alt Hacker NewsNot sure if it's still possible, but in eastern europe back in 2010s you could buy bottles of liquid ephedrine nose drops without a prescription. The pharmacists would get raw ephedrine and mix it in the back, filling the generic nose drop bottles. Tho they'd only give you 1 a month or so, looking at you suspiciously if you came multiple times in a row.
Back when I was obsessed with sports and being the peak athlete I can be, I'd go to the different pharmacies around town and buy a bunch of nose drops. These would get mixed in with coffee to get a dumb version of EC stack. Not sure if it was worth it, but it definitely had me wired to the gills.
I had a student once from Sofia (capital and largest city of Bulgaria), she told me her mother mailed her all sort of antibiotics because they were not available here (western Europe) and "what if she'd catch a cold or the flu?" (Both are viruses so antibiotics don't even do anything other than kill the useful bacteria in your body!)