I began my day today by popping a methylphenidate (MPH) pill, not because this is my daily ritual but because I had a pretty packed day ahead of myself. At around lunchtime, I decided to shop for some groceries. I was full of energy, so I just wanted to get this out of the way and as I was not feeling hungry, thanks to MPH, time was not much of an issue either as I surely do not want to take a 90 minute lunchbreak. At the supermarket, I had a most remarkable encounter with an alcoholic, which made me realize once again that we live in an utterly bizarre society. Alcohol is freely available, yet MPH is not. It would be saner if it was the other way around.

First things first: I quickly made my way through the supermarket, gathering the items I wanted to buy. Yet, there was a line at the cashier. In front of me there was a guy who looked fifteen years older than me but who could possibly have been of a similar age. From the looks of it, he was an alcoholic. In his shopping cart there were two stacked crates of beer. Each crate contains 6 x 4 bottles. This guy probably prepared himself for the weekend. I did not even stand that close to him but I could smell him. He was reeking of sweat and alcohol. There are not a lot of such people around in my area, but there are some. Fortunately, there is no critical mass so they seem to drink at home instead of congregating outside. If you have not lived in a small town or a village before, you may wonder how this is even possible but the explanation is quite simple. All it takes is a couple buying a house, raising some kids, and one of the kids ending up with the house. If this person becomes an alcoholic, you end up with the village alcoholic. If you put only a minimal amount into maintenance of a house, the costs are quite manageable. You can even keep a house you own while receiving benefit payments, but these people may even be able to do odd jobs. Thus, you can sometimes see such people living in areas they otherwise would not be able to afford.

Well, here I am on MPH, feeling like Super Mario after grabbing a super star. I knock one item after another off my to-do list. Yet, in order to get MPH you need to overcome serious gatekeepers. There may be shady psychiatrists who give you a prescription for anything you ask for, but in my case, I had to jump over a lot of hurdles to get a prescription. More correctly, I jumped over a lot of hurdles and accidentally ended up with a prescription for MPH. This is Super Mario on MPH:

When I looked at this fat slob in the supermarket and his two crates of beer I was flabbergasted that his drug of choice is supported by society. Past a certain age, you can buy as much alcohol as you want and drink yourself into an early grave if you so desire. Alcohol is the drug of choice of the Western man, it seems. We are being told that alcohol is part of our culture. However, the deleterious effects of alcohol consumption are far-reaching, both for the individual and society. Drunk driving is an obvious example, and so is violence. The long-term health effects of alcohol are nothing to scoff at.

People drink alcohol to get buzzed, and some people drink habitually. Without alcohol they cannot even make it through the day. These are high-functioning alcoholics. If you did not know them personally, you would never guess that they have an alcohol problem. There are high-functioning alcoholics in my wider social circle and even my extended family. I have also had friends who outwardly seemed to have their life under control yet were apparently buzzed 24/7. I recall a friend from my university days. We hung out at my place in a small group during the week. I do not recall the reason, it was probably study-related. Yet, he casually pulled out a hip flask in the early afternoon, casually taking a sip. As this was apparently normal him, he was not even aware that his behavior was odd.

A society in which alcohol is widely available is arguably not a good one, considering that too many people cannot handle it. This makes me wonder why there is no widespread ban or at least severe restrictions towards its consumption. Yes, you may be fine, but a lot of people are not. It could very well be that alcohol is seen as an ideal drug for the population from the perspective of the elites. Moderate use puts you in a better mood, making you perhaps more accepting of the shit sandwich you are being served. Regular use furthermore keeps you in a sedated state. You are not going to start a revolution if there is a crate of beer left for you to empty before the weekend is over. On top, there are harmful effects of alcohol on your endocrine system, including permanently suppressing your testosterone levels. What is not to like if you are part of the hostile elite?

After having discussed the virgin-drug alcohol, let us have a look at what the Chad drug MPH gets you: Take your most productive hour of the most productive day in any given week and imagine you can operate at this level for an entire week. MPH is an incredible productivity booster. There are issues with people self-medicating and taking much more than they should but if you are put on the optimal dosage under the supervision of a psychiatrist you will most likely be fine. With MPH you simply operate at your maximum much more often. There is the perception that it boost mental performance but this is misleading. You are not going to temporarily gain IQ points. Instead, you are able to hyperfocus and enter a prolonged flow state, multiple times a day.

This is how my day today on MPH looked like: I got the work for the day done in about two hours in the morning and subsequently knocked out some tedious admin tasks. None of this was overly exciting but it had to be done. Of course, I did not feel hungry at noon so I went shopping for groceries, as you know from the start of the article. I popped another pill later in the afternoon. Unfortunately, I had to sit in in the most boring meeting of my life. Even though I was on MPH, I completely trailed off. I was in the bizarre state of zoning out, yet still retaining information. Probably I should seek out more utterly boring meetings to explore this state further. In the evening, I realized that I had eaten hardly anything the entire day, just two small bowls of oatmeal together with my MPH pills. Still, I did not feel hungry. Being full of energy, I then got my workout out of the way so I walked downstairs to my basement gym but not before putting some potatoes in the oven. After I was done with my exercises, I fried some eggs, prepared some spinach, and threw it all together for a quick meal. Afterwards, I sat down to do a bit of writing, i.e. this and the previous article.

The Chad drug MPH allows you to squeeze more hours out of your day. There are some supposed side effects, including the suppression of hunger. For almost anyone, this would be a clear benefit. Extrapolating from my experience, this is how a society on MPH would look like: You would be much more focused and get probably about 30 to 50% more done, day after day, assuming you do mental work. With physical work, the difference is probably not as pronounced, in particular if you depend on time passing. To use a simple example, if you are a line cook, you are not going to produce the same amount of food in 2/3 of the time when you are on MPH but you probably will still find it easier to deal with the noise and distractions. As a mental worker, you would not feel tired after a day’s work. I have no need to “veg out” at the end of the working day anymore, at least after MPH-enhanced working days. As a consequence, I am not tempted to go down rabbit holes, and even if I decide to read up on some issue or follow a few links, it is trivially easy to just stop.

Arguably, women would have fewer issues on MPH as well. Imagine all the women around you being slim and thus significantly more attractive. Thanks to MPH they would eat less and it would be easy for them. They would like themselves better as they would no longer see a fat slob in the mirror. In turn, men would like women better because they are simply biologically drawn towards slender women. Even better, women would no longer need to check their phone every two minutes, making them more pleasant to be around.

I can understand that the government does not want to hand out MPH to everyone. After all, what would society look like if all of us were able to reach more of our goals while we find it easier to stay in shape? It would be even worse if people would use their newfound mental powers to educate themselves about the world. The effect of a really smart person effectively another two hours out of the day would be quite staggering. I am quite sure that a lot of very productive people, and even plenty of fairly average  people, are on MPH or amphetamines anyway. However, if you are not there is no government-endorsed campaign to get you on it, in contrast to the heavy promotion of drinking culture.

Not many people admit taking MPH, just like hardly any bodybuilder, even the most roided-out freaks, admit taking steroids. They tell you about all the white rice and chicken breast they eat, conveniently forgetting about all their gear. Somewhat similarly, many women get fake tits and if it is not extremely obvious, they do not talk about it, or even lie that their boobs are natural. It is similar with MPH or amphetamines in academia and competitive office jobs. I even have evidence of that. For instance, during my brief time at dental school, there were some students who openly spoke about taking Adderall or Ritalin in order to boost their exam performance. They got their prescription from a family member or someone in their wider social circle, simply because many of them had a father who was a dentist, or even a regular doctor, and dentists surely often know doctors, too. A very well-known case of an intellectual being honest about his external source of energy is Paul Erdős, one of the most prolific mathematicians who have ever lived. He openly admitted that he basically is on MPH all the time, at least in his later years. Well, he did not go around talking constantly. One of his favorite phrases was that a mathematician is a machine that transforms coffee into proofs. Probably he thought this was more normie-digestible than saying that a mathematician is a machine for turning MPH into proofs.

The abuse potential of MPH seems quite limited. For everyone who could not resist snorting it, there are surely thousands of regular users. With alcohol the ratio is probably worse. On top, alcohol irreparably damages your body if you overdo it. I even wonder if there is a safe dose. You can tell if someone is drinking too much. Their personality also changes, and not for the better. This part in particular I find almost bizarre. I am reading that MPH consumption may lead to personality changes, as a temporary side effect. Yet, with alcohol your temporary personality changes, which are hardly ever referred as that, are much more severe. You are not going to start random fights on MPH or decide that it is a great idea to fall asleep in public. The long-term personality changes of alcohol, caused by ever-increasing brain damage, are severe and non-reversible, and the same is true for your body. With MPH, the long-term risks are nothing compared to alcohol, and the benefits far outweigh is, both individually and at the group-level. I would certainly much rather live in a society in which MPH was one of the state-endorsed drugs than one in which I am constantly being told that alcohol is the drug of choice.