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Comment by sek | Hacker News Reader

So Ritalin is just a usual mind boosting drug, it has rebound effects and people develop a tolerance.

Like cocaine, MDMA, ephedrine and meth. It differs in it's euphoric and adverse effects, but the positive influence is not permanent.

Not a single drug can help you in the long term, you have to develop the abilities yourself. These drugs have the opposite effect, because as long as you take them you don't evolve. The worst thing is when you get used taking this stuff. You give up faster and think you are unable to deal with it yourself, what leads very fast to an addiction.

So many of my fellow students are taking drugs now for learning, especially Ritalin (but also the other stuff i mentioned earlier). I tried Ritalin once and the results were impressive, but i always had a bad feeling about this. This article proves my concerns right, Ritalin is not without downsides.

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because as long as you take them you don't evolve.

Homeostasis of the human body does make any intervention hard to keep long-lasting. I take it you mean "develop" (the word you used in the preceding sentence) for where you wrote "evolve," because of course individuals don't evolve (in the biological sense of the word) but rather populations do by changes in gene frequencies. The story of obesity seems to be that change is hard for human beings, period, whether the intervention is medical or a lifestyle intervention. If a person has a personal tendency that is truly a disorder for adaptation in current society, maybe nothing should be taken off the table for the person seeking help. But, yes, I agree with you that willpower-developed kinds of personal behavior changes are surely helpful for ADD and for other problems too, perhaps more possible if they are backed up by external helps of one kind or another.

The word develop is the right one. It is the same translation in German, my mistake.

The big problem is that while you take it, it feels like it. To make the observation that this is not permanent, while influenced, is very difficult. The feeling is very subtle and not obvious like being drunk for example.

You are right, there are extreme forms who need medication. The article suggests, that the whole ADD existence is still not clear and i was diagnosed myself as a kid. I assume that just a little part of the people who take Ritalin really need and benefit from it.

What do you mean by mind boosting? Do you mean that the effects of the drug when used by people with ADHD are no different then when used by an NT person, and that everyone is just being "boosted"? (if so, this is not correct, responses to these medications and the dosages required for certain effects differ between the two groups)

When you suggest that people need to "develop the abilities" themselves, do you mean to include ADHD people in this? It is believed that people with ADHD literally cannot develop such abilities. (actually, there appears to be about a 30% lag in their development of them .718yrs = 12.6yrs, .721yrs = 14.7yrs, .7*30yrs = 21yrs etc)

The big problem is that there is no easy definition of what is happening. There are some words that describe the important undertone i call "boosting", they all have some euphoric impression too, but it declines after a while. These descriptions are somewhat like "ability to concentrate", "self-discipline", "motivation", "clarity". Some people say the difference is a lack of fears, or Mr Hyde is deactivated, who always manipulates you as a second personality who only seeks short term gratification.

Maybe it is easier defined by the complete opposite: There were tests with mice without dopamine production who starved next to food.

Maybe this is the real problem, we still don't know what we are really dealing with and we compare school grades to create some numbers.

Can you please elaborate on your numbers and who they are coming from and what they really mean?

I know some people here are easily offended, by saying there is no big difference between someone who has ADD and someone who hat not. But i am diagnosed myself and can't see a difference. We have a bigger problem here so maybe we are more entitled to take these. In the end, the problems are the same.

The main thing is, fucking everybody around me starts taking Ritalin, for the simple reason being a student. I have friend's who talk only about learning and convert into a Chinese stereotype.

I'm working and unable to spend a lot of time find the papers (for which you would need access to the journals to read)

I do have this transcript of a talk which does a much better job than I can. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9991388/2200_7-barktran.pdf

For more published research, checkout the references used in the publicly available stuff from that dr's website.

Would you advocate the use of cognitive or psych medication that had effects that were permanent? I don't think so.

So you're effectively arguing against the use of that entire class of medication in favor of "developing the abilities yourself".

Don't take this the wrong way but in my experience people who take this line of reasoning have never closely known anyone dealing with real issues in these areas who have actually been helped by medication, or they don't know about it (people are often reluctant to share their stories), or they're a Scientologist.

When we talk about normal activities like studying and working, i think so. The ability to concentrate and motivating yourself is something you have to develop yourself. Ritalin is not the wonderdrug you take and become a perfect student.

If there is something like that, the perfect drug without side effects, i don't think you can prevent people from taking it. Even for caffeine you develop a tolerance very fast.

The ability to concentrate and motivating yourself is something you have to develop yourself.

I once thought this too.

Everyone has issues with concentration and motivation. Most people deal with it through "self-discipline". This is great for them.

The problem is that people who haven't experienced clinical levels of cognitive issues in themselves or with others close to them often find it very appealing to evaluate others within this same framework of "self-discipline" that worked well for themselves.

Ritalin is not the wonderdrug you take and become a perfect student.

Someone who I know personally literally went from having many D's and F's in high school to being valedictorian in college after being treated for ADHD with methylphenidate (Ritalin). For a certain (small) percentage of the population on the far end of a certain spectrum it does indeed make a huge difference.

That is the reason a lot of people i know are taking Ritalin, without a diagnosis. These incredible improvements show all of them, it is out of question that the short term improvements are impressive.

If you have read the original article, the question is if this can be sustained over a long period. When the person you know get's into his first job and he is totally dependent on Ritalin what happens when the effect wears off?

A good friend of mine started with it at grade 8, about 4 years after that the problems were slowly coming back. He blamed different things for it, but he never the medication. I mean it worked so well in the beginning. I wonder why there are so few long term studies, that is exactly the behavior that is significant.

When the body is somewhat dependent on methylphenidate to produce enough dopamine, the situation is worse than before. I mean we still don't fully understand what affects the production of dopamine. That is exactly the reason why you have to know how these things influence you over decades.

Even at a coarse level there are hundreds of identified structures in the brain and hundreds of identified neurotransmitters like dopamine. Each neurotransmitter may act to produce different effects for each part of the brain.

No one will ever "fully understand" dopamine.

Almost all medications will have some side effects that patients and doctors have to balance against benefits. Good psych doctors know that everyone is an individual and even for the same individual treatments sometimes need to change.

I think your "dopamine dependency" concerns are greatly overblown.

"Not a single drug can help you in the long term, you have to develop the abilities yourself."

What is your proof of this claim? As with most generalizations, I doubt there is one.

Tell me which mind boosting drug does not wear off?

First, even if natrius cannot answer your question, absence of a counter-example does not constitute proof of your argument. Second, I've been taking an ADD medication called Dexadrine for about 10 years now, and in my opinion the effect on me has not diminished.

I am not an expert, but when i read the other posts about Adderall(which is similar to Dexadrine afaik) it seems not problem free.

The article suggests Methylphenidate does not have positive long term implications, but here in Germany for example Dexadrine is not available as treatment for ADD. So you suggesting we have not access to the effective medication.

Just curious, did you stop it sometimes to check the difference? I was also diagnosed with ADD, but only took Ritalin over a short time when i was a kid.

I don't know how similar/dissimilar Dexadrine and Adderall are, but they have really different effects on me. Adderall made me feel high, and seemed to encourage me to focus like a laser beam on low-level details. Dexadrine, on the other hand, has a very subtle effect on me. I've never felt high when taking it. It's more like a gradual transition into being able to focus at will. When it wears off I can no longer focus easily. On weekends I usually take half the usual dosage, and sometimes I skip taking it all together. When I skip it, aside from difficulty paying attention/focusing, I have mild withdrawal symptoms like feeling tired, headache and an increased appetite.

Having said all this, I want to point out that my doctor told me that different medications work for different people. I may just be lucky enough to have the right body chemistry for a drug like Dexadrine to work well for me.

What do you mean with "wear off"?

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