> You are asserting that the law firm's long working hours were caused by her med use. Do you think you might have that backwards?
It probably becomes a vicious cycle / race to the bottom. You take more drugs to work longer hours and compete with your colleagues, who start taking more drugs so they can work more hours to have the edge over you...
The long working hours of many law firms existed before the widespread availability of adderall. Drugs have absolutely zero to do with it. They are merely a symptom of the underlying workaholic culture.
I had a friend whose grandfather was a hot shot lawyer at one of the largest international firms of his day in the 60s/70s/80s. She told me that he was a speed addict for close to 20 years. Long story short he got into a situation where he had to quit cold turkey and did, successfully.
Substance abuse to get ahead is nothing new. Drugs are not as new as we pretend they are, and it's been common practice to abuse them for personal gain probably as long as they've been around.
I've worked for a couple of the bigger law firms in the UK and I've never come across drug use (of this type).
Drugs may enable and perpetuate this behaviour today, at least in some countries, but I don't think there's much of a case that they caused it. At least if they did it arose in places like the UK without that assistance.
From my experience the root is far simpler - greed. They dangle the possibility of partnership with all it's attendant wealth and status in front of the bright young things and watch them scrap it out and burn out. I have a friend who made partner with one of the magic circle firms and while the rewards are amazing, I wouldn't swap his life for mine in a million years.
They dangle the possibility of partnership with all it's attendant wealth and status in front of the bright young things and watch them scrap it out and burn out.
It used to be that about 5% didn't make partner. It was like getting fired-- in the 1970s, when that itself was rare. It was harder to get an associate position, but once you were in, you were solid. Also, work hours were not at the extreme that they are now.
Now, instead of 5% not making partner, it's about 5% who make partner.
That's because some really evil, greedy fucks got in charge and realized they could replace partnerships with overworked, churn-and-burn associates.
You're right that the number who make partner has shrunk massively (and the competitiveness goes further in that being a partner is no longer as secure as it was - several of the large firms have ousted partners which would previously have been almost unheard of).
The upside (at least for those competing) is that many who don't make partner will still go on to secure corporate lawyer jobs earning six figures...
The industrial revolution was a shift in the curve. You could successfully argue that automation to get ahead is nothing new, but it would miss the importance of the scale of the new changes.
Adderal and its ilk are a similar shift in the curve. People with access used to be people rich enough to afford speed.
Now almost all school kids are entering the work force and know someone or have themselves used performance enhancers.
Are you asserting that the main reason people work long hours is because of performance enhancing drugs? And if you're not asserting that, what are you asserting?
I'm asserting that trying to extract causation from these scenarios is often not productive. One outcome didn't lead to another; feedback was almost certainly involved.
This is true. However, a lot of people will take away the message 'stay off adderall' whereas
(1) some people apparently benefit from it,
(2) some people whom doctors wouldn't prescribe to may benefit (e.g. the mathematician Paul Erdös took ritalin, a similar drug),
(3) all people who abuse drugs do so because of personality problems -- thus if she hadn't taken adderall then she may well have gotten into some other drug or obsession leading to some other addiction or disorder
She isn't saying that people should stay off adderall, she is saying that people should be careful and not think of it as something totally harmless and risk-free. Obviously adderall can be very useful both on- and off-label, but that doesn't mean it can't be harmful too.
And saying that "all people who abuse drugs do so because of personality problems" is obviously quite ignorant. Genetical factors are often important of course, no doubt about it, but to suggest that everyone physically addicted to really addictive substances do it purely because of personality problems, and not the addictiveness of the drugs, is really strange.
You seem to think that being addicted is a simple choice. That might be true for psychological addictions (although I doubt it), but it is certainly not true for physical addictions.
>She isn't saying that people should stay off adderall
Indeed.
>And saying that "all people who abuse drugs do so because of personality problems" is obviously quite ignorant
Nah. The truth in this whole drugs business is far from obvious. Check out Gabor Maté on youtube, he has some interesting things to say. Apart from that, perhaps when we have a theory of consciousness we will be able to re-frame mental disorders as disorders of consciousness.
Meanwhile 'addiction' and 'abuse' are problems -- are you saying they're not to do with personality? Some people do talk about genes in this context, but they have no explanatory theory connecting genes to specific mental traits, so I think they're mistaken. And, if they did, those genes would then be part of the personality
>You seem to think that being addicted is a simple choice
No, I think addictions are a form of unconscious behaviour, so not a matter of choice, although the cure might entail making a choice
You are asserting that the law firm's long working hours were caused by her med use. Do you think you might have that backwards?
> the author's self-absorption, the victimization tone
She had a substance abuse problem. She's warning others that it's a slippery slope. Show some compassion.