[danShumway]

I would absolutely be willing to bet that a small dose of Benadryl won't make someone hallucinate "a small amount".

Put it another way if makes you feel better -- a little bit of D3 via direct sunlight and D3 rich foods will improve your mood and health outcomes in a variety of ways. An excessive amount of D3 will give you kidney stones and harm your bones.

[swayvil]

Would you notice it if you became slowly, progressively, stupider over several years? Maybe, maybe not.

[danShumway]

This is mostly just scaremongering, but even if I had a noticeable drop in intelligence from taking medication over multiple years, gaining the ability to actually schedule appointments in a calendar, to do focused research on topics that I'm interested in, and to build productive habits like eating regularly, exercising daily, and daily practicing skills I wanted to improve at -- would more than offset the downside.

It's one thing to be worried about subtle effects from medication, but I already know what the long term health and brain effects are from constant insomnia and regularly forgetting to eat. Neither of those are good for brain function.

So yeah, seems like a pretty reasonable risk to take, particularly given the fact that I have a psychiatrist, therapist, and multiple friends and family monitoring me.

Let me flip the question back to you. Would you notice if D3 or iron or protein intake was subtly harming you over the course of multiple years? Is that something that terrifies you?

[swayvil]

You're taking a hammer to the seat of your soul. So I gotta raise my eyebrow.

But you tell me it feels good. And you are more productive etc. And all the experts agree. So who am I to argue?

[danShumway]

Still wondering if you have the same concerns about the long-term effects of iron intake as you do about medications, or if you're somewhat selective about which long-term effects of chemicals in the body terrify you.

But yes, I do think the benefits for my mental health very clearly outweigh the theoretical risks you posit. So even if I agreed with what you're saying (which I don't), a subtle hammer tap to the soul is still very clearly and obviously better than the sledgehammer to the soul that is sleep deprivation (something that I concretely know would impact my brain function as I age and that I concretely know makes me less of myself). If that causes you to raise your eyebrows, then I'm not sure what to say other than that you're bad at risk analysis.