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I've been on adderall since I was 17. I'm 32 now. Almost more of my life has been spent on it than off it. I've been productive in a variety of ways. Some exam

I've been on adderall since I was 17. I'm 32 now. Almost more of my life has been spent on it than off it. I've been productive in a variety of ways. Some examples are listed on my patreon: https://www.patreon.com/shawwn https://www.patreon.com/shawwn but I feel silly bragging about comparatively minor accomplishments in ML. But I know for a fact that without adderall, I wouldn't have done a damn thing. I've tried for a few months. Shrugged and went back. Her flying to Nevada is completely understandable. CA pharmacies are some of the worst in terms of this medicine. I've experienced it firsthand. Is it so hard to believe that I'd probably be a potsmoker working at a grocery store if I hadn't had adderall? Not that there's anything wrong with potsmoking nor working at a grocery store, but it's not ML. I advise empathy. Try. And I wish I could put it more eloquently why it's worthwhile. Her missing work for a few ays is equal to a coworker getting sick for a few days. Your reaction is why so many keep their lives private. I myself have gone from Missouri to IL to fill a script. A few hours' drive is nothing. Fun road trip. Most recently, a person (who wasn't me) found themselves in CA unable to fill their script because their doctor wasn't licensed in CA. They literally just tell you "Sorry, can't do it." What are you supposed to do? It's easy to say "Well, just deal with it." And we do. Let me cast a sleeping spell on you and see how well you do. You're getting verryyy sleeeppyy... you'll have a rough week.

ArnoVW 6y ago
This sums up perfectly the issue with mental health problems. Burn-out. Depression. ADHD. Being 'old'. You cut slack for someone with a broken leg or a blind cane. But unless you've been there yourself, you don't understand what's going on in the head of someone else. So the natural thing to do is to decide "they're slacking".
- djeiasbsbo 6y ago
  Exactly. I think one of the problems is that "invisible" handicaps do not invoke an emotional response. In fact it is even worse because e.g. irrational behaviour of a mentally ill person often invokes a negative response. This results in stigmatisation, which is inherently counter productive. A general mindset change is needed to address this on a larger scale. Specifically, in education there should be much more of a focus on ethics than there is now. This is hard because it can be in contrast to "profit-focused" education where e.g. the main goal of studying a field is to get a well paying job at a big company. But of course there are many factors there such as how a university is funded and can keep running. Sadly, it doesn't look like the general population is ready for these discussions because as a human race, we cannot even get over more known/discussed problems such as racism.
kamera 6y ago
I reached a level where i wanted to learn, prepared everything, my desk, materials, made a plan and i knew why i had to learn and honestly i like to learn new things. When you sit in front of your clean and prepared desk with over 20 and you sit there and hold a pen and you look at the book and nothing happens and you just can't and give up after 15 or 20 minutes starring at it, i realized thats how it is. I don't know where this blockage comes from, i know it took me quite a while to see this barrier so clearly but i know now this was always here. Ritalin just solved this problem. I had a small wall to break through with Ritalin, easy and then i just did it.
billjings 6y ago
But I know for a fact that without adderall, I wouldn't have done a damn thing. I've tried for a few months. Shrugged and went back. There's an underlying assumption here: that the medication either makes things better, or makes things worse. It may have different effects on different axes, but it has those effects while it is active, and they go away once the drug is metabolized. This way of looking at things makes the logic of using many psychoactive medications inescapable from a school and career perspective (Maybe less so from a social point of view). But it's not the only way to look at things. What if, for the sake of argument, we posited that that the drug has not one, but two kinds of effects: 1. Constant effects, like we are assuming right now, and 2. Derivative effects. Effects that change not how good you are at work today, but how good you are tomorrow. This could be either an adaptation to the medication, or a suppressive effect the medication has on learning. If that is so, then we would expect type 2 effects to dominate in the long run, but type 1 effects to dominate in the short run. At any given two week window taking the medication is a huge win (because of type 1 effects), but on a longer time horizon of perhaps two or three years the prognosis could be better off the medication (because of type 2 effects). The devil is in the details, ofc: do type 2 effects exist? How large are they? Is there a crossover point? Is it two years, twenty years, or two hundred years? My personal experience with stimulant medications is that type 2 effects do exist, and that the crossover is something like two years. That means that getting off them requires one to put up with two years of being worse off than one was on the medication.
- yowlingcat 6y ago
  > type 2 effects do exist, and that the crossover is something like two years. That means that getting off them requires one to put up with two years of being worse off than one was on the medication. Very nice, nuanced analysis and sadly one I can relate to almost 100%. It was really hard to let go of it but I had to for the sake of my sanity. The side effects were getting too dramatic and long-term to ignore.
- HPsquared 6y ago
  Some "type 2" effects are also positive. For example, getting one's life organised, gaining skills, etc etc.
hombre_fatal 6y ago
I started amphetamine at age 20 and I'm, coincidentally enough, also 32. I happened to have a good friend on Adderall in university, and he let me try a pill one day. In one day I went from thinking that I was just a lazy, low-achieving individual that would always zombie through life, that—like my dad said—just didn't have a fire lit under my ass, and I went to realizing I was just a low dose pill away from achieving all I wanted. (I would eventually tell my dad that I did feel like I had a fire lit under my ass before I found amphetamine, I just had felt like it was engulfing me and I couldn't muster to move.) I live abroad in South America right now and I fly back every three months to refill my script, that's how much it has improved my life. Though I just took a year-long break from the drug. Btw, I switched from Adderall XR to Vyvanse about half way through my amphetamine career. Definitely was an upgrade: a more gradual curve and ~no come-down. Anyways, the talk of amphetamine and ADHD (whatever that loosely understood umbrella word includes) is a lot like the talk of opioid painkillers: yes, there's abuse, but the conversation can't just stop there.
- chairmanwow1 6y ago
  I agree about Vyvanse. It's a much less intense physical experience and has all the mental benefits afforded by its predecessor.

ArnoVW 6y ago

This sums up perfectly the issue with mental health problems. Burn-out. Depression. ADHD. Being 'old'. You cut slack for someone with a broken leg or a blind cane. But unless you've been there yourself, you don't understand what's going on in the head of someone else. So the natural thing to do is to decide "they're slacking".

djeiasbsbo 6y ago
Exactly. I think one of the problems is that "invisible" handicaps do not invoke an emotional response. In fact it is even worse because e.g. irrational behaviour of a mentally ill person often invokes a negative response. This results in stigmatisation, which is inherently counter productive. A general mindset change is needed to address this on a larger scale. Specifically, in education there should be much more of a focus on ethics than there is now. This is hard because it can be in contrast to "profit-focused" education where e.g. the main goal of studying a field is to get a well paying job at a big company. But of course there are many factors there such as how a university is funded and can keep running. Sadly, it doesn't look like the general population is ready for these discussions because as a human race, we cannot even get over more known/discussed problems such as racism.

kamera 6y ago

I reached a level where i wanted to learn, prepared everything, my desk, materials, made a plan and i knew why i had to learn and honestly i like to learn new things. When you sit in front of your clean and prepared desk with over 20 and you sit there and hold a pen and you look at the book and nothing happens and you just can't and give up after 15 or 20 minutes starring at it, i realized thats how it is. I don't know where this blockage comes from, i know it took me quite a while to see this barrier so clearly but i know now this was always here. Ritalin just solved this problem. I had a small wall to break through with Ritalin, easy and then i just did it.

billjings 6y ago

But I know for a fact that without adderall, I wouldn't have done a damn thing. I've tried for a few months. Shrugged and went back. There's an underlying assumption here: that the medication either makes things better, or makes things worse. It may have different effects on different axes, but it has those effects while it is active, and they go away once the drug is metabolized. This way of looking at things makes the logic of using many psychoactive medications inescapable from a school and career perspective (Maybe less so from a social point of view). But it's not the only way to look at things. What if, for the sake of argument, we posited that that the drug has not one, but two kinds of effects: 1. Constant effects, like we are assuming right now, and 2. Derivative effects. Effects that change not how good you are at work today, but how good you are tomorrow. This could be either an adaptation to the medication, or a suppressive effect the medication has on learning. If that is so, then we would expect type 2 effects to dominate in the long run, but type 1 effects to dominate in the short run. At any given two week window taking the medication is a huge win (because of type 1 effects), but on a longer time horizon of perhaps two or three years the prognosis could be better off the medication (because of type 2 effects). The devil is in the details, ofc: do type 2 effects exist? How large are they? Is there a crossover point? Is it two years, twenty years, or two hundred years? My personal experience with stimulant medications is that type 2 effects do exist, and that the crossover is something like two years. That means that getting off them requires one to put up with two years of being worse off than one was on the medication.

yowlingcat 6y ago
> type 2 effects do exist, and that the crossover is something like two years. That means that getting off them requires one to put up with two years of being worse off than one was on the medication. Very nice, nuanced analysis and sadly one I can relate to almost 100%. It was really hard to let go of it but I had to for the sake of my sanity. The side effects were getting too dramatic and long-term to ignore.
HPsquared 6y ago
Some "type 2" effects are also positive. For example, getting one's life organised, gaining skills, etc etc.

hombre_fatal 6y ago

I started amphetamine at age 20 and I'm, coincidentally enough, also 32. I happened to have a good friend on Adderall in university, and he let me try a pill one day. In one day I went from thinking that I was just a lazy, low-achieving individual that would always zombie through life, that—like my dad said—just didn't have a fire lit under my ass, and I went to realizing I was just a low dose pill away from achieving all I wanted. (I would eventually tell my dad that I did feel like I had a fire lit under my ass before I found amphetamine, I just had felt like it was engulfing me and I couldn't muster to move.) I live abroad in South America right now and I fly back every three months to refill my script, that's how much it has improved my life. Though I just took a year-long break from the drug. Btw, I switched from Adderall XR to Vyvanse about half way through my amphetamine career. Definitely was an upgrade: a more gradual curve and ~no come-down. Anyways, the talk of amphetamine and ADHD (whatever that loosely understood umbrella word includes) is a lot like the talk of opioid painkillers: yes, there's abuse, but the conversation can't just stop there.

chairmanwow1 6y ago
I agree about Vyvanse. It's a much less intense physical experience and has all the mental benefits afforded by its predecessor.