[jdo1984]

I would say nicotine is the closest thing to Adderall as far as non-prescription drugs. I have started chewing nicotine gum or using chewing tobacco when the effect of my medication starts to run out when I have to work late.

My Adderall dosage is 30mg/day but the length of my workday and my size (200+ lbs) make it necessary to take more than that on a typical workday (necessitates not taking meds on the weekends). I guess I should maybe ask my Doc if he’ll increase my dosage but based on his past comments he didn’t seem very open to increasing it beyond 30 mg a day because he was concerned it would raise blood pressure too much.

I drink A LOT of coffee, but I don’t think it helps concentration aside from enabling you to be awake and alert.

 

 

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[jdo1984]

I’ve used Luminosity. I’m not sure about the post above, I thought I paid $200 for 1 year of access. I definitely improved with games on the site but I’m not sure that improvement carries over to other non-Luminosity tasks.

Google shows a lot of skepticism over the value of Luminosity’s brain games. Even if they are benefitial, you can obtain similar benefits by exercising you brain in other ways at a much lower cost.

I am obsessively competitive, so it turned into kind of an addiction for me where I ignored work responsibilities for several hours a day until I reached the 99.5th percentile. Sadly I have now replaced that addiction with Ruzzle (at least it is $97 less!).

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[jdo1984]

I think it is possible the reason you feel the generic version produces different effects is psychological.

Generic versions of brand drugs need to be proven to be both bioequivalent and therapeutically equivalent to the original medication in order to be approved by the US FDA. That means the active ingredient must be chemically identical and the active ingredient(s) need(s) to be absorbed into the bloodstream at the exact same rate and that the drug must produce the same effect as the brand-name drug.

I have been in paid clinical trials for generic drugs where they need to demonstrate bio-equivalance. They dose you and then take about 20 blood samples over 2 days – some receive the brand name drug and some take the generic trying to get FDA approval. They ensure the levels of the drug in your blood are identical between the two. They need to test this on a lot of people and spend a lot of money to prove. My point is that the FDA takes many steps to ensure the generic version is essentially identical to the brand drug.

Pharmaceutical companies that produce brand drugs have a lot to gain from widespread misconceptions about generic drugs because brand drugs are MUCH more expensive, which not everyone notices because they pay a copay for the drug rather than the full cost.

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