Substituted amphetamines were already very popular in the 1950s.
Methamphetamine was invented in Germany in 1937 and the German military at the time was very quick to adopt its use.
Everybody who could afford it adopted psychostimulants in WW2. Go pills have been part and parcel since then. Some countries have adopted modafinil, but the US still uses amphetamine.
I am not sure if that's still the case, but "go pills," Dexedrine, were certainly used in Afghanistan. Here was a horrible potential side-effect:
https://www.cbc.ca/news2/background/friendlyfire/gopills.htm...
An army of tweakers. I don't think that this aspect of the War and the Holocaust are discussed enough. Certainly no excuse, but it is very interesting.
> Chronic Meth users have deficits in memory and executive functioning as well as higher rates of anxiety, depression, and most notably psychosis.
And had been researched treat symptoms of depression and what would eventually be called ADHD in the 1930's.
Benzedrine (an amphetamine inhaler) was the first antidepressant marketed (although at the time I believe they used the term "psychic energizer" for antidepressants)
... and I didn't know about them:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substituted_amphetamine
The most famous in that family seems to be meth(amphetamine)
Dune also predicted it. The spice must flow.
Just want to echo someone else's sub-thread: Adderall is not at all similar to Huxley's description of Soma. Soma was about feeling good and not having to think of the evil things that make the BNW society possible, not efficiency.
I read champignons and it kind of fit even better. Adderall (Brave New World) and mushrooms (Island).
Soma in BNW is more analogous to MDMA as it's about sedated pleasure, not mental clarity/performance.
I seem to think marijuana is more about sedated pleasure than MDMA. Granted, it's been about 30 years since I read Brave New World.
I agree, soma definitely parallels weed much more closely, but I don't think it's a perfect match. Huxley imagines a drug a bit more insidious, without obviously negative side effects, and with somewhat unrealistic(imo) intended effects.
The sedation is psychological - soma suppresses discomfort and boosts easy pleasure. It’s not introspective at all, which makes it much closer to MDMA than to cannabis.
mdma is pleasureful but extremely non-sedated
I meant the psychological role in the book - soma as a tool to melt away discomfort or disturbing feelings, not its literal pharmacology.
pure racemic MDMA has very little stimulant effect. street MDMA can feel stimulating because it is either intentionally mixed with caffeine/speed/meth or contains residual precursor from clandestine synthesis.
my major state was one of deep relaxation ... MDMA does not work like Dexedrine ... I feel totally peaceful.
- Alexander Shulgin, PIHKAL
https://www.erowid.org/library/books_online/pihkal/pihkal109...
This article (and the title alone) is harmful. Adderall is not about increasing mental efficiency.
What Adderall is about is:
- helping with executive dysfunction for people who suffer from it.
- allowing people with ADHD like me to function. To do the things that everyone else does, things that we want to do and need to do, but can't do because of the way our brains are wired.
- increasing the lifespan of ADHD people who don't get help. Women with ADHD die about 9 years younger than those without ADHD [1].
- making our lives less painful, since every small task incurs pain, resulting in 3x depression rates [2] and alarmingly high suicidal ideation rates (50% of ADHD adults [3]).
Please, please, educate yourself about ADHD and medication for it before writing something like this title.
No, Aldous Huxley didn't. "predict" Adderall.
To understand more, I've put together a resource which, I hope, will be easy enough to digest. Here's my experience of getting prescribed Adderall for my ADHD:
https://romankogan.net/adhd/#Medication
If I have attention deficit and I could write it, I hope you (and the author of the text we're discussing) could spare some attention to it before talking about Adderall, amphetamines, and other stimulants prescribed for ADHD.
Thank you in advance.
[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/01/23/nx...
[2] https://add.org/adhd-and-depression/
[3] https://crownviewpsych.com/blog/adhd-increased-risk-suicide-...
It's kind of a long, but I listened to this podcast a while back with Peter Attia and Trenna Sutcliffe discussing Autism, ADHD, and Anxiety, and found that it really changed my views to become more accepting of medication for treatment of ADHD. In particular, understanding the risks of not effectively treating ADHD, in comparison with with the potential risks/benefits of the medication. That's not to say that we should only rely on medication - behavioral therapy (with parents involved too) should also play a part.
Exactly.
Adderall has no positive relationship to my mental efficiency. It can in fact be a negative once your passed the 8 hour windows where its still in your system.
At the end of the day, it makes it easier to not bounce between different things. It doesn't help me be smarter. It helps me drive to work without needing to listen to music and be on my phone.
Modafinil... maybe.
Here here. I also have ADHD though I couldn’t use stimulant medications due to bad reactions to it, but I’ve had success with non-stimulant medications (Straterra aka atomoxetine [1]).
A big thing I struggled with prior to medical treatment that I don’t often hear discussed about ADHd was rejection sensitivity.
For those unfamiliar: imagine a time someone said something that hurt your feelings or caused a strong emotional reaction.
Now imagine that as a routine emotional response to day to day interactions. Feeling intensely sad, irritated, insulted, etc. to extents completely o it of proportion to whatever was said or even implied.
It’s brutal. It contributes to a lot of depression and social anxiety for folks with ADHD. It doesn’t matter if you’re aware of the response being disproportionate—you get to go on that emotional roller coaster whenever somebody says they don’t care for your favorite food, accidentally cut you off in a conversation, or the day just turns out differently than you were expecting.
Medical treatment makes a huge difference—in my particular case the difference between feeling like I had the emotional regulation of a toddler and not needing to constantly question every emotion I felt prior to responding to things I was reacting to.
Stimulant medications didn’t work for me, but they do this for most people with ADHD (more effectively, too!) and like alterom it saddens me whenever FUD like this crops up.