okay also semi related post. I think it is really silly when people make all these posts about how adderall is so different than meth and start saying demeaning stuff about meth users when they’re discussing the artificially created adderall shortage. the two drugs are both stimulants and yeah they are not chemically identical but they are enough the same that I currently know of a clinical trial where people are piloting adderall as a form of MAT for meth users. (Which has been really popular with the participants so far, people were telling me they liked having access to a consistent supply of adderall and were interested in reducing their meth use to only a couple times a week instead.) so maybe we should start thinking a little bit more about how there’s a lot of propaganda sensationalizing and stigmatizing meth use and stop blaming people who use meth for a shortage that the DEA is causing!!!
meth and adderall are not only both stimulants but they’re both *amphetamines*. adderall is dextro and levoamphetamine, meth is methamphetamine. they’re more closely related to eachother than other stimulants like cocaine and ritalin.
meth is also a prescription drug for ADHD, too! many people don’t even know that — meth is not a schedule I, completely banned drug. the brand name is desoxyn.
Iirc dexto & meth are mirror to each other, so while they are made of the same things, the arrangement is opposite. This was explained to me to mean that they “fit” into different receptors. That’s the only real difference.
I’m far from a chemist, but I find stimulants fascinating chemically, so I went reading some more, and Adderall is a racemic mixture of different compounds that have different effects between them (I knew this part, but the next I did not). These compounds, levo and dextroamphetamine, are enantiomers. I read an explanation of how enantiomers are like the “left and right hands” of the drug, so they create non-superposable mirror images of each other.
This is what amphetamine’s “left and right” hands of levo and dextroamphetamine look like!
Meth’s left and right are levomethamphetamine and dextromethamphetamine.
Interestingly, prescription meth like Desoxyn is not a racemic mixture and is a pure enantiomer of dextromethamphetamine, so its amphetamine equivalent would be the prescription drug Dexedrine, which is just the enantiomer of dextroamphetamine. It seems illicit meth can be a racemic mixture of dextro and levomethamphetamine, similar to how Adderall is created.
I didn’t read further at this time, but I’m guessing that much like the levoamphetamine in Adderall, levomethamphetamine extends the duration of the effects, which would be more desirable.
The molecular structures of methamphetamine and amphetamine also practically are a copy of each other, with one difference:
