Abstract
Amphetamine psychosis, and psychoses due to other stimulants, present as a well-defined syndrome of a paranoid state with auditory and visual hallucinations in a setting of clear consciousness. Reports that appear to deny the consistency of this syndrome would seem to have confused the effects due to concomitant addiction to other drugs.
Fourteen cases are presented and the similarity of amphetamine psychosis to paranoid schizophrenia is illustrated. However, two distinctive features of amphetamine psychosis are the prominence of visual hallucinations in some cases and the absence of thought disorder in all cases.
It would appear that amphetamine intoxication can precipitate the onset of a schizophrenic episode.
The importance of amphetamine as a psychotomimetic substance is emphasized by the fact that it produces a "model psychosis" that has a closer resemblance to schizophrenia than that produced by any other known hallucinogenic drug.