Cognitive enhancement drug may also cause addiction | Hacker News Reader

Cognitive enhancement drug may also cause addiction

nature.com

15 pointsrobg25 comments

Irrespective of observable physiological effects, any drug, or indeed anything that improves our quality of life is addictive. Addiction is part of the human condition and we're better off just accepting it and letting ourselves get hooked on things, subject to our own rationally chosen limits. Those choices should be based on the strength of the addiction and the benefits and risks of the addictive object. The chemical/psychological distinction is hardly important.

> drug, or indeed anything that improves our quality of life is addictive.

There is a difference between using something (and getting used to it because it increases your quality of life) and a chemical addiction.

> The chemical/psychological distinction is hardly important.

There is a huge difference. If you are addicted to something it is pretty much a physiological effect on you.

I agree up to a point, but we know that psychological events cause physiological changes, not just vice-versa.

Simple example, the addiction of the adrenaline rush and dopamine release of extreme sports.

Often when people, and especially the media, say "addiction" they're actually referring to psychological dependence.

Most physiological addictions have a psychological component. As an example, I'm addicted to caffeine, but I'm also dependent on coffee as part of a morning routine. Smokers who are addicted to nicotine are often also dependent on the social aspects of being a smoker. It's often the psychological component that, long term, is the hardest to break.

The converse, however, is not true. A good example is so-called "Internet addiction" which should rightfully be called "Internet dependence", at best, because it has no physiological component.

To say that something like internet addiction has no physiological component is to vastly understate the power our brain has over the rest of our body. If your method of getting a dopamine rush is the internet (or world of warcraft, porn, gambling, etc), you are still going to get physiologically attached to that dopamine rush and will suffer negative physical reactions (poor mood, etc) if those things are taken away.

I've been waiting for a reason to go back to smoking

If your only reason for quitting smoking was because you dislike the concept of addiction, then I suspect you were never a smoker in the first place and are making this up.

Smoking is expensive, unhealthy, inconvenient, and stinky. That's why there's a big push to get people unaddicted to smoking, but not so much push to get people unaddicted from caffeine.

Actually, I was a smoker. On the addiction scale, I'd say very high which was part of the reason. I quit for health reasons mostly. It was also becoming more of an inconvenience.

Honestly, I liked smoking a lot (still do really). I disliked the addiction.

One of the most successful smoking cessation methods uses this very tactic to help people quit. Smokers already know that smoking is unhealthy, stinky, expensive and inconvenient. This doesn't help them quit. Convincing smokers that they are drug addicts seems to help more. It's easy to rationalize smelling bad, but very hard to rationalize a drug addiction.

"Quit Smoking the Easy Way" by Alan Carr

>"The chemical/psychological distinction is hardly important."

Yes, it is. In some cases, withdrawal can cause death.

How is this news? Even modafinil.com and Wikipedia already list Dopamine effects from modafinil.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modafinil

http://modafinil.com

Worth noting, too, that "may cause addiction" does not equal "causes addiction".

Nice catch. It's the first imaging study to show the effect, I guess. I think this is one of the reasons for its popularity. It not only makes some folks alert. It makes them happy and alert. That's the holy combination. Caffeine doesn't quite get there and how big is that market? When we look back in fifty years at the development of custom (and cosmetic) psychotropics, I bet modafinil leads the story.

Out of curiosity, are there any legal stimulants that are non-addictive and generally low risk to risk free?

I quit smoking a couple of years ago, and my brain never fully recovered from quitting. I've felt mentally slower ever since I quit.

I've occasionally taken Modafinil, and whenever I've taken it, my brain resumes back to my smoking baseline. I don't feel amped up on it at all, just normal.

I don't think there are any central nervous system stimulants which don't have the potential for addiction, legal or not...

A lot of people on here probably meet the criteria for ADHD. Methylphenidate is addictive to a certain extent, but not as much as caffeine and is basically risk free when taken as prescribed. I agree with the other poster, I don't think there are any stimulants that are tolerance free.

Strattera has the same concentration improving effects of stimulants and is not habit forming.

Strattera is not a stimulant, it is an NRI, a class of drugs that are mostly anti depressants. In a statistical sense, it does not treat ADHD nearly as well as methylphenidate or amphetamine.

I was slightly curious too, and so did some searching. Surprisingly stimulants can actually decrease risk of addiction to drugs or alcohol. It was found that adults who were prescribed medication for ADHD were at less risk for substance abuse. Now I don't no whether it just reduced risk for addictions to things other than stimulants, or that it just reduced addiction in people who had ADHD, but it at least shows that there is a medically safe dose for some people.

http://www.drugabuse.gov/NIDA_Notes/NNVol14N4/ADHD.html

Treating a mental disorder/personality quirk that is fucking up your life will reduce your risk for substance abuse, not to mention loose women and rock and roll.

It also helps if the drug you're being treated with has a lot of the same effects, or is in fact the same substance, as the drugs you would otherwise abuse.

If you are talking about cognitive enhancement there are a few (not all are technically “stimulants”). Firstly, things rich in Omega 3 has shown to improve your memory (e.g. flaxseed oil). Ginkgo Bilbao has shown to work in some studies.

Then there is things such as Piracetam (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piracetam) that has shown to improve memory.

It's more a concentration issue than it is general memory and cognition.

I've tried piracetam and aniracetam, and neither of them really did much for me. I actually had better luck with gingko biloba.

Personally, it's not a huge issue; it just frustrates me that I know I'm not operating at peak capacity.

Still, if I know I'm going to have a day where I need to be able to keep a lot of various fiddly bits in my head while I work through a particularly rough patch of logic; every little bit helps.

I would be very surprised if you don't meet the criteria for ADHD. Why not talk to a psychiatrist or general physician about it? The prescription stimulants greatly improve one's ability to keep various fiddly bits in one's head. They've been around for so long that their safety is very well documented.

I downmodded you for your willingness to diagnose ADHD in someone you don't know.

Most people have some mental quirks. The difference between a quirk (that doesn't need treatment) and a disorder (that needs treatment) is whether it is so disruptive that it prevents you from living a life which you consider normal.

Being easily distracted does not automatically imply that you should start a regular course of amphetamines prescribed by your neighbourhood friendly psychiatrist.

...the poster is asking about stimulants and shows an interest in cognitive enhancement. He talks about being easily distracted. I'm not diagnosing him; that's up to a physician. I'm saying that if he's interested in these drugs, it's as easy as talking to a doctor because he probably could be diagnosed with ADHD if he is interested in stimulants. I take care to use the phrasing "meets the criteria for ADHD" because I don't think ADHD actually exists in the vast majority of cases, at least not as a disorder. Concentration and focus are a continuum, some are better at it than others and stimulants improve concentration for everyone

See an online ADHD inventory like this one: http://www.addresources.org/article_adhd_questionnaire_amen..... Western medicine has a very generous definition of adult ADHD -- if you get distracted easily as an adult, and had behavior problems OR organizational problems as a child in school, a doctor is likely to diagnose you with ADHD. This doesn't rise to the level of disorder in my opinion, but when the diagnosis is handed out so freely, stimulants are a safe, reliable method of cognitive enhancement. I am generally against our society's overmedication of children with stimulants without their consent, but as adults, we have the ability to make informed, rational decisions about the substances we put into our bodies.

This Nature article discusses some of the ethical issues behind cognitive enhancement in the healthy. http://www.scribd.com/doc/13134612/Naturrecom456702a

Don't screw around with your brain unless you're willing to accept the consequences for something bad happening to it.

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