All stimulants - from caffeine to cocaine - are a unique subset of credit markets, and only if treated as such do you gain an edge. There is no energy surge that comes from nowhere: you are borrowing from your future self. And you must pay it back.
No matter what your go-to stimulants are - caffeine ☕, nicotine 🚬, theine 🍵, mateine 🧉, theobromine 🍫, which all act as central nervous system stimulants; extendedly the psycho-stimulants 💊 (Adderall, Ritalin, Vyvanse); and the more potent ones 💎, amphetamine, MDMA, cocaine ❄ - all work the same, accelerating brain activity by increasing the level of a chemical (catecholamine), some more selectively.
Generally these substances aren’t inherently bad, but they can be used badly:
- All are addictive to a degree; some are highly so.
- All give you access to your future self’s resources - somewhere to borrow from.
- All exhibit side effects and a potential for abuse directly proportional to their potency.
The credit market works because humans are terrible with credit - it’s not intuitive.
Like with your credit card (stimulants in our body): people outspend their earnings (take more stimulants than they can recover from), accumulating too much credit card debt (strain without recovery). Your credit score drops and your ability to borrow decreases (the effect on alertness, energy and attention weakens), your interest rate increases (extended recovery needed), and eventually you may default and go bankrupt (complete exhaustion and burnout).
Treat your stimulants like your bank loans and you will be fine. All the general credit-market advice you have ever heard applies here:
- Pay on time // Recover well. Sleep.
- Don’t overuse // Take coffee, medication and other stimulants when needed, not out of routine habit.
- Make payments before the due date // Plan recovery weekly and yearly, before exhaustion and burnout.
- Deploy your credit line productively // Use stimulants for constructive purposes - work efficiency, sharpening focus, workout performance. Think of them as an investment rather than mere leisure.
By equating stimulants with credit markets, we can better administrate their impact on our well-being - and explain it simply to the loved ones around us, to help them stay debt-free, exhaustion-free and burnout-free.