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Comment by littletimmy | Hacker News Reader

No, because Adderall messes with my creativity.

I was doing a math major in college, and whenever I took adderall (legally prescribed) before doing a p-set, I always came up with a long and unelegant solution to a problem. It seemed to motivate me to work very hard, but not to work smart.

No idea if this was just something I had in my head or there is some neurochemical basis for it.

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I have the exact same problem when taking Adderall/Vyavanse/etc my creativity and memory retention is horrendous. Creativity is such an important feature to your personality and taking it away makes you so robotic and boring that I'd rather have the AD/HD and my normal, fun self than a foggy head all the time.

I have experienced the same thing, but it was primarily because the dosage was too high. I have taken Adderall for years, being initially prescribed 5mg and now, 5+ years later, taking 15-20mg per day. I take "drug vacations" (no Adderrall) on most weekends, to help keep my tolerance low. Personally, I find amphetamines very useful. :)

For comparison, my friend was prescribed Adderall, but his initial dosage was 40mg per day. He did not enjoy it. I do not understand the (poor) reasoning for prescribing such a high initial dose.

I use to joke a lot of the code I saw recently bears the distinctive mark of Adderall-induced creativity.

OTOH, lots of Lisp or Smalltalk code I saw earlier could be attributing to LSD or psilocybin.

Adderall is not a nootropic

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