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Diet Pills
What are they? Diet pills are amphetamine look-alikes that produce many of the same effects as amphetamines without a lot of the laws that regulate them. They do require a doctor's prescription.
How do they make you feel? Diet pills make the user forget about food and being hungry. Like amphetamines, they also raise a person's energy level and put you in a good mood. Take them for too long and they can make a person crabby and unable to sleep
What do they do to your body? Like amphetamines, diet pills increase a person's heart rate and breathing. They can also cause heart problems and convulsions (uncontrollable muscle contractions).
How easy is it to become "used to" the drug? All drugs are poison to your body. But because your body is so amazingly devoted to keeping you alive, it can become "tolerant" to having poison in it. Most people taking diet pills lose weight during the first few months. But since taking the pills teaches them nothing about controlling their own eating habits, users regain the weight when they go off them. Dieters afraid of regaining weight may collect prescriptions from different doctors so they can keep taking the pills. These people end up looking like cocaine users -- very thin, very jumpy, very irritable, and very unhealthy.
What is an overdose like? An overdose of diet pills is like an overdose of amphetamines. It causes heart problems, which, in turn, can be fatal.
What's withdrawal like? Like amphetamine withdrawal, withdrawal from long term diet pill use is accompanied by mental and physical depression. But nothing physically painful or life threatening happens during diet pill withdrawal. In other words, it's easier for users to handle than withdrawal from tobacco, cocaine, or heroin. Most diet pill users who want to stop can succeed with help. However, since they started taking the pills to solve a weight problem, they should also get help from dieter's support groups and learn how to be in charge of their eating habits.
Is it legal? Low dose diet pills are available over the counter. Higher dosage pills require a doctor's prescription.
