I heard that intense coffe drinkers/cigarette smokers are actually undiagnosed ADD-ers that need the caffeine and nicotine stimulants to keep their brains awake.
IIRC, Ritalin…a stimulant…speeds up the under-stimulated part of the brain responsible for attention and focus: imagin a motion picture camera which normally runs 24 frames a second slowed down to 10 frames a second. ADDs percieve a world running amuck, unable to keep up.
I guess I don’t qualify as “normal” because I had pretty much the same experience as you. It wasn’t so much that I felt increased concentration as that things seemed to just fall into place so easily that I had no trouble doing what I had to do–whereas before, it had been a big effort, if not impossible, to accomplish something like (for instance) sending in for renewal tags for my car. (I know that sounds really easy, so why couldn’t I do it?)
Unfortunately I had to switch doctors because of insurance, and my new doctor was horrified that I was on this drug. She said, “That’s a street drug, people use that to get high. No way.”
Back to coffee–which is not nearly as effective.
I’m failry sure most “normal” people who routinely take these drugs do so with the desire to stop being irritable, anxious, uncomfortable and lethargic and simply feel better. Are you implying that off-label use of stimulants is done with the hopes of being jumpy, overexcited and anxious? Also note that anxiety, loss of focus and irritability are secondary symptoms of almost all types of general discomfort - and the difference with you is that you perceive your discomfort as being a consequence, and not the cause of those symptoms which is more than likely entirely true, but that’s your decision in the end to think that, be it influenced by a doctor or not. My opinion is that “normal” people who use and abuse these drugs do so to typically get the same effects, just like “normal” people who abuse pain medications when they are not in pain are doing it to get the same biological effects that people in actual physical pain want. Who are we to call their reasons, desires and problems somehow fundamentally different without any particular reason to do so (not reason they are different, mind you, but a reason to point it out even if it so)?
Don’t get me wrong, I am not against stimulant medications in any way, nor do I deny existence of specific disorders that they treat, I just don’t think it is correct to keep drawing thick lines between medicinal use, social use and patient and non-patient abuse. They are all, typically voluntary, chemical adjustments of internal state that is perceived as being uncomfortable, detrimental or incorrect. While the drug is available it’s a godsend, and typically important, in lives of any user - being medicated or being self-medicated. The key problem with self-medication or abuse is not that the goals are necessarily different, nor is it that the desired effects are necessarily different, but that it is not supervised and controlled by a third-party and often there is nobody monitoring you and making sure you’re not hurting yourself until the damage is done. The high-and-mighty approach I often hear from people about their ‘medical’ uses being vastly different and somehow better than abuse because they ‘actually’ need it grates me to no end. Why is it that I ‘need’ air and water just like everybody else, but my ‘need’ for my morning cup of coffee is somehow less ‘actual’ than somebody elses 80mg of caffeine prescribed as a dieuretic? Neither one of us is likely die immediately from not getting it, and I’d guess that in most cases the discomfort of doing so would be comparable. 
And I feel like reiterating that for adults, it is typically you who decides what psychoactive chemicals go in you. We are not being cured by the majority of these meds, and at best they allow one to develop good mental habits that will perhaps allow one to transition off of the drug. I just really do not see the need to consistently denigrate people who engage in similar activities to oneself but in a different manner that is presented as more frivolous, less important and less justified. It’s true of almost everything in our lives - we love to come up with justifications why our after dinner sherry is so much better and more refined than the malt liquor for the alcoholic next door, why that cuban is somehow a divine concept in comparison to teenagers sucking down GPCs, why you actually need your percocets because you are in chronic pain unlike the junkie downtown who’s only looking to get high, why your sonata in E minor is somehow a work of a bigger mind and is automatically more intellectual than any rap song, why your use of language is more refined than somebody else’s and even such things as why your love for your wife of fifty years is so much more pure and important than any middle-school puppy romance. If you like being on a high horse, that’s up to you of course, just like ranting about it is up to me 
Also, I didn’t at any point claim that benzodiazepines were related to stimulants in any way, but it is a regular practice to blur the lines between types of addiction because of the prevalent evidence showing very similar behaviors and effects accross a whole range of things people become dependent on - from cocaine to se x to gambling.
Cheers,
I got a flight to catch,
Groman
I hope everyone understands that I am not “denigrating” anybody, and I clearly did not do so in any of my posts. I think it’s very important not to put words in people’s mouths when it comes to internet posting of any kind. People should take whatever helps them, although if they’re going to take amphetamines, it really SHOULD be under the supervision of a doctor. However, Focalin clearly lists anxiety, irritability, and nervousness as possible side effects (from what I understand, Focalin is actually notorious for that.) I am experiencing the opposite, and that doesn’t seem to be what most people experience.
I don’t have an intact or normal brain, and I have the MRI and CAT-scan to prove it. The ADD came from a head injury several years ago. Anyone can LOOK at pix of my brain and see that it isn’t normal. That being said, this isn’t true for most people with ADD. I don’t know why people have it whose brains look normal on a scan, or how many people could benefit from the same medications. If everybody wants to drink a gallon of coffee a day, be my guest! But personally, I can’t pretend that I don’t need these medications anymore, and that is all I am saying.
At first, I read the title of this thread as “How do normal people react to Britain?”
-FrL-
I was misdiagnosed as a kid and took it for a while. It made me jittery and nervous. I also had a weird side effect: everything had a faint smell that can best be described as the odor of rotting meat. I lost weight because I didn’t want to eat with that constant stench in my nostrils.
Because I am one of those fools who will readily self medicate I took over the half a bottle of leftover Adderal from my now 18 yr old who was quite ADHD but grew out of it two years ago. With my job of odd and sometimes very long hours, I figured a little stimulant would not hurt.
What I found was it took very little to achieve the desired effect: wakefulness. I sectioned the 20mg pills in 1/8 bits, and found one tiny part would keep me awake and alert for a good 8 hours.
Side effects? Lack of appetite, cottonmouth and an urge to be overly talkative. Really seemed like I had less negative side effects than heavy coffee use or other tricks. Drank lots of water and got the job done. I stretched those pills out for about a year or more of occasional use, they’re all gone now. Too bad, they worked like a charm for me.
Precisely.
By whom? It’s hardly professional to ‘blur the lines between types of addiction’ when a medication properly used to treat a condition will not be addicting but the use of the same drug by someone for recreational purposes might be.
I’m not really buying the ‘everyone who wants to take drugs is by definition a legitimate patient’ argument, BTW. A LOT of people indulge in chemicals to enjoy sensations that are not available in daily life, then they get addicted to that ‘buzz’, and afterwards they become addicted to not feeing the effects of withdrawal.
This is not to say that some people who should be properly medicated don’t self-medicate but there are also many people who indulge in chemicals for entertainment. I have spent a fair bit of time on a board where quite a few people do use recreational drugs; maybe two of them are self-medicating. The rest describe the kicks they get and it’s clearly about a form of ‘fun’.
And this person calls herself a physician? :eek: Refer her to this:http://www.aafp.org/afp/20001101/2077.html
Horrifying how uneducated medical ‘professionals’ are about this disorder.
She can get CME credit at Medcape’s ADHD Resource Centre if she’d like to climb into the 21st C and become informed.
I believe her objection was that I came to her office and asked for it but I’m not sure. I have other issues with this doctor. I’m of an age where I’m concerned about bone loss (I’m also fair and extremely small-boned). The place I go is a family practice residency so first I see a young doctor, then an experienced doc comes in and contradicts everything the resident suggested. In this case the young doc suggested a bone density scan and a bone-loss prevention drug that is taken once a month. The old bitch said I didn’t need a scan until 5-10 years past menopause (huh? From what I’ve read, most of the bone loss occurs in perimenopause and the first couple of years after menopause!) and at that time they’d assess whether I need a bone loss prevention drug. It didn’t seem to bother her that they’d measured me 1/2 inch shorter than on my appointment two years before (“Oh, that varies from day to day and at different times during the day”–why even do it then?).
So I am looking for a new doctor.
In my misguided youth (well, several years ago) I worked with a group of ne’er-do-wells who enjoyed using Ritalin recreationally. They had one friend who had a running prescription and used to share it with them. I guess he must’ve been prescribed more than he needed. Their preferred method was to pulverize the pills and snort them.
I once accepted their invitation and tried it. Didn’t find it appealing in the least. It was stimulating, but in a very jittery, anxious, dysphoric way. (And it burned like hell.) It reminded me much more of (a very high dose) of caffeine than any “recreational” stimulant like cocaine or methamphetamine. I frankly didn’t understand what they saw in it, and was never tempted to try it again, but they loved the stuff.
Then again they were major potheads, too. Maybe it just helped keep them awake.
Sounds like a very good idea. Poor you. I had one like that once. Ditched her fast.
In the dorm I lived in last year, a lot of the guys didn’t go to class all semester, then studied like crazy (a semester’s worth of material) right before the exams. They’d obtain and snort Adderol to help keep them awake. This seemed to be the only side affect that I can attribute directly to those particular meds, but they were on such a cocktail of so many drugs it was hard to tell.*
It’s also worth noting that there was a lot of talk about how easy it is to convince a doctor to give you ADD medicine. I think they bought it from kids who didn’t really need it, but had a prescription for it.
*Note: I did not participate in the Adderol nor other drug consumption; this is from observation only. Also, some of the guys are no longer at school, some I’m guessing this was not a particularly helpful move on their part.