I've been taking adderall(similar to Ritalin) since I was about 12, I'm 22 now. I have actual ADHD and cannot function at work without it, I cannot focus on one thing for more than a few minutes tops. I'm a software developer so this is a huge problem. I had hoped I would grow out of this so I didn't have to take it but I don't see that happening anymore.

AFAIK it hasn't had any negative long term effects on me, short term it kills my appetite so I have to force myself to eat. It was a problem when I was younger, I was severely underweight during highschool but I've been able to manage my weight well for the past few years.

There was an attempt to put me on Ritalin in school. This was quickly aborted because my mother was told about it and almost defenestrated the vice principal over it (third story window, so that counts for something).

Giving continued-used psychotropics to developing brains is an excellent recipe for fostering lifelong addiction.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zidiWe9yq88

I've been taking it 5 times a week for the past 10 years and I'm not addicted to it in the slightest. Whenever I go on vacation or have longer periods off of work or school I stop and I never feel the urge to take it.

My understanding is that it's nearly always only addictive if it's taken in recreational doses. If prescribed medically, the dose is usually too low for addiction to occur.

> The army uses amphetamine & provigil during long term flying missing during critical operations. So what is illegal for ordinary citizens is legal for the state.

i have no military experience, but wouldn't the army administer these drugs through medical professionals in a narrow set of circumstances, like a civilian doctor would? i doubt soldiers are allowed to take these meds whenever they want.

amphetamines (adderall) and provigil are prescribed to civilian citizens as well.

A doctor is usually involved, but, they are still handed out almost like candy.

It's not very hard to be prescribed Adderall or Provigil in the US (as a civilian), though.

Provigil is legal, if prescribed, as it is for pilots. So is amphetamine - that's what Adderall is. I've taken Provigil and actively take Adderall (by prescription, diagnosed with ADD as an adult, best thing I ever did for my career).

Their effects are, ultimately, similar, though with a different time to onset and duration of effect.

As a developer whose (suspected) ADD has been growing worse over the years, I think your post just convinced me to see a doctor about it. It's making work more and more difficult for me.

Late reply, but maybe you'll find it anyway.

I struggled with seeing things through (projects, homework, household tasks) amidst a cacophonous riot of distractions competing for my directionless attention. I thought I was broken. I really did. I did my own research into numerous mental conditions because I actually thought i might have something deeply wrong with me.

Turns out, it's mostly chemical. You have no idea how freeing that was to discover, to lay down those burdens and recognize that I'm just wired differently, and that my unusual wiring can be an amazing advantage if only I could control that one thing: where my attention goes.

First day on Adderall, and I literally felt like a superhero, I got so much shit done. I'm told that neurotypical folks who take Adderall just get revved up.

But if you have ADD, your brain either makes too little dopamine, or the re-uptake of dopamine is revved up. So your brain is constantly and subconsciously seeking the reward of novelty by taking over your normally conscious ability to direct your attention (something most people take for granted).

And Adderall changes that. It gives you the ability that most people have to control where their attention goes, even if the task isn't particularly novel or exciting.

People without it just don't understand how I can say I can't control my attention, it's such an alien concept to them. I can control it, as long as its focused on something exciting and new. Tasks were due "now" or "not now", and "not now" just wasn't very exciting for my brain's wiring. Oh, look, a chicken!

It was literally a life changing decision for me. I never regretted it. Never felt like I was giving in. Never felt like I lost a part of myself to the drugs.

Hell, some days, I still feel like a superhero.

Get a referral if you need one to see a psychiatrist, unless your general physician is well versed in dosage and formulations for the stimulants (there are two major kinds and one may end up being significantly better for your particular wiring). And get your heart checked too - amphetamines and heart rhythm defects don't go together.

That's my rambling (meds wore off a long time ago!) and too-late reply, and I hope you discover it.

Thank you very much for this, it's given me a lot of hope. Your pre-Adderall experience sounds completely identical to my life as it is now.

I've always avoided seeing a doctor about it because of horror stories I've heard about Ritalin and Adderall from friends and strangers. I don't want to become dependent on any sort of drug, or at least not in a way that affects me in the long term or causes serious withdrawal issues. If it actually does the job with tolerable side effects I'd be okay with taking it for the rest of my life.

I'm going to arrange an appointment in the near future.

Stimulants can essentially directly increase your intelligence for a time. You think faster, answers can just pop into your head faster, you can code faster. Laser focus, a sense of unlimited capability, too. A more realistic version of the movie "Limitless".

They don't seem to help with creativity, and can do the opposite. It's easy to get concentrated on the wrong thing. I knew a PHP dev on pro vigil long term, and when he'd take an extra dose of stims, you could tell. A flurry of good idea emails in the morning, then disappeared into his office all day.

But... One time, he spent all day trying to optimize the platform for TLB misses. From PHP code, that made a MySQL call every ten lines. Without the hyper focus and drive of stims, no way anyone would waste a day chasing down such crazy thing. (What annoyed me even more was that this useless but "hard" work received a lot of respect from people that understood less...)

So simulants are best taken when one has a clear idea of what to work on and can get into that work right away. In many cases, I think they're a win, and for thought focused work, like students, mathematicians, programmers, simulants should be more widely available legally. Why should we not want most of the population to have performance enhancing medication? As you note, the state is well aware of the effectiveness.

Also note that stimulants can cause psychosis over time, so there is some risk in having everyone use them all the time. But a measured use, like an afterburner, seems like a good thing to have available.

The only counter example I have is professional high-level chess players. In typical tournaments they play seven games each taking three hours each. While it's just as competitive a "sport" as football, they don't take any stimulants stronger than orange juice and green tea.

This is why I don't think any performance enhancing drugs work for the average human. Because if there was, thousands of chess players would already have used and abused the shit out of them.

Chess orgs do have anti drug policies and test, although this mostly seems driven by nitwit ideas from the Olympics and Wada. If coffee works, it's likely amphetamines work too, although taking them during a game might be noticeable.

Students widely use them for exams.

Yes there are very anachronistic drug enforcement rules in use in chess. My point is that no chess player has ever gotten caught using performance enhancers, nor has any chess player admitted to using any of the legal drugs. There are a lot of cheaters in chess (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borislav_Ivanov), and if there was any mind enhancing drugs that used for chess I'm pretty sure they would be used by a lot of players, legal or not.

I used to take Ritalin, and it had serious negative effects on me after a while. When it would wear off I would become depressed and unable to do anything until the next morning when I would take it again. Since then I've been diagnosed with depression in addition to my ADHD, so it's possible that the Ritalin simply exacerbated an existing condition.

I do sometimes wonder if the depression is caused by the fact that I've taken stimulants of one kind or another for most of my adult life, as I don't recall ever being depressed as a child or teenager, at least not in the same way that I recall having ADHD.

I could talk about recreational drugs too (I used psychedelics from time to time in college), but I don't have much profound to say, aside from that you get out of them what you put in, and setting has a large effect on whether it's a mind-opening experience or not.