Coffee is a much less effective stimulant for this purpose than amphetamine or methylphenidate.
Re:How To Take Ritalin Correctly
by ivankirigin on Sunday July 05, 2009 @08:23PM
(#688898)
My point is just about the different between those using and those not - not the degree. In the long term, more powerful stimulants could prove less effective.
One good reason to legalize stimulants is to let more people experiment with them. It would be great to know that taking amphetamine is actually a bad way to work in the long term.
Either way, I'm more excited about non-stimulant methods of increasing concentration. Stimulants seem zero sum, at best.
I'm not talking about a difference of degree where one stimulant is "more powerful" than the other, but in the nature of the effects. "CNS stimulant" is a very vague term which glosses over really major differences between, say, amphetamine and caffeine.
I'm not sure in what sense you mean "zero sum" but it isn't true of amphetamine in the senses that come to mind.
That the author suggests good study habits doesn't mean people shouldn't take them.
Given the risk of addiction, it is probably especially important to recommend good usage habits.