My doctor wanted to prescribe me benzodiazepines for depression / insomnia / brain shakes but, after seeing what withdrawal from legal benzodiazepines looks like, I refused. Illegal weed keeps me sane and let me sleep, but go and explain that to lawmakers...

Good choice. Benzodiazepines screw with brain chemistry like no other drug I've seen people use medically or recreationally. As one friend put it about his Xanax: "I'm not sure where the anxiety goes when I take Xanax, but I think it goes to the gym considering how strong it is when it comes back". My guess is that 20 or 50 years from now we are going to look back on the widespread prescription of benzos as a really bad idea. Hopefully the legalization of cannabis continues to accelerate so people like yourself don't have to risk legal consequences for treating a medical condition.

Just as a counterpoint I can handle benzos fine. Some slight rebound anxiety if I use multiple days in a row.

Weed on the other hand will send me one a 1 month train to hell smoking every day falling deeper and deeper into a depressive haze and there's nothing I can do about it.

Everybody is different, I guess.

> Why should the government be able to tell you what you can and cannot put into your own body?

The answer to that question that I see is that the government is responsible to step in when someone else get hurt under humanitarian obligations. If you make someone responsible for an outcome then they will likely want to implement rules to reduce their own risks.

The rules should of course be proportional to the risk and balanced. It make sense that drugs and driving should not be combined and which outcome can't be fixed afterward. Parenting and drugs are also a pretty problematic area, but it is difficult for the government to make a law against that combination without banning drugs completely. If people took drugs while working with heavy equipment, makes decisions that impact people, work within health care or education, then there is an additional increased risk that the government is expected to manage.

ADHD medicine, especially the non-self medicated versions, have the opposite effect for the government. It reduces the risk that they have to step. If all the other alternatives have failed and you found a solution that do work then that is good and the law might then need to change to incorporate that success. It doesn't however change the reason why the government might still want to tell you what you can and cannot put into your own body.

Where I live we also have universal health care and meth stresses the heart quite a lot. The result is that when the heart start to fall apart it is the government that has to pay for repairs, and those are often quite expensive surgeries that need to be redone every few years. I am no doctor so I can't answer if 10mg is small enough to be safe, but if I was taking it I would find a doctor and do regular heart checkups.

Governments shouldn't be responsible for the outcome of their people, the individual should. This is the perspective difference we share. It's really a choice between individual freedom despite possible negative stats "addictions" vs less freedom and more government control while optimizing number of addictions. I value my personal freedom and see no reason why the government should pay for healthcare. In the USA, they caused this distorted market to begin with (see also student loan bubble)

I understand the idea in theory but have a much harder time in practice to not want the government to take a final responsibility. If a child parents can't take care of them it make humanitarian sense that the government step in. We should not punish children because their parent won't take responsibility for the outcome of their own behavior.

Similar, I would want the government to step in and pay for healthcare when a victim get hit by a car driven by an uninsured driver. It is not fair to let the victim die just because someone else were unable to take responsibility for their own faults.

So to make a general theory, people should be responsible for their own actions when there is a high likelihood of repayment for wrong doing. For those things individual freedom is positive. For other actions which is irreversible and where individuals will sometimes be unable to take responsibility, and we expect the government to step in, then individual freedom may be balanced against risk.

The vast majority of countries where healthcare is both far cheaper and more effective than in the US have government provided healthcare. Most of those countries also have affordable or free higher education. So the smoking gun would seem to point at US style capitalism and lobbyists rather than government services themselves.

"It doesn't work in the USA" is increasingly very poor evidence when it does work many other places, and often has for over a half a century.

Back in the mid 90's I worked on a concrete crew for a few months. It was a big outfit building tip up buildings like box store type, maybe 50 guys on site.

Everyone (I think) did meth except me and one other guy, a Native American. It was expected. The pace was set by meth. Lunch was about 10 minutes. Often we would get to work like 3AM for pours. I lasted like 3 months and couldn't handle it any more.

After awhile guys would burn out and not show up. No big deal, replace them with another guy. I saw my supervisor later at a restaurant. He told me how he had tried at one point tried to commit suicide. The resulting impacts on the former employees lives (and the lives of their families and associates) wasn't the companies problem so long as the building went up fast.

That company is still around too. No, not going to name and shame.

While I'm generally in favor of people being allowed to put whatever they want in their bodies there is significant moral hazard and danger. Particularly with drugs like meth and heroin.

Thank you for giving a counter example of how useful some of these drugs can be.

> I would argue the bad cases you’ve seen are from people with no self control.

Please reconsider this position. It is outdated and goes against all recent evidence about the science of addiction, and the chemical changes that occur in the brain to cause addiction. Addiction is a medical condition. It has as little to do with self control as having cancer does.

Yes that is fair. I think the stats are something like <10% of people that use meth are addicted.

2.5 mg methamphetamine daily saved my life.

Compared to dexamphetamine:

- It has less cardiovascular impact (no cold extremities, no excessive sweating, less "fight or flight")

- It has a lower impact on sleep (I can take a nap while under the influence)

- It lasts longer (9 to 12 hours, compared to 4 to 6)

- It makes living a balanced live easier (dexamphetamine would feed perseveration, meth makes switching tasks much easier)

- No noticeable comedown

Some of the downsides of methamphetamine include:

- A much higher abuse potential (however, I have never felt the need to exceed my daily dose. I want to live a normal live, not experience some shallow euphoric bliss.)

- It is unclear what the neurotoxic properties are in therapeutic dosages.

- The social stigma

Glad to see somebody else benefiting. Agree with most of the above, I do believe therapeutic doses are well studied and tolerated since this was frontline treatment a few decades ago.

It certainly can be good, it can also be a harmful addictive drug.

"self control" is a nearly meaningless phrase when used in the same sentence as drugs

Nah mate, you just aren't informed or experienced on this topic.

No, I understand that some people can exercise self control with drugs. But there is a certain, non-negligible % of drug users that are physically unable to exercise self control once they've experimented with the drug.

I challenge to do a google image search for faces of meth and come back and say that again with a straight face. That stuff is a poison that destroys both mind and body. If you think self control is enough to keep that stuff from rotting your face, making your hair fall out and keep yourself from going crazy you are foolish. Comparing it to ADHD medications is plain and simple stupid. If you think meth is the drug you need to focus you already need professional help because there are lots of stimulants out there, even illegal, that have nowhere near the side effects and consequences of meth.

Stop it with the hyperbole, as you clearly have no clue what you’re talking about.

Methamphetamine is routinely prescribed for the treatment ADHD (also obesity and narcolepsy, amongst other off-label uses), and is sold under the brand name of Desoxyn (in the US). Meth IS medication!

On that note, maybe don’t believe everything you read about drugs online.

I may need to clear up a misconception of mine, so here goes.

Isn't it Dexamphetamine that is the routine treatment for ADHD? As far as I understood, methamphetamine has much stronger effects than dexamphetamine, also meth been prone to cause more adverse effects and have more neurotoxicity than the dex counterpart?

Maybe I'm completely off base here.

Dextroamphetamine is a common first line treatment for ADHD, but methamphetamine is a second line treatment.

A lot of the information about methamphetamine is, bluntly, propaganda. For example, there seems to be nothing about methamphetamine that is uniquely harmful to teeth, but "meth mouth" is a common trope. When taken orally at therapeutic doses it's not clear methamphetamine is any more harmful than dextroamphetamine, but it's certainly possibly it has more scope for abuse. It's certainly dangerous at high doses! Unfortunately it's hard to find hard data and not drug war propaganda.

Thanks for the reply. Is second line treatment, what is heard from others may be derived from drug war propaganda, got it. This clears things up nicely. Thanks.

dexamphetamine / dextroamphetamine works well but over-focuses me (could watch paint dry) and causes depression + robotic behavior after a few days. Every med is distinctly different, even different isomers of the same chemical.

Yeah I mentioned it because I got put on dexamphetamine once. Couldn't stand it personally, couldn't sit down or keep still, and made me more annoying I think. Totally understand that even chemically similar medications can be very different to each other.

i think the OP is talking about crystal meth, not ritalin or adderall. Ritalin and Adderall is not what "faces of meth" depicts, as it depicts long term use of smoked crystal meth addiction.

This is correct, also part of the nuance that's often missing in these kinds of discussions. Pharmacy grade drugs are a different beast than the street drugs. From packaging to usage, it's two sides of the same coin.

So we should make all of it pharmacy grade?

Perhaps they are talking about Desoxyn. FDA approved for treatment of ADHD. Not saying that it isn't bad but just pointing out there is a comparison to ADHD medications.

I was, but can switch out with crystal if needed. Almost as pure.

Actually I've tried most all of the alternative stims and they all affect me worse in all areas of life. Meth is a drug used to treat ADHD and is FDA approved for this reason.