8 ms·

How To Take Ritalin Correctly

96 points by pw 17y ago

michael_dorfman 17y ago
Would it sound terribly old-fashioned to suggest that before taking amphetamines to help study, one ought to figure out what the (non-medical) obstacles are to effective studying, and remove those? I think that if somebody were in a position to take the author's advice of "take a pill, and then study for 4 uninterrupted hours, keeping your attention keenly focused on the task at hand", they'd do (almost) as well skipping the pill.
- ivankirigin 17y ago
  Given two similar people that follow the same study good advice, but one takes coffee (or some other stimulant), the person taking the stimulant will do better. That the author suggests good study habits doesn't mean people shouldn't take them. Given the risk of addiction, it is probably especially important to recommend good usage habits.
  - kragen 17y ago
    Coffee is a much less effective stimulant for this purpose than amphetamine or methylphenidate.
    - ivankirigin 17y ago
      My point is just about the different between those using and those not - not the degree. In the long term, more powerful stimulants could prove less effective. One good reason to legalize stimulants is to let more people experiment with them. It would be great to know that taking amphetamine is actually a bad way to work in the long term. Either way, I'm more excited about non-stimulant methods of increasing concentration. Stimulants seem zero sum, at best.
      - kragen 17y ago
        I'm not talking about a difference of degree where one stimulant is "more powerful" than the other, but in the nature of the effects. "CNS stimulant" is a very vague term which glosses over really major differences between, say, amphetamine and caffeine. I'm not sure in what sense you mean "zero sum" but it isn't true of amphetamine in the senses that come to mind.
- devin 17y ago
  I can attest to what you're saying. I've taken adderall with a prescription for years. I would be very interested to know what the retention rate is for knowledge gained while taking amphetamines vs stone cold sober. I feel like I have a much better command of the material when I use both methods. It's like an automatic mode of reinforcement. For instance, it helps to imagine each chinese character is some sort of animal, so you remember how to draw it by thinking of a duck with horns, and so on. Adderall, Ritalin, etc. force you to perceive the things you're studying in a different way, and add to your ability to retain them. The mixture of the two methods can take you a lot further than one or the other in my experience. However, as I commented below, I am skeptical as to how concrete the amphetamine driven associations persist 3-6 months down the line.
  - jerf 17y ago
    I'd love to see a study that examined six month+ retention on amphetamines. Part of the reason I'd love to see that study is that it would have to examine six month+ retention in a control group, too. I suspect we'd all be pretty disappointed by the results. We all "ha ha" about people cramming for the test and then immediately forgetting it all, but I think that we all know that that is actually the normal thing for most people. Putting numbers to that would probably be pretty sobering. (We've talked a lot on HN about whether it's worth it to go to college. That wouldn't be a half-bad metric to use as part of that decision; do you actually recall stuff from more than three months ago in school? If not, don't spend money on college. Obviously, this is not necessary to live a good life because most people seem to manage without it.)
    - kragen 17y ago
      I have to admit I don't remember a lot of the organic chemistry textbook and AD&D Player's Handbook I inhaled when I was 9 and on Ritalin, but I apparently remembered enough of the book on phone switches that digital logic was always a cinch. But that was 23 years ago. I think even five or ten years later, I remembered quite a lot of it.
mahmud 17y ago
Look, if you're gonna waste your brains on chemicals, do it right: MDMA, a pair of reeboks, and a bottle of wate give life a rhythm section! Besides, when did the geeks become pill-popers?
- devin 17y ago
  You're not in college, are you? There's serious demand for "study aids". It's really not a surprise. If you're statistically going to score higher than your peers by taking a pill, that's not too far off from hacking. Code optimization for the brain.
  - mahmud 17y ago
    So you're gonna risk your mental health and your brain just to score "higher" than your peers by some arbitrary benchmark? I thought higher education was for learning and self-development, not pushing your body like a machine. If amphetamine use is a mental "hack", then so is cheating or paying someone to do your work; call it crowd-sourcing, or distributed education, but that doesn't lend it any legitimacy.
    - jrockway 17y ago
      Indeed. I never saw college as being competitive. Assignments were assigned, I did a good job, I got a good grade. No need for brain hacking or anything like that. (I did find it very boring and generally worthless, so I dropped out to work on something more interesting. The real world is even less competitive -- there is more work to do than there are people available to do it.)
    - gnaritas 17y ago
      > So you're gonna risk your mental health and your brain just.. Don't assume it's a risk. The effects of these stimulants are well known and well studied. Taken safely and in proper doses these are not risky drugs. The world is not black and white and learning and self development can be aided by these drugs. It is not cheating. Artificially enhancing your natural cognitive abilities is a trend that is only going to continue to increase as we learn more and more about the brain and how to manipulate it. The body is a machine, and if we learn to make the machine operate better through chemicals, which is inevitable, then we're going to take advantage of that. You won't see people complaining when they're daily regiment of 20 pills lets them live healthy lives well into their 200's. Some people realize this is already happening and are taking advantage of it.
liuliu 17y ago
If I do have a great concentration on test day (I usually do) but distracted much when preparing the test. Should I take any kind of stimulants to help out?
TravisLS 17y ago
The conclusion of this article is the most illuminating part. In case you didn't get there... As a public service announcement, don't worry too much about grades. This is America, not Germany, where success is determined by the solidity of your goal and the amount you are willing to work. I know you don't believe it now, but it's true. Go have a drink.
- jmtame 17y ago
  many students on visas have to maintain a very high cumulative gpa. if they slip below 3.5 (some have told me they have to maintain a perfect 4.0), they could be kicked out.
  - dandelany 17y ago
    Ditto with scholarships.
    - dangrover 17y ago
      I'm actually moving from a private school to a public school because of this. I went back to school too soon after having a craniotomy to remove a brain tumor and didn't have the energy to get perfect grades. I'm not sure if I was impaired as a result of the surgery, or if I just realized, in light of it, that life is too short to spend too many nights worrying about what rounding algorithm/grading scale some professor uses.
      - jacquesm 17y ago
        There is probably a high correlation between people that have had some traumatic experience and those that know how to enjoy their lives. Best of luck to you!
- jpwagner 17y ago
  One of the many points the author is wrong about. Luckily, his arguments weren't based on any facts or research (but likely hearsay of grad students of the late 90s.)
dmg_83 17y ago
I would love to see a study done comparing the benefits of Ritalin, Adderall etc. to users diagnosed as having ADD/ADHD against users not diagnosed as having it. If the former group receives significantly greater benefits that would be a strong indicator that ADHD is a distinct condition, rather than a label applied to a set of personality traits. On the other hand, if the benefits were similar for both groups it would call into question why one of them is denied (legal) access to the drug.
- tokenadult 17y ago
  I have a lot of medical monographs at hand including descriptions of such studies. I'm still reading them. But the summaries I've seen so far in my reading are quite ambiguous as to claimed benefits of taking ADHD drugs (for anyone), especially for the inattentive subtype of ADD. Subjectively reported "this drug really helps me" or third-party observation of "this kid doesn't wiggle around so much in class" is not the same as carefully verified gains in learning from using the drug versus not using the drug.
DanielBMarkham 17y ago
I'm somewhat amused by all this discussion about brain-enhancing chemicals. It's different, yet it is strangely the same. As a vitamin junkie, I truly believe that certain "hacks" allow me to do better on interviews: caffeine, ginko, SAMe, glutamine, etc. Maybe by a few percentage points. Nothing to write home about, but worth the investment for the job interview. But these kids aren't going for job interviews. And they're not talking about run-of-the-mill OTC brain hacking. They're talking about using high-performance brain-targeted stimulants as part of a maximization strategy for some test in school. As if anybody gives a rat's ass about what you made on calculus finals six months from now. Let's see: brain damage versus 10 points less on a test you're never going to talk about (unless you fail). I think this risk analysis is a no-brainer here, to use a pun. I'm concerned that what's really going on is that some people are just wired to go screw around with their bodies using chemicals. This whole take-to-maximize-study rationale is just another in a long line of rationales going back many decades. There was drug use to combat the drudgery of life. Drug use to protest the system. Drug use to find inner peace. Drug use for religious exploration. Drug use for sports enhancement. Drug use to prolong life. Now we have drug use for educational enhancement. I'm not saying this is wrong -- whatever that means. Perhaps there is an evolutionary competitive advantage to hacking your brain with chemicals and, if so, we're seeing a new branch of the human family tree. Or perhaps we're still four hundred years away from true brain hacking and this is just another in a long line of reasons to screw around with reality. Timothy Leary may be dead, but he's far from gone.
- j_baker 17y ago
  The thing is that amphetamines are some of the most well understood medications prescribed by doctors. They've been prescribed for almost 80 years. Doctors know their effects better than most "conventional" medicines. And it has never been proven that they have seriously harmful side effects when taken under appropriate medical supervision. Although it's hard to objectively diagnose ADHD (just like any other psychiatric condition), doctors know what they're doing when they prescribe stimulants. Therefore, the choice isn't "brain damage vs 10 points on a test." It's more like "performing like a normal human being vs failing at life."
  - 17y ago
ianbishop 17y ago
I'm still in school and this is one of those things that I have seen countless people do. General intake is a snort of half a ritalin pill when your body is beginning to tire near 12am before your early morning exam or big term paper. It isn't just ritalin either. I've seen people snort so many wake-ups (an over the counter caffeine pill) that they are too busy zoning to even study.
- kragen 17y ago
  This is a bad idea. Snorting (instead of swallowing) the pill won't change how it affects you half an hour out (or further). It will, however, get it into your bloodstream immediately, giving you a quick high, and by hyperbolic discounting, it will make the operant-conditioning association between the pill and the high much, much stronger. Ritalin or amphetamines are much less addictive if you take them in a pill, especially a slow-release pill and/or with some food. And if your reason is to be awake for an all-nighter on a term paper, you don't get any benefit from snorting.
- rms 17y ago
  Along the lines of the other person who responded, norting pills is just a stupid drug culture thing. If you want the pill to come on faster, break it into pieces or chew it. The drug is not stronger intranasally, it just comes on faster and it's bad for your mucous membranes.
sirfrancisbacon 17y ago
Suppose that after some time, we become expert brain hackers and we can find a way to pass these changes onto our children. (through some sort of gene manipulation; I'm not an advocate of Lamarckian evolution!) Since at this point, humanity will diverge into two species (those who have access to technology and those who don't), how exactly should we value those who's lineage hasn't been benefited by the presence of these drugs? Just a hypothetical situation of this mentality being taken to an extreme, but still interesting nonetheless.
- extension 17y ago
  You can value them however you like, but I imagine the enlightened front will continue to push for token equality amidst the harsh realities of disparate wealth and opportunity and a small minority of bigots, while society at large remains unconcerned with intelligence, maintaining its longstanding fascination with wealth, status and charisma. Then again, these drugs only cost pennies so they could really even the playing field. Starbucks needs to hurry up and invent the amphetamine latte.
jacquesm 17y ago
instead of taking stuff to get temporarily smarter how about NOT taking stuff that is known to cause you damage in the long term ? So, no drinking, no smoking, no other drugs, just healthy food and a good rhythm in your life. And preferably a significant other of the same mindset. You'll be surprized by how well you can perform without any 'additives' when you're well rested and healthy.
petercooper 17y ago
This is all well and good but where do you actually get all this shit? Perhaps I'm too white and middle class but I don't have the first clue as to where to get any of this crap and I don't know anyone who's using it either.
- lallysingh 17y ago
  Ask your buddies who have doctors in the family.
- Devilboy 17y ago
  Not sure about other countries but in Australia you go to a GP, explain your problem and he will then send you to a specialist. The specialist will consult with you and if you do your homework you can ask him to prescribe X and if you're making sense and there's no contra-indications he'll do it.
  - petercooper 17y ago
    It might just be me but I'm getting the impression a lot of the people here are talking about taking these drugs very much not on a physicist-advised schedule or dosage ;-)
sown 17y ago
I've never been able to focus adequately enough to do well in school. I'm finished with it now but I found my school years to be disapointing because of the lower grades which pretty much shut out any chance of doing undergraduate research or a chance at grad school -- ever. Students rolled their eyes when I asked a question, professors sighed and shuffled their papers at me when it was time to return exams. I always felt like I was being judged and looked down on during school years. One possible explanation that I can't shake is that I never belonged in college or grad school anyways. At least it's over now. Nowadays I get to look forward to being judged by my colleagues. Until I retire or die.
HalcyonMuse 17y ago
I guess provigil/modafinil is too new to be mentioned in this old article?
embeddedradical 17y ago
Warning: you do this at the detriment of your ability to be creative, have insights, and go new directions. I'm not suggesting they're horrible in all situations, but keep that in mind. If you are using amphetamines please see this article by Jonah Lehrer, editor of Seed Magazine: http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2009/04/cognitive_enhancement_and_crea.php http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2009/04/cognitive_enhancement...

96 points by pw 17y ago

Would it sound terribly old-fashioned to suggest that before taking amphetamines to help study, one ought to figure out what the (non-medical) obstacles are to effective studying, and remove those? I think that if somebody were in a position to take the author's advice of "take a pill, and then study for 4 uninterrupted hours, keeping your attention keenly focused on the task at hand", they'd do (almost) as well skipping the pill.

ivankirigin 17y ago
Given two similar people that follow the same study good advice, but one takes coffee (or some other stimulant), the person taking the stimulant will do better. That the author suggests good study habits doesn't mean people shouldn't take them. Given the risk of addiction, it is probably especially important to recommend good usage habits.
- kragen 17y ago
  Coffee is a much less effective stimulant for this purpose than amphetamine or methylphenidate.
  - ivankirigin 17y ago
    My point is just about the different between those using and those not - not the degree. In the long term, more powerful stimulants could prove less effective. One good reason to legalize stimulants is to let more people experiment with them. It would be great to know that taking amphetamine is actually a bad way to work in the long term. Either way, I'm more excited about non-stimulant methods of increasing concentration. Stimulants seem zero sum, at best.
    - kragen 17y ago
      I'm not talking about a difference of degree where one stimulant is "more powerful" than the other, but in the nature of the effects. "CNS stimulant" is a very vague term which glosses over really major differences between, say, amphetamine and caffeine. I'm not sure in what sense you mean "zero sum" but it isn't true of amphetamine in the senses that come to mind.
devin 17y ago
I can attest to what you're saying. I've taken adderall with a prescription for years. I would be very interested to know what the retention rate is for knowledge gained while taking amphetamines vs stone cold sober. I feel like I have a much better command of the material when I use both methods. It's like an automatic mode of reinforcement. For instance, it helps to imagine each chinese character is some sort of animal, so you remember how to draw it by thinking of a duck with horns, and so on. Adderall, Ritalin, etc. force you to perceive the things you're studying in a different way, and add to your ability to retain them. The mixture of the two methods can take you a lot further than one or the other in my experience. However, as I commented below, I am skeptical as to how concrete the amphetamine driven associations persist 3-6 months down the line.
- jerf 17y ago
  I'd love to see a study that examined six month+ retention on amphetamines. Part of the reason I'd love to see that study is that it would have to examine six month+ retention in a control group, too. I suspect we'd all be pretty disappointed by the results. We all "ha ha" about people cramming for the test and then immediately forgetting it all, but I think that we all know that that is actually the normal thing for most people. Putting numbers to that would probably be pretty sobering. (We've talked a lot on HN about whether it's worth it to go to college. That wouldn't be a half-bad metric to use as part of that decision; do you actually recall stuff from more than three months ago in school? If not, don't spend money on college. Obviously, this is not necessary to live a good life because most people seem to manage without it.)
  - kragen 17y ago
    I have to admit I don't remember a lot of the organic chemistry textbook and AD&D Player's Handbook I inhaled when I was 9 and on Ritalin, but I apparently remembered enough of the book on phone switches that digital logic was always a cinch. But that was 23 years ago. I think even five or ten years later, I remembered quite a lot of it.

mahmud 17y ago

Look, if you're gonna waste your brains on chemicals, do it right: MDMA, a pair of reeboks, and a bottle of wate give life a rhythm section! Besides, when did the geeks become pill-popers?

devin 17y ago
You're not in college, are you? There's serious demand for "study aids". It's really not a surprise. If you're statistically going to score higher than your peers by taking a pill, that's not too far off from hacking. Code optimization for the brain.
- mahmud 17y ago
  So you're gonna risk your mental health and your brain just to score "higher" than your peers by some arbitrary benchmark? I thought higher education was for learning and self-development, not pushing your body like a machine. If amphetamine use is a mental "hack", then so is cheating or paying someone to do your work; call it crowd-sourcing, or distributed education, but that doesn't lend it any legitimacy.
  - jrockway 17y ago
    Indeed. I never saw college as being competitive. Assignments were assigned, I did a good job, I got a good grade. No need for brain hacking or anything like that. (I did find it very boring and generally worthless, so I dropped out to work on something more interesting. The real world is even less competitive -- there is more work to do than there are people available to do it.)
  - gnaritas 17y ago
    > So you're gonna risk your mental health and your brain just.. Don't assume it's a risk. The effects of these stimulants are well known and well studied. Taken safely and in proper doses these are not risky drugs. The world is not black and white and learning and self development can be aided by these drugs. It is not cheating. Artificially enhancing your natural cognitive abilities is a trend that is only going to continue to increase as we learn more and more about the brain and how to manipulate it. The body is a machine, and if we learn to make the machine operate better through chemicals, which is inevitable, then we're going to take advantage of that. You won't see people complaining when they're daily regiment of 20 pills lets them live healthy lives well into their 200's. Some people realize this is already happening and are taking advantage of it.

liuliu 17y ago

If I do have a great concentration on test day (I usually do) but distracted much when preparing the test. Should I take any kind of stimulants to help out?

TravisLS 17y ago

The conclusion of this article is the most illuminating part. In case you didn't get there... As a public service announcement, don't worry too much about grades. This is America, not Germany, where success is determined by the solidity of your goal and the amount you are willing to work. I know you don't believe it now, but it's true. Go have a drink.

jmtame 17y ago
many students on visas have to maintain a very high cumulative gpa. if they slip below 3.5 (some have told me they have to maintain a perfect 4.0), they could be kicked out.
- dandelany 17y ago
  Ditto with scholarships.
  - dangrover 17y ago
    I'm actually moving from a private school to a public school because of this. I went back to school too soon after having a craniotomy to remove a brain tumor and didn't have the energy to get perfect grades. I'm not sure if I was impaired as a result of the surgery, or if I just realized, in light of it, that life is too short to spend too many nights worrying about what rounding algorithm/grading scale some professor uses.
    - jacquesm 17y ago
      There is probably a high correlation between people that have had some traumatic experience and those that know how to enjoy their lives. Best of luck to you!
jpwagner 17y ago
One of the many points the author is wrong about. Luckily, his arguments weren't based on any facts or research (but likely hearsay of grad students of the late 90s.)

dmg_83 17y ago

I would love to see a study done comparing the benefits of Ritalin, Adderall etc. to users diagnosed as having ADD/ADHD against users not diagnosed as having it. If the former group receives significantly greater benefits that would be a strong indicator that ADHD is a distinct condition, rather than a label applied to a set of personality traits. On the other hand, if the benefits were similar for both groups it would call into question why one of them is denied (legal) access to the drug.

tokenadult 17y ago
I have a lot of medical monographs at hand including descriptions of such studies. I'm still reading them. But the summaries I've seen so far in my reading are quite ambiguous as to claimed benefits of taking ADHD drugs (for anyone), especially for the inattentive subtype of ADD. Subjectively reported "this drug really helps me" or third-party observation of "this kid doesn't wiggle around so much in class" is not the same as carefully verified gains in learning from using the drug versus not using the drug.

DanielBMarkham 17y ago

I'm somewhat amused by all this discussion about brain-enhancing chemicals. It's different, yet it is strangely the same. As a vitamin junkie, I truly believe that certain "hacks" allow me to do better on interviews: caffeine, ginko, SAMe, glutamine, etc. Maybe by a few percentage points. Nothing to write home about, but worth the investment for the job interview. But these kids aren't going for job interviews. And they're not talking about run-of-the-mill OTC brain hacking. They're talking about using high-performance brain-targeted stimulants as part of a maximization strategy for some test in school. As if anybody gives a rat's ass about what you made on calculus finals six months from now. Let's see: brain damage versus 10 points less on a test you're never going to talk about (unless you fail). I think this risk analysis is a no-brainer here, to use a pun. I'm concerned that what's really going on is that some people are just wired to go screw around with their bodies using chemicals. This whole take-to-maximize-study rationale is just another in a long line of rationales going back many decades. There was drug use to combat the drudgery of life. Drug use to protest the system. Drug use to find inner peace. Drug use for religious exploration. Drug use for sports enhancement. Drug use to prolong life. Now we have drug use for educational enhancement. I'm not saying this is wrong -- whatever that means. Perhaps there is an evolutionary competitive advantage to hacking your brain with chemicals and, if so, we're seeing a new branch of the human family tree. Or perhaps we're still four hundred years away from true brain hacking and this is just another in a long line of reasons to screw around with reality. Timothy Leary may be dead, but he's far from gone.

j_baker 17y ago
The thing is that amphetamines are some of the most well understood medications prescribed by doctors. They've been prescribed for almost 80 years. Doctors know their effects better than most "conventional" medicines. And it has never been proven that they have seriously harmful side effects when taken under appropriate medical supervision. Although it's hard to objectively diagnose ADHD (just like any other psychiatric condition), doctors know what they're doing when they prescribe stimulants. Therefore, the choice isn't "brain damage vs 10 points on a test." It's more like "performing like a normal human being vs failing at life."
- 17y ago

ianbishop 17y ago

I'm still in school and this is one of those things that I have seen countless people do. General intake is a snort of half a ritalin pill when your body is beginning to tire near 12am before your early morning exam or big term paper. It isn't just ritalin either. I've seen people snort so many wake-ups (an over the counter caffeine pill) that they are too busy zoning to even study.

kragen 17y ago
This is a bad idea. Snorting (instead of swallowing) the pill won't change how it affects you half an hour out (or further). It will, however, get it into your bloodstream immediately, giving you a quick high, and by hyperbolic discounting, it will make the operant-conditioning association between the pill and the high much, much stronger. Ritalin or amphetamines are much less addictive if you take them in a pill, especially a slow-release pill and/or with some food. And if your reason is to be awake for an all-nighter on a term paper, you don't get any benefit from snorting.
rms 17y ago
Along the lines of the other person who responded, norting pills is just a stupid drug culture thing. If you want the pill to come on faster, break it into pieces or chew it. The drug is not stronger intranasally, it just comes on faster and it's bad for your mucous membranes.

sirfrancisbacon 17y ago

Suppose that after some time, we become expert brain hackers and we can find a way to pass these changes onto our children. (through some sort of gene manipulation; I'm not an advocate of Lamarckian evolution!) Since at this point, humanity will diverge into two species (those who have access to technology and those who don't), how exactly should we value those who's lineage hasn't been benefited by the presence of these drugs? Just a hypothetical situation of this mentality being taken to an extreme, but still interesting nonetheless.

extension 17y ago
You can value them however you like, but I imagine the enlightened front will continue to push for token equality amidst the harsh realities of disparate wealth and opportunity and a small minority of bigots, while society at large remains unconcerned with intelligence, maintaining its longstanding fascination with wealth, status and charisma. Then again, these drugs only cost pennies so they could really even the playing field. Starbucks needs to hurry up and invent the amphetamine latte.

jacquesm 17y ago

instead of taking stuff to get temporarily smarter how about NOT taking stuff that is known to cause you damage in the long term ? So, no drinking, no smoking, no other drugs, just healthy food and a good rhythm in your life. And preferably a significant other of the same mindset. You'll be surprized by how well you can perform without any 'additives' when you're well rested and healthy.

petercooper 17y ago

This is all well and good but where do you actually get all this shit? Perhaps I'm too white and middle class but I don't have the first clue as to where to get any of this crap and I don't know anyone who's using it either.

lallysingh 17y ago
Ask your buddies who have doctors in the family.
Devilboy 17y ago
Not sure about other countries but in Australia you go to a GP, explain your problem and he will then send you to a specialist. The specialist will consult with you and if you do your homework you can ask him to prescribe X and if you're making sense and there's no contra-indications he'll do it.
- petercooper 17y ago
  It might just be me but I'm getting the impression a lot of the people here are talking about taking these drugs very much not on a physicist-advised schedule or dosage ;-)

sown 17y ago

I've never been able to focus adequately enough to do well in school. I'm finished with it now but I found my school years to be disapointing because of the lower grades which pretty much shut out any chance of doing undergraduate research or a chance at grad school -- ever. Students rolled their eyes when I asked a question, professors sighed and shuffled their papers at me when it was time to return exams. I always felt like I was being judged and looked down on during school years. One possible explanation that I can't shake is that I never belonged in college or grad school anyways. At least it's over now. Nowadays I get to look forward to being judged by my colleagues. Until I retire or die.

HalcyonMuse 17y ago

I guess provigil/modafinil is too new to be mentioned in this old article?

embeddedradical 17y ago

Warning: you do this at the detriment of your ability to be creative, have insights, and go new directions. I'm not suggesting they're horrible in all situations, but keep that in mind. If you are using amphetamines please see this article by Jonah Lehrer, editor of Seed Magazine: http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2009/04/cognitive_enhancement_and_crea.php http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2009/04/cognitive_enhancement...