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Comment by luckylion | Hacker News Reader

Many people view anything that affects the mind fundamentally different from things that "just" affect the body (as if a clear distinction could be made). I don't.

It seems to me that some consider it a form of cheating when you don't change your diet or the sports / exercise regimen, work-life-balance etc. I've tried changing my diet and different workout styles, they just didn't have the effect that stimulants provide. To me, it's essentially "if it works, it works".

What makes you sad about it?

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Race to the bottom.

If there is a stimulant that only hurts your health a little, and it becomes popular in your industry, you will have to take it in order to remain competitive, because the workload will be adapted to the new standard.

> It seems to me that some consider it a form of cheating when you don't change your diet or the sports / exercise regimen, work-life-balance etc.

The difference is, if you later find out that some specific diet or exercise regimen hurts your health, you can change it. If you find out that coffee (or modafinil, in the future) hurts your health, but you are socially expected to use it, then it just sucks to be you.

Possibly, but we don't seem to see a race to the bottom, at least not yet. It appears that some people who want to push extra hard take it, and a lot of people who want to get to some level they consider normal and attainable. I've experienced very positive results, and anecdotally so have others I've recommended it to. Not "wow, I can work 10 times as much now", but rather "I have a choice how much I work now, I'm not hard-capped at an hour or two".

After over a decade of turning stimulants into code, I've just had enough. The idea that someone can do this for 40 years is absurd to me.

If it was possible to go into stasis, floating in a vat, hooked up to a computer, where your employer could extract optimal productivity from you... would you do it? How long would you stay in the vat?

Because that's how I feel taking stimulants every day to get my job done. Sure, I'm an effective employee. And yes, "it works". But I can't help but feel something important has been lost.

A decade is quite a while, I've only experienced the shift it can produce about 1.5/2 years months ago and have taken it regularly since December '19, I might still be honeymooning. I believe my life would've taken a very different trajectory had I known about it a decade ago.

I've actually thought about being hooked up to a computer and not deal with this failing body that has annoying quirks and issues and makes me see doctors. I'd love to try at the very least. But I'm self-employed and like what I do - not sure how I'd feel about it if productivity gains didn't translate into income gains very directly, which translates to financial security, which helps deal with anxieties.

Do you struggle with side effects that make the experience not overwhelmingly positive?

I use adderall mostly, not modafinil, but yeah.

It's all still "overwhelmingly positive" to set out the problem you started taking it to solve...

But now that you're making me unpack it, I guess it's because when I'm on stimulants I'm working. When I'm off stimulants, I'm resting but very exhausted from the stimulants.

It makes me into an efficient worker drone though, which is the problem I set out to solve in the first place. So... mission accomplished?

If I could somehow make the same money without having to drug myself, I think I would feel better about the situation.

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