Get back to me about the cognitive improvements after you are curled up in bed with hot and cold sweats, feeling like life will never be normal again, with a bone crushing fatigue that won't quit.

Note -- I'm a staunch anti-prohibitionist and I agree that stimulants are useful tools, but they are also dangerous tools with a high potential for abuse and some pretty wicked effects if you push them too far (stimulant psychosis in the short term, pretty nasty anhedonia as well as a bunch of other health effects in the long term)

So yes, of course let's decriminalize and legalize - and let's start by acknowledging that lots of well rounded people use amphetamines mostly safely and responsibly (the occasional binge seems inevitable) - but let's also have a rational harm reduction talk about the dangers of stimulant abuse. More than any class of drugs, I think they give with one hand and take away with the other. What goes up must come down after all.

It does improve cognition in low doses with very little side effects and no real long term danger unless you already have a cardiac condition.

Also there have been studies that show that people on low-dose therapeutic amphetamines are less likely to abuse drugs, including stimulants.

> There have been studies showing that amphetamine leads to definitive cognitive improvement in the general population.

Stimulants cause people to become psychotic. Some are more vulnerable to this effect than others.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substance-induced_psychosis#Su...

There are better, safer ways to cause a "cognitive improvement in the general population".

Based on your citation - I could also say "alcohol, marijuana, cough medicine, antihistamines and (possibly) caffeine cause people to become psychotic".

While technically true, it's a bit disingenuous to make blanket statements like this without qualifying the risk don't you think?

From my position as an observer of someone who has struggled with substances for a long time, Amphetamines are the worst of that list. My friend recovers from Alcohol and cocaine fairly quickly once she stops taking them. Cannabis (CBD, specifically) calms her down - it would be a great help if she could get it regularly.

Cough medicine is bad, but it's not nearly as potent of an addicting substance as the others on the list. She's used antihistamines as a hallucinogen before, but is not really tempted by them.

If you take an excess of any chemical substance, there will be consequences. Barring an underlying latent condition, amphetamine use at therapeutic levels causes cognitive improvement in the general population with minimal risks.

You must know different people than I do if everyone you know taking amphetamines is always taking them at low-levels ;)

I know people of all kinds. People that have blown out their kidneys and livers from drinking excessively until they vomited blood. I also know people that responsibly enjoy maybe one or two glasses of wine daily and have no real health issues.

It really depends on the individual, but amphetamines are no more dangerous than legal drugs. Why is ephedrine easily available OTC but not levo/dextroamphetamine?

oh I agree completely. not to mention those nasty dangerous benzedrex inhalers. I'm all for full legalization of all substances combined with harm reduction and education.

Actually Adderall is not racemic, since that would mean a 50/50 mix of the dextrorotatory and levorotatory enantiomers. Adderall is 75% dextroamphetamine and 25% levoamphetamine in four different salts.

I could have sworn there is a formulation of 1:1 (50/50 dextro/levo), but I could be mistaken.

There is, it's called Evekeo.

In the past (up until the 60s or 70s I believe), there was also a racemic mixture available on the market as well.

You made me Google it! I bet you did it on purpose!

What's the purpose of including both? Does each one serve a different purpose in the medication?

Levoamphetamine is more active on the PNS, while not that active on the CNS, which causes more side effects but some people swear by it as being the best medicine. It made me feel anxious while pure dextroamphetmine did not.

However these days I take methamphetamine which feels more subtle and has even less side effects.