We did and still are. You can only safely push hardware so much.

Lots of people are, they're called nootropics.

Whether they are successful and whether they are mostly a bunch of snake oil is another question...

I feel way more productive since going sxe.

I am naturally so tired around 9pm when I shut the lid of my laptop that I fall asleep within minutes of getting in bed.

On a side note.. Somehow my dreams have been insane and I’ve low key enjoyed the vivid worlds I find myself in over the past few months.

Wake up around 5 or 6, go for a stroll and then eat some breakfast.

Then I can work taking only breaks for lunch and dinner. Sometimes a 30 min nap in the afternoon in the park.

For those unfamiliar with the abbreviation sxe:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straight_edge

> Straight edge (sometimes abbreviated as sXe or signified by XXX or simply X) is a subculture of hardcore punk whose adherents refrain from using alcohol, tobacco, and recreational drugs in reaction to the punk subculture's excesses. Some adherents refrain from engaging in promiscuous or casual sex, follow a vegetarian or vegan diet and do not consume caffeine or prescription drugs. The term "straight edge" was adopted from the 1981 song "Straight Edge" by the hardcore punk band Minor Threat.

I've always been pretty much straight-edge. Don't drink much alcohol, and recently went off caffeine.

I'm naturally tired at around 2am. I barely dream, or can't remember my dreams. I struggle to wake up at 6:30 even after 7+ hours of sleep.

I do like an afternoon nap, but Sunday's are almost the only opportunity. As a bad consolation prize, I involuntarily micro-sleep at my desk, working from home or in the office, a handful of times most days, generally at peak afternoon nap times (1:30pm - 3:30pm).

I wouldn't say I'm productive, but I would say that the work I produce is generally of a high quality.

> sxe

Weird. First time I've ever seen that (abbreviation?) For straight-egde. Thought you were talking about some supplement at first.

I thought the same and instantly googled, and immediately remembered I had seen it before. It's like a play off HxC

One billionaire is using them to speedrun his mental illness.

'Source'.

Well assuming we’re talking about Elon Musk, he has admitted to using prescription Ketamine for depression, which seems to have a negligible effect on cognition for therapeutic use

Interesting, I have seen some pretty scary interviews with Elon. If I had noticed a family member acting the same way I would have taken them to the ER.

Specifics? I haven’t seen him do anything worse than be overly blunt.

Next he'll grow fangs and start drinking blood.

How so?

Caffeine is the most used drug in academia.

Surely the most used because of its affordablity and easy access. Coffee, energy drinks, tea, caffiene pills, etc.

I wonder what academia would look like if adderall, vyvanse, modafinil were just as accessible, or even less controlled substances that are considered to enhance mental performance like L-tyrosine, alpha-GPC, Lion's Mane mushroom, Bacopa, or Ginko.

Alpha-GPC is just choline, so you can get it by eating eggs. Amino acids and mushrooms are also quite accessible.

Modafinil is straight up better than caffeine though, which is a crappy and addictive stimulant.

"just" choline is a little reductionist, it's much more bioavailable.

I'm not sure where the distinction actually lies, but it is also considered a (generally recognized as safe) drug.

Caffeine also has a track record of several centuries.

We really, really know the long term effects.

What are the long term effects? How harmful is caffeine addiction?

no, you mean Ritalin. caffeine is a joke compared to actual stimulants.

I used to think like you do. But the real place where we could make tons of progress is in relationships. Many stories of great thinkers involve one or a few crucial mentoring/pedagogical relationships. Without those, a person could forever find themselves trying to fit their square peg into the round hole of what "normal" society around them seems to expect. I can easily see how my life could have ended up like that.

As someone who benefited greatly from a few mentors in childhood and adolescence, my goal is to be able to give the same to at least a few other people in my lifetime.

Was just discussing various parenting stories with my colleagues over lunch and, like relationships, childhood environment and parental boundaries (or otherwise) would likely be the greatest influence to any individual.

But then, if 'mentors' applies to parents, then I guess I'm saying the same thing.

Having said that, my teenage son wastes a lot of his life playing online games with his friends, but having said that, I heard him say mid-game to a friend of his "Brazilian isn't a language you idiot!". So, I mean it's trivia, but he knows there's no language called Brazilian. He's a smart kid (that's not the only data point).

(I had to look it up: Portugese is the official language of Brazil).

>> As someone who benefited greatly from a few mentors in childhood and adolescence, my goal is to be able to give the same to at least a few other people in my lifetime.

+1. Same for me.

Relationships has been more important than what I could consider ideal or optimal (in terms of how many missed opportunities are there).

Once I was reading a technical paper from a colleague and could not follow much. Spoke to him and he could explain the crux of it in two-three sentences. I was left wondering why that was not there in the paper itself. But that happens repeatedly. People are able to explain much better than the literature they produce*.

This perhaps has a contribution as to why good relationships and mentors end up being so important. But then, this ultimately comes in the way of scalability.

* Of course, it may possibly also be that in a verbal conversation when the author personally knows the reader, they can explain to that reader better. However, I think this effect is less important than people being able to write better.

I wonder what effects do you expect from that on a societal scale in the long term (at least 3,4 decades) ?

For instance we banned meth and other drugs that have tremendous productivity effects at the expense of the individual and how we had to deal with them, so it's not a rhetoric question.

We didn’t fully ban them. We just prescribe them to anyone a doctor decides has ADHD.

Not quite, but if one does not have ADHD or something similar, things like adderall have a very different effect than they do to someone who has ADHD.

Your apparent disbelief in ADHD doesn’t make it imaginary, by the way. Consider yourself lucky that you do not have it; I am unemployable without medication.

People without ADHD take adderall &etc for focus/performance enhancing reasons. Some get it from a friend, some are incorrectly diagnosed. I don't know if you disagree that this is the case, but I don't think it implies anything about ADHD.

I have ADHD. It doesn’t change the fact that people feign ADHD in order to get access to amphetamines.

Don't forget the military. Go pills.

You will be surprised to learn that methamphetamine is not banned and that it is currently prescribed for refractary ADHD under the name desoxyn!

I'm aware we never "ban" any specific substance, as we say the dose makes the poison. And any substance that has any effect is also a potential cure for the disease that has the opposite effect.

I should have been clear I saw it in the "make people smart" light, as doping an already acceptable situation, instead of correcting something perceived as a pathology.

Meth was widely available over the counter at some point, and we made it legally disappear outside of strict medical settings.

Anything in Schedule I is almost fully banned, though people will try hard enough to get around it that it doesn't matter.

IIRC nicotine is the most effective nootropic by far, the problem being that it's super addictive.

But none of them work as well as sleep and exercise.

And eating right! Gotta complete that trifecta, each one compliments the others.

IIRC nicotine itself isn’t super addictive when used solely in a less addictive form, as in gum or patch.

Have you ever tried taking a vape away from a teenager?

...or me?

A vape is definitely not a less addictive form, I can attest to that. But especially with the patch, and to a lesser extend with gum, it’s not that addictive to (most) people who that never had a cigarette/vaping/dipping/pouching addiction. Gum is probably still more addictive than coffee but I would guess it’s at least closer to that of coffee than inhaling it.

In the past, when I've heard the 'less additive form', it was in contrast to nicotine from tobacco, where there are other chemicals and compounds at play. While it's true ROA can be a big part of habit formation, I'd argue it's a stretch to call it different form when it's the same chemical in either case.

tbf tho, I am somewhat contradicting another comment I made about bioavailability on this very gp thread so suffice to say, I do understand your point.

I mean they quite literally come in completely different forms of products, but I get your point. I thought nicotine vs tobacco was mostly important for health risk, with the exception of cigarettes which IIRC have all sorts of nasty stuff added or in trace amounts.

That's also my understanding, and nicotine has some other strange health benefits - for instance, it's a better schizophrenia treatment (for symptom relief) than the actual medications for it, which is why almost all schizophrenics smoke.

On the other hand, I just looked at Twitter and saw two different people get ~$3000 payments from a class action lawsuit against Juul, which is by far the biggest payment I've ever heard of from a class action signup, so I suspect they're about to die.

I think modafinil is a wonderful drug, far more potent than caffeine or nicotine. It's also very easy to get with no long term ill effects. There is a whole subreddit dedicated to this.

Wonder why more people aren't using it.

> no long term ill effects

That is not totally true for at least three reasons:

1. Modafinil can interact badly with some other stimulants. One must remain careful.

2. Modafinil by itself can cause SJS and similar serious problems in rare cases.

3. Chronic use of modafinil can easily produce anxiety, so much anxiety that it makes using modafinil impossible. This is even in a very low dose.

> Wonder why more people aren't using it.

Because it's classified as an amphetamine in large parts of the western world and would be illegal obtain without a prescription.

Careful what you wish for: https://web.archive.org/web/20140527121332/http://www.infini...

@HN: Downvoting questions is stupid.

You're perpetuating "be ashamed of not knowing" instead of encouraging "learn by asking questions".

If you agree, consider upvoting downvoted questions.

I think gene therapy type stuff seems more interesting at this point:

https://www.psypost.org/new-intranasal-rna-therapy-shows-pro...

It's called nicotine.

I bet if such an effective drug were created, that just like Ozempic, we'd end up in a situation where the rich buy it up and use it to increase their advantage thus only widening the wealth gap. Like some dystopian Monkey's paw effect.

Positive eugenics would result in more smart people with zero drugs or genetic engineering involved. And it requires zero oppression or violence. Just pay couples with high IQs to have babies.