7 ms·
The Hidden Cost of Smart Drugs (2008)
- Unseelie 16y agoAs a lifelong ADHD child, I do agree. Take a pill, write a report for 8 hours. But attempt a poem, a piece of story, and nothing happens. Attempt a daydream...nothing. You're very focused, and that means you struggle to talk to anyone...because they're not into your topic. Focus makes you boring.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- googler 16y agoI'm told that's why you have to balance it out with weed.
- geoffc 16y agoInteresting enough I find a hang over unleashes my creativity.
- rjurney 16y agoI think hangovers lower inhibitions just like being drunk does.
- rictic 16y agoAgreed. I've also found that going without sleep for >24 hours has some similar effects. It's worth doing every once in a while just to experience the altered state.
- capedape 16y agoThis could be due to GABA rebound.
- Alex3917 16y agoIt's one thing to use psychoactive drugs on occasion if you're eating healthfully, exercising, getting enough sleep, in good mental health, and using only one drug at a time. I can't even imagine what mixing weed and amphetamines on a daily basis would do to a person. That sounds like a terrible, terrible idea. As soon as drug use becomes banal you are really asking for trouble.
- eru 16y agoI tend to agree. On the other hand, people seem quite happy taking caffeine and alcohol and daily or near-daily basis. Even mixing the two. So I guess your statement doesn't hold in general?
- Alex3917 16y agoFirst, you can't really judge a person's happiness just by looking at them. Second, you can't really cheat your biology in the long run, because your brain will always compensate for any psychoactive drug you consume. Take dopamine for example. If you take a drug that increases the amount of dopamine in your brain, then your brain will decrease its density of dopamine receptors to compensate. If you take a drug that decreases the amount of dopamine in your brain, then the density of your dopamine receptors will increase. If you take a drug that decreases the uptake ability of your dopamine receptors, the amount of dopamine your brain produces will increase. And if you increase the ability of your receptors to bind to dopamine, the amount of dopamine in your brain will decrease. The production/reception system for every psychoactive drug works the same way. Most people who drink coffee or alcohol on a daily basis are only staving off the low level depression caused by using the substance. (Because if you take a drug that increases the amount of the a neurotransmitter, then your receptor density will for that neurotransmitter will decease. Then once you stop taking that drug then you get all sorts of problems because suddenly there isn't enough of that neurotransmitter in your brain because of your low level of receptors.) Now I'm not trying to suggest drugs are bad. Just the opposite; we're literally made out of drugs. Everything we do from the moment we get out of bed until we go to sleep is designed to get us high in some way or another. It's literally how we survive and reproduce, and because we're essentially the latest iteration in a 500 million year old line of psychopathic paint huffers our brains are extraordinarily well evolved to prevent us from fucking with them. The only reason why big pharma is even allowed to release their drugs is because the FDA only makes them show they are safe and effective for six weeks. Virtually every longterm study on every pharma drug shows that you are worse off in the long run than if you'd never taken it at all, but the government and pharma industry go to extraordinary lengths to hide that information from both doctors and consumers. No matter what you do, in the long run you can't win. You can't even break even. And the worst part of the low level depression induced by something like caffeine or alcohol is that you can't even notice it. Gradually colors will be less bright, jokes will be less funny, emotions will be duller, etc. But you'll never even realize it because it's so gradual and subtle when you're just using daily at these low levels. Especially with alcohol, because not only do you have the normal receptor adaption, but the alcohol itself also causes the bacteria in your gut to produce inflammatory compounds. If you Google for both alcohol + inflammation, and also cytokine theory of depression, it should be pretty obvious why even small amounts of daily alcohol are really bad news for your mental health. (Although good for your heart and a few other things, so it's a trade off as usual.)
- rjurney 16y agoI'm an ADHD OG myself, and take adderall to this day, but my experience is a bit different. Without adderall (and usually coffee) I can organize, email, hustle and promote like nobody's business... but I cannot program, finish anything or do much but bounce between 2-5 minute tasks in 30 second intervals. You can't implement metaclustering or write a cohesive paper in 30 second intervals. It's not that I'm not creative on tasks requiring more focus, it's that they are not even accessible to me without the drug, and that these 30 second bouts of activity feel like they are rewarding even if they don't amount to anything. With adderall I'm creative on a longer attention window, and can work for rewards without very fast payoff.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- tman 16y agoThe blog post gives the example of how more distractable old people can outperform less distractable young people on a specially contrived mental test. Similarly, if you put a bunch of junk for someone to trip over on the way to the bathroom, it would be the old person who tripped over it all that would remember it on his return. But in what real-world mental challenges do old people have the advantage over the young? In mathematics, for example, you're an old man at 30. Except for Erdős the meth-addict, of course.
- Psyonic 16y agoErdos took amphetamines (speed, Adderall, etc), not methamphetamines. They are related drugs, but meth is much stronger and dangerous.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- tman 16y agoCase of exaggeration for comedic effect.
- Psyonic 16y agoGotcha. I'm not a mathematician, but your comment made me feel like I'm running out of time to make a difference, and I'm only 24. It also gave me a bit of confidence that I can. Anyway, better get to it!
- Dove 16y agoMathematics is good at making young people feel old. Take Galois, for instance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galois http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galois). Solved one of the major mathematical problems of his time. Founded a major branch of abstract algebra (seriously -- in a three quarter grad level course, you spend about a quarter on it). Died at 20.
- joe_the_user 16y ago
- madair 16y agoShort version of this blog entry: I heard someone say somewhere once that it seemed to lower their creativity and it totally makes sense doesn't it!!!!
- metamemetics 16y agoRegardless of his lack of scientific method, I would agree that most stimulants do decrease creativity to some degree. However, some nootropics that enhance utilization of acetylcholine DO enhance creativity, specifically piracetam and aniracetam. My problem with the article is mis-titling it "smart drugs" if it is only about Provigil. The wikipedia nootropic article has almost everything you would want to know: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nootropic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nootropic
- justin_vanw 16y agoSo you would like to complain that the article is unscientific, but counter with snake oil?
- silentbicycle 16y agoHis complaint (and one I share) is that most blog posts about nootropics are actually about stimulants, while there are actually several nootropics that are well-studied, reasonably safe, and probably effective * , but since they don't get you wired, they're apparently too boring to mention. * though my stance on this is that you're better off actually getting enough sleep, eating well, taking it easy on caffeine and alcohol, and then seeing if you're still fixated on smart drugs. Piracetam is probably the most benign, though.
- justin_vanw 16y agoSince you apparently already modded me down for disagreeing with me, would you care to back up your nonsense? I would love to see a link to a reputable scientific journal which demonstrated that "some nootropics that enhance utilization of acetylcholine DO enhance creativity, specifically piracetam and aniracetam". If you can't come up with one, would you like to explain the whole 'probably effective'?
- endlessvoid94 16y agoHow did this make it onto a science blog? "It only makes sense..." is the start to many failures in our understanding. Wtf?
- billswift 16y agoUnfortunately, I have noticed before that a lot of stuff on scienceblogs.com isn't very scientific, it's more than a bit of a grab-bag.
- sliverstorm 16y agoThat's not exactly that great of a cost. Just use it when it's appropriate. "Hidden Cost" implies a real danger, particularly a long term impact, and this article has no such dangers to present.
- justin_vanw 16y ago"relied on crushed Ritalin" Yea, people crush Ritalin to get high, because it speeds absorption. Also, 'his friends' did this? Is he really that gutless that he can't own up to taking a few pills in college? I can say that I have taken Ritalin with a prescription, and at appropriate doses I didn't have any such loss of creativity. Ritalin causes a release of dopamine, which makes things more interesting (it also acts as a more general stimulant). You feel wide awake and things seem interesting, that was my entire experience. When Ritalin wears off you basically feel crappy, as you do with any old school stimulant. Provigil, of course, is not Ritalin, they act in almost completely different ways and are basically not comparable. Provigil is not very effective at preventing distractions, it has a tiny effect on dopamine. Provigil wakes you up so that you don't feel sleepy, which is about the extent of it. Usually feeling wide awake puts you in a generally good mood. It is hard to get work done when you are fighting sleepyness. So in that sense, you do accomplish more while taking it, since you are feeling refreshed and able to tackle things. The downside is that it is easy to forget that you still need to rest the same amount, and the effects of lack of sleep are not changed at all (if you stay up a long time on provigil, you don't feel tired, but you are still impaired by the lack of sleep just the same).
- Desireco 16y agoThere is always someone who wants to kill the fun :). Seriously, let us have some and see for ourselves.
- silentbicycle 16y agoTalking about nootropics is one of the recurring HN threads. (Next up? Probably polyphasic sleep.) See also: (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1211959 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1211959)