ChristianKl comments on Open thread, Sep. 19 - Sep. 25, 2016 - Less Wrong
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Drugs are prescribed based on a cost-benefit analysis. In general, the medical establishment is pretty conservative (there's little benefit to the doctor if your problem gets solved, but if they hurt you they're liable to get sued). In the usual case for amphetamines, the cost is the risk of side effects and the benefit is helping someone manage their ADHD. For you, the cost is the same but it sounds like the benefit is much bigger. So even by the standards of the risk-averse medical establishment, this sounds like a risk you should take.
You're an entrepreneur. A successful entrepreneur thinks and acts for themselves. This could be a good opportunity to practice being less scrupulous. Paul Graham on what makes founders successful:
I'd recommend avoiding Adderall as a first option. I've heard stories of people whose focus got worse over time as tolerance to the drug's effects developed.
Modafinil, on the other hand, is a focus wonder drug. It's widely used in the nootropics community and bad experiences are quite rare. (/r/nootropics admin: "I just want to remind everyone that this is a subreddit for discussing all nootropics, not just beating modafinil to death.")
The legal risks involved with Modafinil seem pretty low. Check out Gwern's discussion.
My conclusion is that buying some Modafinil and trying it once could be really valuable, if only for comfort zone expansion and value of information. I have very little doubt that this is the right choice for you. Check out Gwern's discussion of suppliers. (Lying to your doctor is another option if you really want to practice being naughty.)
The idea that doctors who describe Adderal to ADHD patients are conversative about prescribing it seems to be an extraordinary claim.
How many doctors do you think get sued for giving patients adderal?
There a lot of money from drug companies who lobby that drugs like Adderal don't get perscribed in a conservative fashion.
I'm assuming you think the answer is "not many". If so, this shows it's not a very risky drug--it rarely causes side effects that are nasty enough for a patient to want to sue their doctor.
From what I've read about pharmaceutical lobbying, it consists primarily of things like buying doctors free meals for in exchange for using the company's drug instead of a competitor's drug. I doubt many doctors are willing to run a serious risk of losing their career over some free meals.
No. It also consists of lobbying the relevant politicians to make it hard to sue doctors and generally policies to reduce harms caused by drugs. Drugmakers fought state opioid limits amid crisis:
That argument assumes that only side effects that can be proven in court to be bad are meaningful to worry about. Giving that establishing causation of drug effects usually takes millions of money to run well controlled studies that get published in leading medical journals that allow the drug companies that publish the studies that don't follow best standards of science that the journals pledged to honor (the CONSORT standards), it's not easy to prove all causation.