I'm glad you stopped before you got truly addicted like I do. I don't know why doctors are choosing adderall before they try ritalin on people. I'm not saying we should ban adderall, just that ritalin should be tried first for ADHD.
As a pharmacist dealing with the shortages, people were way more angry when told we were unable to get Adderall than the people who had to tell we couldn't get Concerta
I'm not surprised at all. I'm on Concerta now and it's such a relief being able to take a stimulant that's not insanely addictive. I know those patients are annoying, it's hard for me to blame them though when the doctor for some reason is choosing the more addictive option as the first line treatment, usually. And why are they prescribing IR Adderall first before XR? That's a recipe for disaster, given the dopamine rush of the IR. Of course you can crush up the XR beads, but I suspect the XR deters at least a little bit.
I've noticed doctors seem to be going to Vyvanse more now; it's less addictive than adderall, but I still found it addictive myself. I just don't know why they're not choosing the methylphenidate-based agents first, when they're safer and less addictive. They may be less potent, but does anyone really need more than say 72 mg of Concerta for their ADHD?
The thing about Vyvanse is it's inactive until after being processed by your liver, so it's extremely difficult to abuse. Take a higher dosage you don't get more stimulated, it just lasts longer as your liver works through its "backlog".
I felt like I still got more stimulated though, because it takes about two hours to metabolize if I remember right, so if I took a large dose at once, it would still be a larger than prescribed dose, it would just take longer to kick in. And sometimes I would have already taken my days pill but then take a few more, and the effects would kick in in a couple hours. I do agree that it deters abuse more than other extended release amphetamines for sure though. It definitely deters the most dangerous ways of abusing them, such as snorting or worse. So it’s a lot less risky than adderall xr. Vyvanse was odd for me in that it gave me more physically unpleasant side effects than adderall or Ritalin; adderall felt good but didn’t help much with my adhd. Whereas Concerta and the IR Ritalin booster I take actually help my adhd symptoms, while still combating my chronic fatigue syndrome symptoms as well, but it just doesn’t feel as rewarding or make me want to overdo it. I know everyone is different though, and I’m not saying everyone is going to abuse amphetamines by any means.
Depends who is writing the prescription. A former higher up of one of the major telehealth sites said the goal was to get 100% of people on them because it leads to repeat business. Now the feds are looking at putting 2 current higher ups in prison
>I didn't know chemically they worked in such different ways. As a result, I got addicted severely to my prescribed adderall for years.
Everyone reacts differently to pharmaceuticals. I used to be on citalopram (SSRI) for a while, was horrible getting on it, and when I felt ready to get off of it, I felt no withdrawal. Somehow I got lucky and didn't go through the horrible withdrawal that comes with antidepressants.
The same goes for adderall. I've been taking it for years now. I take it so responsibly my family gets annoyed about it - I only take one for work, four a week (10 hour shifts) and I don't touch it again until my 3 day weekend is over unless I'm doing overtime.
Am I addicted? Yeah, technically, since I do go into withdrawal, but I do it on purpose every week so I don't have to keep increasing my dosage for it to work, and honestly it's not that bad, and I know full well that trying to constantly chase that high because I've built a tolerance is so much more worse than sleeping a few extra hours on my days off. My technique works for me, but it doesn't work for everyone, whether it comes down to differences in brain chemistry or just the discipline to not use it every day.
The drug isn't the problem. It's the people abusing it, as well as the people who pretend to need it/think they have it because they went on TikTok and saw a list of generic ADHD traits and said "omg that's just like what I do". And they're making it far worse for those of us who genuinely need this medicine.
Ritalin sucks. You can say it blocks dopamine but that doesn't mean it does a great job at it. It's also heightens anxiety instead of calms me like adderall.
Keeping you awake is probably it's best quality.
Ritalin helps my ADHD symptoms and executive function. It was adderall that kept me awake and basically just got me high like meth, which is essentially what it is. I'm not sure why you're attacking a safer and less addictive medication to defend what's essentially just a slightly milder meth in a pill. But Ritalin is superior in many ways.
That's great it works for you, but this post came off as "well it works for me, so you guys should get your drug banned or supplied way less because some people can't resist abuse."
Your pharmacology isn’t right. Methylphenidate acts on the same cellular transporters as amphetamines to inhibit reuptake of dopamine and norepinephrine, to a much lesser degree, serotonin. This doesn’t matter anyways because the pleasurable and addictive effects of these drugs come mostly from dopamine. We know this is true because SSRIs don’t have any of the same pleasurable effects as adderall/ritalin and neither does atomoxetine (Strattera), which is the ADHD drug that is mostly specific to norepinephrine reuptake. All of this is an oversimplification still because the brain is more complicated than saying that “X neurotransmitter = feel good”. If I took a syringe full of serotonin and injected into your brain it wouldn’t feel good, you would probably die. Everything depends on where and when neurotransmitters are and I’m not going to pretend like I understand the brain any more than that.
I think that if you didn’t feel the same effect using Ritalin that you did using Adderall, you either weren’t taking an equivalent dose or your brain is just different, similar to how some drug addicts prefer meth over cocaine or vice versa despite a similar mechanism of action.
I agree with you that methylphenidate shouldn’t be classed the same as benzodiazepines, but I don’t really think that adderall should be either.
My pharmacology is correct, actually, you can look it up. Adderall doesn't just inhibit the reuptake of dopamine, it goes beyond that to directly stimulate its release, not just block the reuptake. It is in fact objectively more addictive than methylphenidate.
Cocaine is also “only” a re-uptake inhibitor. Indeed, amphetamines exhibit both re-uptake inhibition and release, but phenidates have a much stronger re-uptake inhibition than amphetamines. In fact, phenidates also increase firing rates if neurons, while amphetamines tend to slow it down, which stops the from going into a hyperdopaminergic state (too much dopamine).
I agree that amphetamines are more addictive than methylphenidate, but the reason is not that the former are also releasers, the psychopharmacology of these is way more complicated than that.
stopped feeling the euphoria from Adderall so I stopped taking it
I'm glad you stopped before you got truly addicted like I do. I don't know why doctors are choosing adderall before they try ritalin on people. I'm not saying we should ban adderall, just that ritalin should be tried first for ADHD.
As a pharmacist dealing with the shortages, people were way more angry when told we were unable to get Adderall than the people who had to tell we couldn't get Concerta
I'm not surprised at all. I'm on Concerta now and it's such a relief being able to take a stimulant that's not insanely addictive. I know those patients are annoying, it's hard for me to blame them though when the doctor for some reason is choosing the more addictive option as the first line treatment, usually. And why are they prescribing IR Adderall first before XR? That's a recipe for disaster, given the dopamine rush of the IR. Of course you can crush up the XR beads, but I suspect the XR deters at least a little bit. I've noticed doctors seem to be going to Vyvanse more now; it's less addictive than adderall, but I still found it addictive myself. I just don't know why they're not choosing the methylphenidate-based agents first, when they're safer and less addictive. They may be less potent, but does anyone really need more than say 72 mg of Concerta for their ADHD?
The thing about Vyvanse is it's inactive until after being processed by your liver, so it's extremely difficult to abuse. Take a higher dosage you don't get more stimulated, it just lasts longer as your liver works through its "backlog".
I felt like I still got more stimulated though, because it takes about two hours to metabolize if I remember right, so if I took a large dose at once, it would still be a larger than prescribed dose, it would just take longer to kick in. And sometimes I would have already taken my days pill but then take a few more, and the effects would kick in in a couple hours. I do agree that it deters abuse more than other extended release amphetamines for sure though. It definitely deters the most dangerous ways of abusing them, such as snorting or worse. So it’s a lot less risky than adderall xr. Vyvanse was odd for me in that it gave me more physically unpleasant side effects than adderall or Ritalin; adderall felt good but didn’t help much with my adhd. Whereas Concerta and the IR Ritalin booster I take actually help my adhd symptoms, while still combating my chronic fatigue syndrome symptoms as well, but it just doesn’t feel as rewarding or make me want to overdo it. I know everyone is different though, and I’m not saying everyone is going to abuse amphetamines by any means.
Depends who is writing the prescription. A former higher up of one of the major telehealth sites said the goal was to get 100% of people on them because it leads to repeat business. Now the feds are looking at putting 2 current higher ups in prison
>I didn't know chemically they worked in such different ways. As a result, I got addicted severely to my prescribed adderall for years. Everyone reacts differently to pharmaceuticals. I used to be on citalopram (SSRI) for a while, was horrible getting on it, and when I felt ready to get off of it, I felt no withdrawal. Somehow I got lucky and didn't go through the horrible withdrawal that comes with antidepressants. The same goes for adderall. I've been taking it for years now. I take it so responsibly my family gets annoyed about it - I only take one for work, four a week (10 hour shifts) and I don't touch it again until my 3 day weekend is over unless I'm doing overtime. Am I addicted? Yeah, technically, since I do go into withdrawal, but I do it on purpose every week so I don't have to keep increasing my dosage for it to work, and honestly it's not that bad, and I know full well that trying to constantly chase that high because I've built a tolerance is so much more worse than sleeping a few extra hours on my days off. My technique works for me, but it doesn't work for everyone, whether it comes down to differences in brain chemistry or just the discipline to not use it every day. The drug isn't the problem. It's the people abusing it, as well as the people who pretend to need it/think they have it because they went on TikTok and saw a list of generic ADHD traits and said "omg that's just like what I do". And they're making it far worse for those of us who genuinely need this medicine.
I’ve been on Concerta, Biphentin and Vyvanse, and I really don’t notice much of a difference.
Ritalin sucks. You can say it blocks dopamine but that doesn't mean it does a great job at it. It's also heightens anxiety instead of calms me like adderall. Keeping you awake is probably it's best quality.
Ritalin helps my ADHD symptoms and executive function. It was adderall that kept me awake and basically just got me high like meth, which is essentially what it is. I'm not sure why you're attacking a safer and less addictive medication to defend what's essentially just a slightly milder meth in a pill. But Ritalin is superior in many ways.
That's great it works for you, but this post came off as "well it works for me, so you guys should get your drug banned or supplied way less because some people can't resist abuse."
No, I only said that Ritalin should be scheduled in a lower tier than Adderall. It should certainly still be legal and available.
Your pharmacology isn’t right. Methylphenidate acts on the same cellular transporters as amphetamines to inhibit reuptake of dopamine and norepinephrine, to a much lesser degree, serotonin. This doesn’t matter anyways because the pleasurable and addictive effects of these drugs come mostly from dopamine. We know this is true because SSRIs don’t have any of the same pleasurable effects as adderall/ritalin and neither does atomoxetine (Strattera), which is the ADHD drug that is mostly specific to norepinephrine reuptake. All of this is an oversimplification still because the brain is more complicated than saying that “X neurotransmitter = feel good”. If I took a syringe full of serotonin and injected into your brain it wouldn’t feel good, you would probably die. Everything depends on where and when neurotransmitters are and I’m not going to pretend like I understand the brain any more than that. I think that if you didn’t feel the same effect using Ritalin that you did using Adderall, you either weren’t taking an equivalent dose or your brain is just different, similar to how some drug addicts prefer meth over cocaine or vice versa despite a similar mechanism of action. I agree with you that methylphenidate shouldn’t be classed the same as benzodiazepines, but I don’t really think that adderall should be either.
My pharmacology is correct, actually, you can look it up. Adderall doesn't just inhibit the reuptake of dopamine, it goes beyond that to directly stimulate its release, not just block the reuptake. It is in fact objectively more addictive than methylphenidate.
Cocaine is also “only” a re-uptake inhibitor. Indeed, amphetamines exhibit both re-uptake inhibition and release, but phenidates have a much stronger re-uptake inhibition than amphetamines. In fact, phenidates also increase firing rates if neurons, while amphetamines tend to slow it down, which stops the from going into a hyperdopaminergic state (too much dopamine). I agree that amphetamines are more addictive than methylphenidate, but the reason is not that the former are also releasers, the psychopharmacology of these is way more complicated than that.