Aldous Huxley predicts Adderall and champions alternative therapies

That's exactly my point: it is NOT.

Not for the people Adderall is prescribed to and was developed for.

See: https://romankogan.net/adhd#Medication

>I don't believe this is specifically about ADHD.

There's nothing to believe in here.

Adderall is a drug that's specifically about ADHD. It's a stimulant that helps people with ADHD overcome executive dysfunction:

https://romankogan.net/adhd/#Executive%20Dysfunction

You can't talk about Adderall without talking about ADHD just like you can't talk about allergy pills without talking about allergies, or talk about eyeglasses without talking about myopia.

> It also happens to treat ADHD

NO. Please reconsider sharing this sentiment.

Adderall is a drug for treating ADHD that also happens to be abused by people thinking it'll have the "effects Huxley predicted" (enhancing thinking efficiency).

It does not; that's the reason why it's a controlled substance. When abused, it will wreck your brain.

As an analogy: glasses make people with myopia see better, but wearing glasses without prescription is a very bad idea.

>I believe it's being used here in the former capacity.

I understand this, and it's a misconception I'm trying to dispel.

With evidence and scientific understanding, mind you, and not just with vibes about thinking what Adderall is.

Speaking of which, I forgot to take it, which means I'm about to have my breakfast at 5PM because I couldn't bring myself to do the eating task earlier.

This is what Adderall is for.

>The title is perhaps a bit unfortunate.

The title is repeated verbatim in the article, whose author has kindly replied in this thread and re-stated it twice (as did you), as if I weren't directly addressing the fallacious point that the author employed to attract attention to Huxley's lecture (which doesn't need such advertising in the first place).

It's not the title that's a bit unfortunate.

It's the mention of Adderall, and the myth that it's a "brain-enhancing" drug.

If it were, it'd be given to everyone already, and perhaps there'd be fewer people spreading vibe-based falsities in post titles, but I digress.

The point is:

==============

Adderall does NOT enhance mental efficiency, as Huxley's fantasized drug would.

Adderall HELPS people with ADHD overcome EXECUTIVE DYSFUNCTION.

That's what it's for. That's what it DOES.

If you take it for ANYTHING ELSE, you will NOT get the intended result, and you will likely FUCK YOURSELF UP.

Spreading the MISCONCEPTION that Adderall is a "brain-enhancing” drug (as the author opined in the comments here) drives the ABUSE of this medication, which HARMS people and makes ADHD harder to obtain for people who NEED it to function.

========

I hope I've succeeded in bringing your attention to this issue.

If this hasn't changed your point of view, please let me know what else I can elaborate on.

Thank you <3

Huxley never mentions Adderall, and neither Huxley nor the article mention ADHD.

I'm not trying to argue with your points about how Adderall relates to ADHD. I agree! I empathize!

I'm arguing that this is not about how Adderall relates to ADHD. I don't think our experience is the intended context.

The talk is mostly about tailoring learning to the individual. I think you'd find it's points quite agreeable!

> you will likely FUCK YOURSELF UP.

To be fair, there's evidence it does the same to us.

Anyway, here's what Huxley's had to say:

> ... I have talked to pharmacologists about this matter, and a number of them say that it’s probably quite possible that it may be possible to, by pharmacological means, which will do no harm to the organism as a whole, to increase the span of attention, to increase the powers of concentration, perhaps to cut down on the necessity for sleep, and the various other things which may lead to a very considerable increase in general mental efficiency.

No high mentioned. Remarkably accurate to my experience.

"Upping the dose" of Adderall makes me sleepy. In fact, I take a little before going to bed if I'm feeling restless. Midnight coffee is a thing for me.

I don't have a problem with attention span (ADHD isn't about short attention spans, after all), and stimulants do nothing for that.

Power of concentration? That's where ADHD people excel when that hyperfocus locks in. That's the default, unmedicated. The problem is the lack of control over where that concentration goes.

As you can see, I've been concentrating well enough on writing long enough comments in this thread to exceed the attention span of some of the commentors who respond to them (including, sadly, the author of the article we're discussing, who, while being kind enough to join this discussion, has nevertheless glossed over the points I've made that others haven't missed).

What I should have been concentrating on is sorting out the stuff in the garage from our recent camping trip.

This is what Adderall helps with. It's starting to kick in, so I'll go and do the adulting things it makes far less painful to start doing .

Wouldn't call it an increase in mental efficiency by any measure, but insofar as my spouse is concerned, it gets me off the couch; and insofar as the to-do list is concerned, I'm more productive in ticking off the boxes.

But the items on that list are far from requiring leaps in mental effort. It's things like folding the laundry, or unpacking suitcases, paying bills, making calls to insurance, mopping the floor, doing the oil change, and so on.

In short, Adderall doesn't work like Mentats from Fallout 1/2¹.

But it greatly increases the number of action points I have for Doing Things, while I feel... normal.

That is the much more common experience, and the reason it's prescribed for ADHD.

____

¹ https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Mentats_(Fallout)

For… weight loss? Adderall was developed as a diet pill. It was never modified in any way to better suit ADHD treatment.

A rather costly part, at that.

There's a heckton of it that needs to be done before doctors can prescribe drug X for condition Y.

Adderall was developed for helping ADHD folks, not for helping everyone else get a boost of "mental efficiency" (and particularly, without adverse consequences).

Not in the least because it doesn't do that.

Then whose experience is the "intended" context?

> To be fair, there's evidence it does the same to us.

Same for every prescription medication out there.

This is why they require a prescription.

This is why spreading the idea that Adderall is a pill that will boost your "mental efficiency" WITHOUT ADVERSE CONSEQUENCES, as Huxley said in his talk, is harmful and dangerous.

Adderall is very much known to not be that kind of stimulant.

Of course, same applies for e.g. nicotine. But we also know the outcome of nicotine being touted as a consequence-free stimulant.

The fact that one is widely available to anyone over 18 no questions asked, while the other requires a thousand hoops and a costly diagnosis is, of course, a bizarre travesty...

...which is only exacerbated by people promoting the abuse of this medication, as the author of the piece does (by saying that it is anywhere close to Huxley's utopian drug at population scale).

Yes, there’s certainly research involved in getting an existing drug approved for a new condition. That’s not development.

> not for helping everyone else get a boost of "mental efficiency" (and particularly, without adverse consequences).

While that’s not what Adderall was recently approved for, that and dieting were the primary purposes driving stimulant development (and also the development of Adderall/Obetrol specifically).

The suggestion that Adderall would only benefit folks with ADHD diagnoses is also fundamentally weird, given that ADHD is not a specific identifiable condition. We can’t scan a brain and identify whether or not that brain belongs to an individual with ADHD, so an ADHD diagnosis is necessarily subjective and not objective.

OK, I concede that point then. That's the information I intended to communicate.

>The suggestion that Adderall would only benefit folks with ADHD diagnoses is also fundamentally weird

Sure, let me rephrase.

There is, as we both agree, research performed to establish that Adderall is something that can help with ADHD symptoms (...and obesity).

There's plentiful data that demonstrates its effectiveness for some people with ADHD in that regard. And appetite loss is a well-known effect.

But there's no research done to establish that Adderall would work the way Huxley describes the hypothetical drug: giving anyone a boost in "mental efficiency", without adverse consequences to health otherwise.

To the contrary, we have extensive data and research that demonstrates Adderall doesn't work that way.

Particularly, for folks without ADHD, mental efficiency is likely to decrease when they take Adderall [1].

It gives them the feeling of being productive, though...

...which only exacerbates the problem.

Quote [2]:

What Adderall clearly does extremely well is make people think they are doing better — and to feel good while they’re doing it. “Adderall might not be a cognitive enhancement drug, but a ‘drive’ drug,” says Anjan Chatterjee, a professor of neurology at the University of Pennsylvania’s medical school. Farah explains, “[Stimulants] make boring work seem more interesting, so they increase your motivation to work, energy for work, and that’s not nothing — that’s really helpful . . . Unfortunately, it also gets into the realm of feel-good drugs, and that means the risk of dependence is quite high.” Yet when I ask Farah exactly how addictive Adderall and other stimulant medications are, she tells me that there is currently no good answer. “Nobody has really looked at these drugs used as work enhancers and what the dependence risk there is,” she said.

"Nobody has really looked at these drugs used as work enhancers" is what I intended to communicate when I said that "this is not what Adderall was developed for".

When somebody did look (the study [1] came out years later), they found that a drug that wasn't for improving mental efficiency does not, in fact, improve mental efficiency.

The mistaken belief that Adderall is akin to Huxley's fantasy pill, which the author of the article perpetuates, is harming everyone.

As I said before, Adderall is for treating executive dysfunction: not being able to do things which you can do, should do, want to do, have the time and resources to do, but can't start doing because Brain Says No.

Adderall won't make anyone smarter. It'll make stupid people be stupid faster and with more enthusiasm.

That's not what Huxley talked about.

The headline, put simply, is a dangerous lie.

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/adderall-ritalin-adhd-decreases...

[2] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/caseyschwartzauthor/add...

The whole idea here is that current evidence suggests that we are almost certainly currently filing a variety of disparate conditions under “ADHD” because we have no good way to determine what “ADHD” actually is.

I would hazard to suggest that it can make many people much more productive though. This topic has been studied extensively since before anyone cared about ADHD, and the answer is broadly “yes, for some tasks”.

> Nobody has really looked at these drugs used as work enhancers

I would strongly disagree with this bit, this was one of the primary purposes people have studied stimulants for. They’ve been successfully used for this in the past and continue to be used anriun the world, especially by various militaries.

Anyway, unfortunately I can’t comment here on personal experience given that I have been twice diagnosed and once undiagnosed with ADHD. Adderall makes me more productive and more prone to tunnel vision, but certainly not smarter.

The historical and continued use by various militaries of stimulants seems to suggest that at least many very highly motivated big spenders seem to expect the same to apply to the general population.

One is supposed to feel good doing "normal" things. Completing tasks should feel good.

There can be many variables at play: maybe your dosage could be lowered, maybe Adderall isn't ideal for you, or maybe you're simply adjusting to the medication the first few times you take it, and it won't feel the way afterwards.

But most importantly: yes, you're absolutely going to feel like you've got a superpower the first time you take it. The euphoria you feel from being able to simply do things the way neurotypical people can just get up and do them is very much a part of the ADHD experience.

Also, neurotypical people don't do mundane things on Adderall. That's not what makes them feel particularly good. Because for them, doing things without friction and climbing the mental wall first is the normal experience.

They don't feel happiness experiencing it for the first time in their lives when they take Adderall. They've had that ability all along.

TL; DR: you feel that dopamine release from doing mundane things on Adderall because you have ADHD.

That suggestion is disproved by the research I linked, particularly when it comes to mental tasks.

>the answer is broadly “yes, for some tasks

For mindless tasks, like long-haul driving, where staying awake is pretty much all that's required ? Sure.

Anything else, citation needed.

>The historical and continued use by various militaries of stimulants seems to suggest that at least many very highly motivated big spenders seem to expect the same to apply to the general population.

Military use is more commonly to increase stamina (e.g. for pilots on 48 hour bombing missions), not efficiency.

And military scenarios simply don't transfer to civilian life.

Staying awake without sleep when you're a bomber pilot is a matter of life and death, so adverse health consequences and even decrease in mental capacity can be tolerated, because being dumb and awake is better than being smart and asleep in that context.

...to an extent. Until you end up shooting some Canadians dead [1].

Which is why the "historical" use by militaries is not continuous. It's been abandoned by militaries that tried it; particularly by the USAF after that incident.

As for use by the military in general, note that the average lifespan of a Russian soldier on the front line in the Ukraine war is measured in hours[2].

That's a very different context than anyone talking here is facing. And one where the ability to stay alert matters more than anything else.

That doesn't translate to efficient or productive in any normal sense. A solider is waiting most of the time. Then something happens, fast. Any delay in reaction, and you're dead.

We can discuss the effectiveness of amphetamines in such scenarios, but that has nothing to do with Huxley's description (or productivity, efficiency, etc).

As I said in my top comment: Adderall is for helping people act without delay. This translates well to military use.

Sometimes.

A delay would've saved those Canadians.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/jan/04/afghanistan.ri...

[2] https://www.yahoo.com/news/average-life-expectancy-front-lin...

The main effect for me is a decrease in inexplicable mental barriers. Things that were hard suddenly aren't. Same brain, different output. I dunno man, I call that an increase in mental efficiency.

I love the action point metaphor. Much better than the spoons I've heard before.

How do you differentiate attention span and concentration?

In which way specifically?

I.e., what do you think is wrong in what I said, and how does Paul Erdos demonstrate it's wrong.

This currently describes most tasks humans do.

I certainly won’t go and suggest that taking stimulants for long-haul driving is a good idea, unless of course you’re in a war zone and lives depend on it. But stimulants do improve performance in these tasks for the vast majority of people. While the side effects probably aren’t worth it for the society as a whole, they probably are on an individual level for e.g. a cab driver who is able to work more hours and pay his rent. That’s of course not a desirable state of affairs, but it is real.

A software developer grinding out a boring project could also greatly benefit, while being much less risky than the cabbie on stimulants.

In the end I believe there are many people without ADHD living in situations where Adderall could meaningfully improve their lives, making it easier to grind through hours of mindless work. Someone living paycheck to paycheck could pick up a few extra hours and significantly improve their financial situation and overall wellbeing.

Should anyone take Adderall in the hopes that it’ll make them smarter? No.

Nothing to add, except dreaming of a utopian society where the grind wouldn't exist.