I've had cocaine a few times now and while everyone is saying it's euphoric, I keep saying it's the most normal I've ever felt. Not "euphoric", I've done other stuff that felt suuuuper good (in an actual euphoria sense) so I believe can compare.
But normal. The cloud of thoughts gone, I am able to make myself do anything with one thought, I have energy, the aches are gone, the tinnitus is gone, I don't second guess, I don't overthink. I just am and I do. It's amazing. This is what people like Bezos and Musk must be like lol
Amphetamine probably feels like this, too, although many say it's actually quite distinct. The price, (un)availability, very short duration and the comedown are big negatives, sadly.
But yeah, comparing it to caffeine... nah. Can't comment on IV, but I can compare it to insufflated caffeine. It has some similarities, but the important parts are missing. Or maybe I'm just desensitized to caffeine. At least I'm a good fake coke detector lol
> But normal. The cloud of thoughts gone, I am able to make myself do anything with one thought, I have energy, the aches are gone, the tinnitus is gone, I don't second guess, I don't overthink. I just am and I do. It's amazing.
Have you been evaluated for ADHD? This is one of the classic tells. Methylphenidate is structurally and chemically very similar to cocaine.
Vyvanse is definitely the best when it comes to duration and classical stimulants. Modafinil has even longer duration, but it isn't always as effective at targeting ADHD symptoms. Vyvanse is kind of stupid expensive, but you can get a savings card. It would be $330 for me even with a good Rx plan, and the card knocks it down to $45/month. Sounds like you would also respond well to Concerta (extended release methylphenidate). I don't like it because I apparently have the metabolism of a honeybadger and get like 4-6h of otherwise "all day" meds like concerta. I have to split my vyvanse and take it in two doses to get a full day.
> This is what people like Bezos and Musk must be like
My headcannon is both these guys are ADHD and/or on the spectrum, have a doctor's script for vyvanse, adderall, modafinil, and/or whatever else, and have figured out how to ride the tolerance curve properly to maximize productivity.
I have no idea why people like Vyvanse so much. It’s just time release with a fancy mechanism and paranoia around abuse potential of instant release formulations, which work just as well in most, if not all.
However, Ritalin is less neurotoxic than amphetamines that can indeed hike your risks of Parkinson’s (and probably few other things)
Because it's been life-changing for me, and countless others? It's not just time release; that's the old school drugs like Concerta.
The chief problem I have with all stimulants is too fast of an impulse response. It comes on too fast, crashes too fast. For me, for instant release drugs, I experience the following half-lives:
- methylphenidate: 60-90m
- amphetamine salts/dexedrine: 3-4h
- caffeine: 3h
- modafinil: 6-8h
Once a drug reaches about 1.5 HLs (about one Tau/time constant, conveniently), I start fading hard. There is a hysteresis effect: peaking/crashing/re-dosing is not the same as plateauing at some in-between value. Once my brain checks out, that's kind of it for the day.
So what Concerta, Adderall XR, and similar do for me, is give me what feels like two randomly spaced doses of instant release over a 4-6h window. This is unpredictable and thrashes my mental state. It peaks too high and crashes too low. The companies market these drugs based on averaging the plasma profiles of individuals to show a nice smooth curve, but I dug into the literature and this is NOT what you see on an individual level, at all. Concerta just doesn't do it for me.
Vyvanse is way smoother. The plasma peak is already low-pass filtered by the pharmacokinetics of hydrolysis of the lysdexamphetamine. As a result, my subjective experience is basically a 6h plateau. I split my dose to basically get a nice, actually smooth profile over 8-12h with a gentle taper instead of a crash. That also means lower peak plasma conc, and peak plasma is the greatest risk factor in neurotoxicity.
If you actually dig into the literature on neurotoxicity of amphetamines, you basically don't see any until you start getting to the equivalent of 50-100mg IR, and even then it's basically within the noise floor until you get to hundreds of mg per day.
Sure. The early history of ritalin was the first sign to me that pharmatech industry owns their regulators. Check out the follow up research on 8-hydroxyguanine glycosylase as an indicator of oxidative DNA damage in response to the 2005 nih publications asserting no increased biomarkers, its somewhat surprising on both sides for Ritalin and the popular amphetamine alternative as well.
> The aim of the present study was to examine the effects of drugs (amphetamine, methylphenidate and atomoxetine)
> We observed decreased expression of this enzyme for all applied substances.
Yeah no I'm not buying it. Amphetamine, perhaps, but atomoxetine causing DNA damage? That sets off my "spurious results" detector, hard.
I'll look into it more but I've done deep research into all things psychostimulants and I have not seen any indication of genotoxicity of methylphenidate or atomoxetine. Amphetamine has a slight risk of increased oxidative stress due to making dopamine leak places where it shouldn't, and DA's electronic structure makes it prone to generating singlet oxygen and ROS, but it's typically only observed in really high doses, like the equivalent of hundreds of mgs per dose.
Like, maybe there's some increased ROS due to any drug that boosts DA/NA (oxidizing catecholamines produces ROS in general), but like, "ritalin causes DNA damage" is the wrong conclusion to draw from that.
Being calm and relaxed on stimulants can potentially mean there is some arousal disorder: sleep apnea, narcolepsy, delayed sleep syndrome, or just chronic sleep deficit. Maybe concussions (mild TBI), amphetamines work for that too. Even depression is possible.
ADHD is just most likely because it’s so common, with sleep apnea being close second. I would rule out ADHD and sleep disorders first.
Potentially also, UARS, which is also form of sleep disordered breathing but not commonly detected with current technology (and also not easy to treat), some physicians do a full nasopharyngeal endoscopy under propofol anesthesia. I believe it’s incredibly undiagnosed and probably accounts for more than 10% of apnea cases, but most patients are thin instead of obese and so nobody suspects apnea-like disorder. If you needed braces or needed corrective jaw surgery UARS should be ruled out.
ADHD can be somewhat objectively measured with some tests like CPT, but that would also often show abnormalities in sleep disorders.
If your measures of attention, and sleep study, along with wakefulness maintenance test, if warranted, are all normal, and your pulse and blood pressure is normal, and by normal I mean very close to ideal 120/80, with hr below 70 - maybe you are just a mutant.
See a good neuropsych that specializes in sleep disorders. Stanford is one of the better centres for that. They will know what to do if it’s not a sleep issue also.
dx of ADHD and good response do not preclude the possibility of other disorders.
you can obtain treatment that way, and investigate other causes later, you may have to wash out from stimulants for a few weeks for the CPT and WMT, and preferably for sleep studies also, because they increase muscle tone and if your sleep issue is due to some neuromuscular issue, stimulants may partially obscure it. (This is still in research, and most physicians won’t tell you this, as it’s not yet standard of care in most places afaik)
I know this is kind of an obvious follow up to your comment, but, have you been tested for ADHD? You described exactly how my brain reacts to mixed amphetamine salts (AKA Adderall). Caffeine doesn’t really do much for me, either, incidentally.
I was diagnosed last year and the psychiatrist I was seeing worked at a clinic that primarily sees inner city patients with much different health profiles than a mild mannered engineer. This is one of my favourite exchanges from the intake meeting:
“So, the first time you tried cocaine, were you surprised that you didn’t react the way everyone else did? Did it calm you down instead of getting you keyed up?”
“I’ve never done cocaine”
“Look, yes, some doctors might disqualify you for stimulant prescriptions for admitting to past substance abuse, but it doesn’t bother me at all. I actually do some research at $local_university specifically looking at how properly managed ADHD dramatically reduces the chance of substance abuse.”
“Serious, I’ve smoked pot, I’ve done mushrooms, but I’ve never tried coke. Had lots of opportunities if I wanted to, but it didn’t appeal to me”
“Huh! With lots of the patients that come through here, they see me for the first time after casually mentioning to a GP that they’re worried they’re weird when coke doesn’t work right for them!”
I was diagnosed twice, both times in adulthood. The first time was by a neuropsychologist who did something like 8-10 hours of testing over about 3 days. I’m not even sure if she ever asked me about any sort of drug use.
The second person to diagnose me was a physician at the student health center where I was a graduate student. Believe it or not, he was actually a pediatrician! I think he may have asked me about my caffeine consumption (excessive!), while also being impressed by my shockingly normal blood pressure (almost always between 110/70 and 125/83). I actually think going on Adderall might have lowered my BP overall, due to the increased ability it gave ume to tolerate and problem solve my way through stressful situations.
I've tried cocaine and it would make me feel like the "best" or perhaps much better version of me. Improved, but subjectively not overinflated self-confidence, sharper thoughts, better concentration, high energy and motivation, easier connection to people, without apparent intoxication or affected judgement.
I would agree with you that it makes me feel normal in the sense that's what it seems I should have been. The first time I tried it, I was like "so when I'm gonna feel the effect?" for a few seconds and then I realized I feel it and thought "That's the way it [life] 's meant to be played" :D
Gonna pile on with everyone else and suggest you get tested for ADHD. This is a pretty classic symptom from what I understand. This is basically how I feel with Adderall. I had no idea how "normal" things could feel.
Mask wear becoming a normal thing is one of the few good things to come out of the response to Covid.
I like them, they provide privacy from people and cameras, while also increasing protection from many viruses and bacteria (provided you don't take it off to scratch your nose).
Common cold and the flu has gotten way less common since 2020. Freaking amazing, since the symptoms can literally incapacitate me for a week or two. I hate the cold and flu.
Yes, socketed CPU on a laptop! The HP equivalent to the M4400, Elitebook 8530w, even had a slotted GPU (MXM slot), which you could upgrade, wow! I loved doing that kind of upgrade with older workstations.
Sadly, Haswell is the last chip that was socketed on laptops. Anything newer and you get a pre-soldered chip that you can't upgrade.
They can be overclocked substantially, partly thanks to FIVR (VRMs on-die, Haswell exclusive, very hot - literally), often outperforming Skylake and even newer chips lol
Only solution nowadays if you want a laptop is to get one of the rare ones using a desktop CPU. They're surprisingly not as huge as you'd imagine, about the same as the article's Elitebook. Still, a pain in the ass.
Yeah, you could also work somewhere not as developed. It's dysfunctional alright, and the pay can be shit. But if the company seriously considers your ideas, you'll be seen as some sort of prophet. Many ideas and systems that you take for granted simply don't exist in developing countries. And they really need them.
When you're at zero, anything happening is a "boom".
I should know, I'm from a country where IT is "booming"... Most of it is tedious boring work that was outsourced by western companies because no one there wants to do it, plus it's cheaper than even creating some automated processes.
Still, that's a pessimistic way to look at it. It's a good thing, and it can grow into something better.
Another perspective is that there are people who prefer to do those jobs (instead of say, working in Amazon warehouse) but can't because it's cheaper (and logistically possible) to outsource to another country.
But also on some level why in the world are they more deserving of the job then the potentially better qualified foreigner just because where they happened to be born.
The question is why is it better for the country not who is more deserving. This is an export of US dollars. Is it better to keep the position local so member of society can be taxed/buy from other local businesses or export so foreign worker can buy tools from US firms or US business can get job done for cheaper.
Well I think that is actually quite a different question. Luckily it's not at all clear that the sort of zero sum thinking that lead to mercantilism was ever true or will ever be true. Having the best people doing the jobs where they have a comparative advantage helps everyone. Ideally we would open our immigration system more, certainly to highly skilled labor, but until then.
They are not. At some level, we accept that there are a lot of inequities in our current sociopolitical systems.
What China (and the Asian Tigers) have shown us is that it is a feasible path to industrialize though. But its possible there are better ways to get to higher standards of living, we just haven't tried them yet.
If these people don't apply for these jobs, they might as well not exist.
Amazon warehouses are staffed with immigrants in Europe. And they would simply not be able to do anything IT related.
It might seem easy for us, but it's not. We're talking about people who can't reinstall Windows. They won't be doing manual unit testing anytime soon, or ever, nevermind anything more complicated.
German companies love keeping it local. Things like manual app testing are advertised as Minijobs, but very few are applying. And of course, they complain about a lack of workers. So outsourcing can make sense beyond saving every penny.
Never. Power consumption for 10Gbps Ethernet on copper is huge compared to 1 Gbps, so it is not sexy for laptops. Consumer switches with 10 Gpbs ports don't exist - price per port is way too high versus 1 Gbps. Even 2.5 & 5 Gbps switches are rare and very expensive, so the 2.5Bbps Intel and Realtek Lan on Motherboard chips are there, but not useful.
At the same time, 10 Gbps on fiber is low power and great speed, but the form factor of SFP+ is simply too big for any laptop of 2022. In theory USB-C 3.2 @ 10Gbps to SFP+ fiber adapters are possible, but fiber is not popular outside server rooms, so there is no market for it.
As I said, never. It is not a matter of PCIe speeds, but a technology one: copper is power hungry and requires new cabling, fiber has no cabling.
10GbaseT power requirements are dropping every year as the MACs get more efficient. Its also of course dependent on cable length. Besides saving power it has also enabled 10GbaseT SFP+'s in recent years.
So, there probably isn't a good reason for not putting it in a laptop. Like wifi, just speed shift it based on load, etc. AKA see 802.3az
So, the old max power draw models from 15 years ago, don't really apply entirely.
Those Mikrotik SFP+ RJ 10Gbps modules get VERY hot. Idle temp is usually in the 60-70C range in my experience. They have guidance about not putting them next to each other in switch ports: https://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/S%2BRJ10_general_guidance#Gen...
I know about that option, but the price per port, including RJ45 transceiver, is huge compared to 1 Gbps ports. Also it is limited to 4 ports only - even for home use it is not enough, all the switches in my home (more than 3) are 8 ports and above.
Well, the idea is that you only wire trunks, wifi APs, and SANs w/ 10GbE, and light a select few wall jacks that matter.
~$120 per port (assuming 309s, the recommended interleaved spacing, and amortizing the switch cost over # ports) isn't very expensive if (a) you need the capability & (b) already have copper in the walls.
Drywall finishing along will run you that much. :) But yeah, new builds should definitely be fiber.
> Power consumption for 10Gbps Ethernet on copper is huge compared to 1 Gbps, so it is not sexy for laptops.
How often do you have your laptop plugged into networking but not power? And if that's an important use, I could see manufacturers spicing it up with some power over ethernet to not only fix but reverse the problem.
Though it feels like ethernet ports on laptops are already unsexy at any speed. And you could have the 'balanced' power profile limit the port to 1Gbps on battery.
Many laptops have a thunderbolt port which serves a similar purpose. On TB4 I get 15gbps in practice, and I can bridge it to ethernet using either a dock or a PC (I use a mac mini with a 10g port to bridge TB to 10ge).
10GB Ethernet requires at least CAT6 or CAT6a cabling. CAT5e is insufficient. For home use, that means that the newer standards of 2.5GB and 5GB which do work over 5e are more reasonable for personal computers.
A USB4 peripheral interface is $15 and a 10g ethernet IC is like $80 at least, plus a little box, SFP+ thing, other physical items. Seems hard to get the price down that low and still make a profit. Plus the buyer still needs an expensive cable on both sides.
A 10G PCIe card is only $100 retail so $150 seems fair for an external version. Newer dongles will include a captive USB4 cable. And consumers use base-T not SFP+.
They're shipped in oxygen free containers to prevent ripening and bruises while in transit, and then are over oxygenated to quickly ripen once unloaded to dockside facilities.
Before that, shipping distances were limited and the majority of what was unloaded had to be trashed before making it to market.
Only one interesting aspect of an extremely interesting historical topic.
Highly recommend starting with the story of Samuel Zemurray for those interested in the topic, who sold his company to united fruit then promptly turned around and took charge of it for the next twenty years in a hostile takeover.
I don't understand why nuts are so expensive. They sell for almost 10x their wholesale price.
They wholesale for ~$1.70 per pound. Peanuts wholesale for ~$0.25 per pound.
Yet walnuts sell for like ~$12 per pound and peanuts sell for ~$3 per pound.
Most foods that have sell for 10x wholesale price are delicate AND perishable, so a ton of that food goes to waste. Also, grocers reject a lot because of looks.
None of this is true with nuts.
So why do they retail for 10x wholesale price? I know technically, it's closer to 5x - since they usually retail blanched and the shell is half the weight. Still...
I've got around 10kg of them from a couple of trees in my garden. I've done zero maintenance, they're just there to keep other shit from growing (walnut trees poison the soil, most weeds stop growing, also because of the shade). All "high quality", the same stuff you get in stores.
Walnut trees are used on roadsides, they're perfect for it, zero maintenance, keeps the soil from moving/sliding and kills weeds. Random people just harvest them if they want to.
The store prices on them make no sense. Just like bananas :D
But normal. The cloud of thoughts gone, I am able to make myself do anything with one thought, I have energy, the aches are gone, the tinnitus is gone, I don't second guess, I don't overthink. I just am and I do. It's amazing. This is what people like Bezos and Musk must be like lol
Amphetamine probably feels like this, too, although many say it's actually quite distinct. The price, (un)availability, very short duration and the comedown are big negatives, sadly.
But yeah, comparing it to caffeine... nah. Can't comment on IV, but I can compare it to insufflated caffeine. It has some similarities, but the important parts are missing. Or maybe I'm just desensitized to caffeine. At least I'm a good fake coke detector lol