When considering the risks of “recreational” chemicals, it helps if we distinguish between moreish and addictive. By moreish I mean the tendency to lead to compulsive redosing, and of course when I say addictive I mean in the medium to long term. These can be surprisingly independent. In the case of MDMA, the consensus among drug users, in my experience, is that it’s medium high on the moreishness scale but very low on the long term addictiveness scale. In my opinion there is pretty much 0 danger of addiction for the vast majority of less wrongers.
However, from personal experience it can be a very dangerous social lubricant, it lead to multiple social interactions that I later regretted strongly, and this seems to be pretty common.
Amphetamine (adderall, vyvanse): +1
I’ve been using this for motivation and to combat akrasia for about 1 yr. Were it not for tolerance/dependance, i would give this drug at least a +6, the effects from a single dose can be quite profound. Basically, I was unable to achieve consistent boosts in motivation without increasing the dose, which would continually increase side effects until I had to abstain for a while, rinse/repeat. My guess is that this drug is much more useful for people who are naturally motivated; the other cognitive benefits (increased focus, mental clarity) do not seem subject to the tolerance issue. As for dependence, I just mean learning behavior X with amphetamine may mean dependence on amphetamine for behavior X