RCs Assuming 4-FA is benign, what is wrong with stimulant abuse?

[sekio]

When they mean healthy subjects, do they mean these subjects have no learning disabilities (ADD/ADHD in particular)?

I think it's healthy neurotypicals. http://www.psych.upenn.edu/~mfarah/pdfs/MAS enhancement.pdf

Some further points.

in the aggregate, the evidence supporting stimulants’ beneficial effects on healthy cognition is mixed. For example, Chamberlain et al. (2010) reviewed studies in which CANTAB tasks had been used to assess stimulant effects in patients and healthy control participants. “acute doses of medication improved aspects of cognition, though findings were more consistent in subjects with ADHD than in healthy volunteers.”
[...]

Our study was designed to overcome several challenges that have hampered previous attempts to answer this question. It had sufficient power to detect a medium-size effect for any one measure of cognitive performance. We nevertheless failed to find enhancement with any of the 13 measures we used. [...] Despite the lack of enhancement observed for most measures and most participants, participants nevertheless believed their performance was more enhanced by the active capsule than by placebo. We conclude that MAS has no more than small effects on cognition in healthy young adults, although users may perceive the drug as enhancing their cognition.

As "offensive" as this sounds, it seems to me some percentage of people are on amps because they subjectively feel it makes their life better even if it doesn't actually pose any real benefit in the numbers. Either they just need the amphetamine stimulus to get into 'work mode' or they lack the confidence/drive to accomplish tasks that would be difficult w/o amphetamine.

 

[ebola?]

but the question is not whether the drugs are benign or not. I said let's assume so. Would there be other things to worry about, such as what I stated in the original post?

I am not dependent on any drug except Tobacco (1 gram a day) and I don't plan on abusing stimulants. IF the drug was benign, would there be "no problem" in abusing it? It's a hypothetical question. If it helps, let's replace "4-fa" with "sending electrical impulses to the brain to affect the brain in the same way as Fa but in a more direct manner so as to avoid side effects and a natural tolerance build-up." The question still applies.

Okay, this was confusing to everyone because you framed the question as if you were asking about an actual, empirical drug when you were in fact asking about a hypothetical drug that does not exist (and with current technology, probably cannot exist). I still don't really understand why the question was posed to ADD, as your hypothetical question is framed in such a way to curtail actual discussion of physiological effects of drugs (ie, there are magically no negative effects and tolerance doesn't accrue). This seems like more of an ethical quandry or a question about self-hood and authenticity...we talk about that kind of think in P and S.

ebola