>Routine use of amphetamines almost always causes people's mental conditions to worsen, eventually.
I've not heard this before..do you have a source? Quite interested.
I've not heard this before..do you have a source? Quite interested.
Here's a random quote from a mainstream medical source:
"Mood disorders similar to hypomania and mania can be elicited during intoxication with amphetamines. Depression can occur during withdrawal, and repeated use of amphetamines can produce antidepressant-resistant amphetamine-induced depression. ..."
- "Amphetamine-Related Psychiatric Disorders" (emphasis added), http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/289973-overview
Mad in America makes the case that mental health treatment is a make-work endeavor. http://www.madinamerica.com/
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methylphenidate
Adderall [2] is an amphetamine.
Ironically it's the most subtle and gentle of all the ADHD stimulants, at least at therapeutic doses. It has a bad reputation because of the abuse of illicitly manufactured meth available on the black market but it's completely unwarranted.
It's pretty irrating to support stigmatizing/banning a drug that millions of people use and get therapeutic effects from based on a few unrelated anecdotes.
My position is simply that there is underlying causes behind people's complaints. Stimulant-prescribing doctors would rather suppress the symptom than investigate.
Robert Whitaker's Anatomy of an Epidemic discusses amphetamines on pages 64, 219, 228-29,236, "See also Benzedrine; Ritalin". Ritalin is covered in more depth: case studies, as cause of juvenile bipolar disorder, hiding the evidence, risks/side-effects, and silencing dissent.
More information about this book can be found through the Mad In America link above; I directly linked to its information page in another comment.
People tend to like the stimulants. They tend to hate the sedatives. Some stimulant users end up being forcibly sedated with "anti-psychotics" (courtesy of a court-order), because they couldn't keep their stimulant use under control and became psychotic.