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The main thing about Phenylacetone meth is that there's so much of it

dynomight.net

251–260 of 371 posts

Re: The main thing about Phenylacetone meth is that there's so much of it

#251
post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teachers and parents can get vaccinated themselves, no? I thought the vaccine works, doesn’t it?

The Alpha variant of COVID-19 was strongly suppressed by the vaccines that were approved in the US, and also the others globally. Since around early Summer Delta has been the dominant variant, which is extremely more transmissible. Even if vaccinated, Delta still retains effective transmutability, though (maybe?) to a reduced degree even for fully vaccinated individuals. Since we still don't have sufficient tests to…

> Even if vaccinated, Delta still retains effective transmutability, though (maybe?) to a reduced degree even for fully vaccinated individuals.

If vaccine works to protect people who are vaccinated, but does not significantly reduce transmissibility, why force it on people who don't care about being protected? Do they not have a right to make their own choices when it comes to their own bodies? If not, why do we want to give people right to choose taking drugs, given their highly detrimental effects on their bodies and on their lives, in addition to high risk of overdose and death? This all seems completely incoherent to me.

Re: The main thing about Phenylacetone meth is that there's so much of it

#252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a clinically ignored case of endometriosis That's exactly what I mean (and the sibling posting is more of the same). If you need more than six doses in a row then you should see a physician for a thorough workup because loperamide is just for the symptoms. The package will say as much. It's really hard to find fault with the FDA coming down on the extended-family size packaging.

I meant the clinician's ignorance about endometriosis. The package will say to take 2 tabs stat and 1 after each loose bowel movement. Not hard to go through a dozen+ each menstrual cycle.

I'm sorry you had to put up with a hippocratic oaf. This should never have happened.

Re: The main thing about Phenylacetone meth is that there's so much of it

#253
post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drugs destroy your ability to make good decisions. They are essentially hot wiring the brain's reward circuits which directly feed back into the brain's decision making processes. Most obviously, it's almost never the case that addicts consciously choose to become addicted.

Does anyone 100% consciously choose anything? If you make a decision after drinking a strong cup of coffee, how much of that decision came from the caffeine, and how much came from your “consciousness”? I’m not necessarily disagreeing with you—addiction is a disease of forces and circumstances, for sure—but the level of “free will” present in any choice (or sequence of choices) is a certainly not amenable to a binary…

Yes, the degree "free will"/willpower factors into a decision is much more of a spectrum than a binary. I'm just pointing out that drug addiction shifts your decisions away from the free will end of the spectrum.

Re: The main thing about Phenylacetone meth is that there's so much of it

#254
post #214
post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People trying to steal to get drugs could. People high on drugs certainly could. A lot of Breaking and Entering, for example, is to obtain money to feed a drug habit. For the person doing the stealing, all they care about is the cost of the drug, so plans to regulate and tax meth, well, don't necessarily improve that situation.

But we aren't talking about plans to regulate meth; it's already very heavily regulated. We're talking about plans to partly deregulate meth, which we can expect to significantly reduce the cost of the drug, from the US$50 or more per gram described in this article down to US$1 per gram or less like other synthetic drugs with similarly simple synthesis routes. The US$50 a gram isn't the cost of operating the reactors…

So the way it worked out with marijuana is the legal stuff is a lot more expensive than the street stuff. Maybe it would be different with meth, but I'm not sure why.

https://www.inverse.com/article/39899-recreational-weed-cali...

Basically the whole legal drug movement is targeted at non-addicts to let them pay a premium for a sanitary, legal, controlled experience. The political justifications for the movement are all about harm reduction. But the reality is that if you are an apothecary in SF, you don't really want junkies hanging out in your lobby, for the same reason that communities don't want junkies in their streets. Mental problems, theft, possible violence, behavioral issues -- it would chase away paying customers, and impose security and liability costs on them.

Those unwilling to pay for that more civilized experience go to the street. One important thing to remember is that legalization did not destroy the illegal market. They are different markets, although there is certainly overlap.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/27/us/marijuana-california-l...

Re: The main thing about Phenylacetone meth is that there's so much of it

#255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like there's NASA sold in spray form, how would that compare in efficacy to subcutaneous injection?

Seems to act differently depending on route of administration. If you've ever had weed, it's like edibles (injecting) vs. smoking (nasal). Intranasal is more cerebral, "in your head" type of effects. Subq is more bodily, "all around your body" type of effects. If you're looking at it as a nootropic, I would recommend the spray. It feels similar to prozac and wellbutrin, if they weren't so terrible. If you're looking…

I guess I'm a little confused by your answer - are peptides nootropics or sensation-type experiences? I guess I perceive nootropics as like "become smarter" or "having better recall" but this answer makes it seem like a recreational time bound physical experience? I also could see how the mental and physical have blurred boundaries.

Re: The main thing about Phenylacetone meth is that there's so much of it

#256
post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. That requires another specific decision to commit a crime. Respiratory viral infection requires no additional decision on part of the viral vector. I agree there shouldn't be a blanket decriminalization of drug use because it does alter judgement/motivation and make a theft or even violent crime more likely.

Drugs destroy your ability to make good decisions. They are essentially hot wiring the brain's reward circuits which directly feed back into the brain's decision making processes. Most obviously, it's almost never the case that addicts consciously choose to become addicted.

Pretty sure that Erdos said that Dexedrine/variants of amphetamine made him want to do math.

Is wanting to do math a not good decision? Potentially, I guess.

Re: The main thing about Phenylacetone meth is that there's so much of it

#257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. It's why I switched from Vyvanse (lisdexamfetamine - basically just d-amp bound to lysine which is then metabolized into d-amp during digestion) to IR generic Adderall (a mix of d-amp and l-amp). Any unwanted effects (insomnia if I take it too late, etc) are almost entirely due to the l-amp, but the slow release of Vyvanse made it essentially impossible to titrate and my options were either to take a dose so low…

I had the same experience with vyvanse. Insomnia and ADHD medication are a dangerous combo -- one that's hardly recognizable until it's too late. In my experience, I've had to run the gamut on all the "other" ADHD drugs (ritalin, adderall, d-amphetamine ER, etc.) and then prove they weren't effective, for my insurance to finally approve it. I've heard of some people even going so far as to get prescription meth (deso…

> Insomnia and ADHD medication are a dangerous combo

A few months ago I started taking 15mg diphenhydramine every night just to make damn sure I always get enough sleep. I had taken it occasionally in the past, but didn't like the lingering effect it had the next morning. Then I had a conversation with my sister, who said that she takes it every night for the antihistamine effects after a doctor told her it's fine. The morning after effects seemed to fade (or I got used to them) pretty quickly once I started regular dosing.

Of course I have mixed feelings about ratcheting up the number of medications I'm taking daily, but to be fair OTC allergy medicine is a far cry from using something like Ambien or benzos to manage insomnia.

Re: The main thing about Phenylacetone meth is that there's so much of it

#258
post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they did that, the consumption would only go up, resulting in even more overdoses. That’s what happened in Portugal, after drug decriminalization — drug consumption there went up significantly (with exception of heroin, which went down, but it also went down in other European countries at the same time which did not decriminalize it). Full on legalization will increase consumption even higher. Of course, one might…

> That’s what happened in Portugal, after drug decriminalization — drug consumption there went up significantly (with exception of heroin, which went down, but it also went down in other European countries at the same time which did not decriminalize it). Full on legalization will increase consumption even higher. ...Do you have sources on this? My awareness of Portugal's situation is basically the opposite of that,…

Your own first link discusses this:

> In the first five years after drug policy reform, use of illegal drugs rose slightly among the general population but fell again in the following five years.

I remember looking at the actual figures, and what happened was that use of heroin in Portugal went down significantly, and use of all other drugs went up significantly, giving slight rise in total drug use on net.

> Use among 15-24 year olds fell throughout the decade,

This implies that use among other groups than 15-24 year old had not fell throughout the decade.

> and among the general population was lower in 2012 than in 2001.

The reason they pick year 2012 is because it's convenient to their argument, and they give out the game later:

> However, consumption trends in Portugal have been keenly disputed and often misrepresented. While drug use during individual lifetimes among the general population appeared to increase in the decade following reform, use within the past 12 months fell between 2001 and 2012. Both the World Health Organization and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime consider use in the past 12 months (recent drug use) or within the past month (current drug use) as better indicators of trends among the general population.18

> Since 2012, past-year use appears to have risen, particularly among those over the age of 25.20 This is, however, based on relatively limited data from SICAD (the Portuguese drug dependence agency) and only one further dataset — in 2016.

The lesson here is that there has been a lot of very dishonest reporting about the results of drug decriminalization in Portugal. You are just another victim of it. Omission of critical facts, cherry-picking groups and dates, and flip-flopping between different ways to measure as needed, are all very common techniques in crafting narratives, misleading people into believing falsehoods, without actually stating them outright, so that they can't easily be caught with blatant lying -- the blatant falsehoods then are repeated by people who were tricked into believing false narratives, which facilitates spreading it, while allowing the authors to wash their hands.

Of course, you don't need to trust some random guy on the internet who's too lazy to dig up relevant statistics, you can keep believing the non-profit industrial complex. You might spend some time looking up these figures yourself, but why bother, after all these non-profits would never lie to you, would they?

Re: The main thing about Phenylacetone meth is that there's so much of it

#259
post #2

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…

Another factor is just sleep deprivation. It's been shown that sleep deprivation increases the likelihood of mania, hallucinations and psychosis. You force someone to stay awake long enough, they will inevitably act crazy. Amphetamine users tend to go on binges and stay awake for days. Keep taking drugs until they pass out from exhaustion.

Re: The main thing about Phenylacetone meth is that there's so much of it

#260
post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meth is definitely one of the drugs that becomes a public nuisance, since people do become erratic and violent while using. Meth users are the only people that worry me when walking through our city since it can make people who are already unstable become unpredictably violent. I wonder if other drugs were legal would people still do meth?

Meth was legal until the 70s, society functioned. The current problem is another side effect of the war on drugs https://www.history.com/topics/crime/history-of-meth

This is very much false, and completely contrary to the actual history. War on drugs only happened because of greatly increased social dysfunction due to drugs, not the other way around. It enjoyed wide social support at the time it was started, precisely because people saw how damaging the drugs are to their communities. The idea that drug-related social dysfunction is an effect of war on drugs is yet another of those "wet streets cause rain" ideas.
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