How To Take Ritalin Correctly

http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2007/08/how_to_take_ritalin_correctly.html

by pw • 17 years ago

96 68 17 years ago

Would it sound terribly old-fashioned to suggest that before taking amphetamines to help study, one ought to figure out what the (non-medical) obstacles are to effective studying, and remove those?

I think that if somebody were in a position to take the author's advice of "take a pill, and then study for 4 uninterrupted hours, keeping your attention keenly focused on the task at hand", they'd do (almost) as well skipping the pill.

ivankirigin2• 17 years ago

Given two similar people that follow the same study good advice, but one takes coffee (or some other stimulant), the person taking the stimulant will do better.

That the author suggests good study habits doesn't mean people shouldn't take them.

Given the risk of addiction, it is probably especially important to recommend good usage habits.

kragen8• 17 years ago

Coffee is a much less effective stimulant for this purpose than amphetamine or methylphenidate.

devin5• 17 years ago

I can attest to what you're saying. I've taken adderall with a prescription for years. I would be very interested to know what the retention rate is for knowledge gained while taking amphetamines vs stone cold sober. I feel like I have a much better command of the material when I use both methods. It's like an automatic mode of reinforcement. For instance, it helps to imagine each chinese character is some sort of animal, so you remember how to draw it by thinking of a duck with horns, and so on. Adderall, Ritalin, etc. force you to perceive the things you're studying in a different way, and add to your ability to retain them. The mixture of the two methods can take you a lot further than one or the other in my experience.

However, as I commented below, I am skeptical as to how concrete the amphetamine driven associations persist 3-6 months down the line.

jerf• 17 years ago

I'd love to see a study that examined six month+ retention on amphetamines. Part of the reason I'd love to see that study is that it would have to examine six month+ retention in a control group, too. I suspect we'd all be pretty disappointed by the results. We all "ha ha" about people cramming for the test and then immediately forgetting it all, but I think that we all know that that is actually the normal thing for most people. Putting numbers to that would probably be pretty sobering.

(We've talked a lot on HN about whether it's worth it to go to college. That wouldn't be a half-bad metric to use as part of that decision; do you actually recall stuff from more than three months ago in school? If not, don't spend money on college. Obviously, this is not necessary to live a good life because most people seem to manage without it.)

mahmud3• 17 years ago

Look, if you're gonna waste your brains on chemicals, do it right: MDMA, a pair of reeboks, and a bottle of wate give life a rhythm section!

Besides, when did the geeks become pill-popers?

devin5• 17 years ago

You're not in college, are you?

There's serious demand for "study aids". It's really not a surprise. If you're statistically going to score higher than your peers by taking a pill, that's not too far off from hacking. Code optimization for the brain.

mahmud3• 17 years ago

So you're gonna risk your mental health and your brain just to score "higher" than your peers by some arbitrary benchmark? I thought higher education was for learning and self-development, not pushing your body like a machine.

If amphetamine use is a mental "hack", then so is cheating or paying someone to do your work; call it crowd-sourcing, or distributed education, but that doesn't lend it any legitimacy.

tokenadult3• 17 years ago

If you're statistically going to score higher than your peers by taking a pill

I agree with you that that is the claim of the people taking the pills, but where are the statistics? How well controlled are studies claiming to show that the pills help normal people?

http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html

wglb• 17 years ago

Well, a pretty serious "geek" did amphetamines: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erd%C5%91s

mahmud3• 17 years ago

By all accounts, Erdos was a dysfunctional human being and hardly worth immitating :-) a great mind, yes, but he had way too many eccentricities to make him a bit odd. For example, Erdos found sex disgusting, in an squemish "I am gonna vomit" kind of way.

You actually see the same thing in artists. Sure, the top geniuses are prone to hard-life and drug use, but there are plenty of phonies abusing drugs and living the "life style" without producing any work of value. My gf is a musician and every time I hangout with her friends I feel like I am the dirty unhealthy one. Nearly all the musos are vegeterian yoga freaks, even the rockers, while I the computer programmer chase cigarettes with spirits like a "rockstar" :-P

zandorg• 17 years ago

I just read his biography.

Basically, he tried stopping taking amphetamines, and was okay, but couldn't do any math without them. He was dependent on them.

liuliu• 17 years ago

If I do have a great concentration on test day (I usually do) but distracted much when preparing the test. Should I take any kind of stimulants to help out?

TravisLS• 17 years ago

The conclusion of this article is the most illuminating part. In case you didn't get there...

As a public service announcement, don't worry too much about grades. This is America, not Germany, where success is determined by the solidity of your goal and the amount you are willing to work. I know you don't believe it now, but it's true. Go have a drink.

jmtame• 17 years ago

many students on visas have to maintain a very high cumulative gpa. if they slip below 3.5 (some have told me they have to maintain a perfect 4.0), they could be kicked out.

dandelany• 17 years ago

Ditto with scholarships.

jpwagner• 17 years ago

One of the many points the author is wrong about. Luckily, his arguments weren't based on any facts or research (but likely hearsay of grad students of the late 90s.)

dmg_83• 17 years ago

I would love to see a study done comparing the benefits of Ritalin, Adderall etc. to users diagnosed as having ADD/ADHD against users not diagnosed as having it. If the former group receives significantly greater benefits that would be a strong indicator that ADHD is a distinct condition, rather than a label applied to a set of personality traits. On the other hand, if the benefits were similar for both groups it would call into question why one of them is denied (legal) access to the drug.

tokenadult3• 17 years ago

I have a lot of medical monographs at hand including descriptions of such studies. I'm still reading them. But the summaries I've seen so far in my reading are quite ambiguous as to claimed benefits of taking ADHD drugs (for anyone), especially for the inattentive subtype of ADD. Subjectively reported "this drug really helps me" or third-party observation of "this kid doesn't wiggle around so much in class" is not the same as carefully verified gains in learning from using the drug versus not using the drug.

DanielBMarkham3• 17 years ago

I'm somewhat amused by all this discussion about brain-enhancing chemicals. It's different, yet it is strangely the same.

As a vitamin junkie, I truly believe that certain "hacks" allow me to do better on interviews: caffeine, ginko, SAMe, glutamine, etc. Maybe by a few percentage points. Nothing to write home about, but worth the investment for the job interview.

But these kids aren't going for job interviews. And they're not talking about run-of-the-mill OTC brain hacking. They're talking about using high-performance brain-targeted stimulants as part of a maximization strategy for some test in school. As if anybody gives a rat's ass about what you made on calculus finals six months from now.

Let's see: brain damage versus 10 points less on a test you're never going to talk about (unless you fail). I think this risk analysis is a no-brainer here, to use a pun.

I'm concerned that what's really going on is that some people are just wired to go screw around with their bodies using chemicals. This whole take-to-maximize-study rationale is just another in a long line of rationales going back many decades. There was drug use to combat the drudgery of life. Drug use to protest the system. Drug use to find inner peace. Drug use for religious exploration. Drug use for sports enhancement. Drug use to prolong life. Now we have drug use for educational enhancement.

I'm not saying this is wrong -- whatever that means. Perhaps there is an evolutionary competitive advantage to hacking your brain with chemicals and, if so, we're seeing a new branch of the human family tree. Or perhaps we're still four hundred years away from true brain hacking and this is just another in a long line of reasons to screw around with reality.

Timothy Leary may be dead, but he's far from gone.

j_baker2• 17 years ago

The thing is that amphetamines are some of the most well understood medications prescribed by doctors. They've been prescribed for almost 80 years. Doctors know their effects better than most "conventional" medicines. And it has never been proven that they have seriously harmful side effects when taken under appropriate medical supervision. Although it's hard to objectively diagnose ADHD (just like any other psychiatric condition), doctors know what they're doing when they prescribe stimulants.

Therefore, the choice isn't "brain damage vs 10 points on a test." It's more like "performing like a normal human being vs failing at life."

DanielBMarkham3• 17 years ago

Is the topic here people that self-medicate in order to gain a few points on a test over non-medicated folks, or people who have serious, real brain problems that need some intervention to be more normal?

Because I'm talking about the first case, and you seem to be talking about the second. The article, to me, was geared toward the first scenario. If you'd like to talk about the second scenario, that's fair game, but not what I was talking about at all.

GHFigs6• 17 years ago

I think it's a bit simpler than people being wired differently.

Stimulants feel good, regardless of their other effects. People will always want to rationalize continuing to do something that feels good. Again, regardless of the other effects both positive and negative.

The difference here is that this rationale is culturally acceptable. It's become good to use these drugs for this reason. The PR submarine[1] is out in full force[2], building positive associations (Take these drugs and you'll get into Harvard!) and diminishing negatives ones ("Progress often carries risk.") That, to me, is what makes this tend unsettling, far more than the drugs themselves.

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html [2]:http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/mindenhancing-drug...

lsc• 17 years ago

From what I understand, Ritalin is prescribed precisely because it has much less of that 'euphoria' than, say, Dexedrine. In my completely subjective experience, Ritalin causes less 'euphoria' than caffeine. Granted, I think Caffeine, especially the first sip after going several days without, feels quite good. But, if I am on vacation; I mean, real vacation where I am not working on anything, I don't take the Ritalin. I feel better without it, if I'm not trying to do something.

It is very important, if you do use psychoactive drugs, to have some sort of external metric. When I was undergoing various ADD treatments, I had my boss evaluate me every week. I found that what I was doing before (that is, using unusually large amounts of caffeine) was not better than baseline me.

rjurney2• 17 years ago

The ironic part of your post is that the artificial, chemical vitamins and potent herbs that you take are probably more dangerous to your health than 10mg of amphetamine: a well characterized, safe, single substance. :) Herbs contain so many chemicals we do not understand its not funny. Many thin the blood and can cause bleeding. Herbs kill more people than pharmaceutical doses of amphetamines ever have.

A family friend just died from a random brain bleed, well before his time. Guess how many herbs he took? There is a strong correlation between random brain bleeds and herb use, it just isn't substantiated well enough to pull them from the market yet. I hear about them all the time. Which is a damn shame. Herbs kill.

So do yourself a favor: go get a Ritalin or Adderall prescription and cut the vitamin overdoses and herbs. You'll probably live longer ;)

DanielBMarkham3• 17 years ago

Point taken. I will consider it. For now, however, I'm of the opinion that there's a lot more herb use around the world than Ritalin use, and in 5 or ten years maybe all these experimenters with brain enhancement (and not simple amphetamines) will give us better data to make decisions with.

I think there is an implied dichotomy that I did not mean to make: I'm perfectly happy with people hacking their brains. I'm perfectly happy with the natural state of mankind being some sort of intoxication, whether it's spoiled fruits, running, nicotine, or whatever.

I'm just amused at the rationales being used, which seem to me to have all sort of inner contradictions.

devin5• 17 years ago

A very thoughtful and well-written post. Thank you for that.

I would like to talk just for a moment about my problems with concentration. ADD is a very real problem for me. I don't mean this in a learned helplessness, "trust me I've been diagnosed" sort of way. I mean it in a "Everything in my entire life points to this diagnosis, 100% -- and I would challenge anyone to try and explain it in an alternative fashion."

I won't go into the details and don't really care to discuss my symptoms and issues much further. However I will say that there are many people out there who are correctly diagnosed as ADD, and whom would probably have never finish high school, let alone college, without the aid of adderall, ritalin, etc. I can tell you this with a certain level of confidence because I am one of them.

I never abused them, and avoided taking them because they make me feel like a zombie, no sense of humor, lack of appetite, irritable, etc. However, for many people out there, they're not just a brain hack, they're the only ticket they have to competing with brains that have a normal level of attention.

ianbishop• 17 years ago

I'm still in school and this is one of those things that I have seen countless people do.

General intake is a snort of half a ritalin pill when your body is beginning to tire near 12am before your early morning exam or big term paper.

It isn't just ritalin either. I've seen people snort so many wake-ups (an over the counter caffeine pill) that they are too busy zoning to even study.

kragen8• 17 years ago

This is a bad idea. Snorting (instead of swallowing) the pill won't change how it affects you half an hour out (or further). It will, however, get it into your bloodstream immediately, giving you a quick high, and by hyperbolic discounting, it will make the operant-conditioning association between the pill and the high much, much stronger.

Ritalin or amphetamines are much less addictive if you take them in a pill, especially a slow-release pill and/or with some food. And if your reason is to be awake for an all-nighter on a term paper, you don't get any benefit from snorting.

rms2• 17 years ago

Along the lines of the other person who responded, norting pills is just a stupid drug culture thing. If you want the pill to come on faster, break it into pieces or chew it. The drug is not stronger intranasally, it just comes on faster and it's bad for your mucous membranes.

sirfrancisbacon• 17 years ago

Suppose that after some time, we become expert brain hackers and we can find a way to pass these changes onto our children. (through some sort of gene manipulation; I'm not an advocate of Lamarckian evolution!)

Since at this point, humanity will diverge into two species (those who have access to technology and those who don't), how exactly should we value those who's lineage hasn't been benefited by the presence of these drugs?

Just a hypothetical situation of this mentality being taken to an extreme, but still interesting nonetheless.

extension• 17 years ago

You can value them however you like, but I imagine the enlightened front will continue to push for token equality amidst the harsh realities of disparate wealth and opportunity and a small minority of bigots, while society at large remains unconcerned with intelligence, maintaining its longstanding fascination with wealth, status and charisma.

Then again, these drugs only cost pennies so they could really even the playing field. Starbucks needs to hurry up and invent the amphetamine latte.

jacquesm2• 17 years ago

instead of taking stuff to get temporarily smarter how about NOT taking stuff that is known to cause you damage in the long term ?

So, no drinking, no smoking, no other drugs, just healthy food and a good rhythm in your life. And preferably a significant other of the same mindset. You'll be surprized by how well you can perform without any 'additives' when you're well rested and healthy.

petercooper2• 17 years ago

This is all well and good but where do you actually get all this shit? Perhaps I'm too white and middle class but I don't have the first clue as to where to get any of this crap and I don't know anyone who's using it either.

lallysingh• 17 years ago

Ask your buddies who have doctors in the family.

Devilboy• 17 years ago

Not sure about other countries but in Australia you go to a GP, explain your problem and he will then send you to a specialist. The specialist will consult with you and if you do your homework you can ask him to prescribe X and if you're making sense and there's no contra-indications he'll do it.

petercooper2• 17 years ago

It might just be me but I'm getting the impression a lot of the people here are talking about taking these drugs very much not on a physicist-advised schedule or dosage ;-)

sown• 17 years ago

I've never been able to focus adequately enough to do well in school. I'm finished with it now but I found my school years to be disapointing because of the lower grades which pretty much shut out any chance of doing undergraduate research or a chance at grad school -- ever. Students rolled their eyes when I asked a question, professors sighed and shuffled their papers at me when it was time to return exams. I always felt like I was being judged and looked down on during school years.

One possible explanation that I can't shake is that I never belonged in college or grad school anyways. At least it's over now.

Nowadays I get to look forward to being judged by my colleagues. Until I retire or die.

HalcyonMuse• 17 years ago

I guess provigil/modafinil is too new to be mentioned in this old article?

embeddedradical• 17 years ago

Warning: you do this at the detriment of your ability to be creative, have insights, and go new directions. I'm not suggesting they're horrible in all situations, but keep that in mind.

If you are using amphetamines please see this article by Jonah Lehrer, editor of Seed Magazine: http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2009/04/cognitive_enhancement...

How To Take Ritalin Correctly

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