- The reason stories like this get written is that people want to find a way to explain the horrific stuff IS does without admitting that it’s the sort of horrific stuff young males with god on their side have always done. It’s much more reassuring to blame some drug than to face the grim fact that, in the next few generations, before Islamic culture is mulched into the global norm, there’s going to be a lot of ultra-violence from young Muslim men who are just smart enough to see that the tide is running against them, but not smart enough to come up with any better response than killing a lot of people eating pizza in Paris.
Comparing Captagon use in the middle east to Adderall use in the west is a huge extreme. Captagon in the middle east is often counterfeit, it's not the weak "real" captagon that was tested in the west, it's basically a superpowered version of real amphetamines. On top of which, when you had a child a pile of captagon pills and say "go, fight", that's way different than saying, "take one of these small doses a day". The kid or even undereducated adult in the middle-east likely has no idea what dosages to take, and even the people giving them out probably have no idea what dosages should be taken safely, so they'll likely take way too much of it. I know it's popular to be anti-Adderall and such, and I agree that it is wildly overprescribed in the West, but I've met people who have been completely nonfunctional change their lives completely from being a chaotic mess to being a calm productive member of society after being prescribed something like that. It's counterintuitive to think that a stimulant can cause calmness in certain individuals, but it's more of a demonstration of how messed up their brain chemistry is to begin with.
In my experience the counterfeit stuff is never as good but maybe the ISIS guys have all the luck. Anyway I'd love to see your sourcing for ISIS getting top notch amphetamines while the stuff the rest of the world gets is shit. I don't think you could pay me enough to zoot an ISIS oxy. No reason to get all hysterically defensive about the Adderall, no one here thinks your going to burn anyone alive. I don't mind a little something something from time to time myself and I've never burnt anyone alive.
I don't actually take Adderall, I was prescribed it once and it was actually a near burn people alive experience :). I still am not anti-Adderall, though, just anti-me-on-Adderall. The phrase "superpowered" was invented by me because I was (am) on a superpowered dose of this street drug kids are calling "coffee" nowadays. But my facts weren't completely off despite being jacked up on magical bean juice. http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Hezbollah-and-the-traffic-in-counterfeit-Captagon-407513 That article explains that most of the Captagon is counterfeit, and this research article from ~2004 (which goes to show, this isn't a new thing in the middle east... it's apparently been around awhile out there and was cracked down in 1988). http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0379073804004591 So it has amphetamine, magical bean juice, and several other things. If this table is to be trusted (source: a really crappy blog that sources the article above that I can't find a PDF of): It supposedly has amphetamine, methamphetamine, ephedrine, metronidazole, magical bean juice, theophylline, chlorphenamine, procaine, trimethoprim, chloroquine, and quinine. The magical bean juice alone is too much for me to handle, clearly. EDIT: That image works if you click it, not sure why it's not displaying correctly...The Drug Control Department of the Public Security Directorate of Jordan has put captagon under control in the year 1988.
Samples from 124 batches seized were analyzed by means of gas chromatograph–mass spectrometry (GC–MS). The analysis demonstrates the presence of amphetamine, caffeine and several other substances, besides, the absence of fenethylline.
The power of an amphetamine, or almost anything else, is generally a function of quanity consumed. The fact that it's not FDA regulated just means it's not all that different from domesfic US trailer brewed meth, a local varietal if you will but nothing special.
It sounds like it's something they take to stay awake and alert. If it were replaced by coffee, would it be written about the same way? No. I enjoyed the read, and agree that people need concrete, relatable reasons for that which is this disturbing. Drugs are an easy place to point your finger. Thanks for unlocking.