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I'm against drug prohibition. I'm also against telling people they have a medical disorder and need to take a recreational drug for it. And damn right Adderall

by AJ007 15y ago

I'm against drug prohibition. I'm also against telling people they have a medical disorder and need to take a recreational drug for it. And damn right Adderall is a recreational drug, it makes stuff that is boring fun. I've also watched people working while using it, they are easily distracted and then focus 100% of their attention on the distraction. Makes for a good illusion of productivity.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
phillmv 15y ago
I think a lot of people, for either environment or genetic reasons, just have crappy brain chemistry for succeeding in our modern, deep-focus oriented world. Back in the day, you work on the farm, you chat with people, you do your regular business. You didn't have to sit still in a large box for 70% of the day, and so it wasn't such a big deal if you were a little "light headed". I have a wee cousin who has ADHD and she's a problem child from hell. We know this 'cos her father was also a problem child from hell. She literally has an immense problem sitting still. Once she takes her meds though… it's hard to describe the feeling I had when I realized she had spent the last half an hour quietly colouring a book. So yeah. Some people pop it to do all nighters; for a lot of other people it's necessary in order for them to achieve the neuronormativity expected of them in say, an office job or 12 years of mandatory schooling.
- jonhendry 15y ago
  "in order for them to achieve the neuronormativity expected of them in say, an office job or 12 years of mandatory schooling." And there are a lot of fields a person might want to enter, entirely on their own initiative (not teacher-imposed), that inherently require you to spend a lot of time doing 'boring' or repetitive things. And if you don't, you'll fail. Or give up painting/piano/whatever early out of frustration.
- ramblerman 15y ago
  "a problem child from hell" It's not unnatural for kids to be all over the place, and subsequently require a lot of parental energy. I've always seen this as a drug for the parent's more so than for the kids, specially at such a young age.
joshklein 15y ago
I'm sorry, but this sounds like telling someone with clinical depression to just cheer up. There's a real chemical difference between regular-lack-of-focus and ADD. It's not the fault of real sufferers that faux sufferers cloud the diagnosis. Regarding focusing attention on a distraction; that is an executive dysfunction disorder, not an attention deficit disorder. One can have both, and adderall would not address the former at all.
- ramblerman 15y ago
  I wonder what people did before we had all the fancy names though. I certainly feel for people who have real chemical imbalances that lead to a different perception of the world. But psychology is not a science. It's extremely subjective.
  - mistercow 15y ago
    >I wonder what people did before we had all the fancy names though. They suffered, just like people with schizophrenia did back when we believed in visions and demonic possession. >But psychology is not a science. It's extremely subjective. This is about psychiatry, not psychology. Psychiatry is absolutely a science. (And so is psychology, albeit a tricky one.)
juiceandjuice 15y ago
That's pretty easy to say if you don't have ADHD and only anecdotal evidence and no real metrics. "non-recreational" drugs work for me as well, but the side effects are much worse than "recreational" drugs. I take concerta with bupropion.
anigbrowl 15y ago
And damn right Adderall is a recreational drug, it makes stuff that is boring fun. As a prescribed user of Adderall, I don't agree. The fact that it can be abused doesn't make it a recreational drug, any more than the fact that cocaine can be abused invalidates its use as a clinical anesthetic. With ADHD, the problem is not necessarily inability to focus: indeed, many people with ADHD are capable of hyperfocus and have no difficulty 'pulling an all-nighter.' The problem is that achieving this hyperfocus requires minimizing external distractions to an abnormal (and often impractical) degree. The all-nighter is a good example itself; it may be a lot easier to work through the quiet of the night but there are social, psychological, and physiological costs to doing that all the time. Likewise, working in an office or in a particular location for extended periods during critical projects can be very manageable and productive, but may require attenuating familial or emotional relationships during the period in question. Most people need to perform multiple roles in multiple every day, e.g. parent, homemaker, employee, manager, spouse etc. etc.. It's normal to give total focus to some roles some of the time, but one can't do that constantly without creating serious life imbalances, with negative consequences for both oneself and the people one is connected to. For people with ADHD the mental cost of focus-switching seems to be much higher, because doing so requires constant re-contextualization. Imagine looking at the world through a pair of binoculars or a telephoto lens on a camera. You can see a great deal of detail this way, but shifting your view by more than a few degrees requires re-orienting your view around the new object of attention. With an optical device you can move it away, look at the wider picture, and easily establish your new point of focus. But if you didn't have that option, then re-orienting oneself would be more time-consuming. If your point of view were being shifted about by external forces on a regular basis, it would be problematic. Likewise, navigating a ship or following a map is simple in principle, but changing weather conditions or inaccuracies on the map can make the task considerably more difficult. My experience of using Adderall is not that it makes dull activities fun or effortless, but more that it provides a relatively consistent mental reference point against which one can calibrate one's model of external priorities. In programming terms, it's like the difference between having pointers and having to use global variables.
- tedmiston 15y ago
  "For people with ADHD the mental cost of focus-switching seems to be much higher, because doing so requires constant re-contextualization. Imagine looking at the world through a pair of binoculars or a telephoto lens on a camera." Spot on. I've tried to draw comparisons before to ADHD about what I can see with / without my glasses being extremely nearsighted. If something's close enough to my face, I can see it very well. If it's not, finding that thing is hopeless. In fact, I can see tiny details that most people go without noticing like: single-pixel oddities in font rendering or anti-aliasing, and I am so bothered by 60 Hz refresh rates on monitors that I'm unable to use them.
mistercow 15y ago
>I'm also against telling people they have a medical disorder and need to take a recreational drug for it. Why? Do you not believe medical disorders exist, or do you just not think that people should be told when they have them? > And damn right Adderall is a recreational drug So? DXM is a recreational drug, and it is also an effective cough suppressant. Caffeine is a recreational drug and it's also an effective alertness aid. Cannabis is a recreational drug and is also an effective analgesic, helps in the treatment of glaucoma, and relieves nausea. That something can be used recreationally is irrelevant to its medical utility.

by AJ007 15y ago

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

phillmv 15y ago

I think a lot of people, for either environment or genetic reasons, just have crappy brain chemistry for succeeding in our modern, deep-focus oriented world. Back in the day, you work on the farm, you chat with people, you do your regular business. You didn't have to sit still in a large box for 70% of the day, and so it wasn't such a big deal if you were a little "light headed". I have a wee cousin who has ADHD and she's a problem child from hell. We know this 'cos her father was also a problem child from hell. She literally has an immense problem sitting still. Once she takes her meds though… it's hard to describe the feeling I had when I realized she had spent the last half an hour quietly colouring a book. So yeah. Some people pop it to do all nighters; for a lot of other people it's necessary in order for them to achieve the neuronormativity expected of them in say, an office job or 12 years of mandatory schooling.

jonhendry 15y ago
"in order for them to achieve the neuronormativity expected of them in say, an office job or 12 years of mandatory schooling." And there are a lot of fields a person might want to enter, entirely on their own initiative (not teacher-imposed), that inherently require you to spend a lot of time doing 'boring' or repetitive things. And if you don't, you'll fail. Or give up painting/piano/whatever early out of frustration.
ramblerman 15y ago
"a problem child from hell" It's not unnatural for kids to be all over the place, and subsequently require a lot of parental energy. I've always seen this as a drug for the parent's more so than for the kids, specially at such a young age.

joshklein 15y ago

I'm sorry, but this sounds like telling someone with clinical depression to just cheer up. There's a real chemical difference between regular-lack-of-focus and ADD. It's not the fault of real sufferers that faux sufferers cloud the diagnosis. Regarding focusing attention on a distraction; that is an executive dysfunction disorder, not an attention deficit disorder. One can have both, and adderall would not address the former at all.

ramblerman 15y ago
I wonder what people did before we had all the fancy names though. I certainly feel for people who have real chemical imbalances that lead to a different perception of the world. But psychology is not a science. It's extremely subjective.
- mistercow 15y ago
  >I wonder what people did before we had all the fancy names though. They suffered, just like people with schizophrenia did back when we believed in visions and demonic possession. >But psychology is not a science. It's extremely subjective. This is about psychiatry, not psychology. Psychiatry is absolutely a science. (And so is psychology, albeit a tricky one.)

juiceandjuice 15y ago

That's pretty easy to say if you don't have ADHD and only anecdotal evidence and no real metrics. "non-recreational" drugs work for me as well, but the side effects are much worse than "recreational" drugs. I take concerta with bupropion.

anigbrowl 15y ago

And damn right Adderall is a recreational drug, it makes stuff that is boring fun. As a prescribed user of Adderall, I don't agree. The fact that it can be abused doesn't make it a recreational drug, any more than the fact that cocaine can be abused invalidates its use as a clinical anesthetic. With ADHD, the problem is not necessarily inability to focus: indeed, many people with ADHD are capable of hyperfocus and have no difficulty 'pulling an all-nighter.' The problem is that achieving this hyperfocus requires minimizing external distractions to an abnormal (and often impractical) degree. The all-nighter is a good example itself; it may be a lot easier to work through the quiet of the night but there are social, psychological, and physiological costs to doing that all the time. Likewise, working in an office or in a particular location for extended periods during critical projects can be very manageable and productive, but may require attenuating familial or emotional relationships during the period in question. Most people need to perform multiple roles in multiple every day, e.g. parent, homemaker, employee, manager, spouse etc. etc.. It's normal to give total focus to some roles some of the time, but one can't do that constantly without creating serious life imbalances, with negative consequences for both oneself and the people one is connected to. For people with ADHD the mental cost of focus-switching seems to be much higher, because doing so requires constant re-contextualization. Imagine looking at the world through a pair of binoculars or a telephoto lens on a camera. You can see a great deal of detail this way, but shifting your view by more than a few degrees requires re-orienting your view around the new object of attention. With an optical device you can move it away, look at the wider picture, and easily establish your new point of focus. But if you didn't have that option, then re-orienting oneself would be more time-consuming. If your point of view were being shifted about by external forces on a regular basis, it would be problematic. Likewise, navigating a ship or following a map is simple in principle, but changing weather conditions or inaccuracies on the map can make the task considerably more difficult. My experience of using Adderall is not that it makes dull activities fun or effortless, but more that it provides a relatively consistent mental reference point against which one can calibrate one's model of external priorities. In programming terms, it's like the difference between having pointers and having to use global variables.

tedmiston 15y ago
"For people with ADHD the mental cost of focus-switching seems to be much higher, because doing so requires constant re-contextualization. Imagine looking at the world through a pair of binoculars or a telephoto lens on a camera." Spot on. I've tried to draw comparisons before to ADHD about what I can see with / without my glasses being extremely nearsighted. If something's close enough to my face, I can see it very well. If it's not, finding that thing is hopeless. In fact, I can see tiny details that most people go without noticing like: single-pixel oddities in font rendering or anti-aliasing, and I am so bothered by 60 Hz refresh rates on monitors that I'm unable to use them.

mistercow 15y ago

>I'm also against telling people they have a medical disorder and need to take a recreational drug for it. Why? Do you not believe medical disorders exist, or do you just not think that people should be told when they have them? > And damn right Adderall is a recreational drug So? DXM is a recreational drug, and it is also an effective cough suppressant. Caffeine is a recreational drug and it's also an effective alertness aid. Cannabis is a recreational drug and is also an effective analgesic, helps in the treatment of glaucoma, and relieves nausea. That something can be used recreationally is irrelevant to its medical utility.