I was recently asked about the effect methylphenidate (MPH) has on meditation. I did not need to to an experiment as I have done that already. I am fairly experienced with meditation and, as many of you may be aware of, even wrote a book on this topic. My baseline experience, without MPH, is that I am able to very quickly enter a meditative state and remain in it. This is due to many years of practice. I used to meditate rather excessively in my adolescence. These days, this is no longer the case. Nonetheless, I meditate almost every day. Given that I have reached a fairly high level of proficiency in meditation, there is not that much of a difference with MPH.

There are two differences, though. Relevant here is my article on MPH and time expansion. The first effect is that I enter a meditate state much faster. Regularly, it takes me about a minute or two until I start feeling the effect. In contrast, on MPH it is near-instantaneous. The more interesting effect is time perception. Once you gain a certain level of proficiency in meditation, you will perceive time differently. However, on MPH, with my current relative lack of experience related to meditating while on this drug, my time perception is completely off. This is is the aforementioned time-expansion effect. I cannot at all guess how much time has elapsed while meditating, but this is not easy in an unaltered state of mind either. However, on MPH perceived time moves a lot more slowly. I had an experience recently where I set a timer for 15 minutes for a quick meditation session. However, while meditating, I circled back to the thought whether I had properly set the timer. This may happen if you do not properly look at the display. I was convinced that at least 40 minutes must have passed by now. Yet, after I got up, I saw that there were about two minutes left on the timer, which I had set properly. I did not quite know what to make of it.

With MPH, there seems to be the potential for a turbo-charged meditative experience. Imagine you meditate for an hour (wall-clock time) and your experience is closer to having meditated for multiple hours (perceived time), without the physical discomfort you may feel. Learning to tolerate physical discomfort, as well as to control your mind, is part of the meditative practice, however. My current position is that you rob yourself of a quintessential part of meditation if you use MPH as a misguided shortcut. It seems true that MPH enables you to more quickly enter a meditative state and remain in it. This approach robs you of the proper experience, however. Clearly, MPH makes it easier to meditate. Yet, meditation is not supposed to be easy. My stance is that you train your body and your mind with meditation. In fact, you slowly learn to control your mind. The meditative mind on MPH resembles playing a video game with a cheat code. I do not recommend it. That being said, I am aware that other people may come to the exact opposite conclusion. After all, if MPH helps you getting your chores done quicker, why not use if for meditation as well? I can understand how people could end up embracing this view. I do not see how you can develop mental fortitude this way, though.