutes to get the next grade level. (I heard from one of the older kids on the bus she was quietly venting to the other teacher about the "fidgity twep".) When I got the test, it was challenging enough to keep me occupied for the remaining time.
My parents got a call asking for a conference with the teacher about my attitude before the end of the day. They got a lot of those over the years, although each of my sisters caused more. (The one over my oldest sister's outraged sermon to her fifth grade gym teacher over his failure to give due heed to Title Nine was the most memorable: mom and dad both laughed for a week about it, and embarass her with the story to this day.) My parents said that the next Tuesday would work for both of them. Of course, this was before the teacher had graded the test results. By the actual conference, the principal was added to the meeting, so they could figure out how to deal with my having tested out of three years worth of math: I had made only one mistake between all three tests. The teacher apparently made a weak attempt to bring up my attitude "problem", but my parents civilly pointed out that I had been polite, reasonable, and (in hindsight) utterly justified in my response. The teacher was smart enough to recognize a futile arguement when it hit her with a two-by-four, and dropped the issue.
Advice to parents: if you were bored and bright in school, plan ahead for the likelihood that your kids may be. Also plan for conferences over the issue.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
HAH! I used to know a coder who was hooked on Adderall. He *loved* the stuff. He would go on and on about how it helped him to get in "the zone," and gave him a new understanding of programming. Guess what? He was one of the worst programmers I've ever known. Definitely had the thing where he would get so into what he was doing that he wouldn't realize that he was doing the completely wrong thing. The guy had absolutely no ability to jump scope. Incidentally, I've seen that tendency in every sort of speed freak I've ever known.
On top of it all, he was a totally grouchy asshole. What a guy!
What's this "fair" thing? Do you think real life is a sport? The laws of the market are as harsh as evolution and will have no compassion for slackers who demand to be natural and can't keep up.
Once science conquers sleep, which provigil points out as a near-future or present proposition, I fully expect the culture to go 24/7. Two jobs, or a job and a hobby, or even a continuous work week from monday to friday with shower breaks every few hours. "He sleeps every day of the week? My god, what a slob! How can he afford rent?"
The problem with the existing system is that it is geared around people learning as and when the teacher gets round to it, rather than pushing people as far and as fast as they are able.
Having dealt with acceleration, pushing them as fast as they can go is not always the best plan; it tends to make socialization difficult, and produce bad results later on. Pushing them as wide as they can roam produces more well-rounded results. Of course, that's hard to manage without extraordinarily flexible teachers in an adaptible environment... which far too many schools don't have. It's also a challenge to maintain a sense of order with such conditions, which is also important to child development.
That said... if a school system can't handle anything fancier, acceleration is better (both for the school and for the kid) than the devil recruiting idle hands.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Since when WP started to employ brain dead retards?
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
To be fair, complete male impotence or female inability to get any kind of arousal would be akin, to use your analogy, to back pain so severe that narcotic painkillers are required to allow them to walk, or clinical depression that requires similair level of medication to allow someone to get out of bed in the morning.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
I am not interested in qualitative studies for the most part and I have little regard for statistical studies. These are too easily rigged to suit people's preconceptions. Empirical research - where possible - where a definite pathway A-to-B-to-C can be demonstrated is the ideal. In education, empirical research is extremely difficult and it's only recently that technology such as fMRI even existed. Certainly, schools aren't equipt with such technology to routinely scan the kids' brains to determine how the school culture is influencing things. Virtually all other research is culturally biased and heavily statistical with no statement on the level of confidence used in the statistical tests, or indeed what statistical method was used, and how it was ensured that a genuinely representative random sample was obtained.
The understanding of the importance of language comes from a mix of research - some involving fMRI (which lends credibility to it), but most involving qualitative assessments of education and the impact on society from schools in Europe over the past 2,500 years. The amount of data is fairly impressive and there is therefore some credibility beyond the "hard science" to the argument that multi-cultural and linguistically sophisticated education is far superior to insular mono-cultures such as those found in many parts of the US.
I'll finish up with costs. I hold to the belief that skilled work generally produces more than it costs, whereas unskilled work is merely necessary to get any work done at all. If you eliminate unskilled labour as much as possible, transferring it to machines or whatever, and raise the educational standards across the board, the net value of the work done will rise. Since we pay taxes as a percent of our income, and corporations pay taxes according to their earnings, etc, the net value of taxes must also rise, if the populace is adequately educated. Now, the law of diminishing returns does come into play here. You can't improve education forever and expect the wealth generated to go to infinity. That won't happen. What will happen is that it will tend to some upper limit. There is therefore some upper bound where further investment will have no significant benefit. However, investment BELOW that point will generate a substandard return and investing further will reap enough of a return to be profitable all round.
(It's not a simple relationship. Greater education produces not only greater skills but better research, which means that the cost for R&D will fall, with respect to the value of the products developed. This will directly benefit the companies, but because you now have more money circulating, you also have more money collected in taxes. R&D is much more random, however, and therefore it is much harder to predict the impact of higher-quality work. This is something you can really only try and see.)
Total investment in education is as much a myth as the total employmen
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I keep seeing this guy in the computer lab that i suspect is using some type of 'enhancer' to work on his school projects. He keeps violently jiggling both of his legs, i'm not talking about someone who just taps their foot this guy is all out flailing his legs (for a visual his legs look like a butterfly flapping, or like he's doing that Susuan Summer's leg excercise thing) Its really annoying to me as a non-drug user because of the sound and the fact that is is sitting in my periphrial vision. For future reference is there anthing that i can do that would make a tweaker annoyed enough to have to leave? Thanks
I'm looking at it from a more long term perspective. You might get short term improvements, but they're countered by long term negatives. These long term negatives can be the better choice compared to certain illnesses, but the overall gain for a healthy person is not significant when you take the risks and the practically inevitable side effects into account. Moderation is key, but you should recognize that a healthy person already has everything in moderation. If you only use a little, you only get a little effect and a little negative side effect. If you want a noticeable effect, then you get noticeable negative effects too. So what's the point?
I am not telling you that you can't use these drugs, but if you do use them (and by use I mean abuse if you're normally healthy) you have to assume all risk. Your environment shouldn't feel obliged to help you when you screw yourself up, which is practically inevitable if you go for a noticeable effect. Of course it doesn't work that way. Your friends and parents will still try to help you and be burdened by your carelessness.
Many young people are under enormous pressure because they're always competing and society only rewards a very small percentage of top performers generously. The drug users show their happy side to the world and hide the negative effects. The prototypical example is the guy who's always the most fun at parties but can't party without alcohol and gradually loses control over his alcohol use and becomes an alcoholic. As long as he gets the party going, he is king and others strive to be like him, but in the later stages he isn't at the parties anymore. This imbalance causes a much better perception of alcohol than it deserves. The same effect affects the perception of psychomeds. Because other students look like they perform better, normal students feel like they should be able to do better too. After all it's a race, you gotta win. Instead of telling them that being the best isn't what life is about and that students on "performance enhancers" are trading their future for a slightly better present, we tell them that "psychotropics seem fairly safe". That's bad and dangerous advice.
Yup, and I would include music as a language here. It's sometimes the first thing to get curtailed during fiscal restraint.
"If you don't have eyes you shouldn't have wings" -- Carl Pilkington
the poop or the ween, mr cleaver?
sent from my slashdot browser.
You're being way too general — the facts do not back you up. For instance, what are my long term negative drug-induced side effects of having a single cup of coffee in the morning? What are they from a joint a day? What are they from a glass of wine with my evening meal (I mean, other than better cardiac health?) You see, your broad strokes do not actually apply; you're just parroting a lifetime of conditioning by the government. The FACT of the matter is that not all drug use results in side effects, and not only that, not all side effects are bad.
No. Come on. That isn't even a caricature of the true state of affairs. The IQ curve goes from way below 100 to way above. In "healthy" people. My IQ is way, way over 100. I'm healthy. No moderation about either issue. I'm *very* healthy, and compared to the median, I'm also very smart. Who am I to say that Joe Sixpack isn't to have access to my kind of smarts if the simple act of gunning down a pill can hand it to him for a period of time when he thinks it would be useful to him? Who are you to say so? Are you the kind of person who would refuse a crutch to a person born without a leg just at the juncture when crossing the street would get him laid? I mean, it is bad enough you want to "protect" me from having my coffee in the morning, but really! If a drug helps a person learn, and they're in school, you'd go so far as to deny the drug? You're cruel, is what you are.
You're just hand-waving again. Some drugs give a little effect, and some give a lot. Sometimes the little effect is what you want (ie morning coffee -- caffiene in small doses.) Sometimes the large effect is what you want. But the fact is, your attempt to tie large negative effects with large drug effects is unscientific and frankly, smacks of total ignorance. Many drugs have large desired effects without large side effects. I could write all day about them. The idea that because a drug is recreational, that it somehow cannot be without side effects... that's just the department of homeland stupidity talking, there. Some drugs have large side effects, some don't. Some develop them over time. Some don't. Some develop them immediately and noticably; some don't. Drugs, like everything else on this planet, are all over the map. So we have to turn to what is constant here, and *that* is the right of a person to make choices for themselves. And what is the best thing we can do there? Educate. Stop lying, the way the government has been doing for many years now, since well before "Reefer Madness." If we don't know something, just admit it, instead of making things up. That'll encourage people to find out what the facts are, instead of making up crap to fit some moronic agenda like the "war on drugs."
The risk is indeed mine. As it should be. There is no reason it should be yours, or society's. I absolutely agree. Personal responsibility for one's actions should be unavoidable, and avoiding responsibility is undesirable for an ethical person in any case. Making it easy to avoid is just encouraging unethical behavior.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I encourage everyone to help reverse this trend by smoking a fat joint and sloooowwwwwing doooown.
The best way to deal with the whole situation is by Rational Anarchism. Basically, I know better than the govt what is right and what is wrong. Therefore, I live by my laws, which in 98% of the cases coincide exactly with whatever descendant of English Common Law I'm mucking about in. (US, Canada)
The Law and I merely disagree on a few points.
The best way to pull this off is to spend the majority of time in a place that has police that respect that. There are plenty of states, and parts of states that are cool with it, as is most of Canada.(And naturally, Mexico.) I've met lots of cops all over North America that will not hassle you much if you are acting peaceably. This also usually means cooperating with them, but acting respectfully but defiantly has allowed me to get away with countless narcotics violations. (And frankly, many liquor and a few trespassing)
I can live with them pouring out my beer or confiscating my pipe, it's the throwing me in jail that is supremely lame.
(Note: I've never been involved with trafficking, nor would I ever have the intention. None of these situations would have looked like that to the cops, and luckily, cops are usually after big fish. To be a Rational Anarchist, one must stay a small fish.)
This article ran on the front page of the University of Toledo's Independent Collegian 2 weeks before finals. Then, ironically, 1 week following this article ran, about 2 students in possession of a controlled substance (adderall) after getting the idea from the original article.
No, it's not. It is about the world not being inherently fair, it is about the playing field being tilted in manifold dimensions all at once and where some of us start in the minima, and others on the maxima, and others everywhere in between, it is about the right of the individual to attempt to navigate this interesting place we live in without some dumbass interfering because they're under the awesomely harmful illusion they are everyone else's mother.
That's fine for you; I wouldn't think of arguing with you about these choices you have made for yourself. You didn't ask for advice, nor am I under any obligation to offer any without such a request. More power to you for at least trying to figure out what will work for you. You should have the freedom to make this decision; I am arguing in your favor.
As long as you don't start telling me and the rest of the world what it is we must do, you're golden. And that is the point.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I stopped reading when the quoted "statistics" from Partnership for a Drug Free America. They use long discredited studies and studies with questionable methodology along with pulling numbers out of their butts to push an agenda.
It is an interesting subject. I just want an article with research. Not propaganda from a shill group.
The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer. - Edward R. Murrow
Er, not to be rude or anything, but this sounds stupid to me. In school I usually read books when I was bored. Mostly professional texts about software and electrical engineering. The remaining 30% of time I was reading fiction. Most of the stuff I read was in a foregin language (English or German); I'm Polish.
Even nowadays when I'm taking some advanced graduate level courses, I sometimes get bored. Then I read too.
I read all of Harry Potter while taking Mechanical Design of Manipulators and Robots and the subsequent Advanced sequel to the same. Some other time I was wildly studying Elasticity notes while taking Advanced Strength of Materials. I'm sorry for the poor professor lady who seemed to hate me for doing that. Pity that the course really covered a lot of Elasticity in an indirect manner, and the Elasticity was taught more to my liking. I sure infuriate some of the professors that way, but it's really their problem, not mine. I think I did fine in the classes that I took.
I don't think that disturbing others is a good thing, so I wouldn't think highly of a bored guy talking to someone, etc. But reading - c'mon, it doesn't hurt anyone (or so I hope).
Cheers, Kuba
I read an adhd article on slashdot about 3 years ago and read up a lot more after that. Went saw a clinical psychologist and registered in the 90th percentile on a lot of different assessments/surveys for adhd. My first day on Ritalin was like a light was suddenly turned on. Following conversations in a group setting is now possible. I can read a paragraph without having to start over ten times just to get through it. My programming and career have since taken off. I finally have a social life and a relationship with someone I love. Before Ritalin, it was like my mind was a porche with no tires hitting the road. Now I can execute and follow through on what I want to do in a given day. I've finally got a life outside work as I can get done easily what I'm tasked with. Before it was lots of weekends and late nights just to get by. Am I dependent on Ritalin? I'd probably be okay without it but so would a person who had their eye glasses taken away. It would just be do-able , just a lot crapier. In a lot of respects, its like the first half of the short story Flowers For Algernon. I've sinced switched to Adderall and things are even better. Here's hoping that I don't live the second half of the story...
This drug is used by the military because a major problem they have is keeping soldiers awake and alert when battles go on for days at a time.
I do wonder about its safety though. I find that if I go several days with inadequate sleep I am much more likely to catch a cold. So if I took modafinil I might feel fine after going 48 hours without any sleep but would I still be more likely to get sick? After all, we aren't consciously aware of the state of our immune systems.
Actually, I don't think it's that bad an example. The SAT and most standardized tests (like the LSAT) are time limited for a reason. With the LSAT, the test is designed specifically so you CAN'T finish all the questions unless you can read (and remember) with near photographic recognition. These tests are not just testing if you can get the right answer. It's wether you can budget your time, get the right answers, and complete the test. These are all parts of the result. Achieving results in a set amount of time is a critical metric in many fields. I agree with the GP that maybe this should be noted on the tests. I agree with all your statements regarding ADD and ritalin though (non-ADD users will react quite differently), but this issue goes beyond ritalin.
Of course in reality, these test scores don't have a shit to do with your skills or how successful you will be. Just how well you took that particular test that day.
I am all for good enhancements of all kinds especially mental enhancements with no or little side effect like Provigil. It is about time we got over the War on Some Drugs and the paternalistic feds telling people what they can and can't put in their bodies. If I can effectively work better and smarter for extended periods I can be way more productive and build more cool things in less time. What is not to like?
Thank you for an erudite poste. I appreciate the precise elocution in the service of cogent arguments.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Sorry for the cowardness. I work in IT, and there's no telling who could dig shit up.
Anyway, I just got out of college and was lucky enough to get my foot in the door at an IT company before graduation. I'm in MIS now. All through middle school, high school, and college, I was a slacker and a half. Missed my classes. Ignored them when I went. Only started studying a few hours in advance. That sort of thing. Mind you, it wasn't because I didn't care. I'd get into internal battles with myself that would last for hours trying to get myself to do something I knew I needed to. A couple of times it came to tears.
About three months ago, I got tired of it because of my new job responsibilities (I hold work on a far higher pedastal than school). I went to see a psychiatrist, and he prescribed me Adderall. Now, I've switched from skirting by on 35 hours a week to pushing 55-60 on some. I was immediately assigned to a lot of very interesting projects, and have been loving the pressure.
I know, I feel I'll get blasted for joining the rat race. But at this point in my life, I'm not burned out; I really love what I do. I spent 14 hours today at the office just fucking with some of the integration tools that Microsoft's coming out with (EPM, Sharepoint, Infopath, Office2k7). I could have never done this a year ago, and I'm learning so much, so fast, that *everyone* in my life has noticed. I'm 100% happier, and my life is finally going the way I want it to, because I'm doing something of value.
Just as every body is different, so is every mind. ADHD isn't bullshit, it's just overblown. Just as another commentor put it...there's a very big difference between an elderly person smoking pot to ease pain and two kids just fucking around and guzzling Cheez Whiz or what have you. Some need it, some don't. I used to want to listen to the detractors, and it might be the biggest regret of my life, looking back and realizing that years were lost due to something that could have been fixed with 30mg of a substance a day that doesn't cause any ill effects.
Hold your tongue and keep your criticisms for drunk drivers or crackheads. Some of us have work to do, and some of us need some help to do it. I don't particularly care if you think the brain is some magic box that couldn't possibly be affected by differing variables which we can't understand for at least the next decade or so. All I know is that before "psychopharm," I was on the fast track to being a cubicle monkey for the next 40 years or so. Next month, my business launches and I won't have time to watch people argue over things that doesn't affect them in the slightest.
I haven't seen any upmoderated comments about sleep.
Insomnia and/or Sleep Apnea leads to symptoms similar to AD(H)D. (People can have sleep problems in addition to their ADD)
Sleep Apnea is much more subtle than insomnia. Basically, as you slip into a deep sleep, your tongue relaxes & obstructs your breathing. Then your body 'wakes up' so that you don't suffocate, the net effect being that you don't spend any meaningful time getting restful sleep.
Not everyone with apnea is fat (though weight increases your risk), or snores like a chainsaw (though it is often an indicator). Even something as simple as learning to sleep on your side can have a massive effect on your quality of sleep, which in turn can do wonders for your waking hours.
Even a perfect diet won't compensate for nightly sleep deprivation.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Who shot who in the what, now?
Unless you have some legit brain problem, your better off just taking a nap everyday. Try Pizizz! http://www.pzizz.com/ It's great! Get a good light blocker for your eyes, whattaya call that? A blinder? Anyway, put that one, plug in some Pzizz nap sounds and let your brain go for a half hour. Make a habit out of this and it'll get you much further in the long run than brain drugs. And Yes I used to drug up to work more, but now I like Pzizz.
Actually, it was localroger.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
I thought Ritalin was for treating ADD in children, but it seems many people continue to take the drug well into adulthood, when it's supposedly not very effective for adults. Isn't this a sign of addiction (either physical or psychological)? Haven't some studies found the drug to be physically harmful?
I've never had the depression after taking my Adderall too often, then stopping. I just sleep for a long time, then everything's good again.
I can take it everyday for months, then just stop with no side effects.
That's because I (for the most part) take it as it prescribed (my doc says to take it as it's needed; sometimes, I do need to stay up until 4:00am finishing homework. I don't take it to stay awake, I take it to be able to concentrate on my work, the awakeness is a side effect, usually undesirable).
Even when I was in high school... the rich kids had tutors their parents paid for... I didn't. I kicked their butts anyways cause tutors don't help with laziness or intelligence...
Still I got bit in the ass when I had to take a 7:30 am Trig/Pre-Calc course cause my schedule was full with other important AP classes that didn't have alternates available... AND the 'teacher' was a college prof who decided to take a break and teach teens... well, she assigned reading material and course work at least, there was little to no teaching actually happening and while the rest of the class learned from their tutors, I having expected to actually learn something in class... ended up with a 60% at the end of the first quarter and just dropped the class rather than deal with that bullshit, which the teacher probably thought was preparing us for college coursework (I was still in 11th grade mind you)...
Moral of the story is that there is more than ten ways to skin a cat... one being performance enhancing drugs... another being paid designated hitters, aka tutors... which is perfectly legit in the real world as well...
Second moral is, where do you draw the line? What is a legitimate competitive advantage that should be applauded and what is a crutch that will end up costing your peers and fellows millions of dollars when you can't live up to the expectations they've hired you to meet.... especially when you've been cutting corners and pulling in expensive experts to do all the heavy lifting to get you there to begin with????
Will a drug taking, tutor taught professional be able to make muster when deadlines are tight and budgets are non-existent? Personally I love seeing golden employees with paper medals of honor burn up in flames when they can't hold up under fire... except when it's my project that was depending on them that is.... which is when I really feel cheated.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
As someone who once used this practice I can confirm two things: 1) Taking Adderall does NOT improve your performance in school or the workplace. Sure, you may be able to sit at the computer for 20 hours straight doing some simple UI coding but I guarantee that the quality of your code will not be as high as you THINK it is. Thats because the active ingredients in Adderall are 3 different types of amphetamines. Thats right, that shit gets you high, makes you euphoric and allows you to concentrate for long periods of time. The trade off however, is that it kills your creativity and ability to think in abstract terms. So the lesson here is, dont wait until the last minute to start your project and you wont need to pull 20 hour coding sessions ;)
2) This drug is just as addictive/debilitating as any other form of amphetamine. The downsides far outweigh the benefits and it will catch up to you eventually... just stick to coffee. trust me.
Read more - Stim Nation: If Ritalin Is Safe, Why Not Give It To All Kids?
I am the last "0.00001" one who eats yogurt instead of drinking coffee, you insensitive clod !
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
There's plenty of other sources of sugar beside refined sugar in normal food.
Fruits and such other contain non-refined sugars (which, btw, are a lot healthier than the refined sugars) that can be used instead of slow sugar.
A lot of vegetables contain slow-sugars (= starch, = sugar polymers) that can be broken into glucose.
Even if you remove not only refined sugars, but completly all forms of sugar from diet (which wasn't what the parent speaker was speaking about anyway) :
- Fats can be used as an alternate main source of energy.
- Some amino-acids (protein bricks) can be converted into glucose (for usage needing sugars).
- The brain can feed on the by-product junk of above reaction (ketonic).
If diabetic die when they lack intra-cellular sugars that's because :
- Glycose remain extra-cellular, and thus bring electolytic and osmotic problem (among other : the diabetic patient keep peeing and dehydrate. hence the name of the disease).
- The brain isn't insuline dependant and therefor keeps feeding on sugar, and doesn't feed on (and remove from blood flow) from the junk that glycose-less cells produce, therefor they remain in blood and they are toxic.
If you come to think : there are a lot of animal that mostly survive during winter only on their stores of body fat.
Humans have survived for thousands of years before they invented a industrial way to pour tons of refined sugar into every piece of junk food they eat (...and in fact, we aren't very much adapted to it, hence most health problems).
Some humans even continue today : as long as you provide enough proteins (to account for the amino-acids-converted-into-sugar) and vitamins (specially anti-oxydant), you can go without eating any sugar. Some bodybuilder indeed do it in order to burn fat.
What is absolutely needed in food are vitamins, essential amino acids (those who can be synthetised) and essential fatty acid (mostly found in vegetal oil).
Everything else (sugar, slow-sugars, synthetisable amino-acids, animal fat) are optionnal and one can be synthetised or circumvented using the others.
(Note: I have a degree in medecine and, unless I'm completly dumb and forgot something crucial that I've learned, this fact could be relied on. But I'm still human and may have forgotten something)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
If I have a project that needs to get done in a short period of time and I really need to stay focused, caffine is not always good enough. So I will get some adderall, dexadrine, or cocaine. I've been responsible with my use so far, but other friends of mine have had some problems. Even when adderall is prescribed it can still be addictive. Definately not something for everyone.
Stimulants are *not* psychopharmaceuticals, dude.
One of the great breakthroughs in treating ADD/ADHD was the realization that these conditions require simple stimulants (caffeine will do, but is probably not the least harmful in the long run) instead of pumping the kids full of actual psychopharmaceuticals.
And "testing" for these ? Oh please. You'd have to test for caffeine, too, and do you realize how many beverages contain caffeine nowadays ? Cola, Mountain Dew, Coffee, Tea,
You make some assumptions that aren't true:
First, you seem to think that I want soft drugs and meds outlawed or strictly controlled so that they are only used under medical supervision. That is incorrect. I generally support efforts to legalize "recreational drugs" under the presumption that the government refrains from trying to help people who are negatively affected by their own drug abuse. I support these efforts because I believe that the illegality is high on the list why young people try soft drugs: "The man wants to keep me from using my full potential / from having fun! I'll do it anyway!"
Second, every generation thinks that the rules don't apply to them when they're young. Every generation has had their "safe" drug. None of these drugs were really safe. It's only common sense to assume that todays "safe" drugs aren't safe either. Even something as seemingly innocuous as caffeine has overlooked side effects: If you regularly consume caffeine, you develop a light addiction: Your body becomes dependent on that dose and you will feel sleepy without it. As someone who regularly drank caffeinated drinks at one time I can tell you from experience that the desired effect becomes continuously harder to achieve and the downside becomes more apparent over time. I've since stopped drinking caffeinated drinks and after a time of being unusually sleepy, I feel much better without caffeine. Today a cup of coffee really keeps me awake. Back then I needed caffeine just to achieve a normal cycle of sleeping and being awake. When you use a drug to keep you awake longer, you pay that time back later. That's not me reciting propaganda, that's me speaking from personal experience with one of the legal stimulants.
Third, apparently you think I support the "be the best" mantra. Far from it. But you can't seriously deny that it's the impression that most young people must get from the way society treats the best. We, as a society, not necessarily myself, make everything into a competition, even education. We reward people for being better than others, not for doing their personal best. That's dangerous and unhealthy, not just because it drives people to drug abuse.
Fourth, you seem to believe that certain drugs enable you to learn more or become more intelligent. I'd like to see scientific backing of this attitude. As far as I can tell, that's only how they work when you are off balance, IOW ill. You can't however equate a low IQ with an illness. People are different and the potential for great or even average cognitive performance isn't in everyone. Drugs can at best temporarily increase your performance, but it'll always swing back into the negative for compensation. Yes, regarding new drugs that is a matter of belief, but extrapolating from past experiences with safe drugs, it only makes sense.
I know people who have used and currently do use drugs, and I can't honestly say that it does even one of them any good overall.
As a european who spend a few months in USA a couple of years ago I can confirm :
every processed food I encountered was loaded with tons of sugar (corn syrup, mostly) and tasted shit. It seem that every last industrial food maker tries to dilutes the raw products using as cutting agent as much sugar as possible.
I mean : what the hell has sugar to do into sausages ? And why every sauce (for salad, for meat, for pasta) contains sugar ?
In a way similar to nicotine, sugar isn't that much a strong psycho-active, as a strong addictive, and its strongest effects are mostly diminishing the symptoms of craving (in sugar case : compensate the effects of the insuline that the body released in consenquences of the previous dose).
The worst part of that is the fact that this leads to Type II diabetis, which is insuline-resistant :
people still produce insuline but their body doesn't respond to it (the receptors on cell surface are down-regulated).
It is much harder to treat than Type I diabetis (Damaged pancreas and no more insuline produced).
It's a real PITA where you have to find a balance between diet (hard to make patient comply) and drugs (which enhance the effect of insuline or brings more insuline and works for some time but then again you run into down-regulation problems).
Also all, apart from Diabetis, this also increases the risks of obesity :
when we eat, the body detects that we have a good quantity of nutrient available in blood, and starts building fat stores.
Eating too much refined sugar increases the levels of insuline dramatically and stimulate very strongly the production of body fat.
But once the food has (very quickly) been absorbed by cell and converted into fats, the body isn't goind to burn them at first hand. It tries to keep stored fat for later time (of fasting) and instead relies on sugar (either eaten or realesed into blood stream from stored slow-sugars).
The individual feels hungry again, and eats immediatly (
Fruits, honey (different sugar form than refined sugar), and starch (polymer) don't lead to such increased levels of insuline and don't have such strong effects.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Why's this offtopic?
Well I start each day with a cup of mud. Probably doesn't give me any edge - just brings me up to the level I'd be at anyway if I never became a coffee junkie.
Couldn't be also the other way around ? That all this "Sorry it turns out sugar isn't that bad after all" is a myth created to serve as an excuse to enable indutrial food maker to use tons of sugar as a cutting agent to dilute more expensive raw products ?
Anyway, it's also proven that people prefer sweet taste to sour taste (from an evolutionnary point of view it makes sense because most of the sweet thing encountered into nature happen to be edible, and sour stuff usually aren't).
This preferrence is much more pronounced in children and they become very easily and very strongly attracted to sweets and start rejecting less sweetened food.
This is well known and used by soda makers to hook children on them (they'll start preferring soda instead of plain water because there's more sugar inside. Once they grow up, maybe they'll start drinking the diet variants, but will be still attracted by the same sodas - this phenomenon was even mentioned in documentaries like "super-size me").
This is also used by some baby food makers (so the baby will like the food and the mother will be happy thinking it's good product because baby eats it and will buy more. The problem is that the children is hooked on synthetic sweet food and is less attracted to normal healthy non-sweet food : he won't like vegetables later).
On a more personnal level, I had an ex-girlfriend who, as a baby was hospitalised along with her mother. There, the nurse to keep the baby silent and happy gave her syrup-loaded pacifier. Her mother complained that after that it was harder to feed her normal food because she always wanted the syrup. Nowaday she still prefer consuming very sweetened product (at least here it's Europe and she gets enough exercise to compensate and she isn't overweighted thanks to her bycicle).
The simple fact that you not only ate sugar abundantly, but also frequently (didn't stop it for a couple of weeks) may also be a manifestation of this sugar addiction.
So although the "screaming monkey children" you mention is clearly an exageration (as most of the other example given in propaganda of that era), there is problem related to eating too much refined sugar, including addiction, and with it at-least restlessness in small children until the sugar-craving has been satisfied. And in adults, the sugar doesn't act as much as a stimulant as a relieving agent for the symptoms of sugar-craving (tired, hungry and sleepy).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
If I remember, back in the day Timothy Leary said something to the effect that "It's the drugs they _want_ you to take that you should be suspicious of".
There are better ways to learn to focus, even during menial tasks! Take up a martial art or yoga or something. The latter when you get beyond the movements and poses explicitely covers these mental functions - though you'll get a lot from just following the physical side. Martial arts also require a lot of focus and develop these skills.
I take it almost every day and it works fantastically well. I feel great, am super productive, and get more energy during workouts to boot. I highly recommend it.
thats all well and sounds good, but consider this:
... unreal. because of the mania I felt pretty much invincible (read dangerous) and eventually crashed and had to be hospitalised
bipolar disorder tends to begin to show itself during our late teens and early twenties.
stimulants like adderol, etc tend to act like a catalyst and can cause severe mania in someone with a bipolar condition (which they may not yet know about).
in my case I had a perscription to adderol. I didn't sleep (for more than a few hours) for a period of three weeks... my grades increased at first, but then took a steep dive as my manic episode reached its peak... at that point it became quite dangerous for me; because of my severe sleep deprevation things got really
this of course ended that semester... in the end most of the grades came through as not passing, or as a W (later cleared) and it took more than a year to get things back in balance (read: the whole year felt like a hangover... everything was incredibly and undendingly boring... and it took a long time to catch up academically.
consider that I had no idea that I had this... consider that I was taking this as was prescribed by a doctor. I was an excellent student, and my because of this type of medication my academic career took a severe hit.
all I can say is be careful. if you mess around with that sort of thing your taking a huge gamble, especially if one isn't taking the proper dosage... it could be deadly
I teach high school, and I used to teach middle school. From my experience of kids, there are a great many with a hard time paying attention. That's about all you can say about them. There may be some certain kids whose condition is so extreme that they need medication. I've actually had some of those kids where medication really makes a difference.
The temptation is to think that anyone who bears some similarity to him will also benefit from medication. In people's minds the definition of ADHD becomes broader and broader. If there weren't a name for lack of attention span (which isn't really ADHD as I understand it), people would just deal with kids the way they are. I have lots of students now who have some kind of "attention problem" but I don't think all of them need to be medicated.
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
Pseudoephedrine (Sudafed) and caffeine is all you need.
This is one of the biggest lies of drug addicts: that they can monitor their usage.
In the middle of your clarion call to the rest of us you forgot something: YOU ARE A DRUG ADDICT.
Drug addicts all believe they can self-monitor. They believe they can responsibly adjust their dosage and avoid all the pitfalls that everyone else succumb to. Drug addiction distorts one's perceptions which is why the toothless, diseased crack-head thinks they are doing just as well as you in monitoring their usage.
Just because you are not currently destroying your life does not change the fact that you are a drug addict. Stop fooling yourself and get some help.
I'm not saying I wasn't distracting the rest of the class. (Though, as they were all coloring in Honors English, I fail to see how it mattered.) I loved all subjects except History. They simply didn't challenge me.
I wasn't alone. We had an Honors Physics class. We had a group of 4 of us that would play cards the ENTIRE CLASS every day. If there was a lab that was graded, 1 of us would do the lab for the other 3 and they'd pull a 4th from the class to cover the missing person. We'd copy the lab and all get A's, every time. We never studied. We never did anything that wasn't graded. We all got A's.
Did the teacher freak out about this? No, actually, he ignored it. He continued to teach the rest of the class and everyone ignored us like we weren't there.
The only thing I really learned in that class all year was how to play Bridge. (Lousy game. It plays itself if everyone knows the rules. Boring.)
The only excitement was the day that we had a substitute. Unable to comprehend that this was possible, he damanded we not play cards. Ryan laughed out loud in his face. Ryan was actually surprised when he got written up. So we didn't play cards that period. Instead, we did something much, much worse. We asked questions. Lots of them. Every once in a while, the sub would get the answer wrong and we'd correct him. I wonder whatever happened to him.
I've got tons of these stories that happened to me, and they all come down to 1 thing: Don't let A students get bored. You'll regret it. Most of the time the teacher isn't really at fault... They have to cover a certain curriculum and they don't have TIME to add anything to it. They have to spend their time teacher the kids that didn't just understand instantly. (Or worse, read the book at home and already understood.) But the school should deal with these problems.
In elementary school, we had a program that took us out of class 1 day a week. We had to play catch-up the other 4 days in class and we learned new (and usually interesting) things the 5th day. We didn't have time left to be bored.
In middle school, we had a program that took 1 class period every day, so we didn't miss any class. That didn't work quite as well, but at least we looked forward to school every day, instead of dreading the hours and hours of pointless boredom.
We had 'honors' classes in high school, as well as 'dual enrollment' with the college, but they just weren't enough. For one thing, they were designed to taken by the majority of kids, instead of the minority that was bored.
I used to think homeschooling was the answer, but then I met quite a few people that were homeschooled and realized that was worse. You parents have to spend as much time with you as all your teachers combined and you lose the diversity of knowledge.
In short, schools know they need programs for the students who can't keep up. They don't seem to realize they also need programs for those who are already ahead.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
I'm completely tweaked on that shit...
You bring up a good point which I'll just try to expand on with my own $0.02.
That is why does our society consider some types of things done for enhancement bad?
Many people take vitamins because they believe that it makes them healthier, smarter, better physically, etc... Some argue this is ok because vitamins are "natural". Well, surprise, most vitamins sold are manufactured chemicals and not natual extracts. Some are even byproducts of industtrial waste. Exercise changes the body and the brain's chemistry not unlike drugs.
Yet, we say steroids are bad. If you really look at the steroid issue though, the majority of the problems occured from taking them in excessive doses. Its further complicated because of the new legal status. Many athletes turn to either veterinary steroids while the wealthy ones turn to designer drugs cooked up in somebody's basement. Both of these are obviously less safe than drugs designed for humans. This gets further complicated because it hurts research into saving the lives of Cancer/AIDS patients by using steroids to counter the wasting effects of these diseases and their treatments.
Then for brain enhancement. Its aparently ok to provoke diabetes drinking gallons of MountainDew/RedBull but bad to take Ritalin/Adderall.
I think what we need to do is just stop and be honest with ourselves. Everybody is concerned with enhancing themselves in one form or another. Whether Jenny Craig, marathon addicts, smart drug enthusiasts, body builders, chess champions, or whatever. And the market is further proof that they are going to do it, look at what the best selling drugs are, Viagra, Ritatlin, Steroids, PhenPhen. Lets just drop these non-sensical stigmas, and do some honest research and allow people to do (what they are going to do anyway) their enhancements in a safe, well informed, manner. Because lets face it, the legally obtainable means for many of these things are much more dangerous than the pharmaceutical counterparts.
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
> YOU ARE A DRUG ADDICT.
Maybe he is, but maybe he isn't.
Simple logic error really. Your premise, "Drug addicts all believe they can self-monitor.", may be close to truth, at least close enough to use as a society level generalization. However, if set A is a subset of set B, it does not mean set B is a subset of set A. Just because he thinks he self-monitors, does not make him an addict. In effect, your logic error says "any recurring user is an addict". However, from other little clues in his post I tend to lean towards thinking this particular guy may indeed be addicted, but that is just my opinion with little to back it up.
I've know many people back in college who _self-monitored_, very much as this guy describes. I'd say roughly 10 people. A couple I lost track of, but of the ones I still know only one sunk into self destruction. The others, except one, basicly grew out of any usage except caffiene. That other one still does a quasi-scheduled monthly recreational party thing, and an annual binge-week-in-Mexico thing, but shows no other signs of self destruction.
and tell me how different they are.
"YOU ARE A DRUG ADDICT."
Ok. well im a food and sleep addict too then i guess. Im also a sex addict (company permitting). Theres nothing inherently wrong with habitual private use of drugs. I dont understand what self righteous people get out of telling people that they are fucked. Doing drugs is his business, and if he doesnt see it as a problem, well then is it?
Just because you have a problem with some behavior for yourself does not mean that other people dont have sufficiant control to handle it. The only problem with drugs comes from their scarcity and illegality. Once you fix those problems, people stealing cars to flip for meth will not be an issue. Most people dont want to be saved from themselves anyways. thats for the weak.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
Maybe many atrocities and civilian killings can be linked to the drugs given our front line troops.
I would ask them but then they would have to kill me.
I wrote Visual Basic code for years, and I took Adderall twice a day. I (or rather my employment status) probably couldn't have survived without it.
Unless you took Adderall under the advice of a physician, with a prescription and after a thorough examination by that physician then I would've strongly encourage you to seek councilling. It is not normal to require drugs of any kind to cope with daily life like that, and really only a professional can help you determine if you really need the assistence of psychoactive drugs or some other form of therapy (or a combination fo both). Personally, if I felt so overwhelmed by the volume and/or menial nature of my work I'd look for another job. The economy is still pretty bouyant and skilled workers can afford to be selective.
There's a common misunderstanding about stimulants like Adderall and Ritalin. They don't make you smarter or faster. They make you able to focus, and they make typically miserable tasks interesting.
The REAL intention of these drugs is to help people who cannot focus on ANYTHING able to focus on tasks of everyday life. When taken by normally-functioning people these drugs narrow focus so tightly that they can rob the mind of creativity and critical thinking. Improper use of drugs like Ritalin and Adderall by people who do not need them can potentially damage academic and professional careers. I've seen first hand how Ritalin has turned some bright lights into dim bulbs (and I'm not even talking about what the side effects did--that's even another story). Sure, whe you're drugged up you are a well-bechaved student that can ace a multiple-choice exam, but what is the point if you turn into a bland, stick-in-the-mud, shadow of the person you once were?
This is anecdotal, but I know a lot of people who took unprescribed Adderall in college. Most of them have never touched any other illicit drugs, but they find the substance useful, and it doesn't seem to cause any harm.
I've seen what happens when Ritalin and Addreall are abused--in this case, by teachers who, either due to laziness or being overworked, used them for behaviour control purposes with hard-to-manage children. When I was young, such students would be called "attention seekers" or simply hyperactive, and were dealt with through everything from discipline to changing diets. Nowadays, a figity kid is labelled with ADHD and some teachers ask (no--TELL) the parents they need some kind of pill. And guess what? Behaviour improves, overall grades go up a little bit--and they smile less, draw less colourful pictures, write less-inspiring stories, are quieter and less sociable.
Someone close to me was mis-diagnosed with ADHD and labelled "learning disabled" largely becasue she was a "difficult student". Ritalin was the newest "wonder drug" and thus she spent some time taking what would now be considered a higher-than-normal dose. She didn't become a better student--the impact on her grades was positive but marginal. She became a well-behaved but lethargic, depressed young lady. She lost weight, had skin and hair reactions (hives/eczema/hair loss), started having headaches, etc. Thankfully Ritalin is not habit forming, however it seems that a few of the physical side effects were permanent.
Years later, other "experts" have told her she NEVER had ADHD and that she exhibited characteristics of dyslexia--her behaviour was due to frustration over not being able to learn well visually. Due to this diagnosis she slid through school and barely graduated, and not she faces the prospect of upgrading her education in her 30s. So don't tell me that since it isn't an illicit recreational drug and it isn't addictive that causes no harm. Improperly used, these drugs cause every bit as much harm as heroin or cocaine.
Equating the need for sleep with the need for drugs just shows that logic is not something you're going to recognize.
It's not just his business. Being a drug addict means he is prone to irresponsible behavior that will impact other people. Addiction (to anything) means that you are no longer in control of what you do. The addiction is going to drive your actions.
I am not interested in "saving" people from themselves. I am however interested in saving OTHER people from them. If he doesn't want help and wants to destroy himself I would have no problem with it, except the impact is never restricted to just the addicted invididual. It affects his family, his friends and the people around him. The affects are emotional as well as physical. Drugs (even high-quality) can have incredibly destructive side affects.
The effects of drug abuse go far beyond thieving to support the habit. You are so deeply buried in your little world that there's nothing I can post, no matter how well-supported by facts and common-sense that will get through to you. Intelligence does not protect you or anyone else from becoming addicted to a drug.
"the sugar high thing is a World War 2 myth"
Um, no, it's not a "myth". I have 3 kids and they have been "raised correctly", if we give them sugar before their bedtime (they go to bed at 9 p.m.) it is a lot harder to settle them down and get them in bed as opposed to no sugar.
Because of this we do not allow them to have deserts or other sugary treats (soda, lollipops, whatever) at least 2 hours before bedtime.
We are with our kids pretty much every waking moment of their lives (no child care, no nannies, etc) even at school my wife works at the same school they go to and knows all of the teachers so she gets first hand reports of their behavior, being this close to them we have a very good idea of what constitutes "normal" behavior and what is sugar induced "screaming monkey children".
There is definately a "rush" they experience from eating foods/drinks with high sugar content.
*lol* wow, the media certainly hasn't gotten to you. I most certainly am not an addict, I am most certainly able to self monitor, and you most certainly are a closed minded fool who cannot see past preconceptions, and by your ability to judge with so little information, I'd guess a christian too.
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
You have to keep in mind though that while that may have been one of the original driving forces of the culture, it quickly attracted those were simply looking for an escape. Only a small percentage of those doing psychedelic drugs at the time were actually looking to increase their mental ability. And the event that turned many people on to hallucinogenic drugs for the first time was Ken Kesey's Acid Tests, which had very little to do with mental or spiritual enlightenment and much more with just messing with people.
... I'm irritated that people abuse these drugs. I seriously need them to function, and I don't want to be lumped in with people who are cheating when I go to the prescription counter and get "the look" from a pharmacist.
People nowadays can buy a diagnosis of ADHD. Instead of asking you to believe my doctor, I'll ask you to believe my significant others. Every girlfriend I've ever had has asked me what I am like off of my medication, and I indulge them by going off of it for a few days. My jitteriness makes them feel seasick, I can't understand what they are saying because my train of thought is too loud, and I am prone to doing weird, uncontrollable, tourettes-like things. Every single one has asked me to go back onto my meds -- for their piece of mind.
I've had experience with all of these drugs. My experience (and don't think I want you to take this as gospel):
Adderall is evil. It is poison. It gets you high, and your tolerance will grow rapidly. It is expensive, and takes an enormous toll on your body. The withdrawal symptoms are so damned uncomfortable -- you feel really stupid, tired, and you have this restless sleep. You will sleep for days after a solid jaunt of adderall usage.
Ritalin is less intense. Taking the normal dosage of it results in a slightly up feeling, and an unfortunate crash later on. Your tolerance for it grows and it messes with your sleep. Can be bad news for people with addiction problems.
Straterra: In all seriousness, it causes you to have something called "urinary retention." That means your bladder fills to an uncomfortable size unexpectedly because your "need to pee" feeling is surpressed. Urinating is kind of painful and the result smells.
Never used provigil.
I personally use slow-release Ritalin because it does not make me feel high. I want to take this as a medication for my uncontrollable shaking, twitching, and fleeting mind (imagine that someone has hooked up a random-number generator to a remote control and aimed it at a 1000 channel television. That is what my mind looks like when I am not medicated.)
I sincerely hope that these drugs do not become too common. I don't want to see my peers getting addicted to Adderall, nor do I want to compete at an insanely high level. I already have to take ADHD drugs to get to the normal competition level, I don't want to see that level rise yet again.
You actually know nothing about this big bad "drugs" word do you? You call me an addict, accuse me of being more prone to irresponsible behaviour than the average person, yet I haven't even named any of the chemicals I will take. But I suppose to you, they're all the same huh? Doesn't matter the molecule, the interactions, the receptor sites it binds to, a drugs a drugs a dirty dirty word, huh? You're so incredibly uneducated, it's scary.
Oh, and I don't steal, for drugs or otherwise.
Do you steal to support your computer gaming addiction?
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
I would have to say that the only drug my code soaked mind enjoys is the occasional bowl of marijuana and for those fun camping trips in the rockes in lovely colorado mushrooms make for a good time.
I find it hard to believe kids think they need these kinds of drugs to do good on tests... what kind of edge do you need to regurgitate and fill in bubbles on a scantron? hell there are only 4 to 5 choices!
-Boycot shampoo! demand real poo!
Is this stuff available in the UK? I'm interested in trying it.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I just finished my comprehensive school. Educational systems of different countries have always been a bit confusing for me to compare, but that's the nine years of compulsory education you've got to go through in here Finland.
Well, I was an exceptionally good student for the first few years - yeah, it was basically just learning to draw letters and numbers and stuff, but I had learned to read several years before my school started, had gathered a substantial body of random knowledge and was clearly the brightest in my class. The rating system here is on a scale of 4 to 10, my grades were mostly 9 or 10 for the whole comprehensive school. For the first six years I wasn't so bored, even though weren't really many new things. I didn't consider myself exceptional either - even though I could get full points without reading from an exam, and somebody else received half that much and hadn't seen daylight in days.
Then I went to the next level of school, the last three years of comprehensive school, and at some point it occurred to me that I had wasted seven years and learned pretty much nothing - or at least everything I had learned I could have learned in less than half the time. I had rarely answered to teacher's questions in classes before, but now stopped that altogether, and spent most of my lessons chatting with other people, though rarely so loudly that it truly distracted the class.
I completely stopped reading to the exams, but my results didn't drop a bit. Yet, since I spent most of my lessons doing something else than exercises - ours were so easy I usually finished them in minutes, but I never bothered to ask for more, since I knew they wouldn't help me a bit - some teachers decided that I had some kind of an "attitude problem" that was never really explained to me. Well, in the end it wasn't so bad for me, though. Since I still got good results from exams, no teacher could drop my grades that much, and my average grade was still more than 9, which is "excellent", and I'll have no trouble entering a gymnasium.
But it was still a terrible waste of time. There were many teachers who seriously had nothing to teach me, but interpreted from my behaviour that I was a bit of a "rebel" or a "gangster". There are obviously some in every class, in ours too, but I doubt they get as good grades though.. So they proceeded to tell me all sorts of nice things such as that I was a lazy bastard and had these attitude problems, and I wasn't that nice to them then too.
A few teachers, such as my history teacher, did have something, and, miraculously, they never accused me of bad behaviour. The one who taught me native language didn't have anything, but she also realised that, I was just bored and already knew everything, and she apologised that she couldn't help it. Received 10 from her.
Teachers like that are a drop in the sand, though. I guess most of them had to work night and day for their grades, so they can not understand - or accept - someone being smarter than them. And because of our awesome educational system, those who do are somewhat powerless - Finland's system just is designed to treat everyone far too equally, even though it's obvious that everyone isn't equal. One MP even wrote a column in which he suggested that students with ADHD and such should be kept in normal classes in the name of equality. Well, guess everyone can deduce that the guy's an asshole and his words plain bullshit. There's help for students who are left behind, but none at all for those who are ahead. There WAS a class for mathematically gifted people in my former school - but they decided to save some money, fire some teachers and whoops, no such anymore. But we got brand new computers, whoo! Everyone used them to play Quake.
They say Finland's competitiveness is mostly hurt - yeah, because money and economy is all anyone cares about - by the fact that there aren't enough super-talented persons in the country. Well, big surprise, if the potential ones are made to bore to death and never recognised.
"However, from other little clues in his post I tend to lean towards thinking this particular guy may indeed be addicted"
No, in fact I've cut some out completely, and cut down on pretty much everything else (although I have drank a lil more caffeine than usual the past week). What you're likely picking up on is not a "need for drugs", but a passion for them, for the difference they have made in my life, and difference I have seen them make in so many other peoples lives. I've seen them bring people together, and open peoples minds. As many bad hypothetical stories most people have heard about drugs effect on people, I can give real stories about real people who have had their lives changed for the better.
I have learnt a lot through experimenting with various drugs (it's always been curiosity driven), combined the "field tests" with my study of the neurosciences, learnt a lot about the mind and the memory (even applied some of what I've learnt to software development), and had a lot of fun along the way.
More people use drugs recreationally than you know. They don't get into fights, or steal to support it, or any of the other things commonly associated with "drugs" (which are in fact associated with the highly addictive drugs, such as crack and smack, which *aren't* used in the same way, for the same reasons, or with the same attitude). It doesn't rip lives apart or do the damage so many people have been led to believe, and I hate the fact that so many people have been so mislead, and lump people like myself together with others such as crack/smack dealers/users, because they don't understand how there can be any difference. There is. And it's huge. I feel sorry that they will never have the kind of amazing experiences that I have had, seen things as incredible as I have, and I'm extremely annoyed that my such activities are illegal because people don't understand them (and thus fear them).
Please try and be open minded. You'll find that people can be more open with you.
Alex
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
> While there are many valid functions for government, protecting people from their own stupidity or ignorance shouldn't be one of them.
But protecting *us* from *your* stupidity *is* one of them...
Glutamate is one of the substances mentioned, and Glutamate Restriction Diets are (just) starting to be used to stop epilepsy.
Unfortunately most seizures aren't noticed - they happen during sleep, are very often partial (don't usually affect movement), temporal lobe seizures, and you won't likely know they're there. Most people with epilepsy are never diagnosed, for that reason. However, you may notice verbal difficulties or substantial memory problems the next day - which won't help with exams.
Good luck kids, don't forget to write - if your motor skills survive. Remember, brain damage is really just in your head.
Analogies aren't logically sound anyway, so it's pointless to quibble about them. I really shouldn't use them, either.
What I meant to assert is that sex is orders of magnitude less important to health than diet or exercise. If I am correct, then it is not a significant hindrance to someone's overall health if they are completely non-functioning sexually. AFAIK, unices (the people) weren't known for dying young. If you can point to a reliable source saying they were, I'll have to reconsider my position.
vi ~/.emacs # I'm probably going to Hell for this.
So, as somebody that actually has ADD and has taken stimulants to treat it, I have to say that while taking the stuff improves my concentration, it turns my memory to mush and accellerates brainfry. If I were taking an exam today, I would NOT take the drug.
No. And, actually, if the body's production of and reaction to insulin is normal, glucose will actually make you sleepy for a while due to the increased release of insulin following the glucose intake. Personally, I occasionally use a glass of uncaffeinated soda to help me wind down and go to sleep.
However, if you're in the US, and most "sugary" things actually contain fructose (as in "high fructose corn syrup"), things might be different.
Decaf soda to induce sleep? Try a glass of red wine at room temperature...