It probably won’t prevent people from getting worked up over the request but it sheds a lot of potential hate and ammunition.

I say boogeyman not to imply it is without problems but rather to say that in the problem spaces that it is often deplored the incumbent alternative is often categorically worse for all those who do not directly benefit from it, which is usually a supermajority at a minimum. Thus, to make the incumbent more tolerable a caricature of an idea is brought forth to scare those who would otherwise support an aspirational idealist into backing the known “lesser” evils.

Unfortunately in my own ruminating on the topic the only practical alternatives seem to be one or more variations on the scary boogey man of socialism.

Yes, absolutely society does cause people to feel the need to rely on medication that otherwise would not be required and has long-term harmful effects on their health. I would assert however that the reliance on medication is not, in itself, the problem, and sidesteps the original discussion, which is that someone claimed "people only need these two specific drugs" and I responded that the needs of the individual vary based on their specific environment and biology, using myself as an example.

Your assertion that society is causing these people to take hard drugs they don't need, or shouldn't need, re-orients the discussion away from the claim I was originally responding to. Personally I would love to not need Adderall, and sure, if I was rich and didn't have to work I wouldn't need to take Adderall. If I grew up in a supportive environment, provided behavioral strategies that fostered better coping skills, and a whole bunch of other favorable conditions were present, I would not need to take medication at all.

But medication is not prescribed because those things didn't happen, it's prescribed because in the life I am living right now, in the conditions I'm experiencing, and with the problems I face every single day, it is what I have found to be the best solution FOR ME.

Finally, on tone: "maybe if I was also on speed I'd be interested in continuing" was not a viewpoint, it was a swipe, and I would point to the site guidelines here ("Be kind. Don't be snarky." and "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says"). I engaged with every substantive point you raised, I would have done the same without the jab, and the conversation would have been better for it.

Thanks for reading!

Also, you’re nerd-famous, this is the highlight of my week.

“Maybe if I was also on speed” was in fact, a personal attack. You chose to refer to my legally prescribed medication by the name used by drug dealers when selling it illegally for the purpose of drug abuse. The implication being that I am “on speed” being that it is incorrectly prescribed and I am abusing it recreationally.

It did not “have the same effect” in the sense that I am being overly sensitive, it had the same effect because it unequivocally was the same thing.

You can be lazy, that’s fine. I’m lazy all the time! In the cases where I do not feel like responding with the appropriate level of rigor and mutual respect I simply choose to not respond at all.

As before, have a wonderful day.

I don’t think it’s okay to dose a large swathe of the population with amphetamines because it’s “good enough” and neither does the global academic medical community.

Individual practitioners I’ve found to be overworked and disinterested to the point of negligence in the united states. The correct manner of prescribing amphetamines is finding the lowest therapeutic dose for a patient (assuming you have already found the right drug) and checking with them every 30 to 90 days to make adjustments as needed.

Amphetamines in excess do the things you described, though for dependency it is more behavioral than chemical dependence, unless you’re referring to meth (not the same thing), while properly prescribed stimulants in general offer more benefits than drawbacks. It’s not perfect, but for me and many others it is better than the alternative of nothing at all.

Have a great day, I hope you refrain from ill informed personal attacks going forward!

Pharmacologically speaking, classifying Adderall as a hard drug by industry terminology standards requires taking the patient into account, the dosage, and its effects on the patient. In the case I was referring to (mine) it is not a hard drug.

The chemical imbalance I refer to isn’t something that is easily and REPEATABLY tested for and prescription of the drug itself is heavily guided by the individual respondent because that is how most psychiatric diagnostics are performed. The chemical imbalance is not the exact same between patients, and ADD/ADHD could be classified as multiple physiological conditions that all overlap into a single group of symptoms. For the purposes of treating it, prescribing a medication that treats a large subset of the underlying causes with no permanent adverse side effects if you treat the “wrong one” is largely good enough for most medical systems. Follow up appointments with providers checking with patients to find the right medication for their brain is part of that process.

So yeah, you can fill out a questionnaire and get amphetamines you don’t need, or don’t treat your specific condition. That doesn’t invalidate the scientific research that has linked the symptom to the one of n chemical causes in the brain.

So in discussions of both philosophical introspection of our society as well as academic discussion of drugs, my original comment is entirely relevant to those informed on this ONE specific mental disorder, of which there are MANY more that are equally as nuanced.

I am the person being told that I don’t need a stimulant by the condescending rich person, and I have to say that mental health is far too nuanced for casual armchair debate about how society is forcing people to need this drug or that drug.

The point I wanted to convey is that this topic is incredibly specific to the individual, and “generalizations” MUST use extensive qualifiers to even come close to being accurate.

I recall hearing similar sentiments from linux sysadmins regarding cloud infrastructure. In many respects they were and continue to be correct. In other respects, the world doesn’t care about the loss in understanding as long as things work “well enough” for the cogs of society to keep turning.

For those who do care (and have the aptitude) to understand things deeper there is always work to be had when “well enough” stops being good enough and someone has to unravel the “RDS queries are taking too long” problems that crop up as a result.

That’s why medical research has so many hoops to jump through.

Ann is 6 years younger than Mary, who is 24 years old.

Or even better, Ann is 18 and Mary is 24.

But then again, I always disliked word-based logic problems that didn't correspond to genuine complexity. If something CAN be stated in simple terms, I believe it should be. If you want to create a word-based logic puzzle then present a genuine problem that can be engaged with rather than a poorly formulated explanation of the mundane.

That being said, I have no idea how I would present the same fundamental logical puzzle using a material problem that doesn't have a simpler distillation that solves the problem for you. Maybe I'm just not cut out for the realm of intellectual puzzles.

If you are a real person trying to show something that you made, I wouldn’t worry about getting permanently banned without recourse and just post again, sometimes mistakes happen.

I remember having teachers in middle school who seemed draconic to me in their emphasis on proper grammar and punctuation, however as an adult I’m lucky to read an email that contains paragraphs, much less proper punctuation.

Times are changing, and it’s up to the individual to decide how they want to respond to it