Comment by crate_barre | Hacker News Reader

Comment by crate_barre | Hacker News Reader

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I think the answer is in the middle. I don’t want to propagate a myth, but I do want to shed light on the fact that this isn’t a benign drug. It’s an amphetamine, many people want to sugar coat it like it’s this particularly saint-like medication (I mean the damn thing let’s you get a high salary job - don’t you disparage my Addy). Adderral and Vyvanse do have added ingredients that thwart abuse (mostly slows it down, can never truly stop abuse on such an addictive substance).

In any case, high dosage of Adderral (or consistent use) has very similar effects to Meth use (obviously not methhead no-teeth level stuff, but definitely euphoria, delusions of grandeur, paranoia, insomnia, drastic appetite suppression, irritability). Psychosis can also occur on Adderral.

A nicer version of Adderral without all the anti-abuse stuff is Dexedrine, you get a more pure amphetamine and is generally smoother since it doesn’t have the Levoamphetamine that creates the characteristic ‘lethargic’ feeling after the initially speedy-rush.

The funny thing about all of this is that it’s legal, and I shit you not, me and my doctor would speak about finding ‘smoother’ meds (imagine two crackheads discussing what would be a nicer high), all totally legal and not frowned upon.

One hell of a PR job by team ‘legal speed’ :) Glad I’m off that shit because I really did feel and act like a Meth-head by the end of it.

You're right on most of that but off on some details.

Only Vyvanse is anti-abuse, because the dextroamphatamine is bound to a lysine molecule. The body must cleave the lysine before it becomes active so snorting it doesn't give the instant rush.

Adderall has no such countermeasures. You're probably getting confused by the fact that it comes in both IR and XR formulations (instant release vs extended release). So if someone has XR adderall, it's not as snortable as IR. But it's still more snortable than Vyvanse is, and you can just get IR adderall which is totally abusable. (BTW X milligrams of XR is really just X/2 mg instant release and X/2 mg delayed release beads that take on average 4 hours to activate. So it's roughly equivalent to two X/2 mg IR doses split 4 hours apart) And finally the XR can be countered by crushing the beads up, although it's a bit laborious.

Amphetamine obviously has its risks, and particularly when prescribing to children doctors seem to write some ridiculously high dosage prescriptions without fully understanding what the drug is like. But you can just say that rather than doing the juvenile "it's really just meth in a bottle" shtick when there is literally already actual meth in a bottle that you can (with great difficulty) get prescribed. And that fact - that methamphetamine exists as a drug that can be prescribed - is much more interesting and surprising to people, given that the lay public is completely unaware that methamphetamine has any pharmaceutical uses.

Most Adderall formulations have no anti-abuse precautions, unless you could extended release mechanisms. Vyvanse also doesn't generally have any ingredients added to it, it's a prodrug that is inactive until it is metabolized (which happens in the blood, not the liver so you can still snort it).

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