Crystal

lol this is kind of funny watching u guys complain about people that do worse drugs than weed when u complain about other "straight edge" people that complain about you smoking weed...its just funny

 

I don't smoke weed, though I've probably smoked more in a sitting than you smoke in a month. I don't have a problem with "straight-edgers", either...but I can tell you meth is something to avoid. If you want to keep your friend, you'll not contribute to his addiction; otherwise he will eventually fade into a shakey, violent, toothless idiot who would love nothing more than to stab you in the back and rob you blind, just for another hit.

 

huh? dude...sit down and think about this for a second...I don't care what your friend decides to do, but jesus make sure he knows what he's getting into...
http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/meth/meth.shtml
Make sure he reads that, maybe he'll think twice, after seeing all of 4 positive effects weighed with the 20 some negative effects...not to mention the countless experience reports dealing with addiction, bad experiences, health issue's, and trainwreck experiences.

If you guys are comparing meth to weed, you'd best think again...Trust me if you don't get the meth for you're friend you'll be doing him a huuuuge favor.

It is also my opinion that you dont use drugs that rhyme with 'death'

 

This should be reason enough to not get the shit for you friend.

If you really want to be a good friend you need to educate him on the effects of meth, especially the long term effects. That way, WHEN he gets strung out, you will know you did everything you could to prevent it.

 

ah yes, show them a website!

why not just show them DARE website when they ask if they can try smoking weed?

this thread is not "funny" its "ironic" and you can laugh or simply shake your head

 

...because DARE is government-backed propaganda, whereas Erowid is unbiased information? While both probably agree that methamphetamine is one of the filthiest habits you could pick up, Erowid is reputed as an honest source of information.

But yeah...forget Erowid, just take a walk downtown one night about 3:00-4:00 AM and check out all the crackies...then ask your friend if he wants to end up like that.

You seem rather apathetic about the whole issue considering your mother "killed herself on crack and meth." Guess the apple don't fall too far from the tree...

 

Erowid is un-biased. D.A.R.E is biased. Herein lies the flaw in your analogy.

 

This is from http://www.disinfo.com/archive/pages/dossier/id1950/pg1/

My opinion:
First off, explain to me how (meth)amphetamines are so bloody horrible if we're perscribing them to MILLIONS of CHILDREN to take DAILY. Adderall is the same shit. And we're feeding it to CHILDREN!?? The only difference is purity and the fact that one comes from a doctor. That's it.

Secondly, 80/90%of the shit you're talking about with "tweaking" and the nasty side effects can be avoided. Think about it. I mean, hey.....here's one thought process....
"I've been up for 25 hours, and the only things i've ingested have been a stimulant, some coffee, and a pack of sweettarts....maybe i should eat something"

or

"hey, I've been running around non-stop in 80 degree heat like an Olympic sprinter for about 8 hours now....maybe i should drink some water."

or

"Hey, i've been awake for 4 days......when did i last shower?"

These are the things a responsible user of any drug thinks about. Maintaining ones own health.
Yes, meth can be neurotoxic. Yes, meth can be addictive.
In fact, meth is about as addictive as alcohol. Or tobacco. And remarkably, when done often and in binges, is about as neurotoxic as alcohol. And many of the bodily damages done are for the SAME REASON: I.E. not eating, not sleeping, not maintaining fluid intake or proper sanitary practices.

But the addiction is mostly based on the individual involved. And the fact that an individual is STRONGLY discouraged from seeking help/medical opinions due to the fact that their nascent (or fully developed) problem is illegal, just compounds the problem.

As far as children doing meth: Fuck, i don't think anyone should do any drug until at LEAST the age of 18. How the hell are you going to insert a chemical that alters the brain chemistry into a brain that isn't done developing yet? Yet it's done all the time.

Meth is a drug. It's not evil. It's not satan. It's just a drug. It's a very useful drug, in many cases, and it can be abused. But so can any other drug, to similar effects. Just because any of you have seen a bunch of horribly irresponsible users (or been them yourselves) does not give you the soapbox to stand on and proclaim, "this drug is EVIL"
If you are not confident in your ability to handle yourself under the influence of the drug, don't do it. It's that simple.

But stop spouting bullshit and propaganda just because you couldn't, or you witnessed a bunch of people who couldn't.

 

You're right, amphetamines are commonly prescribed to children, but that doesn't make it right. Meth is fucking stupid and is pure poison in my opinion. I've seen so many lives ruined from meth addiction. People who used it responsibly and only on occasion, but quickly turned into all-out junkies who can't go for an hour without it. I've lost friends and family members, including my dad, to this shit. I will never see any good in it and will always consider it to be one of the worse things to ever be introduced into our society.

 

It all comes down to choices and responsibility. It is the users choice to use any drug with or without responsibility.

In my case I can't trust myself to do meth b/c I know I have somewhat of an addictive personality.

 

Ritalin is like child's play compared to meth... Both of them are disgusting.

 

I never said meth was evil, I said it was a poison (which it is). The people who distribute it (doctors or dealers) are inherently shitty people. Please point out where I exclaimed that children should even be prescribed the garbage?

There's simply no defending a drug like meth; just like crack or heroin. While it may have it's purpose, no regular user is applying it to that purpose (hence the regular use). You're so quick to say "I'm using it responsibly." It starts out like that, but if you "keep using responsibly", you'll be lucky if you figure out what hit you before you find yourself out on the curb, sucking dick for the next fix.

 

At the begining of the post I put a quote gotten from www.some website.com. I wasn't specificaly saying that anyone brought up that point but it shows my veiw on meth. I know plenty of people who use meth recreationaly but for some wild reason they arnt "sucking dick for the next fix. There are differences in drug USERS and drug ABUSERS. Like I said choice and responsibility is all that comes into play here.

 

Give me solid info like I have done then we can resume this debate.



Myth #1: Speed Kills

This slogan, borrowed from the Department of Transportation, was introduced following the 1968 "Summer of Love" in Haight-Ashbury and is perpetuated to this day. In reality, the only correlation between meth and death is the two words happen to rhyme. A closer look at the raw data from which government agencies like the Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration derive their "statistics" reveals the truth.

According to the Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN), an office of the US Department of Health, there were 1,206 "mentions" of drug deaths attributable to amphetamines in 40 metropolitan areas in 1999. However, this figure includes individuals with chronic and acute diseases of the heart, kidneys, and liver as well as people who mixed amphetamines with other drugs (usually depressants). [1]

Clearly, one cannot objectively blame amphetamines for the death of individuals who used them hap hazardously with pre-existing conditions any more than one can blame a pin prick for causing the death of a haemophiliac. In addition, those few individuals foolish enough to mix meth with other drugs die from the accumulative effect of the depressant family of drugs, or in rare cases, from the synergistic effect of depressants mixed with stimulants. If one subtracts these cases from the total:

21 people died (representing less than 1% of total drug deaths) as the direct result of using amphetamines in 41 metro areas in 1998 and even these numbers appear suspect when one considers that there were only 43 documented speed related deaths in the entire world in the thirty year period between the end of World War II and 1975. [2]

The Merck Manual, one of the most respected medical publications in the world, reports: "Even massive doses are rarely fatal. Long-term users have reportedly injected as much as 15,000 mg. of amphetamines in 24 hours without observable acute illness." [3]

Myth #2: Meth Is Linked to Violent Crime

Because it is a powerful stimulant which increases energy and libido along with its early association with motorcycle gangs, meth has been unfairly accused as the underlying cause in numerous rape, assault and murder cases. Even liberal poet Allen Ginsberg in his 1965 interview with the Los Angeles Free Press complained, "All the nice gentle dope fiends are getting screwed up by the real horror monster Frankenstein speed freaks." [4] Even today sensationalist stories like the following persist:

· Father beheads 14 year old son he believes was possessed by Satan. [5]
· Four-year-old girl discovered beaten to death by her parents. [6]
· Ex-National Guardsman steals tank . . . crushes cars. [7]​

In each of these cases, Meth was deemed the culprit. Grisly details of the above were used by the DEA in testimony before Congress and the Attorney General of California in his re-election campaign. Anyone even remotely familiar with the effects of meth know such accusations to be ludicrous. Even the US Department of Justice was forced to admit no such link exists. The findings were reported in Meth Matters - a study of abuse of the drug in five western cities, issued by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) in 1999 during a meeting of the Methamphetamine Interagency Task Force. It revealed that meth users were "significantly less likely than other drug arrestees to be charged with a violent offense." Jack Riley, director of the NIJ's drug-abuse monitoring efforts, said the results were not surprising. It's a common misconception that methamphetamine is concretely linked to violent crime. I've never seen that before, just as it was never observable with cocaine," Riley said. [8]

Myth #3: Meth Causes Psychosis & Schizophrenia

These two mental diseases are generally permanent, incurable and require large doses of strong medications in order to keep them under minimal control. Amphetamines do not cause these diseases. They can, however, cause the user to temporarily suffer symptoms (hallucinations, paranoia) which are associated with psychosis and schizophrenia. These are generally brought on by inducing large quantities and/or taking them for several consecutive days. Hallucinations are brought on not so much by the direct action of the drug but by sleep deprivation.

For those who still remain unconvinced as a result of this clarification, we can look to Japan for answers. They invented meth in 1919 and endured an epidemic of abuse during the post-war American Occupation the likes of which this country will hopefully never have to experience. Like most of the major combatants in World War II, the Japanese pumped amphetamines down the throats of soldiers and industrial workers. At the end of the war, huge stockpiles were found in cities all over the country. The quantity of the drug was exceeded only by the quality. Unlike the present day American meth - manufactured in clandestine labs with shortcut recipes and then laced with adulterants - the Japanese counterpart was synthesized in government facilities under the strictest quality controls. With the exception of Korean and Taiwanese free base, more commonly known as "Ice", it is probably the most potent meth ever produced.

More importantly, the subsequent research on the drug, like their meth, was untainted by politics. A thirty-year timeframe along with huge cross sections of research on sub-populations make for ideal longitudinal studies, the consensus of which was: that in cases where permanent schizophrenia and psychoses has been attributed to addiction, it appears that the underlying ailment was either latent or had existed all along and the meth use had simply exacerbated the symptoms to a degree where it could be finally diagnosed. [9]

Myth #4: Meth Is Addictive

If speed is so addicting, where are the "addicted" recipients of over 200 million amphetamine tablets consumed by GI’s in World War II? If there were any problems then it is extremely doubtful that Uncle Sam would upgrade to meth (six times stronger) and churn it out in even greater quantities in Korea and Vietnam? The only veteran-related drug concern that came out of the latter was the use of high-grade heroin - a physically addicting drug. Today, the term 'addiction' is a controversial catch-all that has subjective meaning and is all too frequently used in objective scientific contexts. But prior to 1994, addiction had two qualifiers: physical and psychological dependency, with the former being more the more severe of the two.

A physically dependent drug was one that provoked specific observable effects if the subject significantly decreased or stopped use of the drug . These could range all the way from flu-like symptoms such as vomiting, sweating, and high fever from cessation of heroin to shaking, delirium tremens and death from alcohol withdrawal.

Psychologically addictive drugs bore none of the severe physical aggravations, only cravings, irritability and depression. These aggravations tended to diminish with abstention.

Everyone seemed content with this dichotomy until the early nineties when central nervous system (CNS) stimulants such as meth and cocaine made a huge comeback. There was a problem though for the purveyors of drug abuse propaganda. These two drugs were not physically addicting, thus their use appeared far too harmless in their eyes. They were not ones to let facts get in the way. So it came as no surprise in 1994, when the largest science-related entity in the world, the World Health Organization, solved the problem by simply redefining the term 'addiction'. The distinctions were simply done away with altogether! One very simple definition of addiction is "the degree to which one can stop using a drug once regular use has been established.” Consider then the case of meth use by US troops in Vietnam. More amphetamines were used - and abused - by American soldiers in Vietnam in 1965-68 than by the combined Allied and Axis combatants in World War II. Concerned by the impact of drugs on combat readiness, then President Nixon commissioned a study. Its subjects included every US Army enlistee returning home from the war in the year 1971 - some 13,760 men. Of these 1,400 were found to have tested positive (by urinalysis) for either amphetamines, barbiturates or opiates. The director of the study, Dr. Lee Robbins of Washington University, then retested them eight to twelve months later. The results revealed that 92% were drug free - a fact that is even more remarkable when you consider the political climate of that time period -one in which returning vets received little in the way of welcome or empathy. As one vet recalled, "I was actually booed by junior high school students - It was enough to drive you to drink!" Maybe so, but not enough, apparently, to use drugs.


[1] Table 2.14 "Percentage Distribution of Drug Mentions by Cause of Death." Annual Medical Examiner Data. 1999. Drug Abuse Warning Network, Substance & Mental Health Services Administration. US Department of Health.

[2] Kalant, H. and Oriana J. Kalant. "Death in Amphetamine Users: Causes and Rates." Canadian Medical Association Journal. 1975.

[3] "Amphetamine Dependence", The Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy, Section 15. Ch. 195. Drug Use and Dependence, Merck & Co. Inc.

[4] Art Kuning interview with Allen Ginsberg. Los Angeles Free Press. December 1965.

[5] Donnie R. Marshall, Acting Administrator, Drug Enforcement Administration Senate Judiciary Committee. United States Senate. 28 July 1999.

[6] Dan Lungren, "Methamphetamine: The Triple-Headed Monster." The Coastal Post. April 1998.

[7] Dan Lungren, "Methamphetamine: The Triple-Headed Monster." The Coastal Post. April 1998.

[8] Bill Romano, "Justice Department Report Contradicts Common Perception." San Jose Mercury News. 5 May 1999.

[9] D.S. Bell. "The Experimental Reproduction of Amphetamine Psychosis." Archives General Psychiatry. 1973. In. Everett H. Ellinwood, George King, Ph.D., Tong H. Lee, M.D. "Chronic Amphetamine Use and Abuse." The American College of Neuropsychopharmacology Psychopharmacology: The Fourth Generation of Progress.

 

I am glad you can cite your resources, but if you really believe that meth isn't addicting you must be stupid.



I am not saying that it cannot be used in a resonsible manor in some cases, but many people who use it generally abuse it.

 

Half of those aren't even legitimate resources! Newspaper interviews with "experts", government documents denying the addiction of the speed they gave WWII soldiers...cite some credible sources for your information and I'll leave it be.

Then again, why would I expect some kid that chugs cough syrup to read through my post, let alone several pages of scientific documents?

 

Some kid that chugs cough syrup, for one thing I am not a kid.... and another if you read my other post and maybe even my name you could come to the conclusion that I despise fucking DXM. When you assume you make an ass out of u and me.

 

Yet another vain attempt to dodge the fact that you simply cannot defend the use of methamphetamine. Unfortunately you've decided to prioritize attacks on your person rather than your issue, which gives me reason to believe that you can't defend your position.

I have experience with methamphetamine. If you truely believe that kappa-opiod dissociatives "suck," then what is your problem with a stance against stimulatory narcotics like meth? At this point you're confusing even me, so unless you have something pertinent to add to the discussion, I'd advise that you not say anything else...lest you were to make an ass of yourself (but not me, since I don't agree with you in any aspect of the topic...kthx).

 

Wait man, I really want to know who attacked who? I have only defended myself and my stance on drugs in general. This website is about "free speech" I am just saying my 2 cents and, I don't want to get bashed about it.

I am playing the devils advocate right now. I really don't like meth or any speed like drugs in general but, when you defend other drugs like LSD, pot, and other "mind expanding drugs" why shouldn't you defend the other drugs?

And when I say DXMsucks it is my opinion I have had to many bad experiences.

My stance on any drug: Prohibition sucks and causes more harm than good.

 

I attacked you, and you defended yourself, as opposed to defending your stance on methamphetamine.

While "playing the Devil's advocate" is sometimes an admirable stance in a politically-correct society, it simply isn't a good postion to defend compounds like methamphetamine; especially if you don't advocate the use of the drug yourself.

I don't defend narcotics, never have, and never will. Narcotics are simply drugs that are generally used to escape reality; while they may have purposes other than to merely "get fucked up", they are rarely used in such a manner. It doesn't matter whether you or I find the drugs to be addictive or not...what matters is the general consensus (atleast in hypothetical debate such as this).

I personally have a tendency towards such compounds, however, I know several individuals that don't have a problem controlling their use of these substances. It's the fact that I know so many more people who participate in extremely niggerish business to get their share of narcotics, as well as statistical data from other reliable individuals, that leads me to the conclusion that these compounds are garbage.

LSD is a true psychedelic; it magnifies the emotional state of the user in a manner that doesn't condone the "acting-out" of these emotions, only allows the user to look at themselves from an outward angle and adjust their personalities accordingly. I don't advocate the use of marijuana itself, however, I advocate the use of THC as a medicine, and the use of d9-THC as a regulated recreational drug.

Contrary to what you may believe, I believe all illicit compounds should be legalized and regulated by the government. This would profit the State, control addiction, and put addicts into rehab instead of jail.

However, I will still stand against the regular use of narcotics (while I occasionally use them myself). I believe the saying was "I may disagree with what you have to say, but I will defend, to the death, your right to say it?"