Aldous Huxley predicts Adderall and champions alternative therapies

Substituted amphetamines were already very popular in the 1950s.

... and I didn't know about them:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substituted_amphetamine

The most famous in that family seems to be meth(amphetamine)

And had been researched treat symptoms of depression and what would eventually be called ADHD in the 1930's.

Methamphetamine was invented in Germany in 1937 and the German military at the time was very quick to adopt its use.

Benzedrine (an amphetamine inhaler) was the first antidepressant marketed (although at the time I believe they used the term "psychic energizer" for antidepressants)

An army of tweakers. I don't think that this aspect of the War and the Holocaust are discussed enough. Certainly no excuse, but it is very interesting.

> Chronic Meth users have deficits in memory and executive functioning as well as higher rates of anxiety, depression, and most notably psychosis. [0]

In more recent times of horror:

> After the fall of the al-Assad regime in Syria, large stockpiles of the illicit drug captagon have reportedly been uncovered.

> The stockpiles, found by Syrian rebels, are believed to be linked to al-Assad military headquarters, implicating the fallen regime in the drug’s manufacture and distribution. [1]

[0] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3764482/

[1] https://theconversation.com/what-is-the-drug-captagon-and-ho...

Everybody who could afford it adopted psychostimulants in WW2. Go pills have been part and parcel since then. Some countries have adopted modafinil, but the US still uses amphetamine.

I am not sure if that's still the case, but "go pills," Dexedrine, were certainly used in Afghanistan. Here was a horrible potential side-effect:

https://www.cbc.ca/news2/background/friendlyfire/gopills.htm...

Im sure eventually whatever pills the Germans were taking back then were bad for you but I would imagine smoking huge doses of not so pure street meth is quite a bit different than something created in a lab.

That being said if anyone uses drugs to avoid sleeping for many days straight I would imagine it's quite horrible for your mental health

So…not that different.

> In 1919, the Japanese discovered a more potent version of the drug — methamphetamine. The new drug was a crystalline powder soluble in water. In this form, it can be smoked, injected, snorted or taken orally. Users get an intense but brief high when they inject or smoke the drug, but if it's snorted or taken orally by capsule, the high lasts longer.

There was also a drink with same name hiropon that was generally available for some time.

I tried googling for more info but I haven't been able to find much in English and my Japanese isn't good enough to read at that level. I've only heard about it from my wife and a few other people in Japan. I've seen a few old posters for it at old bars.

I am an adult with ADHD and have never been able to get past the side effects that I have to drugs such as amphetamines and SSRIs. I was prescribed Modafinil for a short period for "Shift Work Disorder" when I worked shift work as a Stationary Engineer and it was glorious in regard to my ADHD symptoms with effectively zero side effects. I wish the US would expand its usage.

Considering the soldiers were already extremely high risk for lead poisoning, might have been low on the list of concerns.

Modafinil is only a Schedule IV controlled substance so it's usually possible to find a doctor who will prescribe off label if you want it. (This isn't medical advice.)

There were also reports about widespread use of captagon during the attacks of October 7th 2023.

Adrafinil is straight up unregulated in the US and is metabolized to modafinil in the body if you want to, you know, expand its usage personally.

I had not heard that, but I can believe it.

Just a note for anyone passing by. The side effects are rare, except diarrhea and you need to watch your liver enzyme levels if I remember right. Everyone I know who's taken that had diarrhea the entire time (manageable with meds), and it will screw your liver long term.

But I'm not a doctor either so who knows really.

I think the GI effects are basically the same between any of the -afinils, FWIW.

I wouldn't recommend them in general, but mostly because they last too long to really work with a normal 16/8 sleep cycle and the other stimmy effects can detract from things other than focus work.

Highly recommend the book "Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich" by Norman Ohler, a podcast promo led me to get the book from the library and I really liked it!

Adderall is just regular amphetamine, not even a substituted amphetamine.

You've probably also heard of 3,4-Methylenedioxy-N-methylamphetamine, though its abbreviated name (MDMA) is likely more familiar.

It's a huuuuuge family of substances though, particularly if you go one step more generic and start with Phenylethylamine as the backbone (amphetamine is a shortening of alpha-methyl-phenethylamine), the family includes hallucinogens like mescaline, empathogens like MDMA and its close cousins, the whole 2C family, the cathinones and their derivatives ('mephedrone' had a cultural moment 10-15 years back). And some real nasties like PMA, PMMA and bromo-Dragonfly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substituted_phenethylamine

It's a mix of 4 different amphetamines

I never took any long-term, but I've actually napped (purposefully) the afternoon after taking one in the morning, which is impossible on amphetamines.

Which is to say, they seem better to me, but maybe long-term use is different.

Two, but those are just the enantiomers dextroamphetamine and levoamphetamine. Neither has any atoms extra or missing. It looks like four amphetamines because those two cationic isomers are in salts with two different anions.

Each enantiomer exhibits different effects so I don't know if that is relevant. (Even if you count dextroamphetamine sulfate and amphetamine sulfate as one, I'd still probably call it 3 because dextroamphetamine saccharate and amphetamine asparate monohydrate (the other two parts of adderall) do indeed have different forumlas).

Yep. There’s a video of Adolf rocking back and forth looking like he was tweaking

If you synthesize amphetamine through the usual pathways, as I understand it, you get a racemic mixture, which is what is normally meant by unqualified "amphetamine", and is very close to Adderall. It's true that levoamphetamine is not really active at all in this context.

As I understand it, the aspartate and saccharate still dissociate in solution. If so, there isn't much of a plausible reason to consider them different drugs. If not, they might act more slowly or not at all.

None of this puts Adderall in the class of substituted amphetamines like MDMA or Desoxyn or exotics like ALEPH: https://www.erowid.org/library/books_online/pihkal/pihkal003...

Interesting, I didn't know they were cousins !

It’s also noted as an off label treatment for ADHD as well by some doctors.