Ma Huang
Ephedrine was big news a few years ago. Available over the counter everywhere, this stimulant had a variety of uses for which it was popular. It could provide immediate relief from asthma, and was still occasionally used in asthma treatment in spite of newer modalities. It was incorporated, along with caffeine and ginseng, into diet pills which promised to burn fat at phenomenal rates. And of course, its most popular use, for which it was ultimately banned by the FDA: as a stimulant. Not only would truck drivers use it, but so would rave kids who would pop ridiculous amounts of this pill and then go dance all night. It seemed that every week, another teenager out for a good time would end up exploding his or her heart.
Nowadays, ephedrine is hard to find, but ma huang, the plant from which it is extracted, can still be fairly easily obtained. Personally, although I understand the dangers of this drug, I like ma huang a lot and believe that, when used in moderation, it is both safe and useful. The advantages of ma huang as compared to regular old caffeine, are manifold. In the first bit, while caffeine makes you feel jittery, ma huang, except in extremely large doses, makes you feel pleasantly alert without excess tension. In reasonable doses, it is safe and effective, and the crash isn't all that bad. Now the bad news about ma huang .
It is very hard to kill yourself with caffeine. Sure, over years and years of consistently elevating your heart rate and blood pressure through its daily consumption, you might burn your heart out earlier than it would otherwise go, but this makes it dangerous only in the way that, say, fatty foods are dangerous. With ma huang, it is a different story. The dietary supplements that contained ma huang in its purified ephedrine form, whether as fat burners or stay awake aids (called “no-doze”), were sometimes safe at recommended doses, but when the doses were doubled, tripled, or even quadrupled, this drug can put a huge burden on the heart and lead to cardiac arrest. In addition, ma huang was often packaged with ginseng because of the high which these two drugs created when combined together. Unfortunately, this high was very dangerous, seriously increasing the risk of cardiac injury or amphetamine induced psychosis. So if you do decide to use ma huang, please be careful!
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