it's crazy how us humans yearn for magic pills for the highs and the lows just to get ourselves in a healthy baseline
and as bryan johnson's experiments look like, it all comes down to our consistency in eating healthy, exercising regularly, and resting enough - those three alone will net you better health than most people - and it's hard to get into habit of doing those since we all got distractions around us.
Accepting causation is difficult to recognize when it requires personal change.
"As Mark Moran was facing another 90-hour week as an investment-banking intern at Credit Suisse in New York, he knew he needed help to survive the rest of the summer. His colleagues gave him a tip: Visit a Wall Street health clinic and tell the staff he had trouble focusing.
Ahead of his first appointment, he filled out a five-minute questionnaire. One of the questions asked if he had trouble staying organized, another, if he procrastinated. He then met with a clinician who said his answers suggested he had attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. He left with a prescription for Adderall."
https://www.wsj.com/finance/banking/young-banker-finance-adh...
Simplifying a lot here, but people with ADHD are statistically more likely to exhibit addictive behaviours because the addiction provides dopamine that their brain otherwise has trouble getting. Treatment with prescribed CNS stimulants is very effective at preventing those behaviours because the brain no longer has to engage in the addictive behaviours to obtain sufficient dopamine.
Here’s one study where patients reported significantly lower rates of alcohol and drug use over at least a one year period.