Stimulants

What is your opinion on stimulants?

There’s a lot of discussion here about psychedelics and weed, but I’d like to know what this community thinks about the wonderful little chemicals in the stimulants class.
I think they’re amazing. Whether stimulants only unlock latent capacity through their psychological effects or actually increase the absolute upper limit of an individual’s capability through neurological tinkering, the effects are undeniable. Whereas I usually only see a piece of paper with some text on it, on stimulants I see a possibility to learn, discover, get a good grade, accomplish something.

Thinking men like Sigmund Freud and Paul Erodos produced incredible work under the influence of stimulants, and likely had insights and revalations that they wouldn’t have if their capacity for thought and speed of processing hadn’t been increased by stimulants. Jack Kerouac, Ken Kesey, Hunter S. Thompson, Ayn Rand, whatever you might think of their work or them personally, all show a clear influence from stimulants in their writing, and like Freud and Erodos it’s probable that they’d have produced less work without using stimulants. Especially Rand, there’s no way someone could write a book like Atlas Shrugged otherwise.

This is merely a primer, a few examples of how strong stimulants are used and the effects they can have, and how some people have made excellent use of them. Like any drugs, and possibly more so for a number of reasons, stimulants are potentially dangerous and capable of producing dependence, addiction, and psychosis. The superhuman peaks they can soar to are evenly matched to the valleys of destruction and harm, both pharmacological, psychological, and physiological that misuse can wreak. Stimulant use is about managing the downsides and maximizing the upsides, and if handled properly the problems can be reduced to an insignificant level, while the benefits can do much more for you.

(greatest part of this text came from the taimapedia page about stimulants)