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Microdosing: Improving performance enhancement in intelligence analysis (2019) [pdf]
- xvector 6y agoOnly a matter of time before we are expected to take drugs to be better at our jobs.
- jariel 6y agoUnfortunately, a lot of people already are. Long-haul truck drivers have an underbelly of 5-hour-energy drink and barbiturate use.
- pizza 6y agoTo quote Peep Show: “hey, Corrigan, you’re management, how about 200 lattes?”
- IIAOPSW 6y agoWe're all on caffeine already and no one is clutching pearls over it. How is taking harder drugs any different other than in effectiveness?
- lallysingh 6y agoCaffeine wears off quickly, and seems to be good for you. I go off cold turkey once in a while, and the worst I've ever gotten is a week of mild headaches.
- saagarjha 6y agoWhether caffeine is good for you or not seems to be largely inconclusive, similarly to the question of whether caffeine is bad for you.
- tayo42 6y agocaffeine can be bad for you. There's direct issues it causes like heartburn which will wear down your esophagus.
- nine_k 6y agoCaffeine forms an addiction in a few weeks, and requires increasing doses just to keep you normal. What's good for you are other parts of the coffee bean. I avoid taking caffeine with any regularity, let alone daily. This is why I can get a full kick from a cup when I need it.
- sdenton4 6y agoHmm, I've kept a pretty steady dose of coffee across years without needing such an increase over time. A day with zero coffee is, indeed, not fun. But we live in the future and coffee is really available everywhere always. And even if the supply chains crash, it'll be a bad week and then I'll be fine...
- dwighttk 6y agoHuh. I like a cup of coffee in the morning but I’ve never experienced the “I need a cup of coffee or it’s gonna be a long day” feeling people talk about. (Well now that I think of it I may have thought that a few times (in ~20years) but it was usually after a short night of sleep or something like that.)
- lallysingh 6y agoI don't have to increase dosing unless I let it mess up my sleep. Taking my last drink at the office and stopping for the rest of the day works.
- coldcode 6y agoI drink one cup in the morning, occasionally a second after lunch. Increasing doses only works up to a point, your brain has only so much capacity to support caffeine; anything beyond that just affects the rest of your body but does nothing to the brain.
- phobosanomaly 6y agoMuch like nicotine, the addiction seems to be highly dependent on the person. I can drink coffee for weeks and weeks, and the stop abruptly and suffer no ill effects. Same thing with oral nicotine pouches. I can use them for weeks and weeks, and then stop cold turkey and have zero craving or desire. I know people who do the same and the withdrawal absolutely wrecks them.
- colordrops 6y agoThere's a reason they are called "hard" drugs.
- justatdotin 6y agoyep, the people who use that term are trying to convince you of something.
- d0100 6y agoWhenever threads mention caffeine I am compelled to share that caffeine has no effect whatsoever on me. To my sadness, it feels like I'm excluded from a common universal community and performance advantage
- NOGDP 6y agoTry crack.
- mrlala 6y agoPretty much the same here.. I drink a lot of coffee just to have a hot drink, but I can drink coffee at night and it doesn't seem to do anything. Maybe a little, but I hardly notice.
- sn41 6y agoI had the same issue due to excessive coffee drinking. Stopping cold for 2-3 weeks helps to bring back some of the effectiveness later. But any regular dose even after this is rapidly tolerance-building.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- tehlike 6y agoSame here, I imagine this might be due to me drinking coke zero in huge quantities, and that somehow making me indifferent to caffeine even when i am not drinking coke.
- stickfigure 6y agoCaffeine has a serious effect on me - it makes me jittery and screws up my sleep. I gave up caffeine in the late 80s - to my happiness, actually. I consider it a competitive advantage.
- carnitas 6y agoAs a counterpoint whenever I have caffeine I am maniacal focused on something and turn into an asshole for at least 12 hours. It warps me as a human.
- lm28469 6y agoTrue, I drink a beer a day so why not snort a line of coke instead, they're both drugs, right ? Or heroin for that matter, they're all the same thing obviously
- chrisseaton 6y agoNo job expects you to take caffeine though does it? (Except in the coffee industry maybe.)
- calvano915 6y agoIts a question of where the line is drawn. Some, or many perhaps, would prefer a world where they aren't forced to alter their brain chemistry to the degree that a powerful pharmaceutical does. Caffeine, while substantial, does not have this same degree of power, whether positive or negative. There are reasons why one is a controlled substance and the other freely available OTC.
- bagacrap 6y agothose reasons are primarily political
- ikurei 6y agoI've never seen any requirement, or even social pressure, to use caffeine at work. Plenty of people in all offices I've worked at didn't take coffee, or only very ocasionally. It was widespread, but no expected of you. I wouldn't mind some coleagues taking some drugs, as long as they didn't make them very antisocial or generally bad to be around. But I would very much mind an employer expecting me to take something.
- snarfy 6y agoThe coffee is always free.
- aquajet 6y agoThere's a web comic about something like this: https://www.powernapcomic.com/ https://www.powernapcomic.com/. The story is set in a world where the majority of people take a drug that eliminates the need for sleep, but the main character is allergic? to it so suffers a "handicap" for being what we would call normal.
- hombre_fatal 6y agoGreat one. I was looking for that the other week but could not for the life of me google it, having forgotten its name.
- adamsea 6y agoLove it - only half-joking. Take advantage of a large population of healthy young men under close medical supervision and government access to good LSD in order to run a good experiment to see if micro dosing has positive cognitive effects.
- op03 6y agoDomination and obedience based hierarchical system + positive cognitive effects = ?
- mancerayder 6y agoBrave New World
- for_i_in_range 6y agoExactly. I find it impressive Aldous Huxley wrote it when WW2 was beginning. Before LSD, Prozac, and the Mental Health Crisis.
- winocm 6y agoMan, the mental health crisis is just bad for certain people. I basically got thrown away by the professional mental system because I'm classically "untreatable" and got left to fend for my own. :(
- carlmr 6y agoDrugs in the military were a thing back then as well: https://time.com/5752114/nazi-military-drugs/ https://time.com/5752114/nazi-military-drugs/
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- klodolph 6y agoProbably will turn out better than project MKUltra. Probably. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra#LSD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra#LSD
- Waterluvian 6y agoWhen I was a child and teen I was a hyperactive, unstimulated, bored, D- student. Ritalin drastically changed that and I was getting A's and teachers described me as a whole different person. I would too: it made me antisocial and jittery and basically robbed me of my humanity. Since then I've found drug-free strategies to manage my intellectual/social Jekyll and Hyde. The idea of performance enhancing drugs making their way into the workplace arena scares me a lot.
- curious_fella1 6y agoCan you share some of these strategies?
- metiscus 6y agoFor me, my add has been made much better with aggressive weight training. I started doing "Starting Strength" and transitioned into the Texas method but three pretty heavy workouts a week really helps. Normally I feel like I see the world through the narrow end of a funnel. When I get done with a big workout, somehow for the next day or so my brain is chilled out and I can concentrate again. After two days or so I start to regress a bit but another bout of lifting resets me. I only really need medicine during periods of bad health or incredible personal stress now.
- clolege 6y agoInteresting, I've recently started committing to a hard 10-minute workout each day of the week, and it's been helping me focus through my ADD a lot better too. I feel so much more alive. I've also picked up meditating 10 minutes a day and that's been helping as well, but I don't think as much.
- metiscus 6y agoI've got a theory about why it works. Basically you're tiring out parts of your brain when you exercise and activating others. Somehow that regulates the neurotransmitters at the heart of add for a while. If I only lightly exercise, I don't get the same effects. The workout has to be strenuous and I need to feel like I worked both body and mind (finishing that last rep under heavy load takes willpower and concentration). I bet that HIIT could be as effective as weights for me because the curative part seems to come from exhaustion and exercise of will. Meditation may or may not be as mentally strenuous, I am not really familiar with it.
- pmoriarty 6y agoIt would be interesting to see if microdosing LSD would lead to any ethical objections to war or violence on the part of the Marines.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- yellowapple 6y agoI mean, I'm pretty sure the tendency for LSD users to ethically object to war or other offensive violence is exactly why the US decided it should be treated as more dangerous than crystal meth (or perfectly legal drugs like alcohol and tobacco and caffeine) despite there being precisely zero evidence of such danger.
- tayo42 6y agoThe history of psychedelics include a ton of irresponsible use in the 60s which lead to reactionary banning before there was clear medical uses. Research was happening but nothing conclusive. Meth has established medical uses. There's no conspiracy to prevent people from questioning wars, we do that without drugs anyway.
- pmoriarty 6y ago"Research was happening but nothing conclusive" I've read that before it was made illegal LSD was the most studied pharmaceutical compound in the world, with literally thousands of papers written on it. There were clearly medical uses, and it was being used medically. Whether the research was "conclusive" is a matter of opinion. Pretty much all of the psychedelic researchers I've read or heard interviews with (which is a lot) were completely convinced of its effectiveness. But that didn't matter to the administrators and lawmakers, who were much more interested in the headlines than the science.
- tayo42 6y agoI just went to double check my self quickly. It never was an official medicine, therapy with it was still experimental for alcoholism. It was having success but turned into a recreational drug that scared people so it all got banned. The same thing happened with mdma and crack later on. The penalties were excessive and reactionary to recreational use. https://www.theguardian.com/science/neurophilosophy/2014/sep/02/psychedelic-psychiatry https://www.theguardian.com/science/neurophilosophy/2014/sep... This was the end of 50s early 60s, seems we still did stuff like lobotomies. Idk if I can blame law makers for not taking psychiatry seriously at the time.
- monksy 6y agoWhat's wrong with full dosing off hours? There's got to be a balence where you're not relying on a drug to optimize productivity.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jtsiskin 6y agoTheir proposed evaluation strategy is interesting - playing Go. And they cited Googles AI research using Go as reason behind it.
- gbh444g 6y agoThey'd better let participants solve Go problems (aka tsumegos): much quicker and much more measurable.
- gbh444g 6y agoA few years later, those US marines will be quite surprised to learn that they are barred for life from possessing firearms.
- analyte123 6y agoThis is not true. US law only bans “current users” of drugs from possessing firearms. On top of this, the statute requires you to be “actively engaged” in the use to be counted which means the prosecutor has to piece together a paper trail of arrests, transactions, or testimony to prove this.
- bbarn 6y agoThe question on the 4473 says "are you an unlawful user of.." That requires both currency (are you...) and breaking a law (unlawful). Please don't spread misinformation.
- phobosanomaly 6y agoYou're definitely right, and I'm not trying to make a statement about your personality or anything (I'm almost 100% sure you didn't intend it this way), but the phrase "please don't spread misinformation" comes across as so smug and pompous. Every time I see someone post it I immediately want to read them the long list of all the dumb shit they've ever said in their life (we all got a really, really long list). analyte123 also corrected the guy, but I read it and instead thought, 'huh, learned something new today.'
- Zenbit_UX 6y agoThe chart on page 3 suggests cannabis has roughly the same harm to others as tabacco? And steroids present harm to other individuals? I'd love to hear these arguments.
- klodolph 6y agoThat's a citation from a different study. The original study was "Drug harms in the UK: a multicriteria decision analysis" is based on a survey of experts, if I recall correctly, and the breakdown of the reasoning is in that study. The major contributing factors for "harm to others" for cannabis, over tobacco, are: - "Loss of relationships: Extent of loss of relationship with family and friends" - "Crime: Extent to which the use of a drug involves or leads to an increase in volume of acquisitive crime (beyond the use-of-drug act) directly or indirectly (at the population level, not the individual level)" - "Family adversities: Extent to which the use of a drug causes family adversities—eg, family breakdown, economic wellbeing, emotional wellbeing, future prospects of children, child neglect"
- peteretep 6y agoI find it somewhat interesting that the Marine Corps Gazette has just taken a chart from The Economist without any attribution
- mas3god 6y agoIts ok to work sobee
- sali0 6y agoAs a marine, this is just unbelievable to see in the Marine Corps Gazette. What a strange timeline.
- ipnon 6y agoI always had the impression that the armed forces have a hands off approach to drugs, while its the federal government that puts the foot down.
- remarkEon 6y agoI think it depends. If there’s emerging research, which there is with micro dosing, that shows a potential tactical advantage for a particular substance certain groups within DoD will probably lean into it and try to get an exception. For things like marijuana or cocaine, not gonna happen, it’ll still get treated like alcohol influence even if it is removed from Federal scheduling. That said there’s been plenty of confusion in the past with workout supplements causing positive drug test results for Amphetamines. It’s an administrative problem without an easy solution that I can think of.
- okareaman 6y agoI sorted many of my trauma issues with nitrous oxide. Nitrous mitigated much of the PTSD anxiety so I could look at the issues objectively.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- blueblimp 6y agoThat purported Einstein quotation set off some red flags: “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it." Seems that he never said it, if this Quora answer is to be believed (and it seems reasonable): https://www.quora.com/Einstein-said-that-you-cannot-solve-a-problem-from-the-same-level-of-consciousness-that-created-it-What-did-he-mean-with-it-Can-you-use-a-concrete-example/answer/Paul-Mainwood https://www.quora.com/Einstein-said-that-you-cannot-solve-a-....
- russholmes 6y agoThe British Marines tried this in Operation Moneybags. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WscQIp3Kac https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WscQIp3Kac
- scottlocklin 6y agoIt's an open secret in the military that psychedelic use is fairly widespread. Unlike cocaine and weed, you can't really test for it. Kind of sad to see something like this published by the Marines though; basically content free "muh microdosing." I mean, does this even mean anything? "Microdoses cause cortical functions to be more fluid, leading researchers to believe that psychedelics may help certain brain areas work in increas- ingly flexible and expansive ways." If ever there was a meme elixir designed to punch holes in your pre-frontal cortex, microdosing is it. There's basically zero evidence such substances enhance anything. In my experience, and in my observations of others, it makes you feel like you're enhancing your noggin, but real world performance definitely, sometimes dramatically suffers. Modafinil and amphetamines probably enhance performance on grinding tasks. Nature, concentration and lack of sleep definitely enhance performance on creative tasks. Caffeine works too, and nicotine and the racetams for keeping the cobwebs out and the acetylcholine high. Microdoses, yeah, nerd "muh microdoses" articles ain't gonna cut it for me: I've seen the effects and will stick with coffee and snus. Hell, simply looking at scientific or technological output pre and post civilizational psychedelic use: you can see it hasn't had any obvious benefit. People did more amazing things back when day drinking was common.
- bigpoppa 6y agoThis reads like entries in erowid.com. Y'all drug addicts.
- dr_dshiv 6y agoIs this for real or an April fool's joke?
- chairmanwow1 6y agoThreads like this always make think that I think most of human society has the wrong frame of mind about performance enhancement. I think the "stock" performance of the human brain / body should not be blindly accepted. I want to outgrow my biological limitations and be a more effective version of myself.