From a societal POV, we need a Government-regulated drug harder than Alcohol or Tobacco. Similar in function to Soma. Maybe marijuana can fit the bill.
It doesn't make sense to 'outsource' production of narcotics to antagonistic nations or criminal enterprises.
i have had a theory for years if you sold any drug like meth or cocaine in an advil bottle with a label on the side saying “take at most 1 tablet every 4 hours, do not exceed 6 tablets in one day. do not use for more than 2 days in a row” etc then the vast majority of people would not have any issue with it. the people who are already abusing it would continue to abuse it. most people can be around hard addictive drugs ingrained in society like alcohol and do just fine
No, it's not. Please stop spreading this age-old myth*. You can literally buy prescription meth in a bottle, and it's called Desoxyn.
Adderall is extremely similar, because amphetamine is quite similar to meth (just an inferior version IME). D-meth is probably 20-30% more potent than d-amp dose for dose, but with somewhat reduced unwanted peripheral (body) side effects. The other main differences are meth releases some serotonin (not nearly as much as MDMA) while amp releases almost none, and that for whatever reason methamphetamine takes 3-3.5 hours to reach peak blood concentration when taken orally, whereas amphetamine peaks much sooner.
* I get it, the point isn't literally that it's meth, just that it's similar. But it's silly thing to say rhetorically when you can literally get prescription d-methamphetamine in the US under the brand name Desoxyn.
I think the answer is in the middle. I don’t want to propagate a myth, but I do want to shed light on the fact that this isn’t a benign drug. It’s an amphetamine, many people want to sugar coat it like it’s this particularly saint-like medication (I mean the damn thing let’s you get a high salary job - don’t you disparage my Addy). Adderral and Vyvanse do have added ingredients that thwart abuse (mostly slows it down, can never truly stop abuse on such an addictive substance).
In any case, high dosage of Adderral (or consistent use) has very similar effects to Meth use (obviously not methhead no-teeth level stuff, but definitely euphoria, delusions of grandeur, paranoia, insomnia, drastic appetite suppression, irritability). Psychosis can also occur on Adderral.
A nicer version of Adderral without all the anti-abuse stuff is Dexedrine, you get a more pure amphetamine and is generally smoother since it doesn’t have the Levoamphetamine that creates the characteristic ‘lethargic’ feeling after the initially speedy-rush.
The funny thing about all of this is that it’s legal, and I shit you not, me and my doctor would speak about finding ‘smoother’ meds (imagine two crackheads discussing what would be a nicer high), all totally legal and not frowned upon.
One hell of a PR job by team ‘legal speed’ :) Glad I’m off that shit because I really did feel and act like a Meth-head by the end of it.
You're right on most of that but off on some details.
Only Vyvanse is anti-abuse, because the dextroamphatamine is bound to a lysine molecule. The body must cleave the lysine before it becomes active so snorting it doesn't give the instant rush.
Adderall has no such countermeasures. You're probably getting confused by the fact that it comes in both IR and XR formulations (instant release vs extended release). So if someone has XR adderall, it's not as snortable as IR. But it's still more snortable than Vyvanse is, and you can just get IR adderall which is totally abusable. (BTW X milligrams of XR is really just X/2 mg instant release and X/2 mg delayed release beads that take on average 4 hours to activate. So it's roughly equivalent to two X/2 mg IR doses split 4 hours apart) And finally the XR can be countered by crushing the beads up, although it's a bit laborious.
Amphetamine obviously has its risks, and particularly when prescribing to children doctors seem to write some ridiculously high dosage prescriptions without fully understanding what the drug is like. But you can just say that rather than doing the juvenile "it's really just meth in a bottle" shtick when there is literally already actual meth in a bottle that you can (with great difficulty) get prescribed. And that fact - that methamphetamine exists as a drug that can be prescribed - is much more interesting and surprising to people, given that the lay public is completely unaware that methamphetamine has any pharmaceutical uses.
Most Adderall formulations have no anti-abuse precautions, unless you could extended release mechanisms. Vyvanse also doesn't generally have any ingredients added to it, it's a prodrug that is inactive until it is metabolized (which happens in the blood, not the liver so you can still snort it).
People with ADHD (like myself) don’t get the same effects from amphetamines as those without it. When someone with ADHD takes adderal it just makes them focused with a little euphoria when they initially begin taking it.
Feel free to read through all the experiences and try your best to not lie that you are different. You have the same blood and organs like all of us, the same brain, the same nervous system. It doesn’t ‘affect’ you differently, it affects us all the same. The same way I don’t have cancer and if I were to take chemo, my hair would fall out still.
You are free to Google Blulight forums for more testimonials. Reddit is also there. I get it, it makes it so you have a high paying job and let’s you do good in school. But just be honest about it, you’re taking a amphetamines and that shit affects everyone the same.
Excerpt:
T + 02:00 – T + 04:00
Pretty steady effects through here. The best of which was absolutely intense ability to focus. I mean locked the fuck in. The translation from eyes to mind was mindbogglingly fast. Unfortunately, these awesome effects were accompanied by consistently unpleasant effects. I was often sweating, but plagued by chills. My breathing sometimes became erratic as I would encounter a wave of stronger effects. This wasn’t extreme enough to become a true cause for concern, but it would break my concentration and make me a bit uncomfortable.
Yeah, that’s everyone on this thing, labeled adhd or not, we are just humans.
Have you ever taken Ritalin? I’ve taken it along with XR version of Concerta. I can paste the wiki stuff about how it’s essentially similar to Meth, but I get it, it hurts peoples feelings.
Look, you can’t bullshit someone that’s been on this stuff, it’s a serious drug.
>I can paste the wiki stuff about how it’s essentially similar to Meth
Yes, drugs that get classified as stimulants due to their physiological effects will have some similar effects. Different mechanism of action though, and not derived from amphetamine.
>it’s a serious drug.
Yes, as opposed to all the light and fluffy drugs.
It's difficult to say what an equivalent dose might be and this is just my experience, but...
Definitely cognitive tasks would be considered more impaired by weed than beer, at "roughly equivalent to a pint" level. Likely neither would be a big deal.
Weed is neither upper, nor downer really, it an hallucinogen.
That means less ordered thinking. Quite possibly an increase in creativity and lateral concept matching (say, making or appreciating witty comments) but also an impairment to short term memory and direct logical reasoning.
For motor skills and reaction times, beer definitely hits harder.
Oh, and on dosage, I'm from the UK. In my experience in the US a single joint is rolled to a potency I'd consider equivalent to "a mug full of whisky", not a pint of beer!
Depends on a few factors like what task, innate ability, etc. Which is not a non-answer - it is THE answer: in my experience, some things are easier on one than the other and vice versa.
In my experience I can code on alcohol (unless I get completely shit faced.) Weed makes me more creative and I want to code more, but I also make a lot of mistakes that I wouldn’t normally. This is why I quit cannabis, in math classes I would mess up simple things like forgetting to multiply by -1
In case you're interested, in my reply I've mentioned why the UK is an exception and is able to prescribe diamophine. Apologies if you're already aware.
They've been devastating for good reason, which is that with oxycodone the long proven, well established administration and monitoring protocols for narcotic opioids were not observed.
Essentially, every narcotic opioid ever discovered or used has addictive properties and thus they all have the potential to addict users. Opiate addition takes a very pernicious form because withdrawal makes the addict feel so absolutely rotten which is instantly fixed by restoring the level of drug to its normal 'maintenance' levels.
Opiates come in a huge range of types and strengths. Some are considered sufficienty mild or innocuous to sell OTC without a script, others are considered too powerful and dangerous to ever sell legally even though they do have legitimate medical uses, heroin (diacetyl morphine) falls into this category in most countries as it's considered too 'hot' to handle/administer - although the UK is one exception where it's used for intractable pain (as in terminal cancer).
(The UK struck out/did not sign the section that covered the complete prohibition of heroin in the international treaty on banned narcotic drugs because its
doctors used the rationale that heroin is actually a more effective painkiller in terminal cancer cases over morphine (which in fact it is by a reasonable margin) - thus addiction was a secondary consideration in such dire circumstances. Whilst the UK, didn't ban heroin for medical use, it agreed to the other provisions of the treaty - those concerning its illegal trade, and possession, etc.)
As I said, ALL opioids that induce narcotic and pain-reducing effects have the potential to be addictive - even mild OTC ones. I'll use myself as an example here. Years ago, I used to take OTC painkillers for the occasional headache of the type that included both codeine and paracetamol (acetaminophen) and whilst they cured the pain I found the headaches becoming more frequent which then led me to take more tablets. Eventually, it dawned on me that the codeine was the reason for the increase in frequency of the headaches - not what caused them in the first instance. I then switched to the paracetamol-only tablets and the frequency of my headaches subsided to the frequency that they were originally.
Of course, in my case, withdrawing from the codeine was was trivial - just a simple matter of switching to codeine-free tablets, but it's anything but simple for a heroin addict - in most cases it's a fucking painful 'nightmare' of the worst kind.
Right, I've taken a long time to get to the point which is this: simply introducing a new opioid drug, especially so a powerful one such oxycodone, without keeping in place all the existing protocols that cover the medical administration of opoids which have existed for well over 100 years is a recipe for an unmitigated disaster - and that's exactly what happened.
We know that Purdue Pharmaceuticals and its owners - that ragbag mob the Sacklers - were the irresponsible pushers of oxycodone, but in many ways it's how we'd gotten to the point where oxycodone was so widespread that it's had such a devastating impact on the population that is so damning and it still must be explained in detail.
What's never been explained to me or, for that matter any other member of the public, why the FDA didn't nip this potential problem in the bud at the outset when it originally approved oxycodone. Moreover, why did the second line of defense fail so catastrophically - that is, why didn't the medical profession - all those doctors prescribing oxycodone - use their knowledge of opiate addiction (which is basic 101 pharmacy knowledge required for them to pass their medial exams), stop the opioid crisis before it took hold?
The opioid/oxycondone crisis is one of the greatest failings in public health administration in modern times. Purdue and the Sacklers started the crisis but why public health administration failed so catastrophically has never been answered.
Good question. If you were to go by relative effects on consciousness, alcohol is a far harder drug than cannabis. Lots of illegal drugs are, alcohol is much worse than we believe.
it's a good question - I avoided it in my own response with the clever use of quotation marks.
But to answer, I think the term is used colloquially all of the time and of course is open to interpretation.
I would suggest it has nothing to do with a drug's pharmacology or chemical structure but rather the degree to which a drug when taken in easily-consumed quantities can shape our perceptions of the world, the likelihood of negative externalities due to consumer behavior and the probability of becoming addicted to the drug.
A mixture of those things makes a drug "hard" in conversational language e.g. something that dramatically changes a persons perceptions, frequently has negative externalities and can cause addiction with short-term sustained use is a "hard drug". Like alcohol.
When addicted to such a drug, the negative externalities typically expand in scope and severity and if the use scales to a significant portion of the population would generally be regarded as an undesirable state for society to be in.
It doesn't make sense to 'outsource' production of narcotics to antagonistic nations or criminal enterprises.