Could anyone here tell us about their experience with "study drugs"?
When did this start to become a phenomenon, because it certainly was not in the time and place I studied.
When did this start to become a phenomenon, because it certainly was not in the time and place I studied.
I kind of tumbled into IT after school and it worked for me, if I got 2 hours of concentrated work in per day, I'd get by.
A friend of mine had taken modafinil and recommended it to me like three years ago. I tried it and it was extreme, I was able to sit down and just work on stuff and get it done without getting distracted every few minutes. I took it once or twice a week because of all the propaganda surrounding all drugs.
I've switch to armodafinil because I found it to work more reliable for me. About two years ago, I started taking armodafinil each & every day, and it's great. I have no negative side-effects that I attribute to it (well, I've gained weight, but weight has been up & down for me my whole life), I sleep well, and it allows me to get into the flow quickly, remain there for hours, and stay productive. I still have the occasional day where I don't get anything done, but it tends to be because I'm subconsciously avoiding some task, and recognizing that helps me get over it.
These past two years were easily more productive than the previous 8-10. I wish I had known about it earlier. Looking back, it feels like I've wasted a lot of time before.
I'm far from an expert on any of this. I found something that works very well for me, but I'm not making any claims that it'll work for anyone else. I personally know two others who take modafinil, and while there's some overlap in our experiences, they don't have the same effects I do (they do have effects though, and both take it occasionally, but not regularly).
I haven't found it to be physically addictive, and don't experience any crash or withdrawal if there's a gap when getting my prescription filled. I think it can be mentally addictive though, because once I became able to study and communicate the same way my peers do, I definitely miss the benefits when I don't have it.
However, the crash afterwards was so brutal that despite the extraordinary effect on my short-term memory abilities, I never wanted to try it again.
That said, I didn't see what would be the benefit of taking Adderall consistently, given I could achieve similar results with adrafinil, various racetams, and other nootropic drugs.
But generally, the noticeable effects for me are very subtle, I've joked before that if someone swapped out my drugs with a placebo, I wouldn't be able to immediately tell. It doesn't help me at all with my time blindness, it doesn't improve my memory (that I can tell). And (contrary to other people's experiences) it doesn't even really help me avoid getting distracted (for example, I'm on HN right now). But what it does help me with is starting tasks and getting over executive dysfunction.
With my experiences with ADHD, there's this huge gulf between wanting to do something and actually doing it. So what I notice when I'm on Concerta is that it lessens that gulf. So if I tell myself to go put clothes in the dryer, then I actually go put clothes in the dryer, it's not as much of a monumental multi-step effort of "stand up, put on your shoes, find the laundry room key, walk out the door."
This could be related to the time-release, it could be that people taking this in non-prescribed settings are taking much higher dosages, it could be an individual thing? But I'm always a little weirded out by the idea of people getting addicted to this stuff, because I have to set timers and actively remind myself to take it. It doesn't make me feel wired or unable to sleep or constantly focused. When I started taking Concerta, I spent multiple months with my psychiatrist just tracking day-to-day tasks like how often I ate, whether or not I was brushing my teeth -- because without the charts I didn't feel confident that it wasn't just a placebo effect, I needed to track data to know for sure that anything was even happening.
I'm assuming that people using unprescribed Ritalin are taking it in different ways and in higher dosages. But... I mean, it's not going to make you smarter, at most it seems like it's going to make you more focused on something? But speaking as someone who is constantly hyperfocusing and hyperfixating on things, there are a nontrivial number of college/life tasks where hyperfixation is not helpful and where it would be convenient to be able to turn that behavior off. I spend a lot of time trying to manage hyperfixations, they can be beneficial but they're not universally good.
But I do know that Ritalin/Adderall affects different people differently. Back when I was in college I was not aware of people doing stuff like this as a norm, but I don't know how I would have known about it, so maybe it was happening in other circles.
You know that feeling when you think ‘I should really start X right now’ or ‘I could use a break but probably shouldn’t yet?’ As I understand it, that’s the kind of thing I innately am at a disadvantage against. It’s also what treatment helps with. It’s easier to actually start and continue the things I want to do.
Adderall specifically also makes me too tense and physically over sensitive in a very hard to describe way.
I had friends then on all sides of the spectrum (in terms of "study drug" usage). Two most common drugs going around were Adderall and Vyvanse. Lot of people took them but I would divide them into 3 groups
* Group 1: These folks are prescribed it, they usually take it as prescribed or cut back their intake so they can sell the excess.
* Group 2: These folks were not prescribed it but took them all the time. Because there are so many people in Group 1 on campus, finding these study drugs was really easy. This group took them for every test, every remotely hard thing, and this was largely the same group that abused them outside of class (don't take an Addy and go drinking, bad things happen)
* Group 3: These folks are also not prescribed it, but they take them very seldomly, usually for finals. I was in this group, taking a handfull over the course of 2-3 semesters as a Junior and Senior. Often times when taking them you're not taking them to "study" or "concentrate" but to just get work done and stay awake.
As someone who took them every now and again, I could never understand how someone could take them regularly or even semi regularly. I had the usual side effects, loss of appetite, feeling like (very awake) zombie, and just the general feeling like you're on a drug bender even though you took just one.
As someone who has been on Vyvanse (prescribed) for a few years now, I can say that this feeling definitely goes away eventually. Unless I drink a lot of really strong coffee…
A lot of people were graduating addicted to stimulants. I probably should've been prescribed ADD medication, but I never went through the necessary hurdles.
Anecdotal, but that was my experience.
Pretty useless as a study drug, great for a party drug and sex enhancer. You can easily stay up for a week on it. A lot like meth in that way.