One of the great tragedies of the time beginning in the 1990s is the massive abuse of medication to solve social problems, especially in the United States.
It precedes the 90s quite a bit. A “modern” form of the phenomenon was postwar America embracing self-medication: my U.S. history teacher pointed out in The Invasion of the Body-Snatchers the characters are constantly popping pills or swilling highballs offhandedly, as that was how it was done in the day.
Meanwhile, in the 40s, it was normal to take actual meth as a "weight control supplement" in both the US and Germany. Arguably Germany AS A COUNTRY was addicted to meth during the second world war.
Pervitin, essentially Amphetamine with a brand name, used to make people awake longer, walk longer, carry more, was called "Panzerschokolade" - "tank chocolate" by German troops.
Today, psychoactive stimulants are marketed as "Provigil" and regularly used by US troops, which is made responsible for more than one friendly fire incident.
Maybe in absolute terms, but only because there are so many more people now. You should read[1] about the way triangular trade in colonial America led to very low prices for rum creating and epidemic of alcoholism so bad it the social
structure of the time and ultimately led to the rise of the Temperance movement and prohibition.
I sometimes wonder how much US tech productivity is built on a foundation of ADHD med over-prescription. Discussion of taking stimulants is pervasive among the tech Twitterati, to a really depressing extent.
At this point though I'm not sure where the right balance is - the US healthcare model (you are a customer) probably drives excessive medication as much as cultural pressures, but at the same time the UK model (you are a patient, but not a paying customer) drives resistance to prescribing medication where it might actually be beneficial.
Honestly, until we have actual Star Trek level medicine capabilities, I will take the NHS approach, loosely we want to cure you and never see you again, over the USA, again loosely, the patient is a source of income for all involved, so lets medicate and surgeon as much as possible, any day of the week.
The ultimate problem is that our current levels of medical knowledge simply aren't good enough, so the US approach often does more harm than good - and I would gently suggest that that shows up very clearly in US life expectancy figures.
Yes, the incentives in medicine are all wrong. In government medicine, the incentives are to keep you away from the doctor, better to let you die than come back repeatedly. In for-profit medicine, the incentives are to keep you coming back repeatedly until you have exhausted your assets, then let you die.
The problem with overly simplistic comparisons like these is they gloss over real problems on both sides. The average life expectancy in Scotland for example is just ~61 - the UK average is a third more! So it's clearly more than just "hey the NHS is great" at play here.
It gets even worse when you drill into northern cities in the UK - Glasgow clocks in at a shocking 54.
Scotland's life expectancy at birth is ~78 [1].
Glasdow's life expectancy at birth is ~74 [2].
You're likely confusing life expectancy with "healthy life expectancy", which is a different metric that measures the number of years a person can be expected to live in good health.
> I sometimes wonder how much US tech productivity is built on a foundation of ADHD med over-prescription.
Probably somewhere between zero and a negative impact. I tried this briefly some years ago after hearing so much about productivity gains, then tried again once or twice after that. I quickly realized that while in the initial afternoon of the first use you may see some benefits, this come at the expense of later productivity. I'd say it is not too different from the impact of caffeine on sleep in this regard.
People just like taking these meds, they like the high it gives and the chemical induced "feeling productive" rush makes it easy to tell yourself a nice story about why you're taking them and what they're doing for you, but I don't think they're actually producing any real productivity gains.
That's why they used a throwaway. No doubt, some people will get adderall or w/e for that reason, perhaps, but all people like the feeling of being productive; people with a real issue just very rarely feel that unless they slow down the giant double-lane roundabout of their thoughts.
That's pretty ridiculous thing for you to say as the post I was replying quite clearly implied using the phrase "over-prescription" they were discussing abuse of a drug for productivity. That part wasn't really in question, my observation and experience is merely that abusing ADHD drugs does not actually have this effect.
Unless you're actually arguing in favor of taking performance enhancing drugs for the purpose of boosting productivity, which based on your reaction I'd guess that you are.
> I sometimes wonder how much US tech productivity is built on a foundation of ADHD med over-prescription.
Can you clarify - do you mean that the types of drugs used to treat ADHD make US tech workers more productive, or do you mean that it they increase the use of SV-style tech products? Somewhat contentious take either way.
I was thinking of the former - basically a bunch of people who would be well within the bounds of "normal" even if unmedicated, but who have easy access to powerful stimulants and thrive off the high-productivity buzz.
Looking at the rates of ADHD diagnosis worldwide, it is clear that someone is getting it wrong - but that brings us to the deeper discussion of how far capitalism should be allowed to dominate; i.e. whether having large numbers of drugged-up but productive citizens is actually an OK situation for a country to be in.
It's very hard to get ADHD 'right', as the state of the art research can't show biologically what it is or who has it. ADHD-alike symptoms can be caused by thyroid problems, low vitamin levels, narcolepsy, depression, parasites and more.
It's a sad state of affairs because people genuinely suffer for it and we don't have the foggiest what's going on, despite ever ramping research funding. Curing it could bring back billions to the economy.
It was first described (written down) in the late 1700s. Medicine is using very blunt tools (amphetamines, ect) out of necessity to treat problems which need far better understanding.
We really need better, cheaper and more accessible medical tech. A non-theranos, steve jobs style medical tech revolution would do a lot of good for a lot of people and put cured patients to useful work, who would otherwise suffer.
>Looking at the rates of ADHD diagnosis worldwide, it is clear that someone is getting it wrong
Isn't the usual answer something like:
"People with ADHD-like characteristics are restless and impulsive, therefore more likely to decide to strike out on big new adventures. Like emigrating to an exciting new country. So the U.S. has been an ADHD magnet since before its founding, leading to a much higher prevalence / diagnosis than most other parts of the world. And since ADHD is hereditary, it gets passed down the generations, sustaining the imbalance with the rest of the world. And/or maybe there is an amplification effect where in most populations the ADHD genes stay diluted in the gene pool, since it is not a common occurrence, and people with ADHD generally had kids with non-ADHD people. But at certain base rates, the ADHD people start having children with each other, intensify the effects."
Ok, thanks for clarifying. Are there any studies actually showing productivity boosts in healthy adults from ADHD medications?
I've heard about it, but it seemed more anecdotal, and it's not uncommon for drug users to rationalize their consumption in some way, eg based on their first experience.