There was a story on HN with people trying to microdose on LSD, and the alleged benefits - long story short, when they asked peers about their performance, they noticed they're more distracted and not more productive, while those doing the microdosing thought they're on a super productive trip.
We notice this manager is in a constant state of "brain fog" to a point where his speech changed (like he's drunk), while I'm pretty sure he thinks he's a 10x machine and wouldn't be able to pull all of his workload off without drugs.
You get more sick days, you need more time to recharge, while thinking you're on your absolute productivity peak. And when you crash, you're basically unemployable / unproductive for 6 months to 1 year.
Not worth it IMHO.
Note: to have an effective microdose you have to take a small amount. <=5ug. I tried 25ug and it was basically a super light trip (distinctive lsd body high and everything).
Anyway, for 98% of people microdosing won’t help productivity in the long run.
Edit: just to preempt the obvious questions, I’m talking about oral methamphetamine, I’ve never smoked it. Orally, d-meth is just objectively better than amphetamine (okay, that’s subjective, but the peripheral stimulation of, say, l-amphetamine is a huge negative)
This is a fascinating possibility, and apparently there's at least one researcher working on exactly that. [1][2]
On a much lesser level, I know this is a common reason for the divide between focus tips ("listen to white noise, silence, or wordless music to avoid distraction") and people's self-report techniques ("listening to intense EDM helps me code"). The goal isn't to avoid distraction, it's to break through tedium and help code longer without losing focus. I'd hardly be surprised if more intense things like LSD microdosing had similar effects.
Anecdotally, I know at least one very skilled programmer who insisted she couldn't work without marijuana. She didn't think THC did anything to raise her core abilities, but rather said that it stopped her from getting impatient or bored and let her work more methodically for longer.
[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-problem-with-...
[2] http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21507740.2014.990...
A month ago I was diagnosed with severe apnea, and since starting treatment I feel like a different person. I wonder whether the apnea was worsened by modafinil four years ago, and that was the reason for my constant wearing down. Maybe I'll do an experiment just to see, but I don't need stimulants anymore to be productive, not even coffee.
i've wondered this myself. i often hear people say stuff like "people with real adhd can't get high from stims", but i suspect that some of this is just that people want to distance their legitimate use from those tweakers over there.
if there's any truth to it, i'd bet it comes down to the way the drug is used. when you take an extended release formulation (or instant release every n hours) regularly, you tend to have relatively stable blood concentrations of the drug (ie, you don't get "high"). recreational users, and also probably people who self medicate, will end up with peakier blood levels, which results in the perception of being "high". the concentration level over time can be an extremely important factor in how the drug ultimately affects you.
I don't know if "High" is the right word. I've accidentally taken too much, and it makes me super impatient, which makes me kind of an asshole. I've also taken WAY too much on accident, and it just made me paranoid and think my heart was beating out of my chest.
I will say, being on a normal amount is kind of the best kind of high. Living with ADHD is like drowning, like you have these short moments of coming up for air and being productive, but quickly become distracted for everything else.
Being on the right amount, is like someone finally shut all the extra TVs off in the back of my brain. Like there's no challenge in determining the priority of what needs to be done. I feel human, not anxious, not depressed by my inability to remember where I put my keys 30 seconds ago. and thus, more productive.
Now I don't claim that my experience with ADHD is like another's, but this is my experience.
It was terrifying enough that I don't think I'll ever abuse the stuff, but I can definitely believe that some people would like the feeling.
On the other hand, correctly dosed Focalin significantly reduces my symptoms (as in I go from being unable to complete a simple 5 sentence e-mail to being able to be mostly on-task). Avoiding all simple-carbs before noon significantly improves the efficacy of it as well for me (a traditional sugar/starch american breakfast would make me hypoglycemic around the middle of the day).
When you have to take it day in, day out just to feel more normal, the dosage is either too low for pleasurable effects or tolerance negates them, and the side effects start to wear on you. Since it’s something you’re legitimately doing just to feel normal, but you inadvertently suffer from some of the drawbacks of drug addiction, ultimately you'd rather not be doing it.
There are two big hurdles, granted (apart from side effects). One is how long-term toleration works - users report continued efficacy, while objective tests seem to suggest decreased sensitivity. Two is how amphetamines mix with intelligence; normal-IQ users appear to have unchanged or worsened performance on intelligence tests despite 'feeling smarter'. (The same goes for Modafinil.)
But neither of those things really challenge the core observation: in the short term, Adderall and similar substances improve attentiveness, focus/willpower, and probably memory.
They often aren't worth it, and non-medicinal use is often unsustainable. But if someone is showing up with "brain fog" and underperforming while feeling skilled, that really sounds like something else is up. Either a paradoxical reaction to the drug, or some substance other than core focus/'smart' drugs.
edit: I just looked, and paradoxical drowsiness is a known response some people have to amphetamines. I'd bet that the person you're describing has an atypical response to amphetamines.
One of the things that sustained stimulant abuse contributes to is sleep deprivation and the disturbance of sleep patterns. "Brain fog" - confusion, problems concentrating, memory problems, are all symptoms of sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation experiments have also consistently produced psychotic symptoms (hallucinations, paranoia, disturbed/unusual thinking - the person undergoing the psychosis of course thinks they are doing fine) - the earliest experiment I am aware of being Randy Gardner's[1] in 1964. "Stimulant psychosis" is supposed to be one of the effects of amphetamine abuse; I think the psychosis is likely due to the sleep deprivation involved in multi-day binges.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Gardner_(record_holder)
But if tou take them wirh a tolerance and your underlying physical body is fatigued, it becomes very, very easy to fall asleep (or worse, to be too stimmed to sleep but too tired to be productive)
This aligns with my experience. Microdosing is good when you have physical tasks to do (i.e. running around town all day, reorganizing / cleaning your house), but focusing on creative tasks is harder.
Tbh, the only thing I'd recommend it for is for people struggling with chronic depression or anxiety - for these two, it can be a life-changingly effective "aspirin" (i.e. not a cure, you still need to fix the underlying causes) without the significant side-effects of traditional medication, and any lack of focus is massively offset by relieving the brain fog of depression/anxiety.
Meth was extensively used in the German military and probably contributed to the victory over France. Basically to can stay awake and endure, but cognitive ability is impaired in some ways.
Jesus. If that happened to me, my first stop would be to the board/investors to report it, and my second would be out the door and to a new job.
> It's only way to do some of the things that the really successful engineers are doing. You forgo eating, exercise, etc... and spend 110% of your time on working and chasing the high of getting shit done.
I suspect your belief of the effectiveness here is quite a large exaggeration. You might have tunnel-vision focus and the ability to stay awake for long stretches and work, but the quality of that work just cannot be top notch. If you don't eat, exercise, or sleep much, your brain is not getting the fuel it needs to work properly, and no drug can replace or mimic that. Over the (very) short term you'll see a benefit, but after that it's just vapor.
I'm saying this not to say "Actually..." but so that no one discounts your valid point just because they have some anecdote where it didn't apply. There is a point where you pay (or at least stop winning), and our understanding of where that point is and how stable it is is very lacking. Likewise, our judgement under the influence of something should not be considered 100% reliable. Neither should our judgement NOT under the influence, but people tend to become zealots when defensive, and fewer people are defensive of being "normal".
I had a friend that I was discussing nootropics with - It's a topic I'm very interested in, but I'm not interested in any notable experimentation because, well, I've only got one brain and our understanding of it is pathetic. His answer was that by experimentation you'd discover what worked. We were definitely coming at it from opposite ends despite similar interests.
That person ought to be in jail. A CEO is definitely not in charge of the pharmacy, anything of this kind should be prescribed by your doctor.
I don't look back on it and think it was predatory or a big deal or a malicious thing. I definitely don't think he deserves to be in jail or punished.
If a CEO here in NL suggested I take some pills in order to improve my productivity and offered to supply them my first step would be to inform the board in writing and my second would be to resign my position. This is simply not ok, and not acceptable.
Never mind that caffeine is legal yet it’s the shittiest productivity drug I can imagine yet everyone is falling over themselves to serve it to you and get you one while they’re out on break. I’d much prefer people ask me if I’d like a pill of modafinil to the addictive cranky horror that is caffeine.
Nice to see we agree.
> social dynamics change dramatically.
I'm sorry, but whatever the 'social dynamics' as a person in a position of authority over another there are some lines you should never cross. Not knowing what your mandate is as a CEO is a recipe for disaster.
If an employee has a productivity issue a CEO does not have mandate to prescribe - or even suggest - medication. The fact that that needs spelling out is worrisome.
I'd agree that it's not professional/ethical, but the OP didn't say the CEO suggested it.
For all we know, poster might have initially asked (Of course, agreeing to hand out arbitrary medication is of course not the right answer).
Point is I'm trying not too read too much into their dynamics and make assumptions based on a short HN comment.
There's some reason to believe this is literally true - and true in the same sense as the economic rule! In this context, it's been nicknamed the Algernon argument. Gwern (of course) has the canonical writeup.[1]
The short version is: "if some chemical change could make us smarter, why wouldn't it already been in place?" Or, framed differently, "why would the brain evolve to benefit from a chemical it doesn't normally have?" This argument doesn't say cognitive performance enhancement is impossible, only that there has to be some tradeoff for it or we would have evolved it already. If we're going to get rewarding "brain boosts", we need to find tradeoffs that are more appealing than they were historically.
One simple possibility is this one: we can find chemical supplements that let us rearrange when we're performing well, without net gain. Caffeine is an obvious example: it doesn't actually diminish the value of sleep, but postpones the feeling and helps us manipulate our schedules. Amphetamines might be a more extreme case of the same, 'borrowing' energy more generally and paying for it later.
The other dodges are less relevant here, but a fascinating read if you check the article.
These drugs are just changing the balances of existing pathways in our brains. They aren't creating new pathways. Either they are causing a substance that your body naturally limits to exist in higher quantities or lower quantities, keeping a messenger molecule from being removed as fast as it would be normally, or removed faster than normal.
So I agree with the parent, it is likely we can choose the tradeoffs, maybe needing to avoid predators and scavenge for food is not our priority anymore and we can turn off some of that so we can think more deeply. But chemically I doubt we can improve ourselves without any drawbacks.
But yes, technology in general, physical things, can have a more pure benefit, and we are already reaping the rewards of those benefits. A new macbook pro is likely to make me more productive while not interfering with my sleep :)
Gwern outlines three general ways to work around the Algernon rule:
1. We can live under different conditions than evolution prepared us for
2. We can optimize for different goals than evolution rewarded
3. We can make major/multifactor changes unavailable to an local-maximization algorithm.
Condition two is easiest: caffeine is a sensible response to electric lighting, while staying awake long after dark was largely unhelpful in our evolutionary past.
Condition one is sometimes rewarding: piracetam shows efficacy with choline supplements, because we can massively overload a relatively scarce chemical. Other kludges may exist, like boosting immune response by simulating a summer day/night cycle to signal "safe conditions, energy is cheap now".
Condition three is incredibly hard wrt to the brain. It's obvious for the body - eye surgery can improve on 20/20 vision - but I don't know of any drastic better-than-well interventions for the mind.
You could apply the same logic to Aspirin or any medicine - if reducing swelling was beneficial, why doesn't our body do it for us?
That seems like a misunderstanding of evolution. It's not a master plan driving toward perfection. Our biology is a bag of traits, some of which were useful and some of which just haven't been selected out yet.
Perhaps if you are a runner and you take these seemingly benign medicines to reduce pain and swelling, you end up causing more permanent damage by continuing to run when you should not (I have experienced this).
I think a lot of medicines work by turning off or on processes that are important but inconvenient at the time. Painkillers are probably the best example. We shouldn't take them when we are healthy, it would be dangerous. Other medicines, such as antibiotics, work by killing pathogens directly and don't affect our bodies like the drugs in this discussion.
It's I suppose possible to hit a simple optimization evolution hasn't found yet, but that's rarer than people seem to think. The major examples we have are either things which evolution lacks the tools for (e.g. mechanical prosthetics) or major biological leaps (e.g. your antibiotic example).
The things that look quick and easy like "eat some willow bark extract" have tradeoffs, even when they aren't obvious. Taking 'painkillers' to the extreme - morphine - makes it especially obvious. It's generally a terrible idea unless you've recognized that there's a problem and gotten someone else to take care of keeping you healthy while you're out of commission.
There is one version of this idea that I like though, which is that I doubt that we're built for 8+ hours a day of intense abstract reasoning, which seems to be what the modern information economy demands of those aspiring to a middle class or better existence. The vast bulk of humanity did not earn their daily bread this way for most of human history, so I don't think our brains are adapted for "abstract reasoning above all else."
As an aside, drug use was extremely common among indigenous peoples all across the world. I don't even think this naturalism fallacy supports these particular claims.
It's very useful to recognize when we aren't 'made' for something, because it implies we can get benefits from either avoiding it or supplementing our performance at the task. When we are "made for" a task, like walking for long periods or throwing objects with good aim, it's tough to improve on human baseline. (At least, not without serious side effects. There's a reason drugs to boost strength and physical endurance tend to be risky.)
But that distinction has to be kept separate from a values judgement. As I mentioned in another comment, "reading a good book" is something I'm not evolved to do. That might mean I should be prepared for challenges with the task (e.g. back pain if I sit for too long), but it's unrelated to whether I want to keep doing it.
The 'ancestral environment' stuff is likely to be easy or optimized-for, but that's not the same as being a better way to live.
There shouldn't be any easy way to improve on what evolution tried to do, because evolution would have done it. But there can certainly be ways to optimize for things evolution didn't try to do, like preparing us to do symbolic logic for 40 hours a week or stay up well past dark. And there can be ways to optimize for goals evolution didn't/couldn't reward, like "never having kids and staying healthy until age 90".
I do think there's risk in blurring the moral point with the practical one, though. I'm not particularly evolved for reading books, but it's something I enjoy and I want 'hacks' to do it better - whether that's reading glasses or a cup of coffee. I don't like commuting while tired or being stationary for hours on end, and if I had free choice I'd stop doing those things instead of hacking myself to be better at them.
But in "enhancement" terms, they both count as "doing a thing I wasn't made to do" regardless of whether I want to keep doing them.
It does not follow that evolution would maximize intelligence or performance.
Human intelligence exists as a by-product of many cumulative adaptions for survival.
That's the thing, that's not how it works
The brain didn't evolve to be affected by substances unknown to it, it's plants that evolved substances that have CNS effects. (Though the body did evolve to depend on a lot of external substances - be that calorie and protein sources or vitamins)
Nicotine is literally a pesticide (and yes, people do use it as such in some occasions). Not sure how other substances evolved though (I think caffeine made the coffee seeds travel further)
When people experienced prolonged withdrawal symptoms from ceasing stimulants, I think it is usually due to being forced to confront life conditions that were being avoided.
This certainly may be part of it.
However, there are long-term changes in the brain that occur with chronic stimulant use/abuse. I'm looking for the correct number, but I believe it takes about 24 months for the brain to revert to its normal state after stimulant cessation.
Post Acute Withdrawal Syndrome (PAWS) is supposedly a thing that can last months, but it's just an observation of a collection of symptoms - no analysis of a specific mechanism causing it that I have seen.
I would hope that someone trying to do something useful concerning addiction and the brain wouldn't go by a comment on Hacker News that was posted via a cell phone.
Anyway, please see my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16477351
Here's what I could find via a preliminary Google search on my phone:
From drugabuse.gov [0]:
> In the aforementioned study, abstinence from methamphetamine resulted in less excess microglial activation over time, and abusers who had remained methamphetamine-free for 2 years exhibited microglial activation levels similar to the study’s control subjects. Another neuroimaging study showed neuronal recovery in some brain regions following prolonged abstinence (14 but not 6 months). This recovery was associated with improved performance on motor and verbal memory tests. But function in other brain regions did not recover even after 14 months of abstinence, indicating that some methamphetamine induced changes are very long lasting.
Here's a graphic they included [1].
This is another source [2]:
> Stopping drug use doesn’t immediately return the brain to normal. Some drugs have toxic effects that can kill neurons—and most of these cells will not be replaced. And while changes to connections between neurons in the brain may not be permanent, some last for months. Some research suggests the changes may even last for years.
I cannot find the studies these articles cite, but I'll try to find them later.
This is related, but is not specific to stimulant or methamphetamine use:
Delta-FosB, an enzyme that is critical to achieve an addiction state in the brain, has a half-life of ~208hr [3]. Multiply that by the standard 7 half-lives to estimate significant elimination, and that alone yields a maximum of 60 days until it is cleared. This enzyme is key in drug and behavioural addictions.
This paper [4] speculates about changes in the brain that last longer than the time it takes to eliminate elevated Delta-FosB levels in the brain.
[0] https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/research-reports/meth...
[1] https://d14rmgtrwzf5a.cloudfront.net/sites/default/files/met...
[2] http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/addiction/brainchange...
[3] http://www.jneurosci.org/content/jneuro/17/13/4933.full.pdf
[4] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC58680/#__sec5ti...
I wanted to achieve everything naturally. I knew going off the drug would slow me down, but I was willing to trade general health and well-being for a drop in productivity.
I don't live in Silicon Valley any longer though... so that might be part of the reason I don't feel the pressure.
Right now I might call myself a big fish in a little pond (not really, I am more humble than that) but compared to SF where you are a small fish in a big pond ... there is a lot more pressure to stand-out and be excellent.
Pills wouldn't help in fact they would make it more difficult. Organisation, ruthless priorization and discipline are the key. The rest is just distractions.
It pains me to think the abuse left permanent damage.
Congrats on kicking the pills.
Not only that, the amount of things you accomplish in that time span is far greater. So it really does turn you into a 10x engineer. If you're already very strong, experienced, pragmatic, etc.. then the stimulants will truly make you feel invincible.
So if you see a software engineer at a big company who is making 200k a year while simultaneously putting out dozens of open source projects a year, maintaining them, speaking at conferences, managing complex hobbies, etc... chances are that is due to a stimulant drug. I know very few people who are capable of that naturally.
Edit: What I see a lot of is people who think they are super productive while churning out lines and lines of garbage.
Then tolerance rears its head and it becomes exactly like you said. For me it takes till I get close to t_max (peak blood concentration) that my day really starts, which is from 1-3 hrs after dosing (closer to 3 for the drugs I take)
There is a funny meme I saw recently that rings true:
Two biggest shocks of adult life.
1. everyone does cocaine
2. cheese is fucking expensivehttps://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/drug-relate...
if we don't know what the outcome of these ER visits are, then it could well be that for some tiny percentage of cocaine users there is a side effect that causes the perception of chest pain, which disappears with no ill effects after a few hours. or, maybe, this represents almost all cocaine users - 90% of them experience severe enough chest pain to warrant an ER visit, all of whom are pronounced dead withing minutes of arrival.
annoyingly, the website you linked to which details this singular datum, does nothing to clarify as to what the truth of the matter is. it certainly doesn't appear to be "advancing addiction science" in any useful way...
Work smart or go home.
I remember a CEO of one of my early startups would give me 5mg addies to help me get more done. I appreciated it because it was great to get the added boost to focus.
I eventually worked my way up to taking 30mg of XR daily (legally, doctor prescribed) and it was the most productive I have ever been in my life. I worked 24x7. I was working a normal consulting job while also working on a startup/app in my spare time. I did ui/ux/frontend/backend/api development and sent cash overseas for an iOS developer that I managed. None of this would have been possible without stimulants.
It's only way to do some of the things that the really successful engineers are doing. You forgo eating, exercise, etc... and spend 110% of your time on working and chasing the high of getting shit done.
It's not sustainable though. I eventually went cold turkey. I do NOT recommend that as it will completely ruin your life for 6 months to a year. I was not productive, I gained tons of weight, my self-confidence went to shit. My life really went into a downward spiral.
Now I am 100% drug-free and am not at the same level I was back then, but I am very productive and focused. I would not go back to where I was, even for the productivity gains. I eat clean (low-carb, ketogenic), weightlift in my basement, row 5k/10k every few days for cardio. My only vice is really coffee and the low-carb cocktails on weekends. Best of all, I do not wake up in the morning needing a tiny pill full of amphetamine salts.