11–20 of 371 posts
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.
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.
By just about any measure alcohol is a "harder" drug than marijuana but certainly more broadly acceptable.
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.
In the article, "P2P" is an abbreviation for Phenylacetone, a precursor to meth (the drug). It's not "peer to peer" so that solved a lot of puzzling over what the headline could mean.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
By just about any measure alcohol is a "harder" drug than marijuana but certainly more broadly acceptable.
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 dru…
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/94rk1a/how_is_m...
I also recall the show depicting meth users having all those problems - Jesse is paranoid the missionaries are bikers, there's that guy digging a hole in his front yard, Spooe and his head, etc
Seems like the drug was fucking people up way prior to the last few years in fiction.
Around a week ago, I came across this link here on HN that suggested that there's a new form of meth: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28938888 The theory is that new meth is based on a synthesis using a chemical called P2P rather than the old synthesis that used ephedrine. There are claims that this new form of meth is chemically different in some what that started creating schizophrenia around 2017. However, wh…
I saw a similar post that claimed the new meth caused psychosis and hallucinations, etc. I don’t know much about meth itself but I do know about Adderall. When you take the normal dose (10-30mg) it can cause some euphoria but for the most part it helps you focus, gives energy (makes you more happy, talkative.) But when it is abused (60+mg) it can cause serious psychosis with all kinds of mental side effects. I image…
The infamous "meth mouth"? That's caused by not sleeping and by just overall letting one's life go to shit. Amphetamines do suppress saliva production, so they aren't great for teeth, but it's 95% the lack of sleep and other associated behavior patterns.
I've taken pharmaceutical adderall (which is 75% d-amp and 25% l-amp btw), and pharmaceutical dextroamphetamine (100% d-amp), and illicit, presumably cartel-sourced, and presumably very pure d-methamphetamine. When taken orally, d-meth is, in my opinion, simply a superior ADHD drug (it is much more dopaminergic than amphetamine, yet causes less peripheral stimulation, so you get a much more favorable ratio of positive cognitive effects to negative peripheral effects).
However, the moment someone starts taking (especially smoking, since the RoA of any drug makes a massive difference in addiction, doubly so for meth) hundreds of milligrams, it becomes a completely different drug. It becomes super deleterious to health through the sleep deprivation and risky behaviors alone. Furthermore meth has a unique property that amphetamine apparently doesn't, which is that it can become directly neurotoxic in large doses (meth has some serotonin release, like a much, much weaker form of MDMA, whereas amphetamine has virtually none, so it's possible that that's the mechanism). This is why in the research literature there's a lot about methamphetamine "neurotoxicity", but the papers conveniently omit that if taking oral doses comparable to what's given for ADHD, it's not neurotoxic whatsoever (and frankly may be neuroprotective, especially against traumatic brain injury).
So yeah, your analogy to Adderall is spot on. I've often seen people derisively refer to Adderall or other amphetamines by saying "we're basically giving kids meth!". Which is true in a sense, except it's really the other way around: meth is really not very different from Adderall. If someone were to smoke 100mg+ of amphetamine, their body would break down the same way it does in a meth user, except possibly for the direct neurotoxicity effect I mentioned.
I know Vince Gilligan did his research prior to Breaking Bad but st strikes me how on the nose it was. BB came out in 2008 and must have been in production a few years earlier but the increase in actual purity pretty much matches the show coming out. I also recall the show depicting meth users having all those problems - Jesse is paranoid the missionaries are bikers, there's that guy digging a hole in his front yard,…
> Seems like the drug was fucking people up way prior to the last few years in fiction.
Meth has always, always, always been known to cause those behaviors/effects since it first became widespread. Breaking bad shows those behaviors because they're classic tweaker behaviors. The scene where Jesse distracts the guy by digging is super spot on. Brilliant scene.
So yep, the paranoia, hallucinations etc have nothing to do with "new meth", they're just what happens when someone abuses sufficient amounts of meth. And the more potent the meth, the easier it is to get to that threshold. But note that you still need to be smoking or injecting quite a bit. The people exhibiting psychosis and the like are using hundreds of milligrams per session.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
By just about any measure alcohol is a "harder" drug than marijuana but certainly more broadly acceptable.
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 dru…
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.