The overall point aside, people don't take Adderall because they want a kick, they take it because they need it to be functional. I'd say that you have to be either ignorant or an asshole to call someone a druggie for regularly taking Adderall, but you know, 4chan, ignorant, asshole, redundancy, yadda yadda.
Edit: Jumping to the conclusion that people take Adderall because they want to get high feeds the stigma that people with ADHD are just drug abusers, which is a core reason why people with ADHD have so much trouble accessing their medication. If someone wants to get high, there's little reason to go for Adderall rather than drugs actually designed to get you high.
They do, but the point is that you shouldn't assume that's the case simply because someone takes adderal. The vast majority of the time, they take it as directed to treat their ADHD.
People abuse literally any psychoactive substance to get high, the point is a majority of people who take Adderall or any other common ADHD medication aren't.
The people who go around acting like those who treat their disorder are druggies, and derived from that is the myth that ADHD is overdiagnosed rather than severely underdiagnosed (especially in adults, women, and minorities), are why it's so inaccessible to a lot of people who it can help immensely. It's been a massive problem for a while now, even media like South Park have been taking that kind of angle attacking ADHD diagnoses/meds for the past few decades.
Actually expanding on this, a large portion of people who illegally use such medications, e.g. for doing schoolwork or studying in university, have undiagnosed ADD and are unknowingly self-medicating. Something like Adderall doesn't really have affects very different from a bunch of caffeine on non-ADHD minds, it mostly just makes you more alert and less sleepy (on the contrary, a lot of people with ADHD can feel fatigued/sleepy when taking stimulants because now their mind doesn't have 50 thoughts at once going off at lightning speed 24/7). Who would have guessed ADHD medication helps people with ADHD?
I mean it's stupid that (in the US at least) we have a society that thinks "some people abuse this drug therefore we should make it extremely hard to get or make it illegal (as long as it's not alcohol or nicotine) and we should act like most people who use it are abusers and addicts" but it is what it is.
No the fuck it does not. They are both stimulants, that's effectively where the similarities end. A prescribed dose of adderal will not even come remotely close to the effects of recreational meth use.
There is a reason meth is far more popular for recreational use than adderal is. Its true that the effects of the drugs would be much more similar at equivalent doses, but I don't think this is a useful comparison. You could make the same comparison between effectively any two stimulants. This does not mean they are all similar in any meaningful way. All it means is that they all provide mental stimulation, which is kind of the point. The only thing accomplished by making this comparison is furthering the stigma that people who are prescribed stimulants are actually just addicts.
While meth can provide an effect similar to a normal dose of adderal, no meth user actually takes that small of a dose. No one who casually reads that the effects are similar is going to understand that. They are going to assume adderal users are constantly high out of their minds on legal meth.
A high recreational dose would provide effects closer to a usual dose of meth. Not the same, but closer. The reason I dislike the comparison is because most people won't understand that and will simply think adderal and meth are effectively the same as they are normally used.
Use of adderal as prescribed is not even remotely close to as dangerous as recreational meth use. I'm trying to prevent people from thinking that's the case.
The similarities between the two drugs simply come from the fact they are both stimulants. The comparison can be made between any two stimulants. The reason adderal and meth are used is because of the stigma adderal has. The comparison perpetuates that stigma despite having very little actual relevance.
They are actually very similar when used recreationally, which is the context of the post.
I didn't interpret it as being exclusively about recreational use. Now that I'm re-reading it, I wouldn't word my response the way I did.
I still think a response would be warranted to provide more clarification, but you are right to take issue with the way I did it. I used overly harsh wording because of my unwarranted emotional reaction to the claim. Because of that reaction, I also failed to account for the recreational use of adderal.
Having experience with both, it turns out you are correct but still an asshole. Meth is harder to dose correctly but it fixes the same problems with my brain that Adderall fixes.