Astral Codex Ten

amphetamine

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amphetamine

Article

amphetamine is a recurring brand in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between January 25, 2021 and July 19, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as “difference between amphetamine and methamphetamine”; “amphetamine (Adderall), which despite its fearsome reputation as a street drug”. It most often appears alongside Adderall, FDA, ADHD.

Metadata

  • Category: Brands
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: January 25, 2021
  • Last seen: July 19, 2021

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Know Your Amphetamines
January 25, 2021 · Original source
In the 1950s, a shady outfit called Obetrol Pharmaceuticals made a popular over-the-counter diet pill called Obetrol. If you're familiar with any of: the 1950s, shady pharma, or diet pills, your next question will be "did it contain amphetamines?" and the answer is yes, loads of them. Obetrol was a mix of four different amphetamine salts: racemic amphetamine sulfate, dextroamphetamine sulfate, methamphetamine saccharate, and methamphetamine hydrochloride. Why did they need four different kinds of speed? I'm not sure. The uncharitable explanation is: for the same reason Dr. Nick's Cure-All Home Remedy has twelve different herbs, ie customers think things with more ingredients are better.
By the 1970s, people figured out meth was bad, so Obetrol replaced their two methamphetamine salts with two more kinds of non-methylated amphetamine. But the FDA continued to crack down, and although the historical paper trail goes kind of dark, it looks like Obetrol had disappeared by the 1980s.
Treating ADHD with amphetamines was hardly a new invention. Psychiatrists had been doing it since the 1930s, albeit with slightly different drugs. Remember, many organic chemicals come in two versions, a "right-handed" or "d" version and a "left-handed" or "l" version. Benzedrine (a 50-50 d/l split) and Dexedrine (pure d-amphetamine) were the treatments of choice throughout the mid-20th century. So why was it Adderall - a weird combination of four different salts selected kind of at random by a sketchy diet pill company - that caught on?
Peer Review Request: Ketamine
July 19, 2021 · Original source
There are common reports of severe side effects from recreational ketamine users, of which the best known are urinary (eg cystitis) and hepatic. It would be concerning if clinical use caused these at anywhere near the same rate. But we should remember that eg recreational amphetamine abuse produces all sorts of terrible side effects, but essentially none of them carry over to clinical amphetamine use (eg Adderall for ADHD). This is mostly because recreational users take doses orders of magnitude higher; “the dose makes the poison”.
In general, I’m not very concerned about this with most patients, for a few reasons. First are the reports from expert prescribers, who say basically none of their patients ever get addicted. Second is the general experience of using addictive drugs in psychiatry – for example, amphetamine (Adderall), which despite its fearsome reputation as a street drug is rarely abused by patients who get it by prescription. Addiction is a biopsychosocial process and people without genetic and psychological predispositions to addiction are usually able to use these chemicals safely.