[pessimizer]

> And no surprise how people in this thread rush to defend amphetamine usage.

The same thing happens on opiate threads. The people who have been on opiates for a decade explain that their pain is the real kind that can only be helped by opiates. Take anyone with no pain at all, put them on opiates for ten years, and they'll say the same thing.

Because it's true. If you take away the opiates, they will be in all kinds of agony. They may have created deficiencies in their reward system that will never recover. That's not the same as saying that opiates are helping people (in the long term), or that pain is a deficiency of opiates.

edit: and there's no way out of this other than stopping big pharma from funding patients' rights groups, either directly or indirectly, and/or lobbying through them. Patients' rights groups from the 80s on were the Patient Zero of non-profits acting as political front groups for large financial interests.

[pseudalopex]

Many of the people who have been on opiates for a decade explain what they tried before opiates and the difference in their quality of life. The issue would be simpler if we could dismiss them as junkies and useful idiots however.

[seanp2k2]

Also just imagine what would happen to the stock market if they cracked down on cocaine consumption on Wall St.