Peter getting that shit checked out is best. Don't ignore chest pain either. It is retarded.
Why do you take amphetamines? Health reasons?
The short answer is that I take them for my ADHD, but the situation is more complex than that, since they have other benefits that aren't directly related to my ADHD.
On the ADHD side of things, they help me to focus on things, make it easier for me to switch my focus between things as necessary, rather than obsessively focusing on one thing to the exclusion of everything else and have a physically calming effect on me that eliminates my stimming motions.
On the non-ADHD side, they greatly improve my sleep; normally, my sleep pattern is very unstable and my sleep is often unrefreshing, so sometimes I'll be awake all night and asleep for half the day, or will sleep for 10 hours at night and be exhausted in the morning, or will get really tired half-way through the day and will need to nap for a few hours, or some other craziness, and with amphetamines, I'm able to go to sleep at roughly the same time every night, get up at the same time every morning feeling fresh and rested and get through every day without crashing and needing to nap half-way through.
I also normally suffer from chronic low-level depression, and amphetamines lift my mood to what I regard as a normal level, plus I normally have periodic dips into deeper depressions, and amphetamines stabilise my mood so that the dips are far shallower and more manageable.
Another thing is that they relax me and decrease my anxiety.
They also make voluntary movement easier, so I'm much more able to turn my thoughts into physical actions, rather than have them simply bounce around my head while I sit in my chair. I'm normally lethargic and find that it requires a lot of effort and willpower to get up and do physical things like cleaning the house or working in the garden, but it's quite effortless with amphetamines. Voluntary and involuntary movements are regulated by different brain regions which have differing responses to dopamine, thus amphetamines can increase voluntary motion while suppressing involuntary motion in dopamine-deficient individuals.
Considering the difference they make to my quality of life, I find them well worth the risk, which isn't particularly high as medications go.
