As a regular user of methylphendidate (MPH), a very serious and highly effective drug, I spend considerable time paying attention to my mind and body, trying to articulate how this drug impacts me. This also includes tracking biomarkers. There is one aspect that is sometimes pointed out as a potential risk, namely personality changes. Apparently, MPH can make you aggressive and impulsive, irritable, or even prone to crying. I came across one study on side effects that also had a very negative spin on the topic. However, personalty changes can also be of a positive nature. Yet, even this is often framed negatively by describing people on MPH as being “more intense” instead of being “highly focused”.

It is a good question what your personality actually is. To a significant degree, it is probably situational. You can put the most well-adjusted adult into a detrimental environment, and you can basically guarantee that this will affect him negatively, and perhaps even make him depressed. There is also your physical environment. I grew up in the countryside, spent many years as an adult living in big cities, and currently once again reside in the countryside. I am most certainly calmer when I am far away from a big city, in particular your typical Western, dystopian shithole, in which you constantly need to keep your guard up. Technically, speaking you cannot even take a leisurely stroll in a big city. Not even in the company office can I just leave a few items behind on my desk during my lunch break because there is theft. This was an issue in every company I ever worked at. At one place, the situation was so bad that they had to hire security. There was an incident where someone managed to sneak into the building and walk out with five or six laptops, and nobody of the people working there thought that there was anything wrong with that. This probably tells you a lot about how much people identify with their employer.

You can obviously change your personality, for better or worse, by changing your environment. The obvious objection is that this is just temporary, but at what point do temporary changes become permanent? If you live in an unsafe environment, it will probably take only a few months until you have adopted new behaviors that may take years to shake off after a move to a safer area. Meditation can also change your behavior, assuming you pursue it for the long-term and with significant dedication. As a consequence, you will be able to control your mind and even your emotions a lot better and this will also appear to others as being part of your personality.

MPH is a drug you may take for years or even your entire life, so any changes to your personality are probably of a more intermittent nature. However, the effects of the drug may lead to substantial changes even when you are not on it. I do not take MPH daily. However, I like taking it when there is some work to do I would otherwise easily find excuses to put off, and taking care of such tasks can impact me even when I am not on MPH. To give you a good example: you may have made the experience that a cluttered desk can be distracting. The positive spin is that it may inspire creativity. I used to sometimes not tidy up my desk for years, just stacking books and notes as I saw fit. Partly, I did so because I somehow liked a bit of chaos, but there is also the aspect of me not wanting to spend half a day tidying up my desk. Well, with MPH this is quite easy to do. My desk, and my entire study, is probably better organized than it ever was before. The consequence of this is that there is less visual distraction, and thus I am able to better focus on whatever task I want to work on. This is true no matter whether I am on MPH or not. Can this be perceived as a change in personality? I would argue that you could make a good argument that it does.

The personality changes I am experiencing on my very low dose of MPH are, thus far, only positive. This drug does not make me more aggressive or impulsive. You could say that it makes me more “intense”, if you want to use that word, and there are parts of the population that would consider this a negative trait. This is not how I see it. I do come across as a very serious person in real life, and on MPH this effect is probably even more exaggerated, compared to the average person. Being able to fully focus on what is in front of you is quite valuable, I would argue. Thus, you can say that MPH makes you more observant or more attentive. Let me take an interaction my wife as an example: Earlier this week she came to me to chat, as she sometimes does, and we ended up talking for 90 minutes. No, there was no serious topic to discuss. It was simply a good conversation. My wife is not only very good-looking, she also has a really pleasant voice, and if she wants to just chat idly, or learn what I have been thinking about or working on, she is of course welcome to do so. Even when I am not on MPH, I would not cut her off, but I probably would not spontaneously take 90 minutes out of my day, instead suggesting after half an hour or 45 minutes to continue our conversation later. One very positive side effect of MPH is that I get a lot more done, so if that was the only side effect, it would already lead to me needing to be a bit less protective of my time. On top, if you are able to fully focus on anything you want, you do not get distracted either. I wonder if my wife thinks that I am a partly different person, now that I am a bit less “intense” about how to spend my time.

There is one potentially negative aspect of my non-drugged personality that I have completely under control with MPH, however: When I get bored, which happens quite easily because my supposedly oh-so challenging work that requires an advanced degree is not really all that intellectually stimulating, I tend to go off script in order to create more exciting situations. For instance, I may make some very pointed comments in a discussion, sometimes even deliberately putting someone on the spot. By doing so, I may even manage to take over a meeting, which is quite fun, and certainly a lot more engaging than listening to someone drone on. Sometimes, I also like to see what my interlocutors are made of, so I put them on the spot by asking questions they did not at all expect. I recall a meeting with a “stakeholder” that told me that she was really looking forward to learn about a particular topic I was working on, so I could not help but ask her what had kept her from just looking it up as all my work was openly accessible. She did not last long, and neither did a guy whom I was interviewing for a project leadership role. DEI was probably the reason this non-white person’s CV ended up on my desk. My first question was whether he had any leadership experience, including hobbies or even extracurriculars, as I could not see any evidence on this CV. He had none. Then I asked him why, after almost twenty years of (unremarkable) work, he wanted to now step up and lead projects, and even that he could not answer. Well, it seems I saved him and myself a lot of time this way. HR was not happy about this. The white guy I liked and wanted to take on they were not happy with either, so they decided that someone else should also interview him, and they found a junior female DEI hire who diagnosed that this person was not a good culture fit. It is probably not an exaggeration that I am somewhat polarizing, but I do not care much about this. However, if I decided to care more about fitting in, then MPH will take care of it. I think that this drug makes me less aggressive, not more, and I was in situations where I deliberately did not take it because I knew I was about to get into a situation in which I had no interest in being diplomatic.

There are of course aspects of your personality that are quite unchangeable. Still, a significant part depends on your environment, good or bad. Similarly, you can experience personality changes due to the drugs you consume. Compared to alcohol, I would argue that the side effects of MPH, if you do not take an excessive amount, are very positive. I think this drug changes my personality to a noticeable extent when I am on it. I notice it myself clearly, for instance when I patiently sit through a boring meeting or do some mundane chores I otherwise may have put off indefinitely. On top, the side effects of MPH lead to me changing my environment, which has a further impact on my personality.