Adderall has been one of the most popular recreational drugs since the 01960s, despite causing multi-organ failure in common recreational doses, which are higher than the therapeutic doses. If it didn't work on neurotypical brains, it wouldn't be popular.
I think you're purposefully misrepresenting what "works" means in this context. ADHD people can think a lot more clearly with it. The effect of stimulants is completely different on a brain like ours compared to a normal person as it helps regulates brain function in a way that ours can't.
For normal people it just gets you euphoric and agitated, we get CALMER cause we live in a state of constant agitation.
Spencer RC, Devilbiss DM, Berridge CW (June 2015). "The Cognition-Enhancing Effects of Psychostimulants Involve Direct Action in the Prefrontal Cortex". Biological Psychiatry. 77 (11): 940–950. doi:10.1016/j.biopsych.2014.09.013. PMC 4377121. PMID 25499957.
Ilieva IP, Hook CJ, Farah MJ (June 2015). "Prescription Stimulants' Effects on Healthy Inhibitory Control, Working Memory, and Episodic Memory: A Meta-analysis". Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. 27 (6): 1069–1089. doi:10.1162/jocn_a_00776. PMID 25591060. S2CID 15788121.
Malenka RC, Nestler EJ, Hyman SE (2009). "Chapter 13: Higher Cognitive Function and Behavioral Control". In Sydor A, Brown RY (eds.). Molecular Neuropharmacology: A Foundation for Clinical Neuroscience (2nd ed.). New York, USA: McGraw-Hill Medical. pp. 318, 321. ISBN 9780071481274
Bagot KS, Kaminer Y (April 2014). "Efficacy of stimulants for cognitive enhancement in non-attention deficit hyperactivity disorder youth: a systematic review". Addiction. 109 (4): 547–557. doi:10.1111/add.12460. PMC 4471173. PMID 24749160.
Wood S, Sage JR, Shuman T, Anagnostaras SG (January 2014). "Psychostimulants and cognition: a continuum of behavioral and cognitive activation". Pharmacological Reviews. 66 (1): 193–221. doi:10.1124/pr.112.007054. PMC 3880463. PMID 24344115.
Teter CJ, McCabe SE, LaGrange K, Cranford JA, Boyd CJ (October 2006). "Illicit use of specific prescription stimulants among college students: prevalence, motives, and routes of administration". Pharmacotherapy. 26 (10): 1501–1510. doi:10.1592/phco.26.10.1501. PMC 1794223. PMID 16999660.
a quick scan of the papers you linked (top 2 results, I got bored after that) shows that the studies specifically refer to ADHD patients. I'm not sure the links prove the point you're trying to make.
Tangentially related, interesting tidbit from Russel Barkley:
The first of those papers (mostly about a different drug with similar pharmacokinetics) is a review paper mostly about experiments on rats, though it does also include some results on ADHD patients, and the second one is a meta-analysis of 48 experiments, specifically excluding experiments on ADHD patients.
It's not literally false that "the studies specifically refer to ADHD patients", because they do refer to them in order to explain that the results they're reporting are not in ADHD patients—in the first case, primarily; in the second case, at all. But your comment is crafted to create the false implication that their results were limited to ADHD patients. Either that is a knowing lie, or your claim to have scanned the papers is a knowing lie and your false implication is merely reckless disregard for the truth.
— ⁂ —
The first study you said you scanned, Spencer, Devilbiss, and Berridge 2015, is about the effects of amphetamines and methylphenidate in rats and healthy people, and how that relates to their usefulness for treating ADHD:
> A major breakthrough in our understanding of psychostimulant action was the
demonstration in 1980 that the cognition-enhancing and behavioral-calming actions of
psychostimulants are not unique to ADHD, with similar effects seen in healthy human subjects
(11).
> This and subsequent studies unambiguously demonstrate that when used at low and
clinically-relevant doses, psychostimulants improve prefrontal cortex (PFC)-dependent
behavioral/cognitive processes in human subjects with and without ADHD (11-15).
In the summary, it concludes:
> Low-dose psychostimulants are the first-line treatment for ADHD. At clinically-relevant
doses these drugs improve frontostriatal cognitive function in ADHD patients and healthy
individuals.
> The procognitive and behavioral calming actions of psychostimulants are in stark
contrast to the behaviorally-activating and cognition-impairing effects seen with higher doses.
— ⁂ —
The second study, Ilieva, Hook, and Farah 2015, is titled, "Prescription Stimulants' Effects on Healthy Inhibitory Control, ...A Meta-analysis." Here "healthy" means neurotypical, i.e., not "mentally ill," specifically including ADHD diagnoses as "mentally ill" and excluding them from "healthy". They explain, "Research on children, elderly, criminal, or mentally ill patients was excluded," elaborating, "Twelve studies failed to meet the criteria for eligible participants (mice: n = 1; elderly participants: n = 6; children: n = 2; mentally ill participants: n = 2, including one study on ADHD and one study on cocaine abuse; criminal participants: n = 1)."
— ⁂ —
In short, you are telling baldfaced lies about the studies I'm citing, as easily shown by the most cursory analysis (in the second case, the title of the paper), in order to continue posting vile calumnies against my integrity.
I do not think you should post any more on this site.
Perhaps you should...relax. You and the person you're responding to are having a miscommunication. It happens. No one is making any statement about your integrity.
Also, perhaps you should take a better look at the comment tree. My original request for a citation was levied against the commenter speculating that "this was made up to stop it from getting banned entirely like it is in Asia"
So really, maybe go get some fresh air. It's just a discussion on the internet, it's not worth getting worked up over.
> No one is making any statement about your integrity.
That is not correct; in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31231494 luckydata said, "I think you're purposefully misrepresenting...", and in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31241664 they said, "I'm even more convinced now than before that you're in bad faith." Decent people considering commenting on here should not have to worry that they'll be subjected to such character assassination.
(And neither should I.)
Thank you for clarifying your comment. I think the Spencer et al. paper shows that it wasn't made up to stop Adderall from getting banned entirely; rather, it was a belief that was common among researchers in the field until 40 years ago, based on clinical observation. Also, Adderall is not banned entirely in Asia; for example, last I heard, it's legal in Thailand.
It's not completely different or even mostly different. Getting euphoric and agitated happens with doses an order of magnitude higher than therapeutic doses. Low-dose Adderall has been used to help neurotypical people focus for at least a century, though not of course by that name.
Your vicious, baseless attack on my integrity has no place here. Withdraw it immediately.
In https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31243297 I caught you outright lying about what the relevant studies said, I suppose in hopes that other people wouldn't read them. Your accusations of bad faith are groundless and have no place here. That kind of conduct does not belong on this site.
It absolutely has, going by people's subjective ratings, different effects on NT people. That's not to say it doesn't work, there are plenty of explanations. We don't really get how neurotransmitters interact, so it's possible these drugs trip some cascade effect which incidentally treats ADD. More likely, there's a good place to be on the tradeoff curve and different symptoms below and above it. Perhaps large enough doses could push through (though I doubt that amphetamines are so well targeted to permit it), but it's fair to say that if I'm at a 0 and Adderall takes me to a 2, and an NT person is a 3 with Adderall taking them to 4, I can get to 2 and they can't. Is that "working differently"? Depends on how you look at it.
