Haha, well, I can only assure you that it's basically just fine. Nobody gets hurt. It's just a thing people do - like drinking coffee or energy drinks. But it works better.
In the case of amphetamine-related stimulants (ritalin, adderall, dexedrine, speed), it's easy to come off them if you aren't abusing them for pleasure as opposed to work. There's a level of use that enables effective work, and then another much higher level that makes you feel 'high' all the time. If you get high every day, you might well get addicted. But I've never seen it - I even abused my ritalin pretty heavily for pleasure for months and then stopped cold turkey (by accident), and it was just fine. I was mentally the same as I was before the ritalin, and no side effects that suggested physical addiction. I wouldn't recommend it though, it might affect different people differently.
Interesting. Do you think the drug use is due to pressure to succeed / survive, or because you get more out of your time? Having more productive time is appealing but the idea of working 24/7 makes hanging myself appealing by comparison.
You get more out of your time, but many people want that due to pressure to succeed.
A lot of people think stimulants just keep you going longer. They do that, but for a large number of people they greatly improve working memory, problem solving and systematic reasoning.
I know students that take Adderall because their lives are so complicated that they don't have space for regular studying. So they take an Adderall the day before an exam and cram the whole semester in a day. They ace the exam and don't remember much a few weeks later. Similarly I have seen programmers (and been an example) who have a project to deliver but other stuff going on and use Ritalin or Adderall to pull the whole project out of the bag to the expected standards in a tiny fraction of the time it was predicted to take. And others who use the same to just produce much much more than their peers. And then others who just take stimulants because they think they need them but don't actually produce anything worthwhile, or just end up staying awake too much and being much less productive overall because they destroy their circadian rhythm.
I'd definitely say that if you don't feel you need them, don't take them :)
In the case of amphetamine-related stimulants (ritalin, adderall, dexedrine, speed), it's easy to come off them if you aren't abusing them for pleasure as opposed to work. There's a level of use that enables effective work, and then another much higher level that makes you feel 'high' all the time. If you get high every day, you might well get addicted. But I've never seen it - I even abused my ritalin pretty heavily for pleasure for months and then stopped cold turkey (by accident), and it was just fine. I was mentally the same as I was before the ritalin, and no side effects that suggested physical addiction. I wouldn't recommend it though, it might affect different people differently.