alt Hacker NewsI'm so sick of this moralistic attitude toward psychiatric drugs. "Happy pills"? Come on. There are ways to work around tolerance. Even if there aren't, what's so terrible about a temporary improvement?
I'd wager most of us use some sort of vision correction. This does nothing to fix the underlying problem or even halt the progression, and most of the treatments leave us with a lifelong dependency on them. And yet nobody goes around derisively referring to "happy lenses" and talking about how stupid optometrists are.
There are legitimate doubts about the effectiveness of some psychiatric drugs. I don't believe ADHD drugs are among them. Regardless, that should be framed as a need for better education and dissemination of the information, better studies to determine effectiveness and better treatment regimens, and new drugs that do a better job. It should not be framed as "happy pills" with this derisive attitude just because the condition I take medication for is a brain condition rather than something like a heart condition.
> Even if there aren't, what's so terrible about a temporary improvement?
Is it temp though? ADHD is a list of symptoms with no verdict on the cause. What exactly is the plan beyond the amphetamines? A lot of people I see simultaneously want diagnosing but not curing. It's like the double think required to say not having a symptom can actually be having one. As in, "Despite what I can achieve, I still struggle, and that counts as not being able to do it at all". Why do people never mask a language delay for instance? If masking is something all AuDHD people do, why is it always faculties largely intact but they find stuff hard (harder than whatever you feel, despite not having such a great theory of mind they seem to be aware of how other minds work just fine)