[jdefr89]

As someone who’s been on this stuff for most their life… You aren’t doubling your intellect with Adderall. In fact most tests show that neurotypical people taking stimulants only see a moderate (a couple points on the test) increase. The drug has diminishing returns.

[godelski]

As someone who hasn't been on them for nearly that long, I'll also validate this. I wouldn't say it even makes me smarter in any way. Possibly less so. But what it does is stops my brain from constantly pinging me about things that don't need to be addressed at the moment. It really changed my ability to do work and succeed because I went from everything being an emergency triage hell (from making the bed to the report due in an hour) to actually being able to triage issues.

I can also confirm the diminishing returns and will even state that if I take instant dosages around what people say they do, I'm highly non-productive again. Finding the right dosage level and schedule is still a challenge and varies day to day. There's far too common a myth that you just pop 20mg of Adderall and you can focus for 10hrs straight. Maybe that's true for some people, or maybe even for just people without ADHD, but certainly not true for me. For me it is just like turning down the volume on an alarm.