- cross-posted to:
- aboringdystopia
- cross-posted to:
- aboringdystopia
Key Points
- The wealth of the top 1% hit a record $44.6 trillion at the end of the fourth quarter.
- All of the gains came from stock holdings thanks to an end-of-year rally.
- Economists say the rising stock market is giving an added boost to consumer spending through what is known as the “wealth effect.”
The wealth of the top 1% hit a record $44.6 trillion at the end of the fourth quarter, as an end-of-year stock rally lifted their portfolios, according to new data from the Federal Reserve.
The total net worth of the top 1%, defined by the Fed as those with wealth over $11 million, increased by $2 trillion in the fourth quarter. All of the gains came from their stock holdings. The value of corporate equities and mutual fund shares held by the top 1% surged to $19.7 trillion from $17.65 trillion the previous quarter.
While their real estate values went up slightly, the value of their privately held businesses declined, essentially canceling out all other gains outside of stocks.
That’s a very emotional response, (which I expect, people have a lot of feelings about chemical stimulants)
So firstly, amphetamines are stimulants. All of them. Yes they do slightly different things but it’s like saying a red pen is vastly different from a blue pen. Both are still pens, these all stimulate chemical signals and have a high addiction threshold. Funny that you would list MDMA, and Wellbutrin (poor man’s cocaine) as alternatives trying to prove they aren’t still amphetamines.
And I mean that people are so craving caffeine, that we are adding amounts equal to that of strong energy drinks to standard soft drinks. The addiction is selling a 24oz lemonade that has the same caffeine per volume as the 2oz 5 hour energy. An amount that chemical dependent people find not a problem but that can kill people with heart problems (twice). They aren’t dying from their addiction but that of the people who don’t get their rush anymore from smaller doses of caffeine.
And yes cocaine use is still prevalent cause people still argue it works to keep them stimulated and helps them get through the day. Like taking other addictive stimulants, say like prescribed amphetamines. I’m just pointing out the parallels of people being addicted to different stimulants and excusing it away as part of the eras current in drug of choice.
It’s not a similar name that is important it’s the chemical action they have that speeds up chemical signal passing like adrenaline that these amphetamines do. And you are specifically ignoring it so that you can claim it’s bullshit on arguments you are making.
You are having an emotional response that you don’t want to be wrong about and that’s not my concern. In fact it happens every time I point this out and it doesn’t change the reality of it at all.
While useful to some Adderall, Ritalin, Wellbutrin, are all addictive chemical stimulants that we have deemed effective in getting a stimulated active populace that can resist fatigue and discomfort better than those not taking it. While it might be effective it does nothing to resolve or slow down potential environmental factors that make it a dangerous long term fix due to addictive nature of it, that don’t resolve underlying issues.
I’ve noticed you completely ignored that people suffering from dextroamphetamine addiction go to meth clinics as Adderall is just amphetamine and dextroamphetamine.
It really doesn’t matter what you think, or what I think, people actively taking small amounts of a highly addictive habit forming stimulant to get through life at an alarmingly increasing rate. And that’s reality. And your emotional response to belittle me does nothing to change that.
Emotions are an inseparable part of being human. Engaging with them in a productive manner is extremely important and does not invalidate an individual’s points (emotional vs logical is a false dichotomy that you appear to be using to dismiss them and avoid examining the factuality of your statements). They make some very logical and scientifically-backed points.
As one who went their entire childhood and most of adulthood without any treatment for ADHD, I think that this statement is correct but not in the way that it appears that you intend it. People with ADHD have well-studied neuro-physiological changes in their brains, as compared to neurotypical individuals. Notably, in the prefrontal cortex, which is associated with administrative thought, including emotional regulation and behavior related task and time management. Things that are extremely important to surviving and thriving in the modern world.
Having experienced going from the struggle of trying to function without treatment and the positive impact that treatment has had in my life, there are definitely emotions associated and that’s not a bad thing.
JFC. This is why we can’t have nice things. Humans will try to get high off of or screw anything.
“Here’s a SNDRI medication with fairly low dependency-forming characteristics that is literally saving the lives of people suffering from major depressive disorders and addictions. Can I have sex with it? Not in a practical sense. What if I cram that shit up my nose or mainline it?”
Whippits are also a thing. They contain milk products. Should we ban dairy and treat people who have milk in their tea and infants like addicts? People ARE going to try to abuse anything. It’s a fact of human history. There was even a mesoamerican empire that was united entirely by drugs and tamales.
Many cancer treatments are literally poisons, acting on either characteristics that occur me frequently in cancer cells or lower resiliency against the toxins. They can be used to murder people. Should we ban them and let those with cancer die without treatment to avoid that risk?
You come across as demonizing medications that show low addiction potential in the people who need them to function in a meaningful way in the modern world. Have you ever been treated like a junkie by a pharmacist for trying to pickup your prescription?
This statement makes me suspect that you are falling for a reporting bias as well as potential a bias against the existence of documented mental illnesses (I certainly hope that is not the case). In the past, adult ADHD was completely untreated. Prior to research involving brain imaging, it was assumed to be a disorder only impacting children (a great example survivorship bias - those diagnosed as children were often given tools to cope as adults, and those who were not diagnosed had little study into reasons for their negative outcomes). So, the greater number of people being treated with medications for ADHD and major depressive disorder is heavily influenced by these disorders actually being diagnosed and treated, rather than ignored.
Living the dream
Oh for sure to be emotional is to be human, I was simply trying to point it out so we could move past the obvious emotional side of their argument and argue based on facts and not pedantry meant to make me appear wholly uninformed in an area that I do have knowledge in for various academic and personal stakes.
But also yeah I understand that people who have felt supported by these drugs would very much have an emotional response to them. And the fact that they are needed to function no less true for the modern age. But man does it feel insane to be taking synonymous drugs that were taken during war time to keep your gunners alert for air raids to keep up in your work life balance.
And excusing it away by saying their is a perfect version of a brain that needs to be achieved by taking this drug causes an emotional response in myself.
But again I have never suggested a ban or restrictions on any of these items. Go back through the conversation and you will see I don’t stoop to tell people we shouldn’t have a thing even if it’s abused or even if it helps or not. But pointing out the insanity of taking neurologically modifying drug that alters chemistry of your nervous system to survive what should be a better world because of less direct environmental dangers is what I’m trying to point out. And that there are inherent risks with handing out large amounts of these drugs much the same way we later discovered to be true of opioids.
Pain killers are useful, but it can go to far and has fucked up a lot of people’s lives with addiction and having experiences they would rather not and it affecting those around them. I point out that people rather blindly or very happily hold up drugs as an incredible cure all answer while either happy to or all to ignorant of underlying issues, and an over-reliance would be negative as well.
And this is where you lost me as you seem to imply that I’m thinking mental illness doesn’t exist, which as someone who suffers from rather severe depression I can tell you I don’t doubt the existence of neurological issues, but this idea that it’s just all people who are being under diagnosed and that there might not be environmental issues that are at play rising the numbers means you also think that brain chemistry is a thing to be controlled and fixed at will of those with the chemicals to try them out on other people’s brains.
I assume likely that reality is as always a mix of multiple directional influences but this concept that just more people are being discovered to have issues is one I find utterly without base as a singular response and the narrowing of a single version of a good brain to be sickening. It goes to far as to feel like wish fulfillment and coping mechanisms for issues that as a whole humanity ignores.
Edit: Also I’m too poor and overworked to see a doctor, so my pharmacologist doesn’t treat me like anything as I have never really interacted with one. But I get it, you don’t want to feel like you are taking an analogous drug to an illicit one when you are just trying to feel better about yourself but that’s an internal thing you need to deal with and respect that it is in fact related to harder drugs.
That is honestly a relief and why I mentioned that I was hoping that I was misreading you.
I do not think that it is likely one or the other but a combination of multiple things. I also strongly suspect that there are environmental issues at play too. With the well-established like between lead poisoning and aggressive behavior (not to mention the slew of other neurological problems), I strongly suspect that we’re likely to see similar from microplastics or another widespread exposure that we’re not yet aware of. And that’s just chemical environmental exposure. Not even touching on harmful social exposures. The high-stress environment of the modern world is extremely harmful to physical and psychological health.
I think of it as a spectrum running from “needed to survive without harming self or others” to necessary for harm reduction/mitigation due to neurodivergence that makes functioning in modern society very challenging. It’s not that there’s an “ideal” neurochemistry or neurophysiology but that there are neurobiological phenotypes and conditions that are either not well-adapted to modern society (or, in some, extreme cases, any society). Use of chemical and other available therapeutic means allows for such individuals to survive or thrive in an environment that is not ideal for them.
Absolutely, it does. Medicine can be a bizarre thing. Similarly, like I hinted earlier, nitrogen mustards, as in “mustard gas” were the first chemotherapy agents for cancer treatment. Mustine (chlormethine) is still in actively used for this purpose.
Indeed. There can indeed be some denial, etc but, I suspect that a lot of it comes down to defensiveness due to societal issues. When people make a comparison to illicit stimulants, it often comes back to things like the ongoing shortage that has impacted a lot of people with ADHD. The shortage is caused, pretty definitively, by the DEA overcorrecting their enforcement of controlled substance, after they did fuck all about opioids. Amphetamines are a convenient target to “show that they’re doing something” because they sound like meth and are used to treat disorders that are either rare or not taken seriously.
Loose enforcement of the past allowed pill mills to thrive and supply the illicit market. Now, they’ve clamped down, causing measurable harm to those legitimately prescribed. They don’t care because they’re just in it to justify their budget increases and get camera time.
What in the god damn fuck? Did you just call Wellbutrin, a mostly non-addictive, non-stimulant antidepressant, an addictive stimulant? And did you just equate Wellbutrin, again a non-stimulant antidepressant with no connection to cocaine, to cocaine? Holy shit there’s no way. It’s literally impossible to get addicted to clinical doses of it, you’d have to be taking an ABSURDLY high, probably illegal, amount over a long period of time to even be able to develop a psychological addiction to Wellbutrin, it’s not even close to dangerous unless you have epilepsy or sometimes heart disease. It’s actually extremely common to use it in addiction recovery / drug abuse clinics to help patients deal with the neurological affects of withdrawal from other drugs because of how safe it is.
It’s also insane that you think “MDMA is an abused drug, so it’s the same as meth, also Adderall is meth too”. MDMA is a drug with PSYCHEDELIC PROPERTIES. It is figuratively in no way, shape, or form comparable to either meth nor (dextro)amphetamines. You are genuinely delusional making this comparison.
You quite obviously have not read almost all of what I posted. Saying “people with X drug addiction and people with Y drug addiction go to the same clinics, they must be basically the same drug” is possibly the stupidest thing you can say in the context of drug abuse treatment.
The next stupidest thing you could say is that “they increase adrenaline/dopamine/norepinephrine production so they must be the same”. Do you know how little that narrows it down? You are now including many antidepressants, anxiety meds, in fact a LOT of non-stimulants and hallucinogens.
I also never stated that ADHD meds aren’t stimulants. Where did you pull that out of? In fact I explicitly stated that they are.
You can cry “emotional response” all you want but that does not change the absurdity of calling Wellbutrin an addictive stimulant like cocaine, literally saying that Adderall is meth, and saying drinking 2 panera lemonades on a visit to the restaurant constitutes an addiction and establishing a lethal dosage of caffeine.
I can’t even begin to express the absurdity of the take “medicines for mental disorders aren’t cures for those disorders so we should get rid of them”. That’s not even the conversation.
Sorry but you’re genuinely crazy. There is absolutely no way you aren’t trolling at this point. I could believe you weren’t at the “everyone brags about microdosing meth, oh btw meth means all stimulant ADHD medications” because that is a common, and stupid, take by people who don’t know anything about drugs. But you’ve headed in a direction which is just unbelievable.
I can’t even bring myself to respond to any more of your garbage anti-science.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10104426/
You are making jumps in logic that I’m not stating. I really don’t care. You aren’t having a discussion with me either just being upset and jumping through hoops to make me sound even more irrational in your head.
Sorry but linking a study of abuse by a population mostly consisted of people who already have SUDs says absolutely nothing about how addictive Wellbutrin is other than it has some possibility of addiction for people who already have drug addiction issues.
You can literally abuse anything, even mostly or even entirely non-addictive drugs. People with SUDs have even been shown to develop addictions to placebos with no psychoactive properties. You are very poorly educated if you think that this makes Wellbutrin an “addictive stimulant like cocaine”.
The fact of the matter is that Wellbutrin abuse is extremely rare and there is no evidence of it being present in populations without prior history of SUDs. Therefore it is almost always labelled by pharmacologists as “non-addictive”.
It’s even crazier to imply that, because Wellbutrin can be abused, that somehow makes Adderall = meth??? Clearly you thought it was relevant considering you thought it was relevant that I mentioned specifically MDMA (being an addictive drug) and Wellbutrin (being one that could be abused).
Also the original comments literally said “people are bragging about microdosing meth” and when I said I’ve never experienced that you responded “Adderall”. That is just saying that Adderall is meth. There is no logical jumps there, you literally stated it. How do you twist that as not stating that Adderall is meth?
I’m sorry I stated that Wellbutrin (street name poor man’s cocaine) was addictive in a way that your pedantry took as singularly chemical dependant instead of just addictive in the sense that people will addictively abuse it as seen by multiple studies but I get it. You are sure no one is abusing it cause your brain tells you, you are right. And why would other people do something wrong. Now get off it.
And Adderall is literally amphetamine and dextroamphetamine which is very similar to the chemical response and dependency that occurs when taking meth. Again with people I know literally taking small amounts of meth when they run out of Adderall because it gives them the exact same feeling. Things I stated before and you ignored to argue against other things I said focusing heavily on addiction to lemonade that I never stated.
I have also never once advocated in this argument that people stop taking anything. People take their drug of choice to get through this world. I’m just pointing out that right now the world has the leaning towards an amphetamine addiction under the guise that prescription makes it better when we know from the opioid wave to not be true. Adderall is highly addictive as it’s literally Amphetamine. And I hold to it despite the emotional response of those taking it stating it helps because it’s just the actual reality.
Edit: also my original argument was just that people are using hard stimulant drugs even if prescribed it to work harder. Something society started advocating for during WW2.
I have literally never said in this entire conversation that Wellbutrin isn’t being abused (even though it is very clearly a non-stimulant and mostly non-addictive drug). I stated multiple times that people with SUDs can abuse it. I just pointed out how absurd it is that you think the ability to abuse MDMA and Wellbutrin at all relates to your claim that Adderall is meth.
An apology that would actually mean something is apologizing for your implication that Adderall is meth. This was never about your views on the effects of medications on society. Prescribed stimulant ADHD drugs, despite having some similarities to meth, are completely different to meth, are not even close to as addictive nor do they have nearly as severe side effects as meth. This, plus the fact that prescription ADHD meds are extremely impure, and even compared to pure amphetamines the effects are significantly neutered.
The drugs that the people you speak of are taking are not comparable to meth, and saying “meth” when you mean “Adderall” or “Ritalin” is literally just an insult to psychiatrists and people who use those medications. People use calling it “meth” as a way to push to mostly ban it like meth.
I know this as someone who has used ADHD medications and has immediate family who have had extremely bad meth abuse problems in the past (I live in Georgia, meth is extremely common here and probably the most abused drug other than opiates) and have used ADHD meds before they developed SUDs (ADHD runs in the family). The effects aren’t even close to similar, other than things most stimulants have in common like increased heart rate and kind of similar-ish effects on certain chemicals like dopamine and norepinephrine.
Adderall mostly decreases dopamine reabsorption rates, while meth PUMPS you full of dopamine and also decreases dopamine reabsorption rates, for example. When taking clinical dosages of Adderall as a neurotypical, you’ll at most feel more confident in your decisions and like you just drank a bunch of caffeine. Take the same amount of street meth and it’s not the same story.
You can complain about Adderall abuse, but substituting the word “meth” in its place is extremely misleading at best and downright disinformation at worst.
And you only refer to the possibility of abuse after I show reports of it. Your multiple times is in a single response. But apparently speaking afterwards and gently agreeing without agreeing is the same as being correct the whole time.
You are coming into this assuming you are correct about the entire argument and swinging the goalposts to match whatever part of the argument you have the most interest in at any given moment in your response. Yes I have been incorrect about parts but you fail to see anything other than you vs me with the only outcome being your total victory.
People love to abuse drugs and potentially harmful ones being simplified into nicer things when they have direct relations to their harder siblings say like a drug that is literally an amphetamine that can spiral into addiction of other amphetamines is not ridiculous despite your insisting incorrectly that Adderall (a prescribed ADHD medication) is absolutely addictive, and has similar affects to meth when taken in comparable doses. People I know swap between them.
I get that you have an emotional attachment to these types of drugs because you take them. I could tell at the very beginning of you arguing with me because it’s a pretty common thing to assume incorrect things about stuff you have good feelings towards and you want to feel good about this. But it doesn’t make it true.
Is my substitution of Adderall as “Meth” overboard. Sure, of course it is. I use to illicit an emotional response to try and raise awareness of negative qualities so as to shame society into using other drugs with less direct pathways to abuse. I don’t care that people get angry about this topic because I expect and want them to because it’s open use I wish for people to question taking especially if “neurotypical” so as to dissuade recreational use.
It’s a drug literally designed to make you feel good and more alert. It’s directly made with amphetamines which are historically not great and it’s closest drug you can take available on the market is meth. I continue to disagree with its marketing as safe.