But do stimulants work in the long-run? From what I’ve seen in people with ADHD (admittedly not the best population to use as a benchmark), stimulants have significant effects for people over the course of 1 - 3 years, but over a long enough period the stimulants drop off considerably in their effectiveness. Worse, long term use can leave these people struggling quite a while after they stop using them (ie, they don’t just drop to their pre-stimulant baseline), so just stopping because the benefits have petered out may not be an option.
And this is all assuming that stimulants work well as nootropics for people without deficits like ADHD. I’ve seen evidence that modafinil has performance-enhancing effects for most people (though perhaps with some negative side effects like tunnel vision, which may not be helpful when you need to be creative or flexible), but it’s not at all clear that Adderall or Ritalin work very well for neurotypicals.
But do stimulants work in the long-run? From what I’ve seen in people with ADHD (admittedly not the best population to use as a benchmark), stimulants have significant effects for people over the course of 1 - 3 years, but over a long enough period the stimulants drop off considerably in their effectiveness. Worse, long term use can leave these people struggling quite a while after they stop using them (ie, they don’t just drop to their pre-stimulant baseline), so just stopping because the benefits have petered out may not be an option.
And this is all assuming that stimulants work well as nootropics for people without deficits like ADHD. I’ve seen evidence that modafinil has performance-enhancing effects for most people (though perhaps with some negative side effects like tunnel vision, which may not be helpful when you need to be creative or flexible), but it’s not at all clear that Adderall or Ritalin work very well for neurotypicals.
Sure, if you can find meaningful, useful work.