ADHD Drugs Aren't Doing What You Think, Scientists Warn (inverse.com) 183
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Inverse: The study authors Lisa Weyandt, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at the University of Rhode Island, and Tara White, Ph.D., an assistant professor of Behavioral and Social Sciences at Brown University, started out investigating the effects of ADHD medications in students that actually have a diagnosable attention deficit disorder. They showed that in these students, there is decreased activity in the areas of the brain controlling "executive functions," which can make it hard for them to stay organized or focused. But because both authors work with college students, they soon became more interested in the misuse of Adderall. In students whose brains aren't affected by ADHD, does Adderall act as a supercharger? Does it make those areas fly into overdrive and unlock otherwise untapped intellectual ability, as all pill-popping students hope?
Weyant and White's double-blind, placebo-controlled study on 13 college students was a small sample, they admit, but their experiment had a rigorous study design. Neither the students nor the researchers knew who was getting Adderall and who was getting placebo sugar pill. The six tests evaluated different aspects of cognition, like working memory, reading ability and reaction time. While students on Adderall did make fewer errors on a reaction time test, it actually worsened working memory, as shown by a decline in performance on a task where they had to repeat sequences of numbers. In short, Adderall improved focus and attention -- but it didn't actually make anyone smarter. The research has been published in the journal Pharmacy.
Weyant and White's double-blind, placebo-controlled study on 13 college students was a small sample, they admit, but their experiment had a rigorous study design. Neither the students nor the researchers knew who was getting Adderall and who was getting placebo sugar pill. The six tests evaluated different aspects of cognition, like working memory, reading ability and reaction time. While students on Adderall did make fewer errors on a reaction time test, it actually worsened working memory, as shown by a decline in performance on a task where they had to repeat sequences of numbers. In short, Adderall improved focus and attention -- but it didn't actually make anyone smarter. The research has been published in the journal Pharmacy.
"Didn't make anyone smarter..." (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"Didn't make anyone smarter..." (Score:4, Insightful)
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Right. I never heard of anyone taking them to make themselves smarter. Just to get stuff done, like studying or papers/projects. I'd be interested to see a study done on knowledge retention for learning done on adderall vs without.
Exactly. There wasn't any mention of testing to see if long-term memory retention is affected. After all, I thought that students took adderall to study for tests.
Re:"Didn't make anyone smarter..." (Score:4, Informative)
Exactly. There wasn't any mention of testing to see if long-term memory retention is affected. After all, I thought that students took adderall to study for tests.
One could surmise that if working memory is affected, long term memory will be affected as well.
It is interesting that this recent test found different results regarding working memory than a 2015 test did. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Granted, the Wikipedia entry reads more like a drug company propaganda piece, taking an amphetamine and elevating it to miracle drug status. Probably to make parents feel good about drugging their young boys to keep them in line.
Which would be contradictory to the rest of the world's not so good experiences with amphetamine drugs.
Back in the day, in college, we had access to various amphetamines. It always followed a predictable course. Take them, cram all night, take the test. Crash. The trick was to not crash before taking the test.
Homie didn't play that. I tried cramming a few times, because it was what you were supposed to do. It really doesn't work. And since I don't sleep much anyway, there was no need for speed.
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Looking at the study itself, the students were given a 30mg dose of Adderall. Therapeutic doses start at 5 mg.
So it doesn't surprise me that the side effects from a 30 mg dose overwhelmed any possible cognitive improvements.
The studies cited that found cognitive improvements also note that there is a dose response-curve, where up to a certain dosage, you see improvements in sustained attention and working memory, and past that working memory takes a dive while sustained attention continues to improve. Until
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At 46 wife was part of a study for a new ADHD drug. Whatever she took did not help but she was then given a year's prescription for another drug, Vivance. It is an amphetamine but acts differently. She became a new woman. She had barely graduated high school and had only worked as a waitress and store clerk.
I am disabled and we needed more income so she went school to become a nurse. After I showed her how to do web searches on her new laptop she became a super student. She graduated top of her class. She
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Dexosyn is meth adderall is a mix of amphetamine salts stop spreading lies
Re:"Didn't make anyone smarter..." (Score:5, Informative)
That's completely incorrect. Don't spread misinformation.
Adderall, and its generic equivalents, are a combination of 25% levoamphetamine and 75% dextroamphetamine salts. They both have the chemical formula C9H13N.
Methamphetamine is a different drug entirely. In its medical form, it is generally sold as dextromethamphetamine hydrochloride, or under the trade name Desoxyn. Its chemical formula is C10H15N.
Both are approved for the treatment of ADHD in the US, but Adderall is much more likely to be prescribed. Under long-term medical use at therapeutic doses, addition is unlikely to occur with Adderall. While methamphetamine is approved for the treatment of ADHD, it is seldom prescribed due to the risks of recreational abuse and addiction associated with it. That said it is a safe and effective treatment for some people when other treatments fail.
Abuse of these drugs is another matter entirely.
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Under long-term medical use at therapeutic doses, addition is unlikely to occur with Adderall
So it only makes you smarter with subtraction? How about trigonometry?
Seriously though, I wonder what "addiction" is supposed to mean when it is said that addiction is unlikely to occur with Adderall. I can buy that meth might be more chemically addictive than Adderall, but Adderall is definitely habit-forming. The problem with the word "addiction" is that in common parlance it can cover many different situations of habit with completely different causes. Perhaps Adderall does not make someone dependent the
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Ha ha ha, I made a typo.
Seriously, if we are talking about addiction, that is usually a combination of both physical dependence and psychological dependence.
Adderall does not cause physical dependence, unlike drugs like nicotine or opioids or even alcohol. What does happen is psychological dependence and changes to the brain's dopamine system due to abuse. If amphetamine is abused, drug tolerance develops rapidly, and abusers have to take increasingly larger doses to get high. This can cause long-term chang
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> Adderall does not cause physical dependence, unlike drugs like nicotine or opioids or even alcohol. What does happen is psychological dependence and changes to the brain's dopamine system due to abuse
Addiction due to abuse is still physical addiction. Even used clinically, patients are weaned off of the drug when they stop using it. The physical addiction is one of the reasons not to discontinue it "cold turkey".
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> That's completely incorrect. Don't spread misinformation.
I've not done so. As I stated, it's a medically pure _variant_ of methamphetamine. They're very similar, chemically and clinically. And yes: mmethamphetamine has an extra methyl group that increases its potency, hence its name. In use, this is mostly made up for by the higher quality of medical grade Adderall compared to street meth. For juveniles and college age users, much of the supply is "diverted" from prescriptions.
> Under long-term medi
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Adderall, while increasingly popular, has long been familiar among college students. It's a medically pure variant of methamphetamine.
You are confusing amphetamine with methamphetamine.
They are different things....
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Adderall is missing a methyl group that methamphetamine has. Perhaps I should have been more cautious with my language, and called it "chemically related" instead of a "variant". I'm also afraid that their medical effects are more similar than many wish to admit, resulting in their misuse.
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I'm also afraid that their medical effects are more similar than many wish to admit, resulting in their misuse.
Of course you have a citation for this? I only ask because I just watched a Netflix doco on recreational use of Adderall (and Ritalin) and the experts they interviewed said the two are like chalk and cheese. This doco matched my own personal experience where I've seen Meth users go completely off the rails, resulting in heavy addiction and violent crime while Amphetamine and Methylphenidate users seem to behave like regular people, just with more periodic boosts in energy and happiness.
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Re:"Didn't make anyone smarter..." (Score:4, Funny)
An alternative headline could be: "ADHD Drugs Are Doing Exactly What They Are Prescribed To Do, Scientists Confirm".
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Re:"Didn't make anyone smarter..." (Score:5, Funny)
I raise issue with calling it a "double-blind study" since clearly those that got meth instead of sugar figured it out on the first dose. There are some thing you cant play make believe about. You may be able to trick someone into thinking they got it when they didnt, but there is no way to do the opposite.
Which, of course, calls for the relevant XKCD comic...
https://xkcd.com/1462/ [xkcd.com]
Re: "Didn't make anyone smarter..." (Score:1)
I raise issue with you calling it Meth. Methamphetamine is, on average, 100x more potent than Amphetamine salt combos, dextroamphetamine, or any other Amphetamine-based prescription drug.
So if that's the equivalence you're drawing, I hope you've never driven after having a beer, because by your logic, it's the same as you chugging a bottle of Jack Daniels.
Re:"Didn't make anyone smarter..." (Score:4, Interesting)
Whatever you exercise, you will make stronger. Don't assume that self-control and willpower are any different. Of course you can exercise your vices and bad habits just as easily.
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I just want to know how it stacks up against caffeine for the same use cases.
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Coffee makes the world go round, but coffee plus a head-ache pill, really gets me going and enables me to do new things that nobody else thought of, or could get to work before. Note that I am an aerospace engineer and really need my smarts about me. I have found that simple meds really does change me from merely being above average, to a superior intellect for a few hours.
The fuckup is in the morning after, but I recover by swimming 1000 meters almost every night to stay above average fit also - 5 to 6 k
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It is a complete other level. The closest I can say is it is like crack. You feel an enormous high ephoria and a rush of energy.
I realized it was dangerous when I took and was cautious to take a half child's dose as I do not want to get high or addicted but just be able to focus and get on through my work day quickly and have generally life improvements with focus on what I know I need to do.
Caffeine wakes you up a little and drives anxiety if you are stressed but it is not the same.
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I find that 12 to 16 cups of (instant) coffee per day + 30mg dexedrine works for my adult ADHD. Small amounts of cannabis (1/2 a cone every 2-3 hours) as well is even better. Large amounts of weed, while nice, doesn't help my maths research.
The benefits attributed to l-theanine are mostly bullshit.
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I find that 12 to 16 cups of (instant) coffee per day + 30mg dexedrine works for my adult ADHD.
Do you know whether that's safe? My doctor discouraged me from drinking more than 1-2 cups of coffee per day when taking a stimulant, though he admitted it's an educated guess rather than something specific from a study. (Coffee and/or ADHD meds may cease to be a heart stimulant after you get acclimated.)
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I'm over 60, I like stims and I don't care if they're safe or not. I don't live my life like a timorous flounder on the bottom of the sea, forever worried that I'll get a spear in the back of the neck.
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Pffft. You and your band of geniuses are welcome to do what you like with the world! I like my 28 hour days.
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But without ADHD meds, how will Space Shire Seven become a reality?
Ah well, got access to better stuff legally. Going to try Strawberry Fields tomorrow. Normally $100 an ounce, on sale at $80, and if I calculated correctly, after military discount (retired) should be $72.
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No fucking duh, most any teenager knows stimulants work well as weight cutters. The Crystal Meth diet has been known for over 20 years.
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No you can't. I have ADHD bad. I can not just simple do something and stay focused as easily as a normal person. It just won't happen.
Yes Adderal helps greatly. Unfortunately, it is a nasty bugger that is addictive and got me fired from a previous job as I blew my lid and almost assaulted a coworker as one of the side effects are violent tendancies and my patience grows thin.
FYI I am not a violent person like some men are but I can't take that shit unfortunately and do not want to get high or feel like I am
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Don't forget, there is a lot of over-diagnosis of ADHD who may be getting the medicine because it's prescribed even though they don't need it.
Re: "Didn't make anyone smarter..." (Score:3)
Did you miss the part where it says, "can make it hard for them to stay organized or focused"?
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I have found that any head-ache or common cold pill made me perform better in examinations. I don't know which ones are best but a combination common cold antihistamine plus pain reliever would boost my abilities very much and I would do 10 to 20% better in the exam.
To improve studying, any head-ache pill would work wonders - even the good old aspirin. Coffee of course is probably the most common performance booster, but coffee plus aspirin, or coffee plus half an antihistamine is a lot better. So there
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As someone with ADHD and been on most of the meds: DUH!
Yes, the meds help focus. This is particularly helpful for hyperactive symptoms where, as they describe it, "a thousand thoughts happen at once" - it's very helpful to focus amidst all that noise. It also helps to speed up things very slightly to deal with the slower than normal pathways the ADHD brain uses.
It doesn't help working memory, one of the worst aspects, nor does it help impulse control. Memory might be improved by Alzheimer medication but
Re: "Didn't make anyone smarter..." (Score:1)
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What will really bust your noodle later is a large majority of behavior modification/investigation is done ostensibly with college students. These same students have to take part in research study as part of a required course's requirements. This is not a great source of random sampling.
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I'm not sure which is more shocking. That you wrote that FUCKing post or that I read all of that FUCKing post!
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I'm not sure which is more shocking. That you wrote that FUCKing post or that I read all of that FUCKing post!
Dooood! Cut that adderall dose in half man!
Re:Pretty small sample size (Score:5, Interesting)
Correct. A sample size of 13 is utterly worthless statistically. No useful information can be had from such an experiment.
Incorrect. A sample size of 13 does give statistically significant results (for a fairly specific version of significant), and is, in fact, the smallest sample size to do so.
It might never have occurred to you to wonder why legal trials have a judge and 12 people on a jury - making 13 people. Perhaps you should look into that: mathematically it's quite interesting.
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I'd assume the answer to why trials have 12 people on the jury is a matter of tradition. I seriously doubt anyone did the maths on it when it was decided. At some point someone decided 12 people was the right number for a jury and it stuck.
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Yep. A Google search revealed the historical reason that I had presumed from the beginning: it's because of the 12 tribes of Israel: https://www.insidescience.org/news/mathematics-jury-size [insidescience.org]
More directly, it was connected to Jesus' twelve apostles, but the reason there were 12 apostles was because it was symbolic of the 12 tribes.
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To be fair that was a fairly interesting article, especially in the fact that it specifically mentions that jury sizes other than 12 have been discussed or tried.
That being said, the historical 'fact' of "why today's juries tend to have 12 people is that the Welsh king Morgan of Gla-Morgan, who established jury trials in 725 A.D., decided upon the number" is sketchy at best (Glamorgan* not even being a dream by that date - this was almost certainly prior, even, to Glywysing being renamed Morgannwg because o
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13 students take a drug, 8 of them fall violently ill, then certainly it's stupid to dismiss that as statistically irrelevant.
Not a Surprise (Score:5, Interesting)
I've had a lot of teachers whose specialty was in this area, and honestly this is kind of the equivalent of 'We checked, water is wet.' ADHD is basically a bandwidth problem--people with attention deficit disorders (there's several) lack the standard suite of preprocessing filters on their incoming data. These normally are present to basically try to get you to stick with what (the filters judge to be) the important stuff in the incoming data is--without these filters, you're attempting to drink from the proverbial firehose. Hyperactivity is the most common method by which the brain attempts to cope--"Maybe if we move really really really fast we can get all this sorted!"
There's other strategies, too, such as 'shut down' and 'increase processing power' which have their own relative issues and your attention is still going to be not working like what is classed as 'normal'--in some populations, ADD is normal, because assumptions about what is/isn't important in your environment tended to get selected against instead of heavily agricultural populations where we strongly selected for the ability to not be too bothered by spending many hours staring at the hind end of a draft animal... It's not shot; you can get hyperfocus and flow, where your attention is very tightly focused on doing a task, vastly more easily than the normal population.
There is, however, one thing about this that's surprising--and that's that you get the same kind of effects in normal people. One of the old methods for confirming an ADD diagnosis is that you had an atypical reaction to stimulants...which Adderall and Ritalin are. To be specific, they're amphetamines...
Oh, almost forgot... (Score:3)
FYI: Working memory is basically the RAM of the brain--it's short-term holding for stuff you're processing and using, which is why it's called working memory. One of the things you check for if somebody who should be doing well in school but isn't? Is if their working memory is functioning correctly.
Focus and attention aren't anywhere near as important. You can only be vaguely paying attention and still retain a surprising amount of information, but you need your working memory to remember the start of a
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I've been diagnosed with ADHD since I was a child, and use medication selectively today, adjusting my dosage depending on the demands of the day & how I'm feeling (I only take my full dosage on "bad" days).
Your description is fairly spot on. Anecdotally however, I'm not sure the medication actually has much of a direct affect on memory, it simply helps in maintaining focus on the right things, which in turn helps you record the right things.
Re: Oh, almost forgot... (Score:1)
It doesn't and it's not intended to. The medication is intended to help the brain control where the focus is directed, not increase working memory or focus.
The misconception here is that people see the change in treated ADDers and assume they can get that by taking the pills and there's no real evidence that it works like that.
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I've been diagnosed with ADHD since I was a child, and use medication selectively today, adjusting my dosage depending on the demands of the day & how I'm feeling (I only take my full dosage on "bad" days).
Your description is fairly spot on. Anecdotally however, I'm not sure the medication actually has much of a direct affect on memory, it simply helps in maintaining focus on the right things, which in turn helps you record the right things.
Working memory is distinct from short-term and long-term memory--the things people normally think of as memory. Those are more like the write buffer to the hard drive & the hard drive itself.
That said, you might want to look into flow--hyperfocus is when you find your attention stuck on something and it's not something you want to be paying attention to exclusively, flow is the state of attention you're in when you hit the zone. I've lost days that way. ADHD actually makes it easier to reach these st
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"Anecdotally however, I'm not sure the medication actually has much of a direct affect on memory"
Judging by your UID, you're a young millennial.
Come back in 15 more years when you start seeing the extended effects of those amphetamines on your nervous system. I took that shit for 12 years, from age 6 to 18. The damage it did is quite noticable. You'll start thinking you're getting Alzheimer's around 35 if you took it as young and as long as I did.
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One thing for sure: you aren't a scientist.
UID isn't indicative of age, just of when the user registered here.
Your memory problems aren't shown to be linked to your amphetamine use.
No evidence is presented that it isn't the underlying condition that was treated with amphetamines that cause these effects and not the treatment itself.
You have not shown that those problems aren't caused by other things, there are a lot of things that can influence mental performance including memory.
There is no evidence that y
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Judging by your UID, you're a young millennial.
Come back in 15 more years when you start seeing the extended effects of those amphetamines on your nervous system. I took that shit for 12 years, from age 6 to 18. The damage it did is quite noticable. You'll start thinking you're getting Alzheimer's around 35 if you took it as young and as long as I did.
It took me the best part of a decade to get around to actually registering, I've been following /. for almost 20 years now.
I was on a high dose of ritalin from the age of 4, until about 12. I was a victim of all of that bullshit prejudice against the treatment of ADD & fell into the trap of believing all I lacked was disciplined focus & motivation. I pretty much dropped out of school after that.
I had reasonable success in my chosen niche of IT, but I ended up crawling back to the psychiatrist in my
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He's confusing correlation with causation. ADD's impact on attention, executive skills, & being able to maintain a line of thought, can lead to effects that seem very much like a memory disorder.
When you've got a constant stream of multiple internal dialogues & other distractions circling around your head, it can be quite easy to forget why you walked into a room, where you just put your keys, or the name of the person you met literally only 30 seconds ago.
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which Adderall and Ritalin are. To be specific, they're amphetamines...
Take a look at the chemical formulas for Adderall and meth sometime.
I think a lot of ADHD problems would go away if we just let kids run around some more. I've known a fair number of people who've been put into that bucket and physical exertion does a lot to mitigate the effects. Extra PE time might also help with the obesity epidemic as well.
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In some cases, YES, it does. Your body is capable of growing new arteries and veins if it detects a shut off of oxygen to various parts of the body. Whether it does it fast enough to keep you alive is a different story.
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riiight... walk it off... does that work on heart attacks and cancers, too?
It's unfortunately not walk it off: The ADHD problem that'd go away is one of misdiagnosis. A lot of places are using outright dismal diagnostic methods--poor accuracy and poor validity combining to produce a false positive rate that ought to be unacceptable for anything commonly perceived as a mental health issue and/or treated with drugs that can have serious side effects.
It'd be rather like diagnosing any and all pains in the chest as a heart attack, even when you've got a knife sticking out of the pati
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which Adderall and Ritalin are. To be specific, they're amphetamines...
Take a look at the chemical formulas for Adderall and meth sometime. I think a lot of ADHD problems would go away if we just let kids run around some more. I've known a fair number of people who've been put into that bucket and physical exertion does a lot to mitigate the effects. Extra PE time might also help with the obesity epidemic as well.
I think they are suffering psychological abuse from their parents, who inherited it from their parents and so on. That adderall acts on the working memory suggests it is trying to make kids forget the source of the emotional pain they are suffering, instead of resolving it.
All common sources of the type of personality disorders that are reaching epidemic proportions. Mental illness is contagious and most of us inherit it from our parents in some form.
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You literally have no idea what you're talking about. Are you a holocaust denier too?
I've been writing a book about these types of personality disorders and how people can heal themselves from this type of mental illness. I know a lot more about this subject than I want to know.
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which Adderall and Ritalin are. To be specific, they're amphetamines...
Take a look at the chemical formulas for Adderall and meth sometime.
I wandered into neuroscience from biochemistry, and actually am thinking of seeing if I can get a copy of this study to read, even though it is kinda stating the obvious.
I think a lot of ADHD problems would go away if we just let kids run around some more. I've known a fair number of people who've been put into that bucket and physical exertion does a lot to mitigate the effects. Extra PE time might also help with the obesity epidemic as well.
I can assure you that a lot of it is, in fact, due to cutting back on the time kids get to actually exercise--that, and schools get extra money for each student diagnosed. A lot of the diagnosis is also somewhere around the 'people should be at least sued for this' end of half-assed, too--I've heard of diagnosis being basically done on the
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Amphetamine psychosis? How about providing any study that shows this being an issue when treating ADHD? I can't find anything but my search skills may be lacking. It is an issue when abusing amphetamines however ADHD is treated with much lower doses than is required to provide recreational effects.
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Amphetamine psychosis? How about providing any study that shows this being an issue when treating ADHD? I can't find anything but my search skills may be lacking. It is an issue when abusing amphetamines however ADHD is treated with much lower doses than is required to provide recreational effects.
As far as I know, there no study checking it at all, which is actually a problem because drug-induced psychosis on the whole is definitely not dose-dependent--it's not as simple as high dose=psychosis, especially since with drugs in the family it seems to be something which will happen if you take it for long enough regardless of how careful you have been about the dose...and some people never get symptoms while others it seems to just be one day they pulled the trigger and got the loaded chamber, so to spe
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What I just described is, depressingly enough, taken from multiple case studies and basic awareness of how you're actually supposed to handle psychiatric medications--if you're on them and nobody's taken the time to tell you, fuckups with your meds can make your mental health problems worse and yes, you should keep track of & mention side effects. This is something your doctors are supposed to tell you, especially since sometimes it can get weird, such as one patient with bipolar who had a psychotic ep
No its not (Score:2)
Remember when the cure for ADHD was an ass whoopin'? Pepperidge Farm remembers. Same goes for kids acting up in a restaurant. In the old days you took them out to the car. When they came back they weren't acting up anymore.
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In the old days you took them out to the car. When they came back they weren't acting up anymore.
Yeah, instead they just grew up to beat their wives and their kids. Great plan.
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There is a difference between "beating" your kids and beating your kids.
Re: No its not (Score:1)
Why did you stop there? People historically have done many horrible things for arbitraty reasons, which you can conflate with common sense when you want to defend coddling as you apparently do.
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ECT is still a standard treatment, the most effective treatment for a number of mental problems.
I've had it as have a lot of people (it's far from unusual). Of course that's a "modern" variant that includes sedation and muscle relaxants which normally at worst gives some muscle ache (due to convulsions), a headache (due to increased blood pressure) and temporary amnesia.
Unlike your description ECT, insulin shock treatment and ice baths weren't used for torture but because they provided real positive effects
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There is, however, one thing about this that's surprising--and that's that you get the same kind of effects in normal people. One of the old methods for confirming an ADD diagnosis is that you had an atypical reaction to stimulants...which Adderall and Ritalin are. To be specific, they're amphetamines...
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Ritalin is not an amphetamine damm you people are pharmaco-ignorant
Methylphenidate [nih.gov] is close enough that it appears to work very much like dextroamphetamine [nih.gov]. It is considered to be in the amphetamine family, typically, and may be* subject to the same laws as amphetamines--right down to the same legal issues if you try to take any with you when crossing the border, even if you obtained it perfectly legally and have the medical documentation to prove it.
* I am not a lawyer, nor employed in any field that requires I know the logistics of obtaining controlled substances or ta
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Good comment, but I do have one clarification.
While Ritalin (methylphenidate) is a stimulant, it is not an amphetamine, but instead a phenethylamine. It works differently from amphetamine, since it works primarily as a dopamine reuptake inhibitor, whereas amphetamines increase the activity of neurotransmitters like dopamine. To simplify it, Ritalin works by keeping the brain from removing dopamine, while adderall works by increasing dopamine release. That's part of the reason why some people with ADHD respo
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An atypical reaction includes focus which it does do.
Unfortunately, those of us on ADHD also get the nasty side effects too the article talks about. But starting a task is what helps. My ADHD is so bad my apartment is a mess half the time and I barely even cook. On Adderall it was squeky clean and I was learning new recipes and felt energy not to get overwhelmed on the simpliests tasks starting.
Unfortunately, it is true the side effects were too bad. I had to quit taking it as I would be fired if I took it
Who care about the abusers? (Score:2)
Do they work on the people who need it?
wait (Score:2)
they're doing *EXACTLY* what *I* think they do.. (Score:1)
they make big pharma and those who write the scripts for the drugs a lot of money
Speed (Score:3, Interesting)
Wish they did it with cocaine and weed too, I'm sure we can find an excuse WHY it's a good idea. Just invent another imaginary illness, or "condition".
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Cocaine is legally sold for use as an anaesthetic, which is most commonly used in eye surgery.
Re:Speed (Score:4, Insightful)
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Are you saying that attention deficit disorders are an "imaginary illness"? And that cocaine and marijuana don't have legitimate medical uses? I'll give you over-diagnosed, maybe, but certainly not imaginary.
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I'm glad we have scientists that brand speed and then sell it to people for profit, legally. Wish they did it with cocaine and weed too, I'm sure we can find an excuse WHY it's a good idea.
Or you know do actual science and make decisions based on that...
Just invent another imaginary illness, or "condition".
The science is there. Feel free to publish your own studies if you have information not already presented.
Don't hype a study with such a small sample size. (Score:3)
I don't care how perfectly well you've set up your experiment. 13 people does not a respectable sample size make. It's all too likely that a fluke is majorly skewing the results. I don't even understand what this post is doing here. We should know better.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't care how perfectly well you've set up your experiment. 13 people does not a respectable sample size make.
Because you said so? Feel free to tell us which part of this you disagree with: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
We should know better.
Yes, yes we should....
They're not supposed to make you smarter (Score:3)
They're supposed to make you pay attention to what you're told, not to reflect upon it.
Working as designed.
Re: (Score:2)
I think you just did that without the drugs...
What is ADHD? (Score:1)
Here is the top youtube video showing ADHD vs non-ADHD child [youtube.com]. Does the girl have ADHD or is she just anxious? Look at how she sits and how the boy sits. Count how many times the boy smiles and how many times the girl smiles (hint: zero). If the girl is the top example of ADHD, I can give 100 children ADHD interviews and classify a large portion as having ADHD. Of course I would be impartial and have no stake in classifying kids as having ADHD and charging for weekly counseling, writing prescriptions, etc.
what do you expect? (Score:2)
I think that feeding psychoactive drugs to boys because their teachers don't know how to raise boys and are boring and dumb is going to produce adults that are angry, poorly educated, and anti-social. And what I "think" these drugs do seems to be exactly what they are doing.
still looking for a good drug for my ADHD (Score:2)
Some ADHD Advice (Score:2)
still looking for a good drug for my ADHD
Some advice:
#1 Nutrition. Stop any type of sugar. Like, don't freaking even touch the stuff for 10 weeks and you'll notice a significant difference in cognitive performance. Promise. Avoid processed foods, preferably like the plague. Learn to cook/prepare your own meals. Do paleo or some other hippster compliant diet if that helps you. I've become a bit of a salad expert. My salads are full meals with grilled veggies or mushrooms or seitan & tofu as topping. Shop
Errm, yes, they are doing *exactly* .... (Score:2)
... what people think: Enhancing attention and focus. It says, right there in the Metaarticle. So thanks for confirming that.
Sidenote: I'd stear clear from any medication, even when in a tough spot at college.
Lack of excersize, bad nutrition, bad sleep hygene, excess media consumption and consumerism are what I have found to correlate with symptoms generally regarded as "ADHD".
Placebo *sugar* pill (Score:2)
I am wondering if it is reasonably to give people sugar pills as a placebo to test these kinds of things. I would think that sugar does give people energy but perhaps less attention?
Really? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
I'll believe real scientists
No matter their degree, as long as their conclusions match my biases.
Re: (Score:2)
After all, they are responsible for the horrendous torture that came about with asylums and their "scientific" methods.
Maybe dead ones. Might as well say the same for medical doctors and leeches or trepanning.
Re: (Score:2)
Is it you Tom Cruise?
Re: (Score:1)
Spoken like a fool that has never been involved in actual research. You have to start somewhere, and usually small, to get others to try repeating your results on a larger scale. That's how most science works, now days.
Signed,
Former Horticultural Research Director