Many of the respondents to this informal poll classified coffee or other energy drinks as a stimulant, so not surprised by this. 64% of Americans drink coffee every day.
This would have been more interesting if antidepressant usage were isolated.
This would have been more interesting if antidepressant usage were isolated.
That seems to exclude caffeine from coffee.
Ctrl-f for 'coffee' to see some sample responses.
To compare the 2, the amphetamine feels more artificial bodily wise. However ingesting about 500mg caffeine has the similar bodily feel as 10mg amphetamine. Given the amphetamine did some tricks like time delayed whereas the caffeine did not, does make it harder to compare. The caffeine did stay just as long, and provided a much longer bodily high.
These days, I just drink coffee and stay away from pills and powder. Safer.
They are both stimulants. I've done both, like I said. So yes, for my body (n=1) I can indeed compare them. And it was sincere and honest.
And the only reason why caffeine isn't schedule 2 is the same reason why alcohol and nicotine isn't either. That's purely a societal reason, and no basis in chemistry. If caffeine/coffee was discovered last year, it would be schedule drug. Look no further than kratom.
It also has some nasty side effects that come with abuse. Mental problems being the first ones, depression, anxiety, mood swings ...
How do alcohol and cigarettes not fit this definition!? Meanwhile, edible cannabis is relatively safe and Ecstacy has shown promise as a component of PTSD treatment. Just a few examples...
"Well, marijuana is a schedule 1, so we can't test it for legitimate applications. And since it's schedule 1, it has no medical applications".
There is absolutely no scientific or chemical basis of "schedule". It was originally a way for Republicans (Nixon, Reagan, etc) to use the law to arrest hippies and black people. And we have no further to look at crack/powder cocaine and sentencing disparities. Crack was inner city and primarily used by black people. Whereas powder cocaine was used more by whites outside of the inner city core.
What difference does it make if it's a prescription stimulant?
What if the headline had said "75 % of med students are on drugs" but actually it just means that 75 % of med students occasionally take acetaminophen or aspirin for headaches? Those are indeed drugs, but wouldn't you feel misled? People drinking coffee is not newsworthy, so one wouldn't expect an article about it. I haven't looked at the data the article is based on, so I don't know if something like this is what's going on, but I think this is the point village-idiot was trying to make.
Sorry to be do blunt but casually ignoring things like modafinil which seems to be the go to drug for staving off sleep if you want to be able to pass drug tests is a bit of a mistake.
Subjectivly most users of modafinil find it "weaker" than coffee because there is no rush associated with it as there is with coffee, you just can't sleep when you take it.
So if the point you're making is actually just virtue signalling with the "well some drugs are worse than others because I guess they are classified as controlled?" bullshit then please provide an actual reason why the comment was disagreeable.
The point the comment was making was very simple: providing a single percentage that includes as a category things that are very different is misleading. In the extreme, saying "95% of the US takes painkillers at a rate considered addiction" where painkiller is defined as aspirin or heroin, is not a very useful metric
2. I'm not judging people who use any of these drugs, whatever their purpose. If it were up to me, all drug laws would be repealed and the state would have no say about what anyone is allowed to put in their own bodies. I'm only pointing out that there are stark differences between caffine and drugs like amphetamine, methylphenidate, and, yes, even modafinil, and lumping them all together as "stimulants" isn't useful to this discussion. (If modafinil is no better than caffeine, why does anyone bother going through the hassle and expense of obtaining it when caffeine is dirt-cheap and easily accessible?)
This discussion is not about villifying drugs or people who use them, it's about the unreasonable, inhumane workload that medical students are expected to handle. If 75 % of medical students feel the need for and take steps to obtain prescription drugs, whether illegally or by getting a prescription, then there is clearly something wrong with medical school. If 75 % of medical students drink coffee or other caffinated beverages, that is not a cause for concern (for me, at least).
If I considered walking across the room as a form of workout, I could pretty confidently say that 99.99% of Americans exercise once a day. But that wouldn't yield me much in the way of insight.
That is absolutely ridiculous, the ADA doesn't imply that anyone with any disability needs to be accommodated for any job, just that reasonable accommodation be made. For instance, someone in a wheelchair will be unable to do many jobs, regardless of accommodation,such as framing carpentry and roofing.
As someone who has gotten ADA accommodations related to mental health, there are absolutely limits. Due to my hand tremors, no hospital in the nation would allow me to be a surgeon, regardless of qualifications. Ditto for police departments, due to said mental-health issues.
I believe even the police are subject to the disabilities laws, the medical profession too. In which case they most likely can't even ask.
(Not a lawyer, just a bumbling Internet commentator, you'd be insane to take me seriously, etc)
However, which jobs would a person with a psychiatric disorder be disqualified for? Couldn’t one argue that all jobs that require a brain would be off-limits? Probably not, but where is the line drawn?
And for some jobs, e.g. you want to work undercover for the CIA as a field agent, your mental state is not what would be strictly considered normal.
You can bet that almost everyone in these jobs has some skeleton in the closet that would officially be a problem. Some years of depression or other psychiatric illness, a proclivity for scandalous sex, having used an illegal drug a couple of times or even regularly, an unofficial child somewhere, some hidden medical issue that popped up once and was never talked about again, etc. With the common case that the issue has little, no or even positive effect on job performance.
This is anecdotally true from off-the-record conversations with exceptional individuals I know. The list of disqualifying parameters is just there so the bureaucrats can cover their ass when an aneurysm causes the loss of a billion-dollar aircraft, and to prevent blackmail with information that can be easily found.
But regarding blackmail, I think the bigger problem is that honest and harmless things can be used for blackmail in the first place. Everyone has smoked a joint and had some compromising photos taken, it shouldn't be such a big deal.
https://www.acepnow.com/article/emergency-physician-with-dep...
(Reddit thread discussing that article) https://www.reddit.com/r/medicine/comments/aaappq/emergency_...
No, you are wrong. Mental health among doctors is a huge issue in the field right now. In some states having a recorded case of depression is enough for you to have a license review.
Behind closed doors everyone will tell you to lie about your mental history. If you need help, you better make damn sure you're going to someone who will take cash and not keep any records of your appointments.
Doctors are literally having their entire careers put at risk because they admit they're human.