This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for the week of July 9th. It's a place to record and chat about it if you have done, or are actively doing, things like:
- Established a useful new habit
- Obtained new evidence that made you change your mind about some belief
- Decided to behave in a different way in some set of situations
- Optimized some part of a common routine or cached behavior
- Consciously changed your emotions or affect with respect to something
- Consciously pursued new valuable information about something that could make a big difference in your life
- Learned something new about your beliefs, behavior, or life that surprised you
- Tried doing any of the above and failed
Or anything else interesting which you want to share, so that other people can think about it, and perhaps be inspired to take action themselves. Try to include enough details so that everyone can use each other's experiences to learn about what tends to work out, and what doesn't tend to work out.
Thanks to everyone who contributes!
Academian put up a wiki page with links to the prior May and June threads for reference. Good idea, thanks!
I tried adderall. It was terrible. My reaction to it was the complete opposite of what it should have been. It put me in a negative emotional state. I felt depressed and stressed, like there was something constricting my chest and throat. I felt on the verge of crying/screaming for large portions of the evening.
It made it harder to concentrate on a single task. I was trying to do reading, and I had to also be singing along with music as well (I normally work with headphones on, but singing along is NOT a norm.) or I would get antsy. I was reading something that I would normally find really interesting, but on adderall it couldn't hold my attention at all. It (and everything else) seemed boring and like an undesirable task. My motivation to do things like "take the dog outside," or "do ANYTHING" also plummeted. (Don't worry about my pup. Of course I DID take him outside. It just took more effort.)
My reaction was weird enough that I double-checked that the pill wasn't a placebo, and that my dosage was strong enough that it shouldn't be explainable by "I just happened to have a really bad day that day."
So, adderall....never again.
If you don't mind my asking, what dose did you try? I've used adderall regularly at low to moderate-low doses with very typical responses, and find myself curious about atypical responses.