I agree with phase_dancer's comments here. People do vary in their responses to amphetamines (plural, meaning the class of drugs).
Perhaps the most well-known paradoxical effect is that of Ritalin, which calms down children who have attention deficit disorder instead of speeding them up. Years ago my nanna was (incorrectly, imo) prescribed Ritalin for chronic fatigue. She didn't have ADD and found it very unpleasant - she was jittery and wired, and not in the nice way!
I have known a fair number of adults who find amphetamines sedating or demotivating and have suspected that they might have suffered from ADD as kids, although this disorder is notoriously problematic to diagnose in adulthood. (Just my hypothesis, I haven't seen any research to back that up.)
As for drugs of choice, it is really is about
personal choice and personal chemistry. For example, most opiate users don't like amphetamines, and vice versa, as they have such opposite effects (and yes, there are those who migrate from one drug extreme to the other). Runner2, I take your point that you prefer the effects of meth to those of amphetamine, but I don't think you can generalise about others. My nanna, skanky old crackwhore that she is, loves a bit of speed on the dancefloor to get her revved up and her heels clicking, but she definitely prefers meth for a cruisy laidback day-after recovery. Mind you, we've had to hide her ice pipe to stop her humping people's legs - it makes her ever so horny, which speed doesn't do. And speed makes her sound focused and intelligent, while meth makes her spout endless amounts of crap and get very scattered.
As for using amphetamine to get off meth, I'm not so sure. With most drugs, if you are using frequent high doses and stop abruptly, you will have a bad comedown/withdrawal. Tapering off the amount and frequency of the meth dose towards the end of the binge will often take the edge off the comedown. Of course you would need the motivation to be able to ration yourself in that way... Perhaps amphetamine might help achieve this inasmuch as it is a less intense drug, but so might smaller amounts of methamphetamine, methinks.
Having said that, I believe there are plans in Sydney for a clinical trial of dexamphetamine as a withdrawal management treatment for heavy methampetamine users. (No details, sorry, but the source is reliable.)
Finally, I am always a little skeptical when know-alls like nanna make very definite claims about which variety of drug does what. With pills, we know that just because the dealer swears it's MDMA, it doesn't mean it is. Ditto with the various amphetamines. I always wonder how people know for a fact that they have taken meth or amphetamine, let alone particular isomers, without having a reliable lab test to verify. (Some of our finest Bluelighters do just that, of course
I think in previous years speed was presumed to be amphetamine. However, solid sources such as NDARC tell us that the vast majority of the stuff currently available in Australia is methamphetamine, including most of the cut powder sold as speed. From memory I think at least some of the NDARC stats are based on Customs seizures.
On the other hand, I have see many, many local (Sydney) urine drug screen results that show up amphetamine - sometimes together with methamphetamine, sometimes independently. Could it be that most of the street stuff is imported methamphetamine, while local backyard chemists are still cooking up amphetamine, though less so now that it is more difficult to obtain pseudoephedrine? (I would ask nanna, but she's busy out in the shed, so I'll just throw that question out there.)
And could it be that there is a spectrum of different effects (for example, from wired/buzzy to laidback/cruisy) that is more dose-dependent than variety-dependent - in other words that the effects of low doses of various amphetamines are
qualitatively different from the effects of high doses?
Now please excuse me... nanna's just blown up the shed.
