I’m a drug guy but even I subscribe to the ideology that if you’ve done meth even once, you probably live under a bridge and have given a blowjob to a stranger behind a 7 Eleven. If you’ve done adderall on the other hand, you’re a hardworking scholar who I will try to become friends with to cop some blue pills for instant motivation. Sure, meth is highly addictive and causes you to lose your teeth while adderall just causes you to lose your appetite and magically gain an interest for the rise and fall of the Holy Roman Empire, but still, the stigmas could not be more polar opposite.
Adderall:
Meth:
Welp, a psychiatry professor at Columbia University named Carl L. Hart is trying to bridge that gap with something called ‘science.’ His claim is that methamphetamine and d-amphetamine are “virtually identical” and indistinguishable.
The Influence:
In our study, we brought 13 men who regularly used methamphetamine into the lab. We gave each of them a hit of methamphetamine, of d-amphetamine, or of placebo on separate days under double-blind conditions. We repeated this many times with each person over several days and multiple doses of each drug.
Like d-amphetamine, methamphetamine increased our subjects’ energy and enhanced their ability to focus and concentrate; it also reduced subjective feelings of tiredness and the cognitive disruptions typically brought about by fatigue and/or sleep deprivation. Both drugs increased blood pressure and the rate at which the heart beat. No doubt these are the effects that justify the continued use of d-amphetamine by several nations’ militaries, including our own.
And when offered an opportunity to choose either the drugs or varying amounts of money, our subjects chose to take d-amphetamine on a similar number of occasions as they chose to take methamphetamine. These regular methamphetamine users could not distinguish between the two. (It is possible that the methyl group enhances methamphetamine’s lipid-solubility, but this effect appears to be imperceptible to human consumers.)
It is also true that the effects of smoking methamphetamine are more intense than those of swallowing a pill containing d-amphetamine. But that increased intensity is due to the route of administration, not the drug itself. Smoking d-amphetamine produces nearly identical intense effects as smoking methamphetamine. The same would be true if the drugs were snorted intranasally.
So, in summation, really good news for meth bros out there, not so great news for adderall guys. I’ll take either at this point. Meet me behind the 7 Eleven at 8 pm SHARP.
[h/t Total Frat Move]