> Adderall/Desoxyn/Methamphetamine/"Speed" are a great example
Small clarification: Adderall isn't methamphetamine, it's amphetamine. When discussing street drugs, for some value of safe, it is a considerably safer substance.
(Real, lab-made methamphetamine, even abused, is naturally much less bad for you than the typical battery acid sold on the street, too.)
I should have been clearer - I was just trying to be concise to prove a point. And I'm making the assumption that we're comparing drugs of high quality in either category (because obviously drugs that are mixed with adulterants are going to have other problems). You seem to understand what's going on, but for anybody else who's curious:
Adderall isn't methamphetamine. However, the methyl group doesn't change the way that the drug affects the brain; it just makes the drug cross the blood-brain barrier more easily. The increased bioavailability means that less of the drug (by weight) is needed to achieve the same result, but the drug isn't activating any different receptors or having a substantially different neurological effect in any other way or for any other reason. Subjectively, there may appear to be a difference for that reason (more efficient access to the brain), but the same pathways are being accessed - just to a greater degree.
An analogous and more familiar (but not identical) example would be Vyvanse and Adderall. The actual metabolic process is different from the example above, but in essence, about 50% of Vyvanse is lost when converting from a form which has no effect on the brain to a form which does. Once it's converted, it's chemically equivalent to Adderall. That's part of why Adderall XR is prescribed in doses about half the weight of Vyvanse.
[Nitpick: Yes, this isn't a perfect analogy; pharmacology is complicated! Vyvanse contains a single enantiomer of a single amphetamine; Adderall contains two enantiomers each of two amphetamines, but if you know that, you probably already know everything else I'm clarifying here anyway. The reason Vyvanse has reportedly lower side-effects is because it lacks the less effective l-enantiomer, not because the amphetamine is otherwise radically different.]
Maybe I should have been a bit clearer, but my point was that Adderall (legally prescribed amphetamine), Desoxyn (legally prescribed methamphetamine), [street] methamphetamine, and [street] amphetamines ('speed') are pharmacokinetically different because of the way that they are taken, the mode of ingestion, and the set & setting, not because of the active ingredient itself. In general, people don't seem to understand that difference, and for that matter, neither do our laws.
[Disclaimer: Everything I've said above is 'false' in the sense that it is an oversimplification, but this is HN, not a discussion board on pharmacology, so I'm sacrificing some precision in favor of accessibility/simplicity and (attempted) conciseness.]
While unrelated to the science, I am a previous user of Adderall XR and then Vyvanse and I want to share some advice on the subject for any hackers out there using these drugs or thinking about them:
It's crazy, it makes you operate on a different level, and I feel bad for anyone in a competitive college or learning situation that isn't using it: it's just unfair. But is cheating at being smart unethical? Oh, nootropics.
However, for hackers, for developers, for designers: it's not what you need. I've written code and spent months in photoshop on and off of those drugs, and that stuff will not put you in the mindset you need to be a great hacker. Highly productive for hours on end? Sure! But it tends to tunnel your vision and cause you to waste time on details.
My work is always better, hands down, off that stuff. That's because the intensity they brought were fantastic for my grueling science degree, but terrible for creating great apps. Nothing beats 8 hours of sleep, healthy diet and exercise for developing good software. Nothing.
If you're going to use it, in my experience, Vyvanse was 100X better than Addy. Addy felt like it crammed energy and focus down your throat and you were a passenger on the productivity express. Vyvanse, I felt, allowed me to be calm when I wanted to be calm, and focused and energetic when I wanted that. I could sleep and eat on it fine. Also, keep your dose small, increasing it is a slippery slope, you will build tolerance, and quitting might take effort. Best not to start.
Hacking and code need a non sedating opiate/opioid. Hydrocodone to start, maybe hydromorphone, then into oxycodone and oxymorphone. Stay away fro the morphines, diacetylmorphine, as they are too sedating. The others give you focus and drive.
Just wanted to offer a second opinion. I too went from Adderall to Vyvanse; I still take the latter. It doesn't give me tunnel vision, and it helps me focus where sleep/diet/exercise did not. So don't rule it out or go for it based on our anecdotal experience. If your psychiatrist thinks it's a good idea, try it and see how it interacts with your individual brain chemistry!
Thanks for your explanation. I know I like knowing /how/ drugs / medical treatments actually work, and I think many of the people on here also appreciate this.
Doctors, in the US at least, are a bit less than helpful when you ask about this kind of stuff, and I've had more than one actually act offended when asked about how/why what they're prescribing works. I know that in IT, if a client asks us how something works, I'm more than happy to explain, or at least point them in the right direction and link them to some documentation and/or how-to articles. With doctors, I typically get more of a "it just does" / "it's complicated and you wouldn't understand" / [very technical explanation, not even trying to make it make sense to laypersons].
It's a rare doctor that really knows -- in many cases, nobody really knows.
For example: How do SSRIs work? Statistically, they do "work," for certain values of work. We know that they result in more serotonin in the synapse. But we also know that that's not the reason they work, because that happens immediately but it usually takes a few weeks for the drug to actually work. Evidently they work by inducing some kind of structural change, but nobody knows what.. Nor do we need to know what to know that they're good drugs to prescribe in certain circumstances.
Meanwhile, many people want "reassurance" to be part of the product that they receive when they go to the doctor. If your doctor said, "these pill seem to sort of go with your symptoms in the massive table I have painstakingly memorized, nobody really knows what they do, try eating them", she would be providing a strictly worse product in many people's eyes than if she said "You have condition X. It happened because of Y. Take these pills and you'll be all right."
The curious will get labeled as doctor shoppers, then you will get nothing but an entry in their database. It's crazy, they treat the stats not the patient.
Vyvanse needs to go through the gut to be converted to its active form, which means that injecting it or crushing it and snorting it does nothing. This is intended to prevent abuse, but it does nothing extra for the user.
Small clarification: Adderall isn't methamphetamine, it's amphetamine. When discussing street drugs, for some value of safe, it is a considerably safer substance.
(Real, lab-made methamphetamine, even abused, is naturally much less bad for you than the typical battery acid sold on the street, too.)