There's an interesting and easy read on amphetamines used in Nazi Germany titled Blitzed by Norman Ohler.

Blitzed is a great reference, it was one of the sources that opened my eyes to the bigger picture iirc

Fun fact: doctors in the US still occasionally prescribe methamphetamine for ADHD. It goes by the trademark name Desoxyn.

Because it works lol. I've never tried it but it's clear why it does: One of it's two metabolites is amphetamine itself. At best you get additional therapeutic effect from the original form and the additional isomer, at worst (since the additional metabolite is not extremely toxic) you just have a prodrug for amphetamine.

For those whom it might benefit, a prodrug is a drug which does not have the targeted action but whose metabolite is the active chemical itself - these are sometimes used to bypass drug laws but they have other purposes too.

afaik there are two primary reasons why meth is seen so much worse than amphetamines even though they are both generally legal prescriptions where either is legal:

• 1. Meth is what was common so meth was the focus of propaganda and other communications, and
• 2. The big one imo: Meth is much, much easier to synth.

And so meth is relegated to a last-resort therapy in most cases.

There may be additional factors I'm missing here that aren't described in the research that I've done. There haven't ever been too many meth users in my social circles and science can often gloss over individual experiences. I don't mean to say meth is great or even that it's not bad for most people. I don't really know. I just know that a lot of the discussion around it is severely distorted which has created some undue prejudices when it is a legitimate therapeutic compound for an illness that plagues significant numbers of the population in Western-styled developed countries where ADHD traits can be strongly discriminated against.