Aldous Huxley predicts Adderall and champions alternative therapies

What Adderall is about is:

- helping with executive dysfunction for people who suffer from it.

- allowing people with ADHD like me to function. To do the things that everyone else does, things that we want to do and need to do, but can't do because of the way our brains are wired.

- increasing the lifespan of ADHD people who don't get help. Women with ADHD die about 9 years younger than those without ADHD [1].

- making our lives less painful, since every small task incurs pain, resulting in 3x depression rates [2] and alarmingly high suicidal ideation rates (50% of ADHD adults [3]).

Please, please, educate yourself about ADHD and medication for it before writing something like this title.

No, Aldous Huxley didn't. "predict" Adderall.

To understand more, I've put together a resource which, I hope, will be easy enough to digest. Here's my experience of getting prescribed Adderall for my ADHD:

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

If I have attention deficit and I could write it, I hope you (and the author of the text we're discussing) could spare some attention to it before talking about Adderall, amphetamines, and other stimulants prescribed for ADHD.

Thank you in advance.

[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/01/23/nx...

[2] https://add.org/adhd-and-depression/

[3] https://crownviewpsych.com/blog/adhd-increased-risk-suicide-...

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.

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