Re: MAPS: MDMA: other health-related effects?

[John Collier <pljdc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 06:43 9/01/99 -0800, Bob Greer wrote: 
> Actually, it was started by
> methamphetamine addicts (as well as beer drinkers).
>  
> Adolf Hitler was, in particular,  a heavy abuser of these on a daily
> basis beginning before he achieved elected office in Germany.  
> This is well documented, and was of considerable concern among the German
> officer corps at the time.  The drug was distributed within all
> levels of the German military and was freely available.
>  
> As the drug was invented in Japan, and retained a strong following there
> (among the military elite) until the end of WW II, the social effects of
> non-psychedelic and non-entactogenic drugs certainly deserve a careful
> reexamination.  (A joke in South East Asia, at this time, is that
> one can always tell when the Japanese tourists have been to the beach -
> by counting the hypodermic needles that litter the sand afterwards. 
> Shortly after World War II, large stocks of methamphetamine that were
> stockpiled by the Japanese government - to "energize" the
> citizens there in case of eventual invasion by foreigners, as well as for
> its' own use - were dumped into the lives of Japanese citizens. 
> Within a few more years, at least a third of the people at public beaches
> displayed serious needle tracks on their arms...) 

There was also a lot of illicit manufacture of amphetamines in Japan in
homes ("bathtub  speed"). In 1954 the Japanese Pharmacist
Association estimated there were 1.5 million addicts of  Philopin,
as it was called, mostly men between 16 and 25. A good book, a bit old
but pretty sound in methodology, on amphetamine toxicity with respect to
behaviour is Oriana Joseau Kalant, The Amphetamines: Toxicity and
Addiction,  2nd Edition,  University of  Toronto Press,
1973 (first edition was published in 1966, well before the "war on
drugs").  Both chronic consumption of amphetamines with and
without ill effects are reported. Addiction, chronic use and toxicity
from chronic use can all be separated in the population studied, i.e.,
one doesn't imply the other. The drugs considered were
methamphetamine,  dexedrine, biamphetamine, phenmetrazine,
methylphenidate and diethylpropion (the last three are not strictly
amphetamines, but have similar effects clinically).

The most common toxic effect is a psychosis -- of the literature from
outside Japan, of 242 reported cases , 83%, or 201 cases involved
psychotic episodes "of a schizophrenic type" (I put that in
quotes because schizophrenia is not a single condition). The psychoses
resemble paranoid schizophrenia, very similar to cocaine induced
psychoses, which were better known at the time.  The condition was
clinically indistinguishable from paranoid schizophrenia. The symptoms
ameliorate with withdrawal of the drug (except in some case that may
indicate a pre-existing condition).

John

"Philosophy is an unusually ingenious attempt to think fallaciously"

        

        

        

        

        

        

Bertrand
Russell