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Comment by rendall | Hacker News Reader

It's an astonishing article. It seems to reveal a hidden world that I have no knowledge of.

I don't know how to absorb that many of my colleagues and even supervisors are taking speed. Like, what percentage?

Honest question: are you all on Adderall?

Not anymore, spent two years using amphetamines daily, different stims like adrafinil, modafinil etc. Turns out it just makes you work a bit faster, make mistakes faster, get tunnel vision, miss clues, makes me an asshole towards other people.

Working in fang, Adderall speed bunnies are not that popular. The best engineers are prioritizing their clear thoughts. Taking speed is really not helping.

There is no free lunch, biggest features for optimal performance are still: sleep, exercise, good food, social contact.

It sure is fun tho, but it makes it easier to lie to yourself. Too bad it's too much fun for me to use recreationally.

No. Caffeine pills + theanine and multi vitamin, yes! Legal and nice.

Caffeine still REALLY works for me, I cannot take it in the evenings unless I want to stay up.

Theanine helps with focus and is also calming, it's what's in green tea.

Multivitamin with all vitamins and magnesium etc. Magnesium esp helps with cramps.

Does it matter if the people taking Adderall actually have ADHD or just take it for fun? My wife takes it and neither her cognitive function nor risk appetite seem greater than normal because of it. It just means she can walk in a straight line for more than 10 feet without wandering off at the first shiny object she sees. I tried a single pill once and felt like I was about to have a heart attack within an hour. Didn't seem to have quite the same effect. As far as I can tell for people who actually have ADHD, the biggest negative side effect is the dependence. Without it now, she'll sleep 20 hours a day.

The article has that extended, unexcerptable part about how tech and finance people are on it in particular because our jobs are unusually hard to focus on for hours per day. The people who can do it both unmedicated and uninterrupted are rare.

There have been periods, sometimes extended times, when I have had a hard time focusing on my job. Other extended periods of time when I literally want to do nothing else.

Over the years, these extremes in variation have largely gone away on its own and I like to have a nice work-life balance.

But I'm doing nothing close to ambitiously creating a cryptocurrency exchange nor making scads with Jane Street, either, and now I must confess to FOMO.

Being a bit older, coke used to be extremely popular in some firms I worked at

check out the documentary "bigger, faster, stronger."

this goes way beyond adderall.

and though a sample size of 1, my own circle largely consists of research academics in the social sciences, of whom at least half have openly acknowledged their use of adderall, concerta and the like for (or more fairly, sometime over) the past 10, 20 years or longer, most starting in grad school. i suspect the real number is close to 75% but not everyone is candid about it.

1. The difference between speed and Adderall taking is larger than it seems at first glance. 2. Scott is exaggerating the prevalence of its usage a bit.

What, exactly, is the difference? If the term "speed" simply refers to amphetamine, the only difference could be ROA and the fact that your usual "street speed" is racemic.

Different types/ratios of amphetamines (there's plenty), different purity levels (dosages of speed are way higher for similar level of effect) and cutting agents (e.g. ephedrine, meth), different dosages and consistency of taking them. Even with the same substance taking 20mg daily is very different than binging 300mg in a night.

Purity definitely, the difference in dosages comes from the fact that adderall (AFAIK) is 70% d-amp and 30% L. Cutting agents can also make a difference.

If someone produces amphetamine, what other byproduct amphetamines would it contain? I'm not sure I understand your statement on the different types/ratios of amphetamines

You are thinking of just amphetamine (so d or l) while speed often is/has other Ahmphetamine type stimulants[0], typically other similar substances with a longer name that has amphetamine in the name and a similar effect. It just depends on what was easiest to obtain/make due to legality, availability of ingredients and a host of other reasons.

0. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphetamine_type_stimulant

Right, my original comment specified referring to just amphetamine as speed. There are a ton of analogs and substituted amphetamines but that's a whole different discussion.

Sure but that's not what speed refers to in practice and if you go buy some speed instead of Adderall those are the realities of what you'll get/have gotten in the past.

When I left SV in 2010 I estimate 5% of my professional/social circle was on some variety of non-approved stimulant use. From the people I know still there it’s upwards of 20% in many companies now, especially in the sketchier startups (eg crypto).

When I started working again in Germany ca 2015 I would say usage was negligible. Today it is… around 5%. I’m pretty worried I’m watching history repeat itself.

Never taken it, never plan on taking it (even though everyone around me seems to be on it).

I trained myself to concentrate the old fashioned way, practice.

I drink a lot of soda.

Cold showers are my adderall

yeah

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