Hacker News Reader

Comment by Kaveren | Hacker News Reader

> "and cocaine and stimulants — a group that includes methamphetamine — are each now killing more than 10,000 people a year, a threshold they only crossed in the past few years."

I understand why people use drugs like heroin and fentanyl, but why methamphetamine? Why do they not just use Adderall or pure amphetamine? What is the gain? Amphetamine and Adderall in particular are not neurotoxic at normal doses, and are very safe if used responsibly. Methamphetamine seems to be inherently neurotoxic. Why risk your health when amphetamines and Adderall are just as good?

View on HN

I think some people have listened to hysteria about softer drugs like marijuana or psychedelics or softer uppers and looked at the histrionic warnings and contrasted those things to their own experiences, realized that some of the 'you're going to die instantly if you try this ___ once' fearmongering is false, and then assumed that all drugs have had the same overblown fearmongering. So they say 'well if marijuana isn't actually that harmful to me and I can control myself and not overdo it, then cocaine probably isn't that unhealthy or addictive to try once'. And after they get used to the idea of taking cocaine or MDMA in a more casual manner and feel they have control and can take it sparingly, they might end up with the same conclusion that 'this isn't that bad right?' and then decide the warnings about something like meth or heroin are probably overblown.

Huh, I always assumed that like crack, the issue with meth is that it is usually laced with heroin.

Literally no parts of the statement are accurate. Crack is freebase cocaine, which is dangerous for a number of reasons, none of which involve lacing it with another (often more expensive) drug. Meth is also a strong and addictive stimulant and comes with its own bundle of problems; lacing it with a opioid/depressant doesn't make a ton of sense.

People do combine heroin and cocaine/heroin and meth, but the issues with cocaine and meth absolutely do not come from them being laced with heroin.

I almost mistook your statement as an ironic statement of hysteria mentioned by parent. IOW, what I was hearing thirty years ago: "you never know what it's laced with". My experience says, "yeah, I do: nothing." I'll suffix that never tried heroin, which I understand to commonly be cut.

But PCP-laced pot? Never, and I can understand that someone isn't going to sprinkle free value-add on there. Cocaine will be laced with baking soda to increase profits, not more pricey drugs. I just never did figure out where people got that idea. Sure, sounds like heroin is getting cut with fentanyl (again, profits). But crack will get you plenty high, and addicted, on its own; there's no need for additives.

Here's a guide to what street drugs are cut with. From 2013, from the UK.

http://www.cph.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/cut-a-guide...

For cocaine and crack cocaine, lidocaine is one common adulterant, sugars are another.

That's not entirely true. Thirty dollars of shit coke turns a $100 bag of weed into a $200 bag of weed.

"dippers" are extremely common.

No, the issue with meth -- from my understanding of it, as I've never tried it -- is that it is the epitome of the phrase "too much of a good thing."

I think it comes down to availability, and anyways it's probably a wash danger-wise considering that people who are dying from using these aren't taking normal doses. Methamphetamine is a prescribable drug (at least in the US) itself, so I imagine there's a "safe" dose for that too.

The biggest difference between Adderall and crystal meth, in terms of safety, is purely that one is manufactured by pharmaceutical companies and the other is manufactured in "meth lab" conditions. (Also the consumption pattern; people don't generally smoke their ADD meds.)

Adderall is a combination of two amphetamines; dextroamphetamine and levoamphetamine. If you don't react well to Adderall, the next step is to try the constituent amphetamines separately. Dextroamphetamine is widely available by itself; levoamphetamine, until recently, was not. Fortunately, a close analogue to levoamphetamine is Desoxyn, which is just methamphetamine. Medicinal methamphetamine is legal in the United States.

Desoxyn, like Adderall, is a controlled substance kept in safes in pharmacies, and so it's a lot easier for your average junkie to settle for Uncle Jethro's crystal meth than to try to get his hands on real pharmaceutical-grade amphetamines, whether that's Desoxyn or Adderall, just like it's easier for your average junkie to get black tar heroin than to get Oxycodone.

It's cheap, widely available and addictive?

I think methamphetamine is only a little more neurotoxic for an equivalent dose.

Methamphetamine is more potent because it more easily crosses the blood brain barrier, but the effects are almost identical. It's also prescribed for ADHD, i.e. Desoxyn.

> the effects are almost identical

This has been my experience too. I don't think I could tell them apart if I was drugged with an equivalent dose and not told which was which. I think the appeal behind meth is mainly the better value, its ability to be smoked, and the difficulty in adulterating it (since it is typically sold in crystalline form, whereas amphetamine is often sold as a powder or paste).

I've had few friends who tried methamphetamine. Two of them were completely turned off by it but one got addicted and very quickly disappeared (we still wonder what happened to him). They were all just hardcore dudes from bad homes hanging out with other hardcore dudes from bad homes.

It seems like the young folks who try meth do it because they know someone attractive or otherwise fun to be around who is doing it. It is my completely uneducated guess that the first person to get addicted to meth, had it perscribed by a medical doctor.

What you do mean disappeared? Like stopped hanging out with you or went missing?

As someone who has used all of them in my days in the rave scene, they’re very similar but not the same — in particular, adderall doesn’t give the same sense of euphoria. If you’re trying to be productive, sure they’re all about equally good. If you want to party adderall is strictly inferior.

Also as someone who dabbled with them and who had lots of friends who were like really into it, I saw the negative consequences first hand, but they’re subtle and take quite a bit of time to manifest. By the time it becomes obvious to you that there’s a problem, most of your non drug using friends have known for a while. But of course you don’t really hang out with your drug using friends any more.

It’s not the immediate horror show you’d expect from the movies or from watching Cops. You only see the worst of the worst. For every drug casualty you’ve met, there are probably dozens of people who do the casually for a few years, maintain jobs and relationships, get bored and then quit. That was at least the case for most of the people i went to raves with back in the day. Almost all of them settled down with families and careers and very few of them had trouble quitting.

I don’t recommend doing any of those things, I just think that people have a skewed idea of what it’s like.

You may have rose tinted glasses on. Meth was introduced to the rave scene much like crack was introduced into black communities in the 80s, to the same catastrophic effect.

I was there. It sucked all the joy out of the scene eventually. But it wasn’t like immediate. It was a slow gradual thing.

This is why we need to be a bit careful about the "there are no problems if it's legal" message. Yes, being illegal does cause considerable harm, but legalisation doesn't eliminate all harm.

Some people would like to have a little bit of legal amphetamine every now and again. Some people just want to get off their fucking gourd. At the moment it's hard to tell the two groups apart until they start using.

As far as I know it is a different high that some people prefer. I think the reason it is more neurotoxic is also the reason why some people prefer it, you want that serotonin and euphoria that follows.

If you understand why people use potent opioids, why don't you believe that the same reasoning -- economics and a desire for stronger effects -- holds for potent stimulants?

Not everyone has the same access to the health care system you do. For the price of a doctor visit and a script you can easily buy over 3 grams of pure methamphetamine

If you want to know what cocaine is like, chug 3 or 4 red bulls kinda quick. This may not be any healthier but it is legal and cheap.

Cocaine usage I get, though it's awfully unsustainable for your heart.

The thing about methamphetamine is that from what I understand it is neurotoxic at normal doses, and you have a much safer drug that's not going to be much more expensive available to purchase.

> and you have a much safer drug that's not going to be much more expensive available to purchase.

Around here (Australia) there is a huge difference in price, cocaine is hugely expensive and meth can be cheaper than legal cigarettes. I've heard of cocaine being much cheaper in the US but maybe that's regional? I think there are also supply issues, something that can be produced in a home lab is going to be around much more consistently.

> The thing about methamphetamine is that from what I understand it is neurotoxic at normal doses

Uh, we give it to old people in dosages around 1/80 of a normal user's high. I forget exactly what for.

Don’t do this. You’ll just feel like shit and it’ll be nothing like cocaine.

For the same reason they use heroin instead of morphine: it’s what they can get

> but why methamphetamine? [...] Why risk your health when amphetamines and Adderall are just as good?

The phenomenon is called the "iron law of prohibition" [0]:

  The iron law of prohibition is a term 
  coined by Richard Cowan in 1986 which 
  posits that as law enforcement becomes 
  more intense, the potency of prohibited 
  substances increases. Cowan put it this 
  way: "the harder the enforcement, the 
  harder the drugs."
  
  This law is an application of the Alchian–
  Allen effect; Libertarian judge James P. 
  Gray calls the law the "cardinal rule of 
  prohibition", and notes that is a powerful 
  tool for the legalization of drugs.
  It is based on the premise that when drugs 
  or alcohol are prohibited, they will be 
  produced in black markets in more 
  concentrated and powerful forms, because 
  these more potent forms offer better 
  efficiency in the business model—they take 
  up less space in storage, less weight in 
  transportation, and they sell for more 
  money. Economist Mark Thornton writes that 
  the iron law of prohibition undermines the 
  argument in favor of prohibition, because 
  the higher potency forms are less safe for 
  the consumer.

I learned this term from Johann Hari's book, Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs [1].

The "epidemic" of opioid overdose deaths would be ended instantly by giving the addicts all the pure heroin they need. ("I think I've mentioned this here before... uhm, 'Switzerland'..., found it").

A response to my comment [2] said "drug overdose deaths fell by about two thirds between 1995 (Heroin prescriptions started in about 1994) and 2012:" [3].

Meth amphetamine is basically an anti-depressant - people don't need even Adderall, they need safe anti-depressants (!SSRI)[4], and help finding stability [5].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_prohibition

[1] http://chasingthescream.com/

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14782416

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14783800

[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18211048 (my comment about coca leaf's anti-depressant effects. Amphetamines are somewhat similar.)

[5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17997852

(edit: added [5], moved [4] to after "!SSRI") (Edit2: moved all the references [] from inline to the bottom of the comment.)

The vast majority of adverse effects are a result of the drug being illegal rather than the effect of the drug itself.

With proper dosage and pure uncut drugs most addictions won't ruin the user's life unless of course they have to spend all their money on drugs because they cost so much. This leads to people becoming drug dealers to finance their habits. They start cutting the drugs with cement dust or other shit that is going to ruin the health of drug users downstream and smoke the drug for free.

I had never heard this 'law' before, but it makes total sense. In college, alcohol was effectively prohibited in the dorms. Off-campus parties were often broken up by 10 or 11pm. So prepartying became extremely important in order to attain the requisite buzz, particularly when you factor in weak party beer and long lines at the keg.

Of course, you had to secretly store potent enough alcohol, (potent enough to easily hide in quantity) and consume it quickly, to limit the likelihood of being found drinking in the dorms.

So, everyone bought 20oz soda bottles from the vending machines, knew their personal taste/tolerance in terms of how much soda to consume from the bottle, before filling it back up with their choice of rum or vodka, to be consumed quickly before departing for the evening.

    "Economist Mark Thornton writes that 
    the iron law of prohibition undermines the 
    argument in favor of prohibition, because 
    the higher potency forms are less safe for 
    the consumer. "

Except the US govt hasn't cared about saving people who they deem breaking the law.

In fact, they've helped kill people doing so. http://time.com/3665643/deadly-drinking/

Reply on news.ycombinator.com