Yeah, I did! Most of the housing was provided by Hungarian math professors taking sabbaticals somewhere.
I was there in the year that is the first odd prime congruent to 2 mod 23 and mod 29.
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Formula for an excellent diarrhetic.
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You say that like it’s a bad thing! 
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The real Irish coffee - a large shot of Jameson’s, freshly made hot coffee poured into a tablespoon heaped with brown sugar, then freshly whipped heavy cream spooned over the top - is revelatory.
Bartenders don’t like to make it because they don’t have time to brew a pot of coffee and whip up cream for a single drink, much less carefully manipulate spoons and deal with clumping sugars, so they try to pass off nasty creme de menthe drinks as Irish instead.
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As far as I can tell, Erdős only took amphetamine, not meth. Methamphetamine and amphetamine are not the same thing. Plain old amphetamine is astronomically safer to consume than methamphetamine: meth is neurotoxic, amphetamine isn’t. I think people ought to know that amphetamine may be a great way to help your mathematics career, like in the case of Erdős, but methamphetamine is certainly a great way to annihilate that career, plus many other aspects one’s life.
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And this is why I never miss the chance to visit the Buena Vista when ever I’m in SF!
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I’ll second the thought that amphetamine is not methamphetamine. I have a kid with ADHD. We tried everything under the sun. Every non-invasive, non-toxic remedy like music therapy, brain training, focus games, motion therapy, homeopathy (don’t judge me man, I was against it wife was for it [f’ing sugar pills for $$]) holistic blah blah blah. Wasted tons of time and money. We eventually relented and tried the stimulant medicines the doctor recommended. First one didn’t seem to do much, but the second one did. It was like a door opened and he walked thru into more and more successful interactions with life the universe and everything.
He may be growing out of it as of late he doesn’t seem to notice as much one way or the other when he doesn’t take em.
There’s my anecdotal $0.02.
Also another shout out for the Buena Vista! nom nom
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So it’s meth > coffee > death. I should get that tattooed somewhere…
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Paul Erdos had an Amphetamine Number
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I separate my life into pre-Adderall and post-Adderall. Post-Adderall is much, much better. And when I have periodically stopped taking it it was much easier to put down than coffee or sugar.
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Was there any change in the quality of his output during his days of speed?
Excellent question.
My experience was that amphetamine is an output drug and doesn’t help confer new insights. Its effects favor repetitive tasks, probably from histidine up-regulation same as Provigil/Modafinil.
Years later, I’d learned to concoct a nootropic cocktail when urgency required sustained effort whether for input, output, or insight.
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This is not really a good characterization of what he did. He did revisit older results, but mainly with an eye to improving them or coming up new or better proofs.
I’m not sure I understand the widespread preoccupation with Erdős’s use of stimulants. You can do more mathematics when you are awake than you can when you are asleep, and sometimes one’s natural sleep pattern is not compatible with the amount of mathematics one wants to do.
As he was a regular visitor to my department during his amphetamine years, I do wonder where he got his supply. I suppose I have ways to find out.
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What is really impressive about his 1,500 publications was that he worked in a field where a lifetime output of 50 was considered prolific.
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I went to some summer workshops at the Renyi Institute 4 and 10 years after that.
Up until recently, my Erdos number was infinity since I always wrote solo. It should probably be finite now, but I’m assuming relatively high.
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I second this recommendation heartily!
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Strictly speaking amphetemine is neurotoxic in large amounts too, but with methamphetemine it takes a lower dose.
Adding methyl groups to the molecule doesn’t change the stimulant effect much, most of it breaks down into amphetemine in the end, but those methyl groups allow it to be carried across the blood-brain barrier more effectively, which is why it’s stronger and longer lasting.
It’s not unlike the relationship between morphine and heroin (diactylmorphine) complete with it being a bit tricky to tell the two compounds apart in drug testing.
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Speed was fairly ubiquitous during the 50’s & 60’s. People attribute the emergence of the counter-culture to LSD & psychedelics, but there wasn’t a single psychedelic luminary during the time who wasn’t also into pharmaceutical stimulants and depressants.
Maybe you need the right mental modeling software. Have you tried DMT?
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My brain is a dusty, abandoned locker room; the last thing I want to do is see it in greater detail
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I’m no mathematician, but doesn’t finding a more elegant proof give more insight into neighboring problems?
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