January 10, 2022:
Ronnie Lane believed his MS was caused by years of amphetamine abuse. I sometimes wonder if there may be something to that.
My history with amphetamines spanned middleschool through college. Throughout that approximate decade I'd buy whites from outlaw biker gangs. Life advice: it's always good to be friends with outlaw bikers. Prior to university the intake was largely recreational. I'd combine them with beer, which was always my favorite mode of self-alteration. At college it had more to do with concentration. I now suspect that through that whole experience I was self-medicating ADHD, especially after giving up the recreation and becoming serious about study. I read so painfully that staying up all night to read and re-read and re-read again was pretty much required.
Even after university I maintained an accidental relationship with stimulants. For twenty years I took OTC allergy meds containing pseudoephedrine. They helped me breathe, and, without my understanding this, were probably also helping with ADHD. I only gave them up when they became controlled and I couldn't get them anymore. My GP was shocked. "You're only supposed to take those for a couple of weeks," he said, when I asked for a script to replace them. Ooops.
So that, to me, two years with Adderall felt "normal". The energy boost and stamina left me feeling like "me" again, the me I'd been used to over years of deliberate and later accidental stimulation. And it quieted many of the multiple conversations running concurrently through my transom.
Now that my medical experts want me off stimulants, substituting caffeine is really not the same. But I've only just begun the experiment.
I don't, of course, know whether Lane's theory is valid; and my experience is too trivial to serve as a test. I never ate speed by the fistful, as Lane says he did. I will point out meanwhile that Lemmy never said he had MS.