As someone with ADHD your sentiment is pretty bullshit tbh. There's a ton of stigma around stimulant medication and the laws around getting some for treatment are literal hell for people with executive functioning disorders. There's been a ton of research on them — if you need them, a therapeutic dose isn't at all the same as what NT people taking them at parties is. In fact other than improving mood and energy somewhat it's hard for me to comprehend what you'd get out of them — for me, taking my medication is like putting the glasses on my brain. And when the bullshit controlled substance laws make it so I have to ration my doses, I'm more likely to skip on workdays than on my days off because it just makes me feel more like myself — my short term memory functions better, I'm able to focus on stuff I wanna do instead of getting paralyzed scrolling or something, and it's easy to overcome the inertia that keeps me from switching from one thing to another.
Comparing stimulant medication to the opioid crisis is fucked up for so many reasons, not the least of which being that if you need adderall or whatever it's not habit-forming.
It's not my place to argue with someone with an ADHD diagnosis about their condition.
The fact is that amphetamine use has been normalized to an amazing degree in the culture. I don't think any other country regards them in the same way.
It's funny because the way it's been normalized to a degree for neurotypicals — i.e. neurotypicals taking it as a fun party drug like you mentioned — increases the stigma for people who actually need it to function. The perception is that I'm partying or tweaking every day, at work, whatever, when the reality is that I literally will forget to eat lunch if I'm not on my medication
Amphetamines, pharmaceutical or otherwise, have been used long before they were prescribed for ADHD related diagnoses, though. For fun, work and war. Their use was curtailed generally because of the heavy societal downsides of wide use.
I'm not commenting on your diagnosis, but on the current normalization of amphetamine use again. Opiods were over prescribed. It's not a stretch to say the same about amphetamines imo.
Even if they're over prescribed, what happens to someone who doesn't "need" it who has a script for it? They don't overdose, there's not much in the way of withdrawal at therapeutic doses, and it's significantly less addictive than opioids. You take it before work, your workday is a little more fun instead of excruciating. There can be some long-term health effects but nothing worse than the effects of alcohol use.
As we've seen with the war on drugs, all moralizing about drug use serves to "other" drug users — practically all of whom use drugs as a response to their material conditions — and this stigma ultimately leads to criminalization, which only serves to worsen the material conditions of drug users in a vicious cycle. If people wanna take the drugs I use for medicine just because they're fun, I fully support them — legalize everything tbh.
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As someone with ADHD your sentiment is pretty bullshit tbh. There's a ton of stigma around stimulant medication and the laws around getting some for treatment are literal hell for people with executive functioning disorders. There's been a ton of research on them — if you need them, a therapeutic dose isn't at all the same as what NT people taking them at parties is. In fact other than improving mood and energy somewhat it's hard for me to comprehend what you'd get out of them — for me, taking my medication is like putting the glasses on my brain. And when the bullshit controlled substance laws make it so I have to ration my doses, I'm more likely to skip on workdays than on my days off because it just makes me feel more like myself — my short term memory functions better, I'm able to focus on stuff I wanna do instead of getting paralyzed scrolling or something, and it's easy to overcome the inertia that keeps me from switching from one thing to another.
Comparing stimulant medication to the opioid crisis is fucked up for so many reasons, not the least of which being that if you need adderall or whatever it's not habit-forming.
It's not my place to argue with someone with an ADHD diagnosis about their condition.
The fact is that amphetamine use has been normalized to an amazing degree in the culture. I don't think any other country regards them in the same way.
It's funny because the way it's been normalized to a degree for neurotypicals — i.e. neurotypicals taking it as a fun party drug like you mentioned — increases the stigma for people who actually need it to function. The perception is that I'm partying or tweaking every day, at work, whatever, when the reality is that I literally will forget to eat lunch if I'm not on my medication
Amphetamines, pharmaceutical or otherwise, have been used long before they were prescribed for ADHD related diagnoses, though. For fun, work and war. Their use was curtailed generally because of the heavy societal downsides of wide use.
I'm not commenting on your diagnosis, but on the current normalization of amphetamine use again. Opiods were over prescribed. It's not a stretch to say the same about amphetamines imo.
Even if they're over prescribed, what happens to someone who doesn't "need" it who has a script for it? They don't overdose, there's not much in the way of withdrawal at therapeutic doses, and it's significantly less addictive than opioids. You take it before work, your workday is a little more fun instead of excruciating. There can be some long-term health effects but nothing worse than the effects of alcohol use.
As we've seen with the war on drugs, all moralizing about drug use serves to "other" drug users — practically all of whom use drugs as a response to their material conditions — and this stigma ultimately leads to criminalization, which only serves to worsen the material conditions of drug users in a vicious cycle. If people wanna take the drugs I use for medicine just because they're fun, I fully support them — legalize everything tbh.