361
Trump's White House Was 'Awash in Speed' -- and Xanax
(www.rollingstone.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2024
361 points (95.5% liked)
News
22876 readers
3914 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Jesus fucking christ. This is terrible journalism. Modafanil is NOT a "powerful stimulant". It's in an entirely different class of drugs than amphetamines, or even methylphenidate. It's most commonly prescribed to people with sleep apnea or nacrolepsy, because it helps you feel awake and aware without having any of the less desirable effects of stronger stimulants. On a typical dose, all you'll notice is that you aren't passing out from exhaustion (and it's not particularly fast; the effects take about 45 minutes on an empty stomach); you just feel awake. Someone that's taking modafanil isn't going to seem coked out, nor are they going to be tweaking.
As far as taking alprazolam with alcohol, you have to take a LOT in order to be likely to suffer anything worse than a blackout. IIRC, the comedian Stephen Fry attempted suicide by taking an entire bottle of alprazolam and washing it down with alcohol (vodka?), and ended up waking up on his own two days later. I've done it, unintentionally; my memories of that night are very, very hazy. Alprazolam is not a particularly powerful sedative, and it's far, far safer than stronger classes of sedatives, like barbiturates.
It literally says that in the article. Just, apparently, further down than you read:
Right, but when RS makes wild claims in the title - "'Awash in Speed'" - and then calls it a "powerful stimulant" in the first paragraph, that's just irresponsible. Or intentionally and willfully deceptive, because the only drug commonly referred to as speed is amphetamines and methamphetamines. Or all three at the same time.
Given that RS isn't exactly a neutral source regarding Trump (and hey, I think Trump can eat a bag of dicks, and I can count the number of Republicans that I would vote for on the fingers of one foot), I lean towards it being all three at the same time.
Alprazolam(Xanax) is one of the strongest anxiolytics made. Times one hundred with alcohol. You are trying to downplay the seriousness of this revelation
No it's not, and I don't need to downplay it because it's not that fucking serious.
Seriously, if you're worried about modafanil and alprazolam, of all the godawful shit that the Trump administration did in their official capacity, then IDK what to tell you. That's not even a fucking blip on my radar for the garbage that he and his administration did, and I don't see why people want to treat this like it's some huge revelation that is going to affect who they vote for. Because if this is your tipping point, and all the other stuff wasn't enough, then your moral compass needs to be recalibrated.
Xanax is very serious, if it is so unimportant why did you take the time to type out your comment and reply downplaying it. You are defending Trumps White House drug use, perhaps it is you who needs to recalibrate their moral compass
On the scale of drug abuse in general, and on the scale of maliciousness engaged in by Trump and his administration, alprazoplam is not serious. It's right up there with huffing nitrous.
Oh no! They did bars of Xanax! Oh, and Trump tried to get Pence killed when he certified the election, tried to strong-arm Brad Raffensperger into commiting election fraud, sucked Putin's dick for four years, and on, and on, and on. There's so much really, really bad stuff that worrying about the illegal use of safe and effective prescription drugs with fairly low rates of habituation used by tens of millions of people daily in the US is dumb. For fuck sake, when you compare this against stealing and storing highly classified documents about the US nuclear arsenal in his fucking bathroom, a bathroom that could have been accessed by hundreds of people, it's not even on the chart.
Shit, I don't even think that what someone does or doesn't use is any of my goddamn business, in much the same way that I don't think Bill's affair with Ms. Lewinsky was any of my business (...as long as she wasn't coerced), especially since it's very unlikely that either of those drugs would significantly alter Trump's chimp-throwing-shit-at-the-walls decision making "process".
Whole bunch of whataboutisms I will not even read
I guess that's what you get when you go to a music magazine for political reporting.
Rolling Stone is pretty good for factual reporting, they're just heavily biased towards the American version of the left.
But.
They're making statements here that are opinions, but treating them as though they were facts. And that's bad.
Well, ever since they ran that hilariously fake story about gunshot victims not receiving hospital treatment due to Ivermectin overdoses, I've gotten in a habit of treating all of their reporting as potentially fraudulent. And this headline certainly isn't helping to restore their reputation.
Eh, apparently a lot of reputable news outlets fell for that one. They--and others--were reporting on a story done by KFOR, and didn't do any independent fact checking.
From what I remember, it was Rolling Stone who broke that story, or at least managed to give it national attention. Many of those other outlets probably trusted them to have done their homework and only reported it because they did.
But that's exactly how fake news spreads, isn't it? One outlet runs a sensational story and everyone else simply reports on it, assuming they did their due diligence. When it eventually turns out to be a hoax, they just issue a correction, but of course that doesn't get nearly the same amount of attention, so most people miss it and continue to spread unsubstantiated rumors.
I bet if you asked around on the street, you'll still find people who believe that this is a thing that actually happened during the pandemic.
It's really what you get when you don't RTFA and respond to a quote used in the headline.
So you agree this is a shitty and downright misleading headline then?
Funny attempt to avoid admitting you are wrong.
What am I wrong about? Is it not misleading to talk about "speed", which is commonly understood to be a street name for amphetamines, when the actual reporting is only about Modafinil, which is a completely different substance?
Amphetamines are Schedule II controlled substances while Modafinil is Schedule IV (i.e. a regular prescription drug). The headline is making it sound like they were throwing raves at the White House when actually they were just using a stimulant that's slightly more potent than caffeine. There is no "high" from Modafinil in any way that's even close to what you get from amphetamines. I know this because I've tried both for my ADHD.
High doses of amphetamine can make you aggressive, exuberant, and take wildly miscalculated risks. It can produce delusions of grandeur, paranoia, and various other dangerous behavior. Modafinil does neither of those things. It just keeps you from falling asleep.
Literally the article explains this, they used a quote from someone in the administration. Ya don't even know if the person quoted us wrong, only that the known drug that the pharmacy was handing out Willy nilly to staff was modafinil. Your complaint is that they used the word speed and it's just another stimulant not normally referred to as speed.
It's nit-picky at best.