Share your hypothesis : Why are people increasingly dependent on psychostimulants and nootropics to function ?

A reporter once asked Churchill, "Mr. Winston Churchill, sir, to what do you attribute your success in life?" He replied, "'Economy of effort. Never stand up when you can sit down, and never sit down when you can lie down." In much the same way, psychotropic substances are the means to a plethora of ends; tiredness, focus, mood alternation, ect. In the case of a healthy person, it is much easier to take a pill or drink some coffee than to take a nap or undergo say CBT or force yourself to work without a stimulant. The decision to take a psychotropic substance boils down to economizing; if a person finds it beneficial, he or she will usually take it than not take it. Even if/after affected receptors (down/up)regulate, a variety of cognitive biases (e.g, confirmation bias) makes this person think that taking a certain substance or drinking that large cup of coffee every morning is really helping them, even though in all reality it's doing little.