Perpetuating the illusion that mental health professionals usually know what they’re doing can be harmfwl
Basically, I’m pretty sure this is wrong/dangerous.
Lisdexamfetamine is indeed being explored to treat depression, and some anti depressants like buproprion have a very stimulant sort of flavor.
But applying these theories directly as a sign of to take stimulants is very very simplistic. Also, there’s a clownish level of abuse of medications in US/western society (see opoids).
To be gearsy, one issue is that stimulants bring you up, but then you almost always have a crash or a low phase—it’s easy to see how this low phase could be very very bad for some people. These substances also have relationships with other disorders/issues that are complicated. Also, these side effects definitely aren’t “limited to being in out of your system in 24 hours”.
I don’t have a long list of references for this or time to provide this, but you can google to explore the standard issues and side effects the stimulant drugs:
Just don’t tell your doctor that’s what you want it for
especially in this crowd, because most people here can do better by trusting their own cursory research.
RE: This and other “anti doctor stuff”.
There’s a lot to write here, but ultimately, these comments and stuff shouldn’t be on a major internet forum, definitely not the EA forum.
The following gives one pretty good argument:
Many EAs are privileged. So for this audience, these people should just see a doctor/psychiatrist to get data points, as well as their trusted network for what works.
For the people who aren’t able to see a doctor, and are under resourced, that’s bad and unfortunate, especially since on average, they have further challenges—but on average it’s likely that taking internet forum drug advice will make things further bad, especially given coincidence of further issues.
So the above sort of is a logical case that explains why internet forum for “drug hacking” (especially for mood/stimulants/depression) is bad.
This is more complicated (someone I know has a relationship with doctors where they sort of punch through and get whatever script they want, which is exactly in spirit of the above comment; doctors, psychologists are very mixed in quality; being an outlier makes all of this worse).
It’s good to acknowledge the facts above—but unfortunately properly situating this all, without causing an “EA forum style” cascade that sort of makes it worse, is hard, in addition to time, it’s sort of, “I don’t have enough crayons” or “I can’t count that low” sort of flavor.
I agree with much of what you said and so edited my post. I do have a few points to make in the abstract though.
Although patients are prone to make mistakes such as abusing drugs, the medical establishment is sometimes majorly wrong in predictable ways, and waiting for the establishment to fix itself through the official channels can take sometimes decades. If caffeine was just discovered today, I think it would be classified as a controlled substance and restricted to certain diagnoses. (No?) If so, I think that would be a huge loss for humankind.
The philosophy of clinical psychology/psychiatry as represented in the DSM strikes me as seriously flawed. They group things into discrete categories called “disorders” and eschew continuity and multidimensionality. As math (and its offshoots) becomes more wildly known, I think this will change, but it will take time. [I’m not saying that the concept of a disorder or diagnosis should be completely abandoned, but it has limitations].
Finally, the opioid comparison strikes me as strained.
I appreciate the thoughtful consideration and I agree with you. IMO I think you are right, including your points like the medical establishment is often wrong and slow. I’m less certain, but it’s possible the DSM (and maybe a lot of physiatry) is a mess.
Finally, the opioid comparison strikes me as strained.
Yes, this should be deleted. Maybe I was trying to gesture at creating subcultures that normalize drug use inappropriately, and I was using “opioid” as an example in support of this, but this might be wrong and, if anything, supports your points equally or better.
The main difference is my concern about EA having subpopulations/subcultures with different resources.
I support the OP, but I’m worried she’s an outlier, being in a place where there is a huge amount of support, creating agency for her exploration (read the 80,000 hours CEO’s story here).
I don’t want to minimizing her journey, such personal work and progress should be encouraged and written up more, because it’s great!
But, partially because this is impractical for many, I’m worried that something will get lost in translation, or some bad views might piggy back on this e.g. normalizing low-fidelity beliefs about drug use (that are Schedule II stimulants!).
Ok there’s been a couple comments on “don’t go to your doctor”, “drug hack”.
Above:
Also here
Basically, I’m pretty sure this is wrong/dangerous.
Lisdexamfetamine is indeed being explored to treat depression, and some anti depressants like buproprion have a very stimulant sort of flavor.
But applying these theories directly as a sign of to take stimulants is very very simplistic.
Also, there’s a clownish level of abuse of medications in US/western society (see opoids).To be gearsy, one issue is that stimulants bring you up, but then you almost always have a crash or a low phase—it’s easy to see how this low phase could be very very bad for some people. These substances also have relationships with other disorders/issues that are complicated. Also, these side effects definitely aren’t “limited to being in out of your system in 24 hours”.
I don’t have a long list of references for this or time to provide this, but you can google to explore the standard issues and side effects the stimulant drugs:
RE: This and other “anti doctor stuff”.
There’s a lot to write here, but ultimately, these comments and stuff shouldn’t be on a major internet forum, definitely not the EA forum.
The following gives one pretty good argument:
Many EAs are privileged. So for this audience, these people should just see a doctor/psychiatrist to get data points, as well as their trusted network for what works.
For the people who aren’t able to see a doctor, and are under resourced, that’s bad and unfortunate, especially since on average, they have further challenges—but on average it’s likely that taking internet forum drug advice will make things further bad, especially given coincidence of further issues.
So the above sort of is a logical case that explains why internet forum for “drug hacking” (especially for mood/stimulants/depression) is bad.
This is more complicated (someone I know has a relationship with doctors where they sort of punch through and get whatever script they want, which is exactly in spirit of the above comment; doctors, psychologists are very mixed in quality; being an outlier makes all of this worse).
It’s good to acknowledge the facts above—but unfortunately properly situating this all, without causing an “EA forum style” cascade that sort of makes it worse, is hard, in addition to time, it’s sort of, “I don’t have enough crayons” or “I can’t count that low” sort of flavor.
I agree with much of what you said and so edited my post. I do have a few points to make in the abstract though.
Although patients are prone to make mistakes such as abusing drugs, the medical establishment is sometimes majorly wrong in predictable ways, and waiting for the establishment to fix itself through the official channels can take sometimes decades. If caffeine was just discovered today, I think it would be classified as a controlled substance and restricted to certain diagnoses. (No?) If so, I think that would be a huge loss for humankind.
The philosophy of clinical psychology/psychiatry as represented in the DSM strikes me as seriously flawed. They group things into discrete categories called “disorders” and eschew continuity and multidimensionality. As math (and its offshoots) becomes more wildly known, I think this will change, but it will take time. [I’m not saying that the concept of a disorder or diagnosis should be completely abandoned, but it has limitations].
Finally, the opioid comparison strikes me as strained.
I appreciate the thoughtful consideration and I agree with you. IMO I think you are right, including your points like the medical establishment is often wrong and slow. I’m less certain, but it’s possible the DSM (and maybe a lot of physiatry) is a mess.
Yes, this should be deleted. Maybe I was trying to gesture at creating subcultures that normalize drug use inappropriately, and I was using “opioid” as an example in support of this, but this might be wrong and, if anything, supports your points equally or better.
The main difference is my concern about EA having subpopulations/subcultures with different resources.
I support the OP, but I’m worried she’s an outlier, being in a place where there is a huge amount of support, creating agency for her exploration (read the 80,000 hours CEO’s story here).
I don’t want to minimizing her journey, such personal work and progress should be encouraged and written up more, because it’s great!
But, partially because this is impractical for many, I’m worried that something will get lost in translation, or some bad views might piggy back on this e.g. normalizing low-fidelity beliefs about drug use (that are Schedule II stimulants!).