I have been taking bupropion for two weeks now. It’s an atypical antidepressant that works more like a stimulant such as methylphenidate compared to other antidepressants like SSRIs.
So far my experience has been very positive. Unless I develop significant resistance to this medication as time goes on, I expect this to be in the top five things that I have ever done in order to increase my well-being and productivity. It does not have any annoying side effects for me. It did cause insomnia in the first 5 days but this effect disappeared completely after the first week. It was also very easy and fast to get a prescription (in Germany). It’s not available in the UK or Australia iirc.
Therefore I tentatively recommend if you are even slightly depressed sometimes, that you read this document.
For me it was especially useful because it helped in 3 ways:
Make me less depressed (works very well for this. That is what it is for what it is prescribed for after all)
It makes me less fatigued (I had some chronic fatigue before. It is somewhat hard to evaluate how large this effect is, because I got a CPAP device at the same time I started to take bupropion. But there seems to be a noticeable difference before and after I take the bupropion.)
It slightly lessens ADHD symptoms (this is mainly useful for me right now because it takes forever to get a prescription for ADHD medication unless I would put in a lot more time into optimizing to get one faster)
It might even make sense to think about this if you are experiencing any subset of these problems.
Heads up that for many people the first few weeks are the best they ever get on wellbutrin, and it will eventually settle at somewhere like 70% of that peak. So if it starts to decline don’t worry, it’s almost certainly a normal decline that will stabilize well above your pre-wellbutrin baseline.
I highly recommend trying to get a prescription for something like adderall (or dextroamphetamine, lisdexamphetamine) if your doctor is willing to diagnose you with ADHD. Just go off it if it doesn’t work, but it seems likely that it will given your response to bupropion. Some vague reasons for recommending it are:
Amphetamines affects dopamine (& norepinephrine) via more than just reuptake-inhibition. I’m not sure yet which mechanisms drive desensitization, it just seems tentatively better to spread the attack vectors out.
I’ve mostly forgot the reasons I suggest amphetamines over methylphenidate, but at least it has a stronger effect on egosyntonic behaviour (/executive function or whatever you want to call it) than bupropion.
Furthermore, if you’re on amphetamines/methylphenidate, I would recommend sort of using it strategically. I only take them on days I know I plan to be productive, and have hope that they enable me to be productive. If I ever take them on a day I fail to motivate myself, it weakens the semiotic/narrative signal for my brain to switch into a mode where it expects productivity & silences competing motivations. Plus, if I know I mostly won’t be productive for a while (e.g. vacation or something), I go off them to reset desensitisation (usually resets a long way within a week it seems).
I’ve been on lisdexamphetamine for 1.5 years, and they still produce a very clear effect. I’ve had depression and, turns out, ADHD, for most of my life. People who have no dysregulation of dopamine will probably have negative effect from too much upregulation (e.g. reduced mental noise/creativity, inability to zoom out from activities and reprioritise).
I watched a video where a doctor said that ADHD does not give you any benefit. I am a lot more creative than other people I think. Specifically a lot more creative than people who are as intelligent as I am. To me, it is unclear if that is not tightly linked to ADHD.
As you mention that stimulants can reduce “mental noise/creativity” I am curious what your experience is with this.
To be clear I think making your mind less noisy and improving executive function is a very very useful tool. But maybe it is a mistake to use amphetamines as the main signal for being productive. Maybe it would be better to have some days where you are productive off amphetamines because that might allow you to do qualitatively different work. E.g. do some ideation and exploration, and then use the amphetamines to dive deeper into what seems promising.
Specifically a lot more creative than people who are as intelligent as I am.
Having read a few of your posts, I think you’re correct about this. I believe in your general approach!
As you mention that stimulants can reduce “mental noise/creativity” I am curious what your experience is with this.
When I first started taking them, it revealed to me that I’d never known what it felt like to be able to think a thought through. Metaphorically, I imagine it sorta like being born with COPD and never realising what it feels like to fill my lungs with air. But I’ve probably always had a severe deficiency of whatever the stimulants are correcting for; and others who’re doing just fine on that front may not share my experience.
I take stimulants in the morning, and I’m soon enthusiastic about thinking deeply about ideas. I become more creative because the relevant threads-of-thought have some room to build upon themselves, probably because my mind is now able to mute the noise and non-relevant threads. When on stimulants, I’m much more likely to get lost down rabbit-holes during research, and often don’t catch myself before hours have passed. The lack of oomph I feel when off stimulants helps me prioritise only the most essential bits, and it’s easier to not overdo stuff—though mostly by virtue of being less capable of doing stuff.
Slightly relevant fun RCTs:
Alcohol concentration (sorta the opposite of stims of you squint) of 0.069-0.075 BAC seems to enhance performance on Remote-Association Tests (ie semantic metaphors)
Subjects who got RAT questions correct while intoxicated also reported feeling like their solution arrived “all at once” and were “more like insights” as opposed to deliberate/analytical.
The lack of oomph I feel when off stimulants helps me prioritize only the most essential bits.
That is very interesting. I think I have a tendency to get hyperfocused on things even when not on stimulants, but it is most of the time the wrong thing. E.g. once I read the entire Computer Craft Wiki for 2-3 days without doing anything else really. I was literally addicted to it. The same happens when I code.
Based on very limited experience I would say that when on stimulants I am not very good at prioritization. Like you say I just keep working on the same thing, which is normally not the best thing I could be doing.
When not on stimulants I am just as terrible at prioritization. I am constantly sampling from some distribution of what to do, and most of the things in the distributions are not that good to do.
Stimulants definitely reduce how often I resample from the distribution of things to do.
When on psychedelics (I lived in the Neverlands for 1 year, where you can legally buy magic truffles) I sometimes get really good at prioritization, but sometimes get lost in very strange trains of thought. Sometimes these strange trains of thought are very useful. Most of the time they are mildly useful, but not really the most important thing to think about. Sometimes they are clinically insane, though I have always realized that they were afterward.
Some person on Reddit says that alcohol makes you forget things:
… the bizarre finding is that studies showed the students who took the alcohol who performed equally as well on the tests at the beginning had forgotten almost half of the equations&formulas after a week as the no drinkers.
I have been taking bupropion for two weeks now. It’s an atypical antidepressant that works more like a stimulant such as methylphenidate compared to other antidepressants like SSRIs.
So far my experience has been very positive. Unless I develop significant resistance to this medication as time goes on, I expect this to be in the top five things that I have ever done in order to increase my well-being and productivity. It does not have any annoying side effects for me. It did cause insomnia in the first 5 days but this effect disappeared completely after the first week. It was also very easy and fast to get a prescription (in Germany). It’s not available in the UK or Australia iirc.
Therefore I tentatively recommend if you are even slightly depressed sometimes, that you read this document.
For me it was especially useful because it helped in 3 ways:
Make me less depressed (works very well for this. That is what it is for what it is prescribed for after all)
It makes me less fatigued (I had some chronic fatigue before. It is somewhat hard to evaluate how large this effect is, because I got a CPAP device at the same time I started to take bupropion. But there seems to be a noticeable difference before and after I take the bupropion.)
It slightly lessens ADHD symptoms (this is mainly useful for me right now because it takes forever to get a prescription for ADHD medication unless I would put in a lot more time into optimizing to get one faster)
It might even make sense to think about this if you are experiencing any subset of these problems.
Heads up that for many people the first few weeks are the best they ever get on wellbutrin, and it will eventually settle at somewhere like 70% of that peak. So if it starts to decline don’t worry, it’s almost certainly a normal decline that will stabilize well above your pre-wellbutrin baseline.
I highly recommend trying to get a prescription for something like adderall (or dextroamphetamine, lisdexamphetamine) if your doctor is willing to diagnose you with ADHD. Just go off it if it doesn’t work, but it seems likely that it will given your response to bupropion. Some vague reasons for recommending it are:
Amphetamines affects dopamine (& norepinephrine) via more than just reuptake-inhibition. I’m not sure yet which mechanisms drive desensitization, it just seems tentatively better to spread the attack vectors out.
I’ve mostly forgot the reasons I suggest amphetamines over methylphenidate, but at least it has a stronger effect on egosyntonic behaviour (/executive function or whatever you want to call it) than bupropion.
Furthermore, if you’re on amphetamines/methylphenidate, I would recommend sort of using it strategically. I only take them on days I know I plan to be productive, and have hope that they enable me to be productive. If I ever take them on a day I fail to motivate myself, it weakens the semiotic/narrative signal for my brain to switch into a mode where it expects productivity & silences competing motivations. Plus, if I know I mostly won’t be productive for a while (e.g. vacation or something), I go off them to reset desensitisation (usually resets a long way within a week it seems).
I’ve been on lisdexamphetamine for 1.5 years, and they still produce a very clear effect. I’ve had depression and, turns out, ADHD, for most of my life. People who have no dysregulation of dopamine will probably have negative effect from too much upregulation (e.g. reduced mental noise/creativity, inability to zoom out from activities and reprioritise).
I watched a video where a doctor said that ADHD does not give you any benefit. I am a lot more creative than other people I think. Specifically a lot more creative than people who are as intelligent as I am. To me, it is unclear if that is not tightly linked to ADHD.
As you mention that stimulants can reduce “mental noise/creativity” I am curious what your experience is with this.
To be clear I think making your mind less noisy and improving executive function is a very very useful tool. But maybe it is a mistake to use amphetamines as the main signal for being productive. Maybe it would be better to have some days where you are productive off amphetamines because that might allow you to do qualitatively different work. E.g. do some ideation and exploration, and then use the amphetamines to dive deeper into what seems promising.
Having read a few of your posts, I think you’re correct about this. I believe in your general approach!
When I first started taking them, it revealed to me that I’d never known what it felt like to be able to think a thought through. Metaphorically, I imagine it sorta like being born with COPD and never realising what it feels like to fill my lungs with air. But I’ve probably always had a severe deficiency of whatever the stimulants are correcting for; and others who’re doing just fine on that front may not share my experience.
I take stimulants in the morning, and I’m soon enthusiastic about thinking deeply about ideas. I become more creative because the relevant threads-of-thought have some room to build upon themselves, probably because my mind is now able to mute the noise and non-relevant threads. When on stimulants, I’m much more likely to get lost down rabbit-holes during research, and often don’t catch myself before hours have passed. The lack of oomph I feel when off stimulants helps me prioritise only the most essential bits, and it’s easier to not overdo stuff—though mostly by virtue of being less capable of doing stuff.
Slightly relevant fun RCTs:
Alcohol concentration (sorta the opposite of stims of you squint) of 0.069-0.075 BAC seems to enhance performance on Remote-Association Tests (ie semantic metaphors)
“On average, intoxicated participants solved significantly more RAT problems (M = .58, SD = .13) than their sober counterparts (M = .42, SD = .16), t(38) = 3.43, p = .001, d = 1.08. Interestingly, this increase in solution success was accompanied by a decrease in time to correct solution for intoxicated individuals (M = 11.54 s, SD = 3.75) compared to sober controls (M=15.24s, SD =5.57), t(38) = 2.47, p = .02, d = .78.”
Sci-Hub | Uncorking the muse: Alcohol intoxication facilitates creative problem solving. Consciousness and Cognition, 21(1), 487–493 | 10.1016/j.concog.2012.01.002
Subjects who got RAT questions correct while intoxicated also reported feeling like their solution arrived “all at once” and were “more like insights” as opposed to deliberate/analytical.
Sci-Hub | Inverted-U–Shaped Dopamine Actions on Human Working Memory and Cognitive Control. Biological Psychiatry, 69(12), e113–e125 | 10.1016/j.biopsych.2011.03.028
“Inverted U-shape” referring to the idea that too much dopamine is detrimental to performance.
That is very interesting. I think I have a tendency to get hyperfocused on things even when not on stimulants, but it is most of the time the wrong thing. E.g. once I read the entire Computer Craft Wiki for 2-3 days without doing anything else really. I was literally addicted to it. The same happens when I code.
Based on very limited experience I would say that when on stimulants I am not very good at prioritization. Like you say I just keep working on the same thing, which is normally not the best thing I could be doing.
When not on stimulants I am just as terrible at prioritization. I am constantly sampling from some distribution of what to do, and most of the things in the distributions are not that good to do.
Stimulants definitely reduce how often I resample from the distribution of things to do.
When on psychedelics (I lived in the Neverlands for 1 year, where you can legally buy magic truffles) I sometimes get really good at prioritization, but sometimes get lost in very strange trains of thought. Sometimes these strange trains of thought are very useful. Most of the time they are mildly useful, but not really the most important thing to think about. Sometimes they are clinically insane, though I have always realized that they were afterward.
Some person on Reddit says that alcohol makes you forget things: