3 ms·

I'm thinking of asking my doctor to put me on Provigil because I have Shift Work Disorder due to the nature of my jobs (one in the early morning, one at late ni

I'm thinking of asking my doctor to put me on Provigil because I have Shift Work Disorder due to the nature of my jobs (one in the early morning, one at late night). Also, I followed the link at the bottom of the article, which stated that the possible tax of using Provigil is the loss of creative thoughts (or distractions). I may be the only one who thinks this, but I think that's also an upside. I consider myself a very creative person but I rarely commit any of my ideas into reality, so I perceive 99% of them as distraction and harmful to my focus. Now if I'm reading this right, Provigil supresses the distractions in the brain, which allows you to the ability to clear up the backlog of creative ideas you've thought up (I assume this because Hari says that in an evening, he read a book cover to cover and finished an article he's been mulling over in the last couple of months.) I don't know if Provigil permanently stifles your chances to have creative thoughts after you stop taking it though, but it would be nice to be uncreative for a while and just get down to the dull grunt works and actually produce results. Just my two cents.

goodside 16y ago
I'm usually a fan of Jonah Lehrer's writing, but his reasoning on this point just doesn't follow. He writes: "However, the same thoughts that can be such annoying interruptions are also the engine of creativity, since they allow us to come up with new connections between previously unrelated ideas. (This might be why schizotypal subjects score higher on tests of creativity. They are less able to ignore those distracting thoughts, which largely arise from the right hemisphere.)" This is a testable hypothesis: Give low doses of amphetamines to schizophrenics and see if they get better or worse. This has been done, and they clearly get worse. In fact, you can induce schizophrenic symptoms (that is, psychosis) in normal healthy adults by giving them sufficient amounts of amphetamines. Furthermore, the effect of amphetamines is known to be reduced, if not eliminated, by simultaneously administering dopamine antagonists, which are typically used for the treatment of schizophrenia. All of this adds up to amphetamines being promoters of creativity (whatever it means, so long as it's something associated with schizophrenia) rather than inhibitors.

goodside 16y ago

I'm usually a fan of Jonah Lehrer's writing, but his reasoning on this point just doesn't follow. He writes: "However, the same thoughts that can be such annoying interruptions are also the engine of creativity, since they allow us to come up with new connections between previously unrelated ideas. (This might be why schizotypal subjects score higher on tests of creativity. They are less able to ignore those distracting thoughts, which largely arise from the right hemisphere.)" This is a testable hypothesis: Give low doses of amphetamines to schizophrenics and see if they get better or worse. This has been done, and they clearly get worse. In fact, you can induce schizophrenic symptoms (that is, psychosis) in normal healthy adults by giving them sufficient amounts of amphetamines. Furthermore, the effect of amphetamines is known to be reduced, if not eliminated, by simultaneously administering dopamine antagonists, which are typically used for the treatment of schizophrenia. All of this adds up to amphetamines being promoters of creativity (whatever it means, so long as it's something associated with schizophrenia) rather than inhibitors.