Talk:History and culture of substituted amphetamines

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 9 January 2019 and 26 April 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Alexj447.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 22:24, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Semantics and their effect
Look, I don't like you wiki people so I'll present a simple point as my medical studies are digging at my soul when exposed to your bullshit. I don't care what you do but all will be judged eventually.

"Methamphetamine was formerly in widespread use by truck drivers to combat symptoms of somnolence".

No, 'exhibiting symptoms of somnolence' is also called sleep. Stop over-extending your vocabulary. Truck drivers are taking stimulants to stop falling asleep at the wheel. Why obfuscate and mask something as a disease. Some truck drivers take methamphetamine to prevent falling asleep at the wheel. And thank God for them, at least some people care about others, unlike the shitheads who put this article together. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.84.138.46 (talk) 22:22, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

Title
Presenting information as this article does is a new concept on Wikipedia and I like it but please continue to seek feedback from WP:WikiProject Medicine and other interested communities about this. This could set a good precedent.

I think that the title of the article should be History of amphetamine. Wikipedia titles are generally succinct. Remember that the title will eventually be translated when the article is and cultural emphases like "history, society, and culture" may not translate as well as something more general and simple.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)   14:05, 16 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the feedback. :)
 * I completely agree on the title - I think my first choice is way too long; I chose a tentative name to get the split done since I wanted to create the proposal to split/merge similar content from methamphetamine to this article. I've posted a proposal about the methamphetamine split on both Wikipedia Talk:WikiProject Medicine and Wikipedia Talk:WikiProject Pharmacology.  I don't know of any wikiprojects that work on cultural and/or historical articles analogous to this one though. Seppi333 (talk) 15:40, 16 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Additionally, per WP:TITLEFORMAT, the title of this article should not be in title case; it should be in sentence case. Right now, as Amphetamine: History, Society, and Culture, it reads as though it's the title of a book. Flyer22 (talk) 03:37, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree - I unfortunately read the MOS on title conventions after I made the first split into this article. I'm going to propose renaming the page soon - I just need to work out a content issue for this and methamphetamine with another editor on talk:methamphetamine first.  Regards, Seppi333 (talk) 16:24, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Scope
This article should combine cultural aspects of amphetamine use and use of related or derivative drugs like methamphetamine, because I do think that these drugs are connected with a common culture. It would be great to identify sources which make this connection.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)   14:09, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Are amphetamine and methamphetamine really synonymous? This article mixes the two compounds together in a manner that implies as much. Yet, in para. 1, it is noted that meth is neurotoxic but amphetamines are not. (Without explaining the difference.) Further, in street terms it would seem the two drugs have fairly divergent histories. As such, mixing them as is done here does not help present the topic with much clarity.

Also, based on my and others' comments, in terms of organization, having the term "meth" disambiguate to the chemstry/pharmacology page instead of to something more like this page is a huge disservice to readers. Most will be put off by the heavy-duty chemistry AND are not intereted in it particularly anyhow. At present, the "methamphetamine" article does NOT link to this age in any readily useful way (say at or near the TOP of that article. This oversight MUST be fixed to avoid losing more readers and rendering Wikipeia irrelevant.  My two cents, thx.  Cynthisa (talk) 09:44, 6 February 2014 (UTC)


 * I've been meaning to merge more of the history/culture sections of the most notable substituted amphetamine articles (which is basically just MDMA/ecstasy and the subst. amph page itself), but I haven't finished copyediting this page after the last merge. A bit of disorganization is expected in light of that.  Nonetheless, the plan was to illustrate the common elements in subst. amphetamine culture with this page.  Seppi  333  (Insert 2¢ &#124; Maintained) 17:06, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

Neurotoxicity
Found the claim to be unsupported by source. A claim of marginally less neurotoxicity than methamphetamine is a sensible extrapolation, but source does not indicate zero neurotoxicity. Flying Hamster (talk) 11:53, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
 * The source says it's not directly toxic. That means not directly toxic...  Seppi  333  (Insert 2¢ &#124; Maintained) 19:04, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

I agree with Flying Hamster that the below statements about amphetamine are not supported by the quotes in the references (the meth statments may be ok, but I haven't looked closely):


 * There is strong evidence that methamphetamine is directly neurotoxic to dopaminergic and serotonergic neurons. Very high doses of amphetamine can cause neurotoxicity, but this is entirely due to oxidative stress rather than direct neurotoxicity; in other words, unlike methamphetamine, amphetamine itself is not neurotoxic to humans.

The article seems to be making a potentially WP:OR argument that amphetamine is less toxic than methamphetamine, but the quotes in references do not support the idea that amphetamine toxicity is ONLY from oxidative stress. The quoted sentence from Rob Malenka and colleagues is specifically talking about one population of neurons, not about neurotoxicity in general.

It is also concerning to me that a cultural/historical article focuses so rapidly on the toxicity of these approved prescription drugs. It seems off-topic and potentially anti-medicine since lot of people take these medically with little choice. In any case, I am not sure why these theories of amp vs meth differences are important to state at the beginning of this article. I agree they should be moved (and properly referenced) to the appropriate wikipedia page or deleted. 173.228.54.200 (talk) 18:55, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
 * While this is a moot issue now, I agree that the word "entirely" should have come out in that sentence for the reason you've argued (it was indeed WP:OR as it was written). I haven't checked this talk page for a while.  Seppi  333  (Insert 2¢ &#124; Maintained) 23:25, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

"Waste left behind from a methamphetamine lab"


This looks like normal trash to me, soda bottles and such. What evidence is there that this is trash left behind from a meth lab and not soda-drinking teenagers?

--71.237.236.28 (talk) 18:30, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
 * The original uploader provided a description saying this waste came from methamphetamine synthesis. 50.106.202.195 (talk) 00:38, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Recreational Use intro section problematic, misleading, badly written
The intro section on recreational use of crystal meth is misleading. The manner in which the documentary quote is cited out of context, combined with the paragraph's wording, implies that PnP culture is exclusive to gay men in San Francisco. It is not a "San Francisco sub-culture." That particular documentary happens to focus on the gay/bi/MSM, which does albeit constitute a higher risk category for drug use generally (in addition to mental illness, suicide, homelessness, and other problems stemming from societal/family alienation associated with being labeled deviants because of sexual orientation.), though MSMs (Men who have Sex with Men) do not hold a monopoly on hooking up with meth. PnP is less of a culture per se, and really more of a behavioral phenomenon. It's an activity that heterosexual people also participate in, even if not in the same numbers. Something to bear in mind is that urban centers like NY or SF have disproportionately large queer male populations compared to other regions of the country where meth use and manufacture are prevalent, e.g. New Mexico, Wyoming, and the Appalachian states where there are less people in general, and where stats on queer demographics are difficult to obtain due to the climate of enculturated homophobia.

Essentially, the section should discuss recreational use of crystal meth in general, which is certainly not limited to the gay community as the wording of this section suggests. The issue of meth and any particular community should be addressed in a separate section, not under such a broad heading. Recreational use of crystal occurs in many segments of the population, and there is no need to address that here. Needed instead would be a concise introduction to the subject with a topic sentence and a "projected organization" outlining the sub-topics on the main wiki article this is copied from ("History and culture of substituted amphetamines"), with those changes mirrored here. Either include more information to go along with statements about PnP and gay culture or simply outline the topic in general terms and leave the demographic issue to its own section in the linked article.

It is problematic to focus on one non-representative urban community, based on a TV Documentary rather than a primary source, especially without including any other information about other communities with prevalence of meth use in the US and elsewhere. It's US-centric, biased, misleading, and lacks primary source material more suitable to cite when introducing a complex topic.

Also, it doesn't make sense to just sort of abruptly throw in a sentence about the comedown as an afterthought after several sentences about gay men. Comedown effects and their relationship to long term addiction warrant their own topic, but the comedown in itself is not a cultural phenomenon and so therefore completely out-of-place here.

Not to be insulting, but this is middle school English stuff here. Topic sentence, organization, exposition, relevant examples, transitions, conclusion. Can someone re-work this so it doesn't just read as an ill-informed indictment of the SF Gay community?

TheArcane03 (talk) 10:46, 1 December 2015 (UTC)TheArcane03
 * Yes, it does need a lot of work. I think this article is fairly low on most people's priority lists though. Feel free to find some reliable sources and take a stab at it. Sizeofint (talk) 20:14, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
 * This article isn't comprehensive at the moment. Yes, that section needs work; anyone is free to add to it at any time.  Seppi  333  (Insert 2¢) 00:19, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

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What about all the other substituted amphetamimes??
I expected at least a short discussion of the other substituted amphetamines. 2600:1700:6808:90:741F:3BC5:7F1C:7204 (talk) 03:39, 30 January 2022 (UTC)