| >Many people, including myself, find exercise to be mind numbingly boring, and intellectually insulting. The supreme irony of this thread is that the exact mindset you're describing here would probably be alleviated by the stimulants being debated as an alternative(?) to exercise. I suspect this plays no small part in the historical use of just about every stimulant under the sun including cocaine, amphetamine and modafinil by athletes looking to get ahead. Said athletes were probably still literal leaps and bounds healthier than the average member of the population. Of course, no drug is an alternative to exercise and good sleep, and nothing about those two things would preclude you from taking any drug I can think of. It's a false dichotomy that breeds silly arguments. That said, the use of such things is probably not strictly healthy. However, rather than worrying about winding up on a 'faces of meth' poster[0] I would consider how much one is really benefiting from use. The stimulant drug classes are infamous for their ability to persuade people that they're receiving much greater enhancements in ability than is really the case. "Cocaine produces, for those who sniff its powdery white crystals, an illusion of supreme well being, and a soaring overconfidence in both physical and mental ability. You think you could whip the heavyweight champion, and that you are smarter than anybody. There was also that feeling of timelessness. And there were intervals of ability to recall and review things that had happened years back with an astonishing clarity." - The Autobiography Of Malcolm X, pages 137-138 "Like their British counterparts, the American scientists evaluating amphetamine for the military consistently found that, by all but a few measures, amphetamine did not objectively improve or restore performance lost to physical exhaustion, lack of sleep, or low oxygen any better than caffeine. Users certainly felt that the drug boosted their performance, but subjective impressions seldom reflected objective performance. Even where measurable gains were occasionally produced these were largely or entirely due to increased optimism and persistence in the contrived test conditions." - On Speed: The Many Lives Of Amphetamines, Nicolas Rasmussen, pages 81-82. You are after all paying quite a cost on multiple levels for whatever gains are alleged, so you had best be sure they're real. [0]: It's important to keep in mind the order of magnitude(s) difference between therapeutic doses and the mega-doses used by tweakers. In the latter case you should definitely be worried about winding up on a 'faces of meth' poster. |