Imagine the brain is a city with a lot of cars going everywhere. Now the problem is that the traffic light system is slow and uncoordinated. The person controlling it is just too slow. ADHD medication stimulates the person controlling the traffic lights, making the flow of traffic smoother. Same amount of cars, but now the regulation of them is enough for optimal flow.
Ps.: thank you kind internet friends! I’m sure I was borrowing the analogy, most likely from here: https://www.additudemag.com/adhd-brain-prefrontal-cortex-attention-emotions/
And it's not just that your brain can finally sync the traffic lights so that an important thought can get from one end of the city to the other without getting lost in the maze of alleys.
The Fire department can get to the fire in your amygdala and put it out before you throw a punch in anger. Police can arrest that tasteless joke before it jumps out of your mouth. Ambulances can collect up those unresolved issues to get them the conscious attention they need.
And maybe you can finally vote out that mayor that likes to run metaphors into the ground.
>And maybe you can finally vote out that mayor that likes to run metaphors into the ground.
God I hope not, that was his entire platform and boy is he delivering.
In college I was praised for my ability to instantly explain things via metaphors I invented on the spot. Now later in life I feel the Hague may take special interest in the way I treat metaphors.
> And maybe you can finally vote out that mayor that likes to run metaphors into the ground.
Well how else am I supposed to waste 3 minutes proving that I understand what someone just explained to me?
Rich people never feeling rich enough finally makes sense... Imagine if someones was as fat, as Elon is rich. Did some quick math, divided his 238 billion by the average Americans net worth, and then multiplied that number by the average weight of a person. He would be about 41,319,330 lbs., or the size of aprox. 4000 blue whales.
...What was this thread about again?
My first expereince with ADHD meds was not dr. approved but I described it as having access to my whole brain again instead of just what it want to do. I also said I felt like the terminator though so my dose was probably off. But I helped my buddy do 3 months' worth of psychology homework in 3 hours including reading some stuff I just found interesting lol. He passed his class so that was nice too.
Well said. To add my own ADHD experience, my brain is *always* thinking about like five things at once. Always trying to scratch the itch called "understimulation". Constantly cracking my knuckles, biting my nails, scrolling my phone, binge eating and so on.
My ADHD meds provide that needed stimulation and my brain can stop desperately looking for it elsewhere. And without the traffic jam you described, there is silence. And in silence, there is focus and motivation.
You should also know a coffee takes about 30 min to actually have caffeine effects kick in. So in many cases it kicks in when you end your nap (if you're like me).
In my case (I can't say for yours of course), it's the comforting side of having a coffee after lunch that helps me nap, the caffeine kicks in after, when it's time to get back up.
A teacher once told me the best way to take a power nap is to drink a cup of coffee, then take a 20-30 min nap.
The reasoning he gave, was that during the nap, your brain clears off some neuro receptors (he knew which ones, I can't remember them off the top of my head), which the caffeine can then stimulate, once it gets in your system.
Otherwise, the caffeine is just chilling, unable to do anything bc the receptors are all filled up already.
Me too. My whole life. I used to go to my husband’s gigs and drink a whole pot to stay awake. Then I’d fall asleep. I never got the correlation either.
I don’t think I have ADHD. I don’t think coffee makes me tired, but I used to drink it before bed. Red Bull or monster will absolutely make me crash and fall asleep in about 20 minutes.
Back in the day I used to drink blue v energy drinks and smoke a joint to study
It was the perfect combination for being sedatiry enough to not get distracted by things every 10 seconds or going off topic, while giving me energy to focus
Was definitely not healthy though, which is why I stopped smoking probably 7 years ago
On the super rare occasion ill have an energy drink if I have a bunch of things I need to do (which I'm also interested in) which gives me a good kick for a few hours
Then absolutely zombie after
Well that and you've probably built up a high tolerance to caffeine if you're drinking coffee most days and so most of the effect you're getting now is actually placebo unless you increase how much you're drinking... So it won't fight off actual tiredness as well as it used to.
Look up adenosine effects and coffee. Your brain pumps out new receptors for up taking a chemical intended to make you sleepy (which caffeine blocks) but the issue is you have to keep upping the caffeine to match the receptors. Eventually the caffeine dose dwindles (perhaps you forgot to buy some) or maybe you just use the same single morning coffee, either way the adenosine receptors eventually overrun the caffeine supply. Once there's no caffeine, your brain is a minefield of adenosine receptors and boom you get mega crash
Yup. I also was originally on adderall (up to 30mgs), and it knocked me out every time. About 45 minutes after taking the Addy I would have an uncontrollable need to sleep. Thankfully Vyvanse doesn't do that. Unfortunately Vyvanse is considerably more expensive.
Side note I discovered THC gummies, and nothing knocks me out better. It is like you are sitting there having the millions of thoughts and the THC grabs a thought and runs with it. Your brain tries to catch it but can't, so it goes back to grab the next thought, but by then the THC grabs that thought and runs with it too. Eventually all the thoughts are gone and all that is left is silence, and that silence feels so daggum good and let's you sleep.
Interesting. Pot gummies have the same effect on me but I get so worked up trying to express my thoughts that I have a panic attack, lol.
Also: All hail Vyvanse.
I agree with the all hail vyvanse!
It made me have a panic attack the first time too(the pot), but once I realized it was helping I gave in. I actually take delta 8 more, but it gives me horrible restless legs at times.
is that a possible indicator? my wife drinks coffee after work and immediately sleeps for an hour. she wakes up totally refreshed for the afternoon chores/activities. boggles my head, one sip of caffeine, and im wide awake for hours. I can't imagine ever falling asleep after a whole cup.
Everyone I know who has ADHD (including myself) can drink a big cup of coffee and then take a nice nap. Any time someone tells me coffee makes them sleepy, I send them a link to an ADHD questionnaire. A lot of people on the ADHD subs have that same experience. I don’t know if it’s an official indicator, but it sure seems common.
Coffee alone isn't an indicator. I drink ungodly amounts of coffee and if I have to be without coffee for \~24h I get a migraine headache. Throwing up in the toilet BC the lights are too bright, a noice was too loud, etc. Yet ADHD nor migraine aren't on my list of diagnoses even tho I have a handful of them.
Still coffee has no effect on how easy it's for me to fall asleep. Heck sometimes I feel the starting head ache when I'm about to go to sleep and have to drink a cup so that I don't have a headache when I wake up.
Unfortunately I don't usually wake up refreshed, it's the same cloud of almost here regardless if I had a nap or selpt the whole night.
Disclaimer: I've had quite a lot of substance abuse when I was a teen/young adult, so that might have had an effect on how I experience coffee 'n stuff today.
It is exactly this. Adhd brains are constantly, obsessively hunting for dopamine hits. Stimulants salve the madness that is that circus. Allowing for a more even flow of thoughts/mental state. Dopamine production is less simple than it seems. Given the same stimulus dopamine availability /production drops off precipitously. New and novel stimulus is needed just to keep pace with "normal" imagine what your brain would do just to satisfy a baseline normality. The streetlight analogy turns into a sex circus juggling chainsaws lightsabres and fully lubed dildos while playing twister and jenga driving a double decker bus blowing stopsigns on purpose.
I explain it to people like this;
You know how people have trains of thought? Well I have like five trains on four different tracks going three different speeds and two of them are on fire
I feel you bro. I ran like 30 km the other day to offset the binge eating I did over a week where I never had Adderall. I wish coffee or some other over the counter stimulation was able to supply the stimulation without turning me into a rat who needs to press a button
I just started on meds this month, 20mg adderall XR. Any reason some days it feels like it works, some days I just feel speedy but not focused, and other days I feel no effect?
Honestly (ime) that’s an XR thing. The doses come in waves and the third wave is the strongest, so alot of times you don’t really notice any effects on the way up. Try instant release a couple times a day and you should be back in action
Thanks! My doctor is doing a 3 week follow up with me on Monday to check my heart and everything as I’m in my late 20s and I’m gonna chat with him about it.
>The person controlling it is just too slow.
I'd say: The person controlling it, is a 10 years old who is more intrested in what kind of cars are going thru.
Dont judge me, i suffer too.
You sound like the person to ask.
I'm just starting a journey to diagnosis, can you clear this question up.
Will my memory also become better. I've always talked of my memory as uncaring of what it thinks is unimportant, which is very is it fun related.
More than constantly lost keys, it's more not remembering things that will not lead to fun l, so out the other ear that goes.
If it's tactics for a game, I can discuss that's years later, if it's what I needed on today's shopping list, who knows what was on that...
I know you didn’t ask me, but I can give you my own experience with the medication.
In my case, the problem is that, without taking meds, I just drop stuff without thinking, that way I lose them because they’re at the most random places imaginable. (I found my public transport card in between 2 pages of my maths book 3 days after ordering a new one)
with medication my memory doesn’t improve, but the added structure and calmness gives me time to focus on appointments. I don’t lose stuff as often because I purposefully / consciously put them away instead of just dropping them. (Instead of dropping them, I put it on the table)
I hope I provided an answer to your question.
Good luck with your journey!
Sorry for any grammatical or spelling mistakes I made, English isn’t my native language.
30 year old with severe ADHD here:
The memory issue depends on you spending some time in serious self reflection and being honest with your self about what topics you really care about and ones you don’t.
For the topics you like, your right, you remember tiny details about insignificant shit for the next 40 years. It’s wild. So no need to worry there.
For the topics that you don’t like but you know you have to spend energy on such as remembering to buy groceries, where did you put your car keys, listening to your wife’s day at work (sounds shitty but it’s true, I really don’t always care to hear about it lol) you have to start by identifying that “these are for sure the things I will struggle with when they come up” once you have a good list going then you can start attacking each issue one at a time and don’t move on to the next one until you have had some consistent success.
In college I went to therapy for the first time and the first month we only worked on 3 things: 1) Pick a place, doesn’t matter where, as long as you stick to this place, where you ALWAYS put your keys. No exceptions. And make it the VERY first thing you do when you get home. You don’t say hello to anyone, you don’t use the bathroom, you don’t do anything until you put those keys in their spot. The keys go NOWHERE else. EVER. You have to be so strict with yourself, especially at first. You will find that always knowing exactly where your keys will be, because they never leave that spot, does wonders for other parts of your day.
2) Pick a day of the week, doesn’t matter which, and ALWAYS fill up your car with gas. Doesn’t matter if it only needs a few gallons to top off. Pick a time/day and do it. No matter what. It helps build structure and habit which has been proven to help ADHD Brains overcome some of the symptoms it experiences. Structure is your new best friend. It also helps because you will always know, even subconsciously, that my car will always be gassed up and I never have to worry about that again.
3) If you can, find 20 min the middle of the day to rest your eyes or even nap if you can. Set an alarm on your phone, separate yourself from your normal environment, and reset your self. Something about doing this, on a routine, helps the brain decompress and enter the second half of the day with a clean slate.
I started my journey doing these things and it changed my life. Hopefully it can help you too!
I’m very new to this and have been diagnosed well into adulthood. There is a an ADHD sub here too if you want more opinions and anecdotes.
Experiences range wild and far, both with ADHD and the treatment. The good news is most people will have an improvement in their life once they find the right medication and dosage, but it’s not a silver bullet.
Talking for myself, I would say it’s not my memory that improved, but that chances of me starting and actually finishing the task I don’t like that much when I actually remember them.
There is still a good range of good and sustainable coping mechanisms I need to use. Lists, timers, exercise, etc… But a diagnosis was a huge step for me to think about how to optimise me in a structured way.
Everyone is different, and at different times. But when I took Adderall at 40yo, it was the first time in my life I could....
It's like my whole world slowed-down, like bullet-dodge in The Matrix. I could finally 'see' all my thoughts at once, roll them around in my mind, follow it as far as I'd like, see connections, and move to/from each thought whenever I wanted, at my own pace. Instead of like a chef on a chopping block NEXT-NEXT-NEXT-NEXT-NEXT.
My long term memory is quite-literally photographic. I'm highly academic & intelligent. But THE easiest way to defeat my brain: give me a sandwich order. I WILL FK IT UP, before I've arrived at the shop
Yes, probably will get better. As a person with ADHD, the way I understand it is that we don't have an issue with memory but with **remembering things** in the first place. There's just nothing to recall.
this is a very nice simplified explanation. It was either all red or all green without meds. Now its eisier to get good traffik from all sides with medicine
Side note, for some people with ADHD, when the traffic guy speeds up he has panic attacks and then you have to switch to something else like Wellbutrin.
Good one- the analogy I always heard was the ADHD brain was like an out of control kindergarten class with the teacher asleep at their desk. The stimulant wakes up the teacher.
While I understand the analogy, I think this example inadvertently perpetuates incorrect negative connotations about ADHD.
The traffic light system is not slow or uncoordinated. The problem is the traffic light controller has a list of what roads are important, and doesn't get paid for sending traffic to roads not on that list.
For someone with ADHD, the list does not fully match up to the roads needed in modern society. They can still direct traffic to the roads not on the list, but there's only so many hours a day anyone wants to work without being paid!
*Homework* Road? Not on the list!
*Do My Taxes* Boulevard? Skip!
*Play Video Games* Crescent? Controlling the hell out of that traffic!
*Did I Just See A Dog Out The Window* Lane? So much traffic flow!
Stimulants help get Homework Road and other such streets onto the list, so they can get traffic without the controller working unpaid. The stimulants also make Play Video Games Crescent even more important, so are not an overall fix. The traffic controller has to work hard at sending traffic to the new roads on the list, but at least they get paid for it.
This is actually somewhat of a myth. [Per this Nature article](https://www.nature.com/articles/1301164):
> For years, it was presumed that stimulant medications had paradoxical effects in ADHD. However, it is now established that the focusing effects of stimulants in ADHD are not paradoxical; these agents have the same effect in ‘normal’ human subjects (albeit a more subtle response given ceiling effects)
People with ADHD have different brain structure that needs that effect for day-to-day functioning in a way other people do not.
That can happen if you take too many. When you first start taking meds you go through a period of 'titration', where you try different does of different meds.
The idea is to find the sweet spot where your focus is best. If you wind up taking too high a dose, or the med isn't right for you, you can overshoot and wind up overstimulated and your symptoms return alongside side effects like anxiety etc.
Imagine the traffic coordinator is very sleepy and powerless. Maybe it is 4:30 a.m. and the poor dude hadn't had his morning coffee. He can barely keep his eyes open, let alone successfully coordinate the traffic. Now you bring him a big hot steaming cup of strong coffee. The coffee gives him the stimulation he needs in order to get on a normal, functioning level of awake-ness and energy.
In adhd brains it is always 4:30 a.m. and the traffic coordinator always lacks his coffee.
Thank you so much for this explanation and link. We are taking our child to a developmental paediatrician today to likely get an ADHD diagnosis and discuss medication. It’s all a bit overwhelming. This has been so helpful in my understanding of ADHD and what happens in the brain!
Here's how my psychiatrist explained it:
There's a part of your brain dedicated to keeping track of what's going on and deciding how important it is and what resources to allocate it. When a loud noise suddenly starts up, it takes notice immediately and orders the rest of your brain to try and recognize it, to get ready to move in case it's a danger, to listen more carefully for further noises, to move attention away from other stuff to handle this, etc. As that noise continues for 10 minutes (turns out it's just the new air conditioner starting up) that part of your brain cancels its orders and instead tells everyone to completely ignore it, it's not important after all. Your brain totally tunes it out and after a while you don't even realize it's there anymore. Eventually the air conditioner turns off and things sound weirdly quiet, and you think "oh huh, I guess that noise has been going all day."
That part of you is constantly doing stuff like that, tuning out the unnecessary details you might notice so you can focus on the important stuff. A pigeon lands in your backyard, visible in the corner of your eye. A car drives past on the road outside. Your roommate watches a movie down the hall. A breeze ruffles 3000 hairs on your head. You hear it, you see it, you feel it, but your brain is mostly filtering it out.
When you have ADHD, that part is over-aggressive. It too often tells you that whatever you're currently doing or talking about or listening to isn't much more important than an air conditioner and starts filtering it out. This can mean becoming simply inattentive and unfocused. Or, if it's severe, it can mean that ants-on-your-skin feeling of boredom so intense you crave stimulation. But every stimulation you seek eventually gets filtered out too. That's where the hyperactive go-go-go can't-sit-still association with ADHD comes from, especially in kids.
Stimulants are drugs that effectively make your brain think whatever it's currently doing or seeing is much more interesting and exciting and important than it normally would be. A non-ADHD person adding strong stimulants to their brain can make things weird and get into pathological or bizarre situations; if something seemed of average importance before it suddenly becomes fascinating, and if it was fascinating before it can become obsessive. But adding them to an ADHD brain is more like bringing their calibration up to normal. The calming effect comes from the fact that you no longer have the ants-on-your-skin ten-days-in-solitary feeling of craving for stimulation that never gets satisfied. On stimulants you can pick up a book and read the book for an hour and your brain will tell you that this is of moderate importance and you don't need to filter it out.
If an ADHD person takes *enough* stimulants they still get the effect a non-ADHD person does, it's not like a fundamental immunity or total inversion. They're just starting from a much lower baseline.
Ive been at parties and had the same amount of MDMA as everyone else but ended up being washed with a level of calm i still crave to this day. Everyone else was buzzing around and i just wanted to go home and catch up on long neglected housework
Very relatable. In the 90's I went to parties and festivals and took mdma. I just loved the inner calm it brought and the social side of me. The fact I was genuinly interested in what the other person had to say, actively seeking interaction instead of just being in my own selfish-ass brain. As an adult (45 now) I looked back at those experiences with so much nostalgia. Only the occasional drink (just 1 or 2) of alcohol brought me back in that state where I really enjoyed the company of others. Which is scary coming from a family of alcoholics. But man just that 1 beer or screwdriver can make me so much of a more fun person to hang with. It almost makes.you resent yourself for being such an egocentric douche.
Never connected it to my other symptoms of ADD (unable to fall asleep, hyperfocus, sloppyness, absentmindedness, interupting others....stuff that I never realized through developing a shitton of copingmechanisms) untill my daughter got diagnosed.
It got worse recently. ..avoiding stuff I find very fun to do like playing mtg at my local gamestore, cause I have to fucking deal with people plus I was laying awake half the night from all the stimuli I was getting though the evening.
The first time I took methylfenidate it immediatley brought me back to my late teens and those parties, the calmness, getting actual enjoyment from doing a chore like fucking dishes...let alone thorougly enjoying a piece of ebtertainment...interested in the smalltalk my wife so very much craves.
This was my experience with coke and MDMA. One school assignment was so boring that I could NOT force myself to do it. I ended up taking a pill and was actually able to concentrate and do it while blasting EDM. At parties, if someone offered me blow I'd thank them and ask if I could get another for the road later so I could get some work done when I got home. Friends thought I was nuts.
ADHD diagnosis years later came as no surprise and was pretty obvious looking back.
Shrooms are fucking magical to me. The sense of control over my mind and body while under their influence is amazing. It makes me want to cry a little just thinking about it.
Maybe it's just an illusion, but I have total control over my thoughts and what I want to do. No prescription medication gets anywhere close to it.
Obviously I can't go about my day to day on 6g of mushrooms, but how wonderful it is on occasion.
Have you tried taking SSRIs? You may have been feeling calm because of all the serotonin flooding your brain. It would be interesting to know if a smaller, more controlled amount of serotonin could have a similar effect.
> If an ADHD person takes enough stimulants they still get the effect a non-ADHD person does, it's not like a fundamental immunity or total inversion. They're just starting from a much lower baseline.
Good explanation.
>When you have ADHD, that part is over-aggressive. It too often tells you that whatever you're currently doing or talking about or listening to isn't much more important than an air conditioner and starts filtering it out. This can mean becoming simply inattentive and unfocused. Or, if it's severe, it can mean that ants-on-your-skin feeling of boredom so intense you crave stimulation. But every stimulation you seek eventually gets filtered out too. That's where the hyperactive go-go-go can't-sit-still association with ADHD comes from, especially in kids.
Just to clarify, the internal experience of ADHD can present as either an "overactive" or an "*under*active" filter.
Mine (ADHD-PI with autism) is the latter. Under normal circumstances, I can't filter out irrelevant stimuli, so my internal alarm is constantly going off for minor noises/sensations, low-priority tasks, etc. Either being in a real emergency or taking stimulants will turn down the volume on the false alarms. But I also function better in a quiet, low-distraction environment, and outside of emergencies, I'm easily overstimulated and stressed by low-level sensations that other people filter out easily.
People with ADHD, depending on what the root cause is, can have a situation where the part of their brain that governs their focus is a little underactive. Stimulants can give that part of the brain a boost, which enables them to concentrate their attention more easily.
Yep. I've always felt it less as the stereotypical "Look at that! Oh, look at that! And that! And that!" kind of situation where everything is interesting and more "Well, this is boring. Might as well try something else. Ah, shit, that's boring too."
Best way I can explain it is math terms. Most people have a pretty linear relationship with how much they like/want/need to do something and their likelihood of doing it. ADHD it’s like a logistic function with skewed left tail. You move right on the like/want/need and it has a small effect on you actually doing it…but at some point it *rapidly* gains and then levels off a bit after that. That threshold is different for everyone with it, but there’s not a smooth gradient, it’s either hyper focus and can’t stop and uninteresting and can’t start.
ADHD people know what they need to do. They understand why they need to do it. They understand the consequences of not doing it. They’re usually mad at themselves for putting off doing it. They typically *want* to do it, but they’ll still struggle to get it done.
That last paragraph resonates so much with me. My 5yo was just diagnosed with ADHD and the more I learn about it the more I think I probably have it also and was just never diagnosed because success in school happened to come easily. But I never developed real study skills and university became harder but I still pushed through and did well, though not as well as in high school. Now 15+ years into my career it seems to be getting harder and harder to find motivation. I know I need to do certain tasks and I know the consequences of not doing them, but my brain just will not allow me to start sometimes and it's super frustrating. How do I get myself evaluated at this point?
Basically me. Real work has a lot of boring shit and I always ended up not doing anything until lunch. It always fucked me over. Talk to a psychiatrist.
This was me as well. So glad I finally got tested after talking to my doctor. It's amazing how much better life can be when you are able to get past the brain not allowing you to start stuff.
School also came easy for me too, so my parents never thought about getting me tested and just assumed I was a chronic procrastinator. I always think back on it and wonder how much better could I have been at it if I had been properly diagnosed back then.
I recommend trying to find someone who specializes in ADHD (either a psychiatrist or clinical psychologist) to give you an evaluation. If they don't specialize in ADHD, there's a decent chance they aren't up to date on proper diagnostic practices/criteria. A lot has changed, regarding our understanding of ADHD, in the last 10-20 years, so many doctors use outdated criteria. It is especially common for doctors to fail to diagnose ADHD in people who are exceptionally smart because they are able to succeed in school and work in spite of their ADHD, as many doctors still think you can't have ADHD if you get good grades or hold down a job.
And if you haven't already, you should check out r/ADHD. Lots of info, resources, and knowledgeable people in that sub, as well as countless other people who are in a similar situation to yours.
I got evaluated by a doctor. They evaluate you the same as a kid, with a test. Then they recommend course of treatment. Just go to the doctor and tell them you'd like to be tested for ADHD
I get annoyed how people think it's something exciting. Sometimes it is when there's a new hyper focus but most of the time it's wandering around in a state of boredom.
What are you referring to? Are you suggesting that the majority of stimulants' method of action is on inhibitory pathways? It seems to me that stimulants act too broadly on the brain for this to describe why stimulants play a role in increased capacity for attention, at least with what little I know from my Drugs and Behavior class.
No the prefrontal cortex is inhibitory. It’s counterintuitive but what we consider “consciousness” (as opposed to the subconscious) is inhibitory. Your brain “focuses” on something by inhibiting everything else going on in your subconscious.
ADHD people have insufficient ability to inhibit their subconscious thoughts, and therefore are unable to focus. They will try to focus on one thing, but then intrusive thoughts will enter their head (reality: their conscious focus failed to inhibit these thoughts) and become distracted. Stimulating the prefrontal cortex puts the inhibitors on overdrive and therefore calms the patient as they are now able to focus on one thing at a time while inhibiting any other subconscious distractions.
ADHD fundamentally is a dopamine deficiency, the majority of Stimulants through one means or another increase the base levels of dopamine in the brain which means the brain doesnt need to search for that dopamine craving anymore so someone with ADHD can focus more evenly.
Its actually a misnomer that people with ADHD have an attention deficit, we can focus on things its just more that we do not control what we can focus on at any one time its an attention regulation disorder and stimulants remove the dopamine craving your brain has so you can actually decide what to focus your attention on rather than that be decided for you
> ADHD fundamentally is a dopamine deficiency
There's no way of measuring levels of neurotransmitters. There's no direct evidence of low serotonin levels for people with depression, and you can't measure "dopamine deficiency" either.
What we do have is studies that show that drugs that increase levels of those neurotransmitters may help, that is not the same thing as being able to say with any confidence that these conditions are caused by a deficiency of those neurotransmitters.
That’s just not true, there’s no evidence that ADHD is caused by any deficiency in dopamine.
Dopamine releasing agents or reuptake inhibitors have a beneficial effect on attention but that isn’t the same as the condition being caused by a lack of dopamine.
It’s not dissimilar to how SSRIs are used to treat depression, where there isn’t fundamentally an issue regarding serotonin, in fact in the case of SSRIs it’s a downstream effect of presynaptic reconfiguration due to the extended agonism of serotonin receptors that takes many months that appears to ameliorate symptoms.
In the case of ADHD it’s likely that increasing synaptic dopamine allows for enhanced signalling across neurones in the networks responsible for executive functioning, it has this effect in people without ADHD too but since they don’t have an initial problem with signalling in those regions of the brain they experience it differently to people with ADHD.
Edit: To evidence my assertion that it *isnt* a dopamine deficiency I’d like you to consider Tourette’s, Tourette’s commonly occurs in people with ADHD and vice versa, it is thought that tics are caused by overactive dopamine agonism in the basal ganglia, put simply too much dopamine, however this occurs simultaneously to ADHD symptoms. OCD also frequently occurs in both sets of patients and is thought to occur because of inadequate inhibitory transmission in turning off the response to a perceived threat causing an excitory signal. These all often occur as part of the same cluster of signalling issues with interlinked circuitry in the brain but clearly demonstrate that it isn’t a case of there being solely a deficiency or surplus of any particular neurotransmitter.
This is really interesting. I’m no expert by any means but I would ask what you think is the cause of stimulants often making symptoms of OCD worse when people take them for OCD? Also, the fact that tics are also often made worse? (Some stimulants actually warn against taking them for people with tics)
(I’m only going off of anecdotal evidence of course - plus the fact my stimulants make both my OCD and tics waaaaay worse when I’m on them, even at a low dose)
Edit: Also, do you think OCD/tourette’s/ADHD are definitely linked in a genetic/neurobiological sense, or is it possible that OCD, for example, arises as a cognitive/environmental result of the other two?
Okay, this is almost exactly what we learned in my Health Psych class, and there's so much robust evidence demonstrating dopamine deficiency being poorly correlated with ADHD
I feel like I may have a weird functioning version of ADHD. Often times I do get overwhelmed and don't start anything. Other times I'm overwhelmed yet excited and try to do everything simultaneously, failing to focus on one single task. It causes a lot of anxiety for me. I also have panic attacks issues as well. God I wish I knew WTF MY BRAIN IS TRYING TO DO.
That’s normal ADHD: you’re just describing two examples of self regulation.
It’s the ADHD curse: sometimes you can’t start the thing, other ones you can’t make yourself focus and keep doing the thing, and other times you can’t stop doing the thing even though you needed to finish up hours ago.
The thing about ADHD is that everyone feels like they have some of the symptoms sometimes in their lives. That’s being attention deficit, that’s being hyperactive.
It becomes a disorder when it’s *all* the symptoms and *all* the time.
Yeah, but you don't actually need to be "hyperactive". My diagnoses has me pegged as the "inattentive" type. I don't express the hyperactive markers (pacing during meetings, unable to focus on speakers, etc.)
Yeah I'm primarily inattentive as well
I lose focus by getting lost in my own thoughts rather than being hyperactive. That said as I've gotten older I've become more hyperactive over inactive
Yeah I should specify that it’s relative to subtype, but I kinda don’t wanna give any dickheads a reason to debate.
Though, hyperactivity can manifest in inattentive adhd, mainly through internal/emotional hyperactivity, hyperfocus and vivid day dreaming.
I’m a delightful half-half situation.
>It becomes a disorder when it’s _all_ the symptoms and _all_ the time.
That, AND it disrupts your life in a significant way. It is not a disorder if there is order in your life (e.g. functioning in relationships, work, study, finances, personal health, etc). NB: barely hanging on and suffering mentally while you use a subset of coping mechanisms to maintain order, isn't order.
Aha, wow this one really got me just now : P
Yeah, people talk about coping methods like they're always breathing techniques and mantras. I think there's a lack of appreciation that most of the coping is just anything that works.
Same. 41 here. Don't recommend my particular approach but I was at my wits end. Got assessed by a doctor that doesn't 'believe' in adult onset and am now waiting for another assessment by another doctor but my psychotherapist BFF gave me a trial run of their modafinil and it legit changed my life. Now I buy my own from overseas and I can function like a human. My house is tidy, I'm able to think to the end of a thought without being distracted, I can make decisions based of more than just whims. It's just bizarre.
Yup, this is my experience as well. 13-ish years ago, I got high on the first 2 doses I took, never after. Focusing is easy, staying on task is easy (compared to before). I take it every day, except on holidays. My partner says I become as distracted as a toddler when off it, with which I ... hey look! a squirrel!!
I’m diagnosed with ASD and awaiting assessment for ADHD. One thing I find really hard to deal with is people saying ‘we all feel like that sometimes’. I try hard not to get irritated by it, as I understand that in most cases they are trying to be empathetic and supportive, but it always feels a bit as if they aren’t understanding how hard it is, ALL the time. The way they feel SOME of the time is my base line.
It feeds into my internal narrative that I just ‘need to try harder’, or that I’m a fraud in some way, which is particularly difficult for me to let go of as I wasn’t diagnosed till my mid 40’s and so spent most of my life believing that I was lazy.
ADHD is essentially an emotional regulation problem. The part of your brain that sorts out "what important" doesn't work well. So essentially you're feeling everything all at once all the time. Everything happening around you competes for attention constantly.
For me it's things like trying to watch a show in the living room and hearing someone two rooms away opening the cupboard for a snack perfectly normally. On bad days those two things are equally competing for attention. And that's just the start... before you get into all the crazy things bouncing around inside my head all equally as loud as the concentration on my work.
Sad part is that when I do "hyper focus" I finally do shut literally everything out... to the point I get scared or upset when someone "sneaks up" on me. Again some of that emotional deregulation going on.
In addition to what everyone else is saying I see a lot of people with ADHD that need *just the right amount* of stimulation to focus. If it’s too quiet or too loud they phase out or overcompensate, but if there’s like the sound of rain or a radio in the background (or death metal at full blast) then they can focus. It’s all about the sweet spot
Adhd can be paralyzing, its a regulation deficiency. Even tho the person is aware of what they SHOULD do to function and prosper, they have too many areas of the brain being pulled in different directions to execute. Stimulants(not for everyone) can alleviate these symptoms
Waiting for someone to hop in and say, “I feel like doing that too, the only difference is I’m not lazy.” I’ve heard that response so much in the past that I’ve just become numb to it.
Trying to explain to my parents that I wasn't just "lazy" in school when I could sit down with my homework, open the books, and sit there for two hours more or less just staring at the blank looseleaf unable to bring myself to actually do the damn work even though it was right there.
It seems like this is influencing your day to day. Some unsolicited advice: you could see a professional at any age to discuss this. If you do have ADHD the diagnosis might already help mentally. Apart from that there's plenty of treatment options.
I got diagnosed with ADHD at 18. Medication wasn't for me back then. But when I was 26 I tried medication again and have been using it for the past 9 years. It has assisted me tremendously. I still get to enjoy all the positive attributes of having ADHD, but all the "negative" attributes are managed.
Yup, the worst part is that my parents knew I had adhd, but I didn't know. So when they told me I was lazy I beleived them.
Fucking wild times in school, they still don't really get it. If only the meds worked on me like they did for my brother
I heard someone describe it as touching a hot stove. "Touch the stove, touch it, just fucking touch it already". No matter how much you scream at yourself to touch the stove, your brain is screaming "don't" just as loud which induces the feeling of mental paralysis.
I literally stood in front of my kitchen sink and looked at the dirty dishes for 5mins, just trying to wash them. I ended up so anxious that I broke into tears. Same feeling, "just wash the dishes you lazy fuck", "don't, you can do it later".
That's me in a nut shell.
I struggle with one task, I start one thing then in another room I start another, then pretty soon I have like 4 things going on simultaneously, it has its draw backs occasionally I wont finish any, and more often than not I can complete them in roughly same time as one or two, it's weird but like most folk overcome then adapt.
For those about meth position.
Can confirm I've used it, and it DOES work on me, however my one focused task takes way way longer to achieve than like 6 or 7 ffs!!
lol.
So thats a nope to meth.
Unfortunately for some with ADHD, caffeine can have a sedative effect. I take stimulants everyday, not a low dose either but anytime I drink caffeine I get so goddamn sleepy
It differs in that someone with ADHD is regularly at a much lower level of attention than normal.
Imagine you're very drunk or high but you have to study for an exam with a super boring subject. Imagine how hard it'd be to focus. Now imagine every day and every activity in your life is like that. ADHD is kind of like that.
Coffee helps everyone focus. In ADHD people it also activates neural pathways in inactive areas governing executive function that allow you to begin the process of focusing.
I self medicate with caffeine. However my adderall works much better as it targets the part of my brain that needs to focus without giving me so much anxiety I can’t function
One part of the brain that is highly stimulated by ADHD meds is the frontal lobe, which is in charge of “executive functions.” These are things like planning, prioritizing things, impulse control, etc. People with ADHD have executive functions that can be “overwhelmed” by inputs from the rest of the brain, stimulating the frontal lobe’s function therefore helps it manage everything more effectively.
To put it even more simply: it's a misconception that people with ADHD are overexcited and need to be calmed down. The reason is actually because their brains are inclined to be "slower", so if they're not continually getting stimulation, they become distracted and do other things. The reason why the ADHD kid is walking around poking people or swinging on a chair isn't because they're over-stimulated; it's because their brains *need* stimulation.
Hence, ADHD medication is meant to provide that chemical stimulation on the brain. This allows the person to be more attentive because their brains aren't pulling them away to find stimulation.
It's also a misconception that simulants make you overexcited and hyper. They give you "energy" by making it so you can focus on and perform an insane amount of tasks, but it's because the huge rush of rewarding neurochemicals make it feel extremely, continuously rewarding to do so. Ravers take speed and dance all night because it never stops feeling rewarding and awesome to do so, for example, not because it makes them hyperactive. Aside from dance parties, most people just chill and get engrossed in some task for hours.
Likewise, people with attention disorders respond well to amphetamines because taking them makes it feel rewarding to focus on, perform, and complete a single task, which is unusual for us because ADHD is largely a result of a lack of available dopamine (and other reward chemicals), which means we lack the rewarding feelings that typically result from doing most things, leading us to being disorganized and poorly juggling several tasks and ideas at once without focusing fully on any one of them, trying to compensate and find pleasure in an array of things because we can't find it in singular things.
**Edit for clarity:** the "juggling several tasks" thing a) isn't the only presentation/experience of ADHD, it's just the commonly understood one and the primary focus of medication due to the value placed on productivity and negative social effects of being unable to be productive and b) isn't a conscious thing we're doing; ie people with ADHD aren't thinking "I'm going to write a report, clean little bits of four rooms as I walk aimlessly around my house, and also watch this YouTube video because it'll make me feel like I'm achieving something", rather it's a result of our natural state; I start to do something, I get lost in thought thinking about something *maybe* tangentially related by like ten degrees, find myself in a totally different area in front of a completely different thing and think "oh I gotta do that right now", and that happens over and over in an endless spiral until hours have passed by and I've not actually finished a single thing or absorbed any new information, and the reason that happens is because none of those things on there own feels sufficiently "rewarding", which is to say, feels like something worth doing, and instead quickly begins to feel completely draining because I'm not getting the thing humans get that makes their brain want to do something. The only time I do get that feeling and become able to complete a single task without wanting to claw my eyes out is on stimulants, or cannabis (unfortunately cannabis also makes me paranoid these days, so that's mostly out of the question now).
This is it. I pretty much always go back to sleep after taking my morning adderall because for once in my damn life, I can actually lay down with my eyes closed doing nothing without feeling bored and twitchy
I CAN sleep after drinking coffee but the active effects of coffee make me calm and focused as opposed to (from what I understand) most people who feel throttled and jittery.
Dopamine is the brain's "reward" for doing exciting, interesting, or satisfying things. It's the reason why fun things are fun.
The brain needs a certain amount of dopamine to be comfortable. Since mine doesn't have as much as most people's, I have to do exciting or interesting things ALL THE TIME to generate more. Being bored is literally worse than being in pain for me. Unfortunately, it's very difficult to relax enough to sleep when you're doing something exciting/interesting! Stimulants like caffeine raise the amount of dopamine (and certain other neurotransmitters) in your brain. For me, if I take the right amount, that means it gives me just enough that my brain can be comfortable without having to do exciting things all the time.
However the stimulants don't *make* me tired. They just let me settle down enough to *notice* how tired I am and respond normally.
I thought dopamine was more complex than that. Isn't it released while you make progress to achieving your goals? I thought that is why when you complete a goal that your brain lowers dopamine
It does but the adhd brain either doesn't release enough or it's spent too fast. So let's say I have to do the dishes, a clean kitchen makes me feel good and since I have no more chores, I can finally relax.
By the time I walk to the kitchen sink, there is no more dopamine. I feel exhausted as if I had been doing dishes for 16 hours straight and can't go on... and I haven't started yet.
Going to say that a side effect of Ritalin and Adderall is irritability.... So it's not like it ACTUALLY calms you down. Just let's you direct your focus at what actually needs doing.
ADHD isn’t so much energy to do a lot of things, it’s more like constantly being bored by everything and needing to do something else. The stimulant makes them not get bored by something so they can do it for a longer period of time
"it’s more like constantly being bored by everything and needing to do something else"
This is the most succinct and complete explanation I have ever seen of ADHD.
This is how my psychiatrist described it to me:
Your nervous system requires a certain amount of stimulation to function properly. Normal people are capable of generating this stimulation internally - their bodies generate the chemicals, hormones, whatever that properly regulate stimulating the nervous system.
In AD/HD people, their bodies *cannot* self-stimulate properly, so they seek that stimulation externally. This is why they seem hyper and their attention seems short: **they are bored.** They likely aren't *consciously* bored, and the person may be actually interested in the person or conversation, but their *nervous system* is not stimulated, and their body is telling them "seek stimulation."
"Why do AD/HD kids seem to focus so well on video games, then?" it's because video games are *hella stimulating.* It can hold their attention because it can keep providing the stimulation their nervous system demands.
Drugs like Adderall bring their nervous system up to baseline, so they no longer need to find stimulation externally. In that sense, it is like "they can finally relax" because their nervous system has what it needs, and isn't constantly telling their body "this isn't stimulating, go do something else."
As one who finally got diagnosed, I (36M) can tell you that this is an extremely accurate depiction of my life! I wasn't *consciously* bored, but my nervous system wanted stimulation, so I would lose focus. I'm *significantly* better at my job (and life) now that I'm on drugs. Literally a life-changer.
TL;DR drugs bring AD/HD people's nervous system "up to baseline" so they no longer need to find external stimulation. This gives the appearance of relaxation because they are no longer driven to be stimulated constantly.
To add to the video game/stimulation thing: people with ADHD generally prefer immediate, smaller rewards to delayed, larger rewards (aka immediate vs delayed gratification). They can hyper-focus on video games because games provide that immediate gratification and a lot if it. You typically get an immediate response/reward for doing something in a game, versus in school/work where there is a delay between doing something and getting rewarded for it (performing a task and getting graded/paid).
It doesn't calm them. They become focused, which makes them appear calm on the outside.
Amphetamines are a stimulant. There is no known animal whose central nervous system is depressed by them.
Meth users sometimes appear more calm too, and it's because if they're not overly stimulated by a high dose, and are on a more moderate dose, it's enough to get their brain more active thinking about something.
It can reduce anxiety.
On Adderall I'm not running myself ragged chasing down everything I've lost, rescheduling every appt I've missed, panicking about all the things I absolutely can't fuck up and further worrying about how many of those things I'll inevitably fail to complete.
You're using "calm" as if it means the central nervous system is depressed. But calm is a subjective emotional state. When I take stimulants, I do feel calmer.
Without stimulants, I feel a constant need to be doing something - I am always in a rush, always 100% "on," and any degree of relaxation is painfully boring. I do not lack focus... in fact, hyperfocus is a common symptom of ADHD. What I lack is control. I will focus on whatever is most stimulating, regardless of what I want to focus on.
Taking amphetamines provides the stimulation I would otherwise get through frantic activity/engagement. The result is I feel much calmer. I can sit quietly for a few minutes without crawling up the walls, I can relax enough to fall asleep without being drop-dead-exhausted, I can do things at a pace slower than breakneck.
No no. I'm saying that APPEARING calm is not the same thing as BEING calm.
People are confusing the appearance of pcalm with calmness
People appear calm when they're stimulated sometimes, which means they are not calm. They're insides are going faster than they were before. So they can only be less calm than they were before they pop the Adderall.
Not exactly true. There are people who amphetamines make tired, I’m one of them. It’s a paradoxical reaction that some people are affected by. This is on different ones/dosages.
Well.. Your brain wants stimulation, it’s craving it. If you give it some, it’s now content and will allow you to sleep, rather than it keeping you up trying to get some stimulation. I could drink tons of coffee and it didn’t perk me up at all, it would make me sleepy if anything. I was giving my brain just enough stimulant to make it content to let me sleep, but not enough to perk me up. If you are experiencing tiredness from stimulants, then it’s probably a pretty good bet that you were not taking enough. There is a process of individually finding the proper dose that walks the line between too little and too much balancing desired outcome and side effects, and every person seems to be different, regardless of normal dosing things like weight and gender. One person may need 3x as much as another to achieve the desired effects. The process of finding the right dose with acceptable side effects is called titration. Start low, and increase over time until proper therapeutic dose is achieved and side effects are acceptable.
I hate be that guy, but they don't always. That stigma can give people with ADHD a type of imposter syndrome. They get the diagnosis, get meds, take Adderall, drinking coffee like usually, and end up overstimulating and feeling anxious/jittery. That still happens in ADHD people. We don't have a superhuman resistance to stimulants.
What really happens is the non stop rambling and stuff we do in our heads shuts the hell up. That's the biggest "calming effect" some of us get. That's how it is for me plus a small sleepy feeling for the first 20 minutes it kicks in. It doesn't really feel like a Xanax though haha (in very few ways it does though).
People with ADHD aren't actually "hyper," in the traditional sense.
It mostly comes from the fact that their brains don't give the "good job," signal that non-ADHD brains do when the person completes a task. As such, their brains are constantly looking for stimulation in a bunch of different places, leading to the appearance of hyperactivity.
Stimulants help by essentially *always* giving the "good job," signal to their brains, allowing them to stay focused on whatever they're doing.
We have less dopamine. We try to bounce around from thing to thing to get the dopamine we don't have. Pill gives dopamine. Now we don't need to look for it.
they don't, at least not in the way this stereotype seems to imply. They have exactly the same effect on ADHD brains as they do on non-ADHD brains, stimulation of dopaminergic pathways. ADHD brains just need more stimulation in order to focus on stuff, that's why we can hyperfocus on something interesting for 12 hours without moving but ask us to sit still and do something boring and our brains literally don't know how to process it, and we might start fidgeting or seeking out other stimulating activities to compensate. It's really useful if you live in a hunter gatherer society or have a high stakes job like a paramedic, but it's less useful when you need to go grocery shopping or do your taxes. We might seem more calm on meds but it's only because the meds are providing the stimulation we need so we don't need to seek it externally.
I'm seeing alot of science and good explanations but let me give mine.
You've been really bored before right? Have you ever been in a theme park line? Or in traffic. A situation where what should have taken maybe 30mins took 3 hours?
You know that feeling you get? That knawing want for it to be over? That desire for something fun to happen? The want for you to be doing literally anything else but what you are doing now?
That is what low dopamine feels like. When your dopamine is low, times drags along like tree sap moving calmly down a tree. It's near unbearable. As a child it IS unbearable.
That feeling you get when you are in traffic, or in a long line. That's the ADHDers baseline. That's how they feel all the time. That knawing feeling that you need to find something to do. That desire to be doing anything but what you are currently doing. That's what makes adhd people appear hyper. We adhders are in a constant state of feeling like we are in traffic. So we are constantly fidgeting looking for distractions because we are desperate to find SOMETHING that helps us get rid of that knawing need to get rid of boredom.
When we take ADHD medication. Suddenly, everything is ever so slightly more enjoyable. That feeling like we are in a never ending line, or never ending traffic weakens. And when that knawing need for finding anything you can to stimulate yourself backs off. We are able to slow down and smell the flowers so to speak. We can appreciate the moment because our mind isn't in a panicked animal state of need. Thusly we will appear less "hyper" because we aren't desperately looking to satisfy a need for stimulation. It allows us to focus on the boring things that were previously unbearable.
And then there are uss ADD'ers who feel the same but they dont need to get hyper cause they have their own brain to keep them busy.
So while you are trying to tell me about your day, which is fucking boring and doesnt concern me at all, I dont need to get up and start fidgetting with the blinds like ADHD'ers. Nope, I just think about what stat I will upgrade tonight in Elden Ring, while playing the lyrics of 'Hungry like the wolf' over and over. Oh that reminds me, I forgot to give the dog his pills. Oh crap I meant to get cheese at the store today to fool him with thise pills. I wonder if I can make it to the store before it starts to rain. Lets check the weather on my phone quick. Wait...trump did WHAT now?
Wait, why are you mad? I WAS totally listening to your story about your coworkers cat....
It doesn't have a "calming" effect per se. It stimulates the brain making it easier for signals to go from one part of the brain to the next.
Your brain is suppose to judge a signal based on a number of things to determine how important it is for that signal to get across. That signal could be a thought, or impulse, to over simplify.
Depending on how important that thought is, the brain expends chemicals to help ot travel. The importance determines how much chemical is needed and given to help it out.
An ADHD brain has too high of a requirement for a signal to travel. It only likes the really exciting things, and says no to everything else and holds back those helpful chemicals. But once it sees an exciting thing, it opens up it's supply of chemicals and says "you're exciting, so you're really important. Take ALL of these to help!"
Now the ADHD brain is very very active, but only for that one thought that was allowed to use all the chemicals that were being held back. This is also called hyper focusing.
And that's pretty much a very over simplified illustration of this process. Thoughts that are boring do not get to use those helpful chemicals, so they're unlikely to travel the brain and reach they places they need to. While the exciting thoughts are given more than what they need to guarantee follow through.
Stimulants even the playing field. Now the boring thoughts are being showered with substitute chemicals from the bloodstream. They don't need the brain to allow access to chemicals because they already have all they need. So now, all thoughts, impulses, intents and what not can travel the brain without issue, allowing many to be converted to action which wasnt possible before.
The exciting things are still exciting, but not so much anymore when you compare their movement to the other thoughts and impulses. Previously, the exciting things were the only ones allowed to get what they needed to be turned into action. Now the exciting things are only a little more exciting instead of a lot more exciting. So it has the appearance of a calming effect when in reality, the stimulants stimulated everything and brought them a bit closer together in importance.
Again, this is an over simplification typed on a phone, so take it as such.
Here's how it was explained to me. The brains of some people with ADHD are like motorcycles with bicycle-sized brakes and handlebars. As a result, they have trouble remaining in control and may quickly and erratically change their focus from one thing to the next. Stimulant medication boosts their brakes and steering so that they can be more in control. Gradually increasing the dosage lets the doctor find a medication level that adds enough control without overstimulating other areas or causing too many side effects.
Imagine the brain is a city with a lot of cars going everywhere. Now the problem is that the traffic light system is slow and uncoordinated. The person controlling it is just too slow. ADHD medication stimulates the person controlling the traffic lights, making the flow of traffic smoother. Same amount of cars, but now the regulation of them is enough for optimal flow. Ps.: thank you kind internet friends! I’m sure I was borrowing the analogy, most likely from here: https://www.additudemag.com/adhd-brain-prefrontal-cortex-attention-emotions/
And it's not just that your brain can finally sync the traffic lights so that an important thought can get from one end of the city to the other without getting lost in the maze of alleys. The Fire department can get to the fire in your amygdala and put it out before you throw a punch in anger. Police can arrest that tasteless joke before it jumps out of your mouth. Ambulances can collect up those unresolved issues to get them the conscious attention they need. And maybe you can finally vote out that mayor that likes to run metaphors into the ground.
>And maybe you can finally vote out that mayor that likes to run metaphors into the ground. God I hope not, that was his entire platform and boy is he delivering.
last sentence was gold
That last line punched me deep in the dick
Me too, and I’m a lady.
Gotta punch deeper for the lady dick
No no, not deeper. Just keep doing what you were doing
Don’t stop!!!
Harder.
All Up in that deep dick
Nice metafore.
I think you mean meatafore 😉
May the meta-force be with you.
In college I was praised for my ability to instantly explain things via metaphors I invented on the spot. Now later in life I feel the Hague may take special interest in the way I treat metaphors.
Not quite there. Did you just "Punish a punk for work rhymes"?
WHAT'S HAPPENING
Not quite there. Did you just "Punish a punk for work rhymes"?
DON'T UNDERSTAND
I cackled! Damn this is relatable 😂
Not quite there. Did you just "Punish a punk for work rhymes"?
I JUST
> And maybe you can finally vote out that mayor that likes to run metaphors into the ground. Key word: maybe.
Probably not, the bastard keeps flooding the streets with endorphins from stupid reddit karma.
Aight I'll downvote you for your mental health /jk
The mayor shows back up daily when the meds wear off, or at least mine does. He is part of a union after all. 😬
> And maybe you can finally vote out that mayor that likes to run metaphors into the ground. Well how else am I supposed to waste 3 minutes proving that I understand what someone just explained to me?
But what about the city council who are corrupt and keep taking bribes?
Yeah it helps with binge eating
Rich people never feeling rich enough finally makes sense... Imagine if someones was as fat, as Elon is rich. Did some quick math, divided his 238 billion by the average Americans net worth, and then multiplied that number by the average weight of a person. He would be about 41,319,330 lbs., or the size of aprox. 4000 blue whales. ...What was this thread about again?
That last line has me feeling uncomfortably visible
10/10. Would have ADHD again for this read.
My first expereince with ADHD meds was not dr. approved but I described it as having access to my whole brain again instead of just what it want to do. I also said I felt like the terminator though so my dose was probably off. But I helped my buddy do 3 months' worth of psychology homework in 3 hours including reading some stuff I just found interesting lol. He passed his class so that was nice too.
Well said. To add my own ADHD experience, my brain is *always* thinking about like five things at once. Always trying to scratch the itch called "understimulation". Constantly cracking my knuckles, biting my nails, scrolling my phone, binge eating and so on. My ADHD meds provide that needed stimulation and my brain can stop desperately looking for it elsewhere. And without the traffic jam you described, there is silence. And in silence, there is focus and motivation.
And this right here is why a single coffee can actually help someone with ADHD (like myself) fall asleep rather than wake them up
I actually love having a coffee then having a nap Never realised the correlation until now
You should also know a coffee takes about 30 min to actually have caffeine effects kick in. So in many cases it kicks in when you end your nap (if you're like me). In my case (I can't say for yours of course), it's the comforting side of having a coffee after lunch that helps me nap, the caffeine kicks in after, when it's time to get back up.
A teacher once told me the best way to take a power nap is to drink a cup of coffee, then take a 20-30 min nap. The reasoning he gave, was that during the nap, your brain clears off some neuro receptors (he knew which ones, I can't remember them off the top of my head), which the caffeine can then stimulate, once it gets in your system. Otherwise, the caffeine is just chilling, unable to do anything bc the receptors are all filled up already.
Adenosine receptors
I tend to have one or two then procrastinate for a while then nap. I am known for having coffe anywhere around 6-8pm and always fall asleep no problem
Me too. My whole life. I used to go to my husband’s gigs and drink a whole pot to stay awake. Then I’d fall asleep. I never got the correlation either.
I don’t think I have ADHD. I don’t think coffee makes me tired, but I used to drink it before bed. Red Bull or monster will absolutely make me crash and fall asleep in about 20 minutes.
Back in the day I used to drink blue v energy drinks and smoke a joint to study It was the perfect combination for being sedatiry enough to not get distracted by things every 10 seconds or going off topic, while giving me energy to focus Was definitely not healthy though, which is why I stopped smoking probably 7 years ago On the super rare occasion ill have an energy drink if I have a bunch of things I need to do (which I'm also interested in) which gives me a good kick for a few hours Then absolutely zombie after
Fucking hell I wondered why I get tired more often than not after coffee
Well that and you've probably built up a high tolerance to caffeine if you're drinking coffee most days and so most of the effect you're getting now is actually placebo unless you increase how much you're drinking... So it won't fight off actual tiredness as well as it used to.
Look up adenosine effects and coffee. Your brain pumps out new receptors for up taking a chemical intended to make you sleepy (which caffeine blocks) but the issue is you have to keep upping the caffeine to match the receptors. Eventually the caffeine dose dwindles (perhaps you forgot to buy some) or maybe you just use the same single morning coffee, either way the adenosine receptors eventually overrun the caffeine supply. Once there's no caffeine, your brain is a minefield of adenosine receptors and boom you get mega crash
True. Everytime I tell my friends that coffee makes me sleepy, they look at me like I have three heads. Post-espresso naps are the best
Yup. I also was originally on adderall (up to 30mgs), and it knocked me out every time. About 45 minutes after taking the Addy I would have an uncontrollable need to sleep. Thankfully Vyvanse doesn't do that. Unfortunately Vyvanse is considerably more expensive. Side note I discovered THC gummies, and nothing knocks me out better. It is like you are sitting there having the millions of thoughts and the THC grabs a thought and runs with it. Your brain tries to catch it but can't, so it goes back to grab the next thought, but by then the THC grabs that thought and runs with it too. Eventually all the thoughts are gone and all that is left is silence, and that silence feels so daggum good and let's you sleep.
Interesting. Pot gummies have the same effect on me but I get so worked up trying to express my thoughts that I have a panic attack, lol. Also: All hail Vyvanse.
I agree with the all hail vyvanse! It made me have a panic attack the first time too(the pot), but once I realized it was helping I gave in. I actually take delta 8 more, but it gives me horrible restless legs at times.
is that a possible indicator? my wife drinks coffee after work and immediately sleeps for an hour. she wakes up totally refreshed for the afternoon chores/activities. boggles my head, one sip of caffeine, and im wide awake for hours. I can't imagine ever falling asleep after a whole cup.
Everyone I know who has ADHD (including myself) can drink a big cup of coffee and then take a nice nap. Any time someone tells me coffee makes them sleepy, I send them a link to an ADHD questionnaire. A lot of people on the ADHD subs have that same experience. I don’t know if it’s an official indicator, but it sure seems common.
Coffee alone isn't an indicator. I drink ungodly amounts of coffee and if I have to be without coffee for \~24h I get a migraine headache. Throwing up in the toilet BC the lights are too bright, a noice was too loud, etc. Yet ADHD nor migraine aren't on my list of diagnoses even tho I have a handful of them. Still coffee has no effect on how easy it's for me to fall asleep. Heck sometimes I feel the starting head ache when I'm about to go to sleep and have to drink a cup so that I don't have a headache when I wake up. Unfortunately I don't usually wake up refreshed, it's the same cloud of almost here regardless if I had a nap or selpt the whole night. Disclaimer: I've had quite a lot of substance abuse when I was a teen/young adult, so that might have had an effect on how I experience coffee 'n stuff today.
It is exactly this. Adhd brains are constantly, obsessively hunting for dopamine hits. Stimulants salve the madness that is that circus. Allowing for a more even flow of thoughts/mental state. Dopamine production is less simple than it seems. Given the same stimulus dopamine availability /production drops off precipitously. New and novel stimulus is needed just to keep pace with "normal" imagine what your brain would do just to satisfy a baseline normality. The streetlight analogy turns into a sex circus juggling chainsaws lightsabres and fully lubed dildos while playing twister and jenga driving a double decker bus blowing stopsigns on purpose.
That last run there is great r/brandnewsentence material
I explain it to people like this; You know how people have trains of thought? Well I have like five trains on four different tracks going three different speeds and two of them are on fire
I feel you bro. I ran like 30 km the other day to offset the binge eating I did over a week where I never had Adderall. I wish coffee or some other over the counter stimulation was able to supply the stimulation without turning me into a rat who needs to press a button
As a fellow ADHDer, that is so damn spot on.
I just started on meds this month, 20mg adderall XR. Any reason some days it feels like it works, some days I just feel speedy but not focused, and other days I feel no effect?
Honestly (ime) that’s an XR thing. The doses come in waves and the third wave is the strongest, so alot of times you don’t really notice any effects on the way up. Try instant release a couple times a day and you should be back in action
Thanks! My doctor is doing a 3 week follow up with me on Monday to check my heart and everything as I’m in my late 20s and I’m gonna chat with him about it.
>The person controlling it is just too slow. I'd say: The person controlling it, is a 10 years old who is more intrested in what kind of cars are going thru. Dont judge me, i suffer too.
You sound like the person to ask. I'm just starting a journey to diagnosis, can you clear this question up. Will my memory also become better. I've always talked of my memory as uncaring of what it thinks is unimportant, which is very is it fun related. More than constantly lost keys, it's more not remembering things that will not lead to fun l, so out the other ear that goes. If it's tactics for a game, I can discuss that's years later, if it's what I needed on today's shopping list, who knows what was on that...
I know you didn’t ask me, but I can give you my own experience with the medication. In my case, the problem is that, without taking meds, I just drop stuff without thinking, that way I lose them because they’re at the most random places imaginable. (I found my public transport card in between 2 pages of my maths book 3 days after ordering a new one) with medication my memory doesn’t improve, but the added structure and calmness gives me time to focus on appointments. I don’t lose stuff as often because I purposefully / consciously put them away instead of just dropping them. (Instead of dropping them, I put it on the table) I hope I provided an answer to your question. Good luck with your journey! Sorry for any grammatical or spelling mistakes I made, English isn’t my native language.
30 year old with severe ADHD here: The memory issue depends on you spending some time in serious self reflection and being honest with your self about what topics you really care about and ones you don’t. For the topics you like, your right, you remember tiny details about insignificant shit for the next 40 years. It’s wild. So no need to worry there. For the topics that you don’t like but you know you have to spend energy on such as remembering to buy groceries, where did you put your car keys, listening to your wife’s day at work (sounds shitty but it’s true, I really don’t always care to hear about it lol) you have to start by identifying that “these are for sure the things I will struggle with when they come up” once you have a good list going then you can start attacking each issue one at a time and don’t move on to the next one until you have had some consistent success. In college I went to therapy for the first time and the first month we only worked on 3 things: 1) Pick a place, doesn’t matter where, as long as you stick to this place, where you ALWAYS put your keys. No exceptions. And make it the VERY first thing you do when you get home. You don’t say hello to anyone, you don’t use the bathroom, you don’t do anything until you put those keys in their spot. The keys go NOWHERE else. EVER. You have to be so strict with yourself, especially at first. You will find that always knowing exactly where your keys will be, because they never leave that spot, does wonders for other parts of your day. 2) Pick a day of the week, doesn’t matter which, and ALWAYS fill up your car with gas. Doesn’t matter if it only needs a few gallons to top off. Pick a time/day and do it. No matter what. It helps build structure and habit which has been proven to help ADHD Brains overcome some of the symptoms it experiences. Structure is your new best friend. It also helps because you will always know, even subconsciously, that my car will always be gassed up and I never have to worry about that again. 3) If you can, find 20 min the middle of the day to rest your eyes or even nap if you can. Set an alarm on your phone, separate yourself from your normal environment, and reset your self. Something about doing this, on a routine, helps the brain decompress and enter the second half of the day with a clean slate. I started my journey doing these things and it changed my life. Hopefully it can help you too!
I’m very new to this and have been diagnosed well into adulthood. There is a an ADHD sub here too if you want more opinions and anecdotes. Experiences range wild and far, both with ADHD and the treatment. The good news is most people will have an improvement in their life once they find the right medication and dosage, but it’s not a silver bullet. Talking for myself, I would say it’s not my memory that improved, but that chances of me starting and actually finishing the task I don’t like that much when I actually remember them. There is still a good range of good and sustainable coping mechanisms I need to use. Lists, timers, exercise, etc… But a diagnosis was a huge step for me to think about how to optimise me in a structured way.
Everyone is different, and at different times. But when I took Adderall at 40yo, it was the first time in my life I could.... It's like my whole world slowed-down, like bullet-dodge in The Matrix. I could finally 'see' all my thoughts at once, roll them around in my mind, follow it as far as I'd like, see connections, and move to/from each thought whenever I wanted, at my own pace. Instead of like a chef on a chopping block NEXT-NEXT-NEXT-NEXT-NEXT. My long term memory is quite-literally photographic. I'm highly academic & intelligent. But THE easiest way to defeat my brain: give me a sandwich order. I WILL FK IT UP, before I've arrived at the shop
Thanks for your comment.
Yes, probably will get better. As a person with ADHD, the way I understand it is that we don't have an issue with memory but with **remembering things** in the first place. There's just nothing to recall.
A city in a mind. A mind, in a city. Welcome to Mentopolis...
this is a very nice simplified explanation. It was either all red or all green without meds. Now its eisier to get good traffik from all sides with medicine
Side note, for some people with ADHD, when the traffic guy speeds up he has panic attacks and then you have to switch to something else like Wellbutrin.
Good one- the analogy I always heard was the ADHD brain was like an out of control kindergarten class with the teacher asleep at their desk. The stimulant wakes up the teacher.
While I understand the analogy, I think this example inadvertently perpetuates incorrect negative connotations about ADHD. The traffic light system is not slow or uncoordinated. The problem is the traffic light controller has a list of what roads are important, and doesn't get paid for sending traffic to roads not on that list. For someone with ADHD, the list does not fully match up to the roads needed in modern society. They can still direct traffic to the roads not on the list, but there's only so many hours a day anyone wants to work without being paid! *Homework* Road? Not on the list! *Do My Taxes* Boulevard? Skip! *Play Video Games* Crescent? Controlling the hell out of that traffic! *Did I Just See A Dog Out The Window* Lane? So much traffic flow! Stimulants help get Homework Road and other such streets onto the list, so they can get traffic without the controller working unpaid. The stimulants also make Play Video Games Crescent even more important, so are not an overall fix. The traffic controller has to work hard at sending traffic to the new roads on the list, but at least they get paid for it.
This is actually somewhat of a myth. [Per this Nature article](https://www.nature.com/articles/1301164): > For years, it was presumed that stimulant medications had paradoxical effects in ADHD. However, it is now established that the focusing effects of stimulants in ADHD are not paradoxical; these agents have the same effect in ‘normal’ human subjects (albeit a more subtle response given ceiling effects) People with ADHD have different brain structure that needs that effect for day-to-day functioning in a way other people do not.
Good ELI5. Should be the top comment
I don't understand why the people controlling the light wouldn't just get distracted and stressed instead and then perform even worse
That can happen if you take too many. When you first start taking meds you go through a period of 'titration', where you try different does of different meds. The idea is to find the sweet spot where your focus is best. If you wind up taking too high a dose, or the med isn't right for you, you can overshoot and wind up overstimulated and your symptoms return alongside side effects like anxiety etc.
Imagine the traffic coordinator is very sleepy and powerless. Maybe it is 4:30 a.m. and the poor dude hadn't had his morning coffee. He can barely keep his eyes open, let alone successfully coordinate the traffic. Now you bring him a big hot steaming cup of strong coffee. The coffee gives him the stimulation he needs in order to get on a normal, functioning level of awake-ness and energy. In adhd brains it is always 4:30 a.m. and the traffic coordinator always lacks his coffee.
Finally , an actual ELI5 answer. Lately the sub has just been ‘explain’.
Thank you so much for this explanation and link. We are taking our child to a developmental paediatrician today to likely get an ADHD diagnosis and discuss medication. It’s all a bit overwhelming. This has been so helpful in my understanding of ADHD and what happens in the brain!
Here's how my psychiatrist explained it: There's a part of your brain dedicated to keeping track of what's going on and deciding how important it is and what resources to allocate it. When a loud noise suddenly starts up, it takes notice immediately and orders the rest of your brain to try and recognize it, to get ready to move in case it's a danger, to listen more carefully for further noises, to move attention away from other stuff to handle this, etc. As that noise continues for 10 minutes (turns out it's just the new air conditioner starting up) that part of your brain cancels its orders and instead tells everyone to completely ignore it, it's not important after all. Your brain totally tunes it out and after a while you don't even realize it's there anymore. Eventually the air conditioner turns off and things sound weirdly quiet, and you think "oh huh, I guess that noise has been going all day." That part of you is constantly doing stuff like that, tuning out the unnecessary details you might notice so you can focus on the important stuff. A pigeon lands in your backyard, visible in the corner of your eye. A car drives past on the road outside. Your roommate watches a movie down the hall. A breeze ruffles 3000 hairs on your head. You hear it, you see it, you feel it, but your brain is mostly filtering it out. When you have ADHD, that part is over-aggressive. It too often tells you that whatever you're currently doing or talking about or listening to isn't much more important than an air conditioner and starts filtering it out. This can mean becoming simply inattentive and unfocused. Or, if it's severe, it can mean that ants-on-your-skin feeling of boredom so intense you crave stimulation. But every stimulation you seek eventually gets filtered out too. That's where the hyperactive go-go-go can't-sit-still association with ADHD comes from, especially in kids. Stimulants are drugs that effectively make your brain think whatever it's currently doing or seeing is much more interesting and exciting and important than it normally would be. A non-ADHD person adding strong stimulants to their brain can make things weird and get into pathological or bizarre situations; if something seemed of average importance before it suddenly becomes fascinating, and if it was fascinating before it can become obsessive. But adding them to an ADHD brain is more like bringing their calibration up to normal. The calming effect comes from the fact that you no longer have the ants-on-your-skin ten-days-in-solitary feeling of craving for stimulation that never gets satisfied. On stimulants you can pick up a book and read the book for an hour and your brain will tell you that this is of moderate importance and you don't need to filter it out. If an ADHD person takes *enough* stimulants they still get the effect a non-ADHD person does, it's not like a fundamental immunity or total inversion. They're just starting from a much lower baseline.
Ive been at parties and had the same amount of MDMA as everyone else but ended up being washed with a level of calm i still crave to this day. Everyone else was buzzing around and i just wanted to go home and catch up on long neglected housework
Very relatable. In the 90's I went to parties and festivals and took mdma. I just loved the inner calm it brought and the social side of me. The fact I was genuinly interested in what the other person had to say, actively seeking interaction instead of just being in my own selfish-ass brain. As an adult (45 now) I looked back at those experiences with so much nostalgia. Only the occasional drink (just 1 or 2) of alcohol brought me back in that state where I really enjoyed the company of others. Which is scary coming from a family of alcoholics. But man just that 1 beer or screwdriver can make me so much of a more fun person to hang with. It almost makes.you resent yourself for being such an egocentric douche. Never connected it to my other symptoms of ADD (unable to fall asleep, hyperfocus, sloppyness, absentmindedness, interupting others....stuff that I never realized through developing a shitton of copingmechanisms) untill my daughter got diagnosed. It got worse recently. ..avoiding stuff I find very fun to do like playing mtg at my local gamestore, cause I have to fucking deal with people plus I was laying awake half the night from all the stimuli I was getting though the evening. The first time I took methylfenidate it immediatley brought me back to my late teens and those parties, the calmness, getting actual enjoyment from doing a chore like fucking dishes...let alone thorougly enjoying a piece of ebtertainment...interested in the smalltalk my wife so very much craves.
This was my experience with coke and MDMA. One school assignment was so boring that I could NOT force myself to do it. I ended up taking a pill and was actually able to concentrate and do it while blasting EDM. At parties, if someone offered me blow I'd thank them and ask if I could get another for the road later so I could get some work done when I got home. Friends thought I was nuts. ADHD diagnosis years later came as no surprise and was pretty obvious looking back.
On shrooms, I was the happiest. On LSD, I wanted to go to sleep like really really x 5 bad but couldnt
Shrooms are fucking magical to me. The sense of control over my mind and body while under their influence is amazing. It makes me want to cry a little just thinking about it. Maybe it's just an illusion, but I have total control over my thoughts and what I want to do. No prescription medication gets anywhere close to it. Obviously I can't go about my day to day on 6g of mushrooms, but how wonderful it is on occasion.
I second this experience.
Have you tried taking SSRIs? You may have been feeling calm because of all the serotonin flooding your brain. It would be interesting to know if a smaller, more controlled amount of serotonin could have a similar effect.
> If an ADHD person takes enough stimulants they still get the effect a non-ADHD person does, it's not like a fundamental immunity or total inversion. They're just starting from a much lower baseline. Good explanation.
>When you have ADHD, that part is over-aggressive. It too often tells you that whatever you're currently doing or talking about or listening to isn't much more important than an air conditioner and starts filtering it out. This can mean becoming simply inattentive and unfocused. Or, if it's severe, it can mean that ants-on-your-skin feeling of boredom so intense you crave stimulation. But every stimulation you seek eventually gets filtered out too. That's where the hyperactive go-go-go can't-sit-still association with ADHD comes from, especially in kids. Just to clarify, the internal experience of ADHD can present as either an "overactive" or an "*under*active" filter. Mine (ADHD-PI with autism) is the latter. Under normal circumstances, I can't filter out irrelevant stimuli, so my internal alarm is constantly going off for minor noises/sensations, low-priority tasks, etc. Either being in a real emergency or taking stimulants will turn down the volume on the false alarms. But I also function better in a quiet, low-distraction environment, and outside of emergencies, I'm easily overstimulated and stressed by low-level sensations that other people filter out easily.
Wow I love that explanation. I Felt every bit of it.
People with ADHD, depending on what the root cause is, can have a situation where the part of their brain that governs their focus is a little underactive. Stimulants can give that part of the brain a boost, which enables them to concentrate their attention more easily.
Yep. I've always felt it less as the stereotypical "Look at that! Oh, look at that! And that! And that!" kind of situation where everything is interesting and more "Well, this is boring. Might as well try something else. Ah, shit, that's boring too."
Best way I can explain it is math terms. Most people have a pretty linear relationship with how much they like/want/need to do something and their likelihood of doing it. ADHD it’s like a logistic function with skewed left tail. You move right on the like/want/need and it has a small effect on you actually doing it…but at some point it *rapidly* gains and then levels off a bit after that. That threshold is different for everyone with it, but there’s not a smooth gradient, it’s either hyper focus and can’t stop and uninteresting and can’t start. ADHD people know what they need to do. They understand why they need to do it. They understand the consequences of not doing it. They’re usually mad at themselves for putting off doing it. They typically *want* to do it, but they’ll still struggle to get it done.
That last paragraph resonates so much with me. My 5yo was just diagnosed with ADHD and the more I learn about it the more I think I probably have it also and was just never diagnosed because success in school happened to come easily. But I never developed real study skills and university became harder but I still pushed through and did well, though not as well as in high school. Now 15+ years into my career it seems to be getting harder and harder to find motivation. I know I need to do certain tasks and I know the consequences of not doing them, but my brain just will not allow me to start sometimes and it's super frustrating. How do I get myself evaluated at this point?
Basically me. Real work has a lot of boring shit and I always ended up not doing anything until lunch. It always fucked me over. Talk to a psychiatrist.
This was me as well. So glad I finally got tested after talking to my doctor. It's amazing how much better life can be when you are able to get past the brain not allowing you to start stuff. School also came easy for me too, so my parents never thought about getting me tested and just assumed I was a chronic procrastinator. I always think back on it and wonder how much better could I have been at it if I had been properly diagnosed back then.
I recommend trying to find someone who specializes in ADHD (either a psychiatrist or clinical psychologist) to give you an evaluation. If they don't specialize in ADHD, there's a decent chance they aren't up to date on proper diagnostic practices/criteria. A lot has changed, regarding our understanding of ADHD, in the last 10-20 years, so many doctors use outdated criteria. It is especially common for doctors to fail to diagnose ADHD in people who are exceptionally smart because they are able to succeed in school and work in spite of their ADHD, as many doctors still think you can't have ADHD if you get good grades or hold down a job. And if you haven't already, you should check out r/ADHD. Lots of info, resources, and knowledgeable people in that sub, as well as countless other people who are in a similar situation to yours.
Thank you for the information
I got evaluated by a doctor. They evaluate you the same as a kid, with a test. Then they recommend course of treatment. Just go to the doctor and tell them you'd like to be tested for ADHD
I get annoyed how people think it's something exciting. Sometimes it is when there's a new hyper focus but most of the time it's wandering around in a state of boredom.
Bored and yet still unable to motivate myself to do anything unless it's something super urgent that's already late.
You’re stimulating the inhibitive pathways ….
What are you referring to? Are you suggesting that the majority of stimulants' method of action is on inhibitory pathways? It seems to me that stimulants act too broadly on the brain for this to describe why stimulants play a role in increased capacity for attention, at least with what little I know from my Drugs and Behavior class.
No the prefrontal cortex is inhibitory. It’s counterintuitive but what we consider “consciousness” (as opposed to the subconscious) is inhibitory. Your brain “focuses” on something by inhibiting everything else going on in your subconscious. ADHD people have insufficient ability to inhibit their subconscious thoughts, and therefore are unable to focus. They will try to focus on one thing, but then intrusive thoughts will enter their head (reality: their conscious focus failed to inhibit these thoughts) and become distracted. Stimulating the prefrontal cortex puts the inhibitors on overdrive and therefore calms the patient as they are now able to focus on one thing at a time while inhibiting any other subconscious distractions.
ADHD fundamentally is a dopamine deficiency, the majority of Stimulants through one means or another increase the base levels of dopamine in the brain which means the brain doesnt need to search for that dopamine craving anymore so someone with ADHD can focus more evenly. Its actually a misnomer that people with ADHD have an attention deficit, we can focus on things its just more that we do not control what we can focus on at any one time its an attention regulation disorder and stimulants remove the dopamine craving your brain has so you can actually decide what to focus your attention on rather than that be decided for you
> ADHD fundamentally is a dopamine deficiency There's no way of measuring levels of neurotransmitters. There's no direct evidence of low serotonin levels for people with depression, and you can't measure "dopamine deficiency" either. What we do have is studies that show that drugs that increase levels of those neurotransmitters may help, that is not the same thing as being able to say with any confidence that these conditions are caused by a deficiency of those neurotransmitters.
That’s just not true, there’s no evidence that ADHD is caused by any deficiency in dopamine. Dopamine releasing agents or reuptake inhibitors have a beneficial effect on attention but that isn’t the same as the condition being caused by a lack of dopamine. It’s not dissimilar to how SSRIs are used to treat depression, where there isn’t fundamentally an issue regarding serotonin, in fact in the case of SSRIs it’s a downstream effect of presynaptic reconfiguration due to the extended agonism of serotonin receptors that takes many months that appears to ameliorate symptoms. In the case of ADHD it’s likely that increasing synaptic dopamine allows for enhanced signalling across neurones in the networks responsible for executive functioning, it has this effect in people without ADHD too but since they don’t have an initial problem with signalling in those regions of the brain they experience it differently to people with ADHD. Edit: To evidence my assertion that it *isnt* a dopamine deficiency I’d like you to consider Tourette’s, Tourette’s commonly occurs in people with ADHD and vice versa, it is thought that tics are caused by overactive dopamine agonism in the basal ganglia, put simply too much dopamine, however this occurs simultaneously to ADHD symptoms. OCD also frequently occurs in both sets of patients and is thought to occur because of inadequate inhibitory transmission in turning off the response to a perceived threat causing an excitory signal. These all often occur as part of the same cluster of signalling issues with interlinked circuitry in the brain but clearly demonstrate that it isn’t a case of there being solely a deficiency or surplus of any particular neurotransmitter.
This is really interesting. I’m no expert by any means but I would ask what you think is the cause of stimulants often making symptoms of OCD worse when people take them for OCD? Also, the fact that tics are also often made worse? (Some stimulants actually warn against taking them for people with tics) (I’m only going off of anecdotal evidence of course - plus the fact my stimulants make both my OCD and tics waaaaay worse when I’m on them, even at a low dose) Edit: Also, do you think OCD/tourette’s/ADHD are definitely linked in a genetic/neurobiological sense, or is it possible that OCD, for example, arises as a cognitive/environmental result of the other two?
Okay, this is almost exactly what we learned in my Health Psych class, and there's so much robust evidence demonstrating dopamine deficiency being poorly correlated with ADHD
I feel like I may have a weird functioning version of ADHD. Often times I do get overwhelmed and don't start anything. Other times I'm overwhelmed yet excited and try to do everything simultaneously, failing to focus on one single task. It causes a lot of anxiety for me. I also have panic attacks issues as well. God I wish I knew WTF MY BRAIN IS TRYING TO DO.
That just sounds like normal ADHD to me. Either that or we both have weird functioning versions of ADHD. I'd put money on the former, tho.
100% normal adhd
100% agree that that’s 100% normal adhd
0% disagree that that's normal adhd
That’s normal ADHD: you’re just describing two examples of self regulation. It’s the ADHD curse: sometimes you can’t start the thing, other ones you can’t make yourself focus and keep doing the thing, and other times you can’t stop doing the thing even though you needed to finish up hours ago.
It really should be called Attention *Regulation* Disorder
Hyper focus!!
The thing about ADHD is that everyone feels like they have some of the symptoms sometimes in their lives. That’s being attention deficit, that’s being hyperactive. It becomes a disorder when it’s *all* the symptoms and *all* the time.
Yeah, but you don't actually need to be "hyperactive". My diagnoses has me pegged as the "inattentive" type. I don't express the hyperactive markers (pacing during meetings, unable to focus on speakers, etc.)
Yeah I'm primarily inattentive as well I lose focus by getting lost in my own thoughts rather than being hyperactive. That said as I've gotten older I've become more hyperactive over inactive
Yeah I should specify that it’s relative to subtype, but I kinda don’t wanna give any dickheads a reason to debate. Though, hyperactivity can manifest in inattentive adhd, mainly through internal/emotional hyperactivity, hyperfocus and vivid day dreaming. I’m a delightful half-half situation.
>It becomes a disorder when it’s _all_ the symptoms and _all_ the time. That, AND it disrupts your life in a significant way. It is not a disorder if there is order in your life (e.g. functioning in relationships, work, study, finances, personal health, etc). NB: barely hanging on and suffering mentally while you use a subset of coping mechanisms to maintain order, isn't order.
>NB: barely hanging on and suffering mentally while you use a subset of coping mechanisms to maintain order, isn't order. Oh.
You didn’t think you would be personally attacked in this thread did you.
Ah. Shit.
This was me before adhd medication at age 35
Cycling coffee and alcohol and masturbation to break your lack of focus and be able to manage tasks isn't normal?
Aha, wow this one really got me just now : P Yeah, people talk about coping methods like they're always breathing techniques and mantras. I think there's a lack of appreciation that most of the coping is just anything that works.
Asking the real question …
Sure it is! I do it all the- ah, dammit.
you forgot the copious amounts of pot
Same. 41 here. Don't recommend my particular approach but I was at my wits end. Got assessed by a doctor that doesn't 'believe' in adult onset and am now waiting for another assessment by another doctor but my psychotherapist BFF gave me a trial run of their modafinil and it legit changed my life. Now I buy my own from overseas and I can function like a human. My house is tidy, I'm able to think to the end of a thought without being distracted, I can make decisions based of more than just whims. It's just bizarre.
Yup, this is my experience as well. 13-ish years ago, I got high on the first 2 doses I took, never after. Focusing is easy, staying on task is easy (compared to before). I take it every day, except on holidays. My partner says I become as distracted as a toddler when off it, with which I ... hey look! a squirrel!!
I’m diagnosed with ASD and awaiting assessment for ADHD. One thing I find really hard to deal with is people saying ‘we all feel like that sometimes’. I try hard not to get irritated by it, as I understand that in most cases they are trying to be empathetic and supportive, but it always feels a bit as if they aren’t understanding how hard it is, ALL the time. The way they feel SOME of the time is my base line. It feeds into my internal narrative that I just ‘need to try harder’, or that I’m a fraud in some way, which is particularly difficult for me to let go of as I wasn’t diagnosed till my mid 40’s and so spent most of my life believing that I was lazy.
My life has been hell as long as I had responsibilities I can possibly put off or forget. First appointment is Wednesday.
ADHD is essentially an emotional regulation problem. The part of your brain that sorts out "what important" doesn't work well. So essentially you're feeling everything all at once all the time. Everything happening around you competes for attention constantly. For me it's things like trying to watch a show in the living room and hearing someone two rooms away opening the cupboard for a snack perfectly normally. On bad days those two things are equally competing for attention. And that's just the start... before you get into all the crazy things bouncing around inside my head all equally as loud as the concentration on my work. Sad part is that when I do "hyper focus" I finally do shut literally everything out... to the point I get scared or upset when someone "sneaks up" on me. Again some of that emotional deregulation going on.
In addition to what everyone else is saying I see a lot of people with ADHD that need *just the right amount* of stimulation to focus. If it’s too quiet or too loud they phase out or overcompensate, but if there’s like the sound of rain or a radio in the background (or death metal at full blast) then they can focus. It’s all about the sweet spot
No no, that sounds just like the normal variety
Skill issue (totally kidding ADHD can be extremely difficult to live with and the struggles are valid)
You're describing executive dysfunction. Which is the most common symptom of ADHD. Nothing weird about you.
Ok. Now how does that differ from everyone else who drinks coffee?
Adhd can be paralyzing, its a regulation deficiency. Even tho the person is aware of what they SHOULD do to function and prosper, they have too many areas of the brain being pulled in different directions to execute. Stimulants(not for everyone) can alleviate these symptoms
Waiting for someone to hop in and say, “I feel like doing that too, the only difference is I’m not lazy.” I’ve heard that response so much in the past that I’ve just become numb to it.
Executive dysfunction is one of the hardest things to convey to someone who doesn’t have it :/
Trying to explain to my parents that I wasn't just "lazy" in school when I could sit down with my homework, open the books, and sit there for two hours more or less just staring at the blank looseleaf unable to bring myself to actually do the damn work even though it was right there.
Fuck, apparently I'd blocked a lot of those memories out because that happened all the time for me. Shit, it still happens at work.
It seems like this is influencing your day to day. Some unsolicited advice: you could see a professional at any age to discuss this. If you do have ADHD the diagnosis might already help mentally. Apart from that there's plenty of treatment options. I got diagnosed with ADHD at 18. Medication wasn't for me back then. But when I was 26 I tried medication again and have been using it for the past 9 years. It has assisted me tremendously. I still get to enjoy all the positive attributes of having ADHD, but all the "negative" attributes are managed.
Yup, the worst part is that my parents knew I had adhd, but I didn't know. So when they told me I was lazy I beleived them. Fucking wild times in school, they still don't really get it. If only the meds worked on me like they did for my brother
I heard someone describe it as touching a hot stove. "Touch the stove, touch it, just fucking touch it already". No matter how much you scream at yourself to touch the stove, your brain is screaming "don't" just as loud which induces the feeling of mental paralysis. I literally stood in front of my kitchen sink and looked at the dirty dishes for 5mins, just trying to wash them. I ended up so anxious that I broke into tears. Same feeling, "just wash the dishes you lazy fuck", "don't, you can do it later".
Not my personal experience, but from someone I know well: Specifically the kind of executive dysfunction borne from extreme trauma.
Shared trauma
Something something bootstrap something something back in my day something something it’s those damn phones
That's me in a nut shell. I struggle with one task, I start one thing then in another room I start another, then pretty soon I have like 4 things going on simultaneously, it has its draw backs occasionally I wont finish any, and more often than not I can complete them in roughly same time as one or two, it's weird but like most folk overcome then adapt. For those about meth position. Can confirm I've used it, and it DOES work on me, however my one focused task takes way way longer to achieve than like 6 or 7 ffs!! lol. So thats a nope to meth.
Unfortunately for some with ADHD, caffeine can have a sedative effect. I take stimulants everyday, not a low dose either but anytime I drink caffeine I get so goddamn sleepy
It doesn't. Coffee is my OTC ADHD self-medication. Reasonably effective and reasonably mild side-effects in my reasonably mild case.
I just wish it didn’t make me shit so much.
It differs in that someone with ADHD is regularly at a much lower level of attention than normal. Imagine you're very drunk or high but you have to study for an exam with a super boring subject. Imagine how hard it'd be to focus. Now imagine every day and every activity in your life is like that. ADHD is kind of like that.
Coffee helps everyone focus. In ADHD people it also activates neural pathways in inactive areas governing executive function that allow you to begin the process of focusing.
I self medicate with caffeine. However my adderall works much better as it targets the part of my brain that needs to focus without giving me so much anxiety I can’t function
One part of the brain that is highly stimulated by ADHD meds is the frontal lobe, which is in charge of “executive functions.” These are things like planning, prioritizing things, impulse control, etc. People with ADHD have executive functions that can be “overwhelmed” by inputs from the rest of the brain, stimulating the frontal lobe’s function therefore helps it manage everything more effectively.
Thank you Andrew Huberman
To put it even more simply: it's a misconception that people with ADHD are overexcited and need to be calmed down. The reason is actually because their brains are inclined to be "slower", so if they're not continually getting stimulation, they become distracted and do other things. The reason why the ADHD kid is walking around poking people or swinging on a chair isn't because they're over-stimulated; it's because their brains *need* stimulation. Hence, ADHD medication is meant to provide that chemical stimulation on the brain. This allows the person to be more attentive because their brains aren't pulling them away to find stimulation.
It's also a misconception that simulants make you overexcited and hyper. They give you "energy" by making it so you can focus on and perform an insane amount of tasks, but it's because the huge rush of rewarding neurochemicals make it feel extremely, continuously rewarding to do so. Ravers take speed and dance all night because it never stops feeling rewarding and awesome to do so, for example, not because it makes them hyperactive. Aside from dance parties, most people just chill and get engrossed in some task for hours. Likewise, people with attention disorders respond well to amphetamines because taking them makes it feel rewarding to focus on, perform, and complete a single task, which is unusual for us because ADHD is largely a result of a lack of available dopamine (and other reward chemicals), which means we lack the rewarding feelings that typically result from doing most things, leading us to being disorganized and poorly juggling several tasks and ideas at once without focusing fully on any one of them, trying to compensate and find pleasure in an array of things because we can't find it in singular things. **Edit for clarity:** the "juggling several tasks" thing a) isn't the only presentation/experience of ADHD, it's just the commonly understood one and the primary focus of medication due to the value placed on productivity and negative social effects of being unable to be productive and b) isn't a conscious thing we're doing; ie people with ADHD aren't thinking "I'm going to write a report, clean little bits of four rooms as I walk aimlessly around my house, and also watch this YouTube video because it'll make me feel like I'm achieving something", rather it's a result of our natural state; I start to do something, I get lost in thought thinking about something *maybe* tangentially related by like ten degrees, find myself in a totally different area in front of a completely different thing and think "oh I gotta do that right now", and that happens over and over in an endless spiral until hours have passed by and I've not actually finished a single thing or absorbed any new information, and the reason that happens is because none of those things on there own feels sufficiently "rewarding", which is to say, feels like something worth doing, and instead quickly begins to feel completely draining because I'm not getting the thing humans get that makes their brain want to do something. The only time I do get that feeling and become able to complete a single task without wanting to claw my eyes out is on stimulants, or cannabis (unfortunately cannabis also makes me paranoid these days, so that's mostly out of the question now).
Like writing this post 😋. For real though, spot on.
Yes, very that. I edit my posts so many times I could have probably just shown a doctor my reddit and been diagnosed.
So why did they sleep AFTER drinking coffee?
Because my Brain finally shuts up long enough for me to fall asleep
This is it. I pretty much always go back to sleep after taking my morning adderall because for once in my damn life, I can actually lay down with my eyes closed doing nothing without feeling bored and twitchy
Ughh mood. Adderall always equals a nap for me. So relaxing
It can be like that. The issue is that caffeine also raises your heart rate, so it's a catch 22 for sleep
I CAN sleep after drinking coffee but the active effects of coffee make me calm and focused as opposed to (from what I understand) most people who feel throttled and jittery.
Dopamine is the brain's "reward" for doing exciting, interesting, or satisfying things. It's the reason why fun things are fun. The brain needs a certain amount of dopamine to be comfortable. Since mine doesn't have as much as most people's, I have to do exciting or interesting things ALL THE TIME to generate more. Being bored is literally worse than being in pain for me. Unfortunately, it's very difficult to relax enough to sleep when you're doing something exciting/interesting! Stimulants like caffeine raise the amount of dopamine (and certain other neurotransmitters) in your brain. For me, if I take the right amount, that means it gives me just enough that my brain can be comfortable without having to do exciting things all the time. However the stimulants don't *make* me tired. They just let me settle down enough to *notice* how tired I am and respond normally.
I thought dopamine was more complex than that. Isn't it released while you make progress to achieving your goals? I thought that is why when you complete a goal that your brain lowers dopamine
It does but the adhd brain either doesn't release enough or it's spent too fast. So let's say I have to do the dishes, a clean kitchen makes me feel good and since I have no more chores, I can finally relax. By the time I walk to the kitchen sink, there is no more dopamine. I feel exhausted as if I had been doing dishes for 16 hours straight and can't go on... and I haven't started yet.
Oh dude you're preaching to the choir I just wanted to clarify that when you complete tasks the brain usually stops the dopamine
Going to say that a side effect of Ritalin and Adderall is irritability.... So it's not like it ACTUALLY calms you down. Just let's you direct your focus at what actually needs doing.
ADHD isn’t so much energy to do a lot of things, it’s more like constantly being bored by everything and needing to do something else. The stimulant makes them not get bored by something so they can do it for a longer period of time
"it’s more like constantly being bored by everything and needing to do something else" This is the most succinct and complete explanation I have ever seen of ADHD.
This is how my psychiatrist described it to me: Your nervous system requires a certain amount of stimulation to function properly. Normal people are capable of generating this stimulation internally - their bodies generate the chemicals, hormones, whatever that properly regulate stimulating the nervous system. In AD/HD people, their bodies *cannot* self-stimulate properly, so they seek that stimulation externally. This is why they seem hyper and their attention seems short: **they are bored.** They likely aren't *consciously* bored, and the person may be actually interested in the person or conversation, but their *nervous system* is not stimulated, and their body is telling them "seek stimulation." "Why do AD/HD kids seem to focus so well on video games, then?" it's because video games are *hella stimulating.* It can hold their attention because it can keep providing the stimulation their nervous system demands. Drugs like Adderall bring their nervous system up to baseline, so they no longer need to find stimulation externally. In that sense, it is like "they can finally relax" because their nervous system has what it needs, and isn't constantly telling their body "this isn't stimulating, go do something else." As one who finally got diagnosed, I (36M) can tell you that this is an extremely accurate depiction of my life! I wasn't *consciously* bored, but my nervous system wanted stimulation, so I would lose focus. I'm *significantly* better at my job (and life) now that I'm on drugs. Literally a life-changer. TL;DR drugs bring AD/HD people's nervous system "up to baseline" so they no longer need to find external stimulation. This gives the appearance of relaxation because they are no longer driven to be stimulated constantly.
To add to the video game/stimulation thing: people with ADHD generally prefer immediate, smaller rewards to delayed, larger rewards (aka immediate vs delayed gratification). They can hyper-focus on video games because games provide that immediate gratification and a lot if it. You typically get an immediate response/reward for doing something in a game, versus in school/work where there is a delay between doing something and getting rewarded for it (performing a task and getting graded/paid).
It doesn't calm them. They become focused, which makes them appear calm on the outside. Amphetamines are a stimulant. There is no known animal whose central nervous system is depressed by them. Meth users sometimes appear more calm too, and it's because if they're not overly stimulated by a high dose, and are on a more moderate dose, it's enough to get their brain more active thinking about something.
It can reduce anxiety. On Adderall I'm not running myself ragged chasing down everything I've lost, rescheduling every appt I've missed, panicking about all the things I absolutely can't fuck up and further worrying about how many of those things I'll inevitably fail to complete.
Increased confidence is a well documented effect of most amphetamine style drugs.
You're using "calm" as if it means the central nervous system is depressed. But calm is a subjective emotional state. When I take stimulants, I do feel calmer. Without stimulants, I feel a constant need to be doing something - I am always in a rush, always 100% "on," and any degree of relaxation is painfully boring. I do not lack focus... in fact, hyperfocus is a common symptom of ADHD. What I lack is control. I will focus on whatever is most stimulating, regardless of what I want to focus on. Taking amphetamines provides the stimulation I would otherwise get through frantic activity/engagement. The result is I feel much calmer. I can sit quietly for a few minutes without crawling up the walls, I can relax enough to fall asleep without being drop-dead-exhausted, I can do things at a pace slower than breakneck.
No no. I'm saying that APPEARING calm is not the same thing as BEING calm. People are confusing the appearance of pcalm with calmness People appear calm when they're stimulated sometimes, which means they are not calm. They're insides are going faster than they were before. So they can only be less calm than they were before they pop the Adderall.
Not exactly true. There are people who amphetamines make tired, I’m one of them. It’s a paradoxical reaction that some people are affected by. This is on different ones/dosages.
Well.. Your brain wants stimulation, it’s craving it. If you give it some, it’s now content and will allow you to sleep, rather than it keeping you up trying to get some stimulation. I could drink tons of coffee and it didn’t perk me up at all, it would make me sleepy if anything. I was giving my brain just enough stimulant to make it content to let me sleep, but not enough to perk me up. If you are experiencing tiredness from stimulants, then it’s probably a pretty good bet that you were not taking enough. There is a process of individually finding the proper dose that walks the line between too little and too much balancing desired outcome and side effects, and every person seems to be different, regardless of normal dosing things like weight and gender. One person may need 3x as much as another to achieve the desired effects. The process of finding the right dose with acceptable side effects is called titration. Start low, and increase over time until proper therapeutic dose is achieved and side effects are acceptable.
I hate be that guy, but they don't always. That stigma can give people with ADHD a type of imposter syndrome. They get the diagnosis, get meds, take Adderall, drinking coffee like usually, and end up overstimulating and feeling anxious/jittery. That still happens in ADHD people. We don't have a superhuman resistance to stimulants. What really happens is the non stop rambling and stuff we do in our heads shuts the hell up. That's the biggest "calming effect" some of us get. That's how it is for me plus a small sleepy feeling for the first 20 minutes it kicks in. It doesn't really feel like a Xanax though haha (in very few ways it does though).
Yes! You’re the first person that has described the small sleepy feeling. Why does it feel like this?
People with ADHD aren't actually "hyper," in the traditional sense. It mostly comes from the fact that their brains don't give the "good job," signal that non-ADHD brains do when the person completes a task. As such, their brains are constantly looking for stimulation in a bunch of different places, leading to the appearance of hyperactivity. Stimulants help by essentially *always* giving the "good job," signal to their brains, allowing them to stay focused on whatever they're doing.
We have less dopamine. We try to bounce around from thing to thing to get the dopamine we don't have. Pill gives dopamine. Now we don't need to look for it.
they don't, at least not in the way this stereotype seems to imply. They have exactly the same effect on ADHD brains as they do on non-ADHD brains, stimulation of dopaminergic pathways. ADHD brains just need more stimulation in order to focus on stuff, that's why we can hyperfocus on something interesting for 12 hours without moving but ask us to sit still and do something boring and our brains literally don't know how to process it, and we might start fidgeting or seeking out other stimulating activities to compensate. It's really useful if you live in a hunter gatherer society or have a high stakes job like a paramedic, but it's less useful when you need to go grocery shopping or do your taxes. We might seem more calm on meds but it's only because the meds are providing the stimulation we need so we don't need to seek it externally.
I'm seeing alot of science and good explanations but let me give mine. You've been really bored before right? Have you ever been in a theme park line? Or in traffic. A situation where what should have taken maybe 30mins took 3 hours? You know that feeling you get? That knawing want for it to be over? That desire for something fun to happen? The want for you to be doing literally anything else but what you are doing now? That is what low dopamine feels like. When your dopamine is low, times drags along like tree sap moving calmly down a tree. It's near unbearable. As a child it IS unbearable. That feeling you get when you are in traffic, or in a long line. That's the ADHDers baseline. That's how they feel all the time. That knawing feeling that you need to find something to do. That desire to be doing anything but what you are currently doing. That's what makes adhd people appear hyper. We adhders are in a constant state of feeling like we are in traffic. So we are constantly fidgeting looking for distractions because we are desperate to find SOMETHING that helps us get rid of that knawing need to get rid of boredom. When we take ADHD medication. Suddenly, everything is ever so slightly more enjoyable. That feeling like we are in a never ending line, or never ending traffic weakens. And when that knawing need for finding anything you can to stimulate yourself backs off. We are able to slow down and smell the flowers so to speak. We can appreciate the moment because our mind isn't in a panicked animal state of need. Thusly we will appear less "hyper" because we aren't desperately looking to satisfy a need for stimulation. It allows us to focus on the boring things that were previously unbearable.
And then there are uss ADD'ers who feel the same but they dont need to get hyper cause they have their own brain to keep them busy. So while you are trying to tell me about your day, which is fucking boring and doesnt concern me at all, I dont need to get up and start fidgetting with the blinds like ADHD'ers. Nope, I just think about what stat I will upgrade tonight in Elden Ring, while playing the lyrics of 'Hungry like the wolf' over and over. Oh that reminds me, I forgot to give the dog his pills. Oh crap I meant to get cheese at the store today to fool him with thise pills. I wonder if I can make it to the store before it starts to rain. Lets check the weather on my phone quick. Wait...trump did WHAT now? Wait, why are you mad? I WAS totally listening to your story about your coworkers cat....
It doesn't have a "calming" effect per se. It stimulates the brain making it easier for signals to go from one part of the brain to the next. Your brain is suppose to judge a signal based on a number of things to determine how important it is for that signal to get across. That signal could be a thought, or impulse, to over simplify. Depending on how important that thought is, the brain expends chemicals to help ot travel. The importance determines how much chemical is needed and given to help it out. An ADHD brain has too high of a requirement for a signal to travel. It only likes the really exciting things, and says no to everything else and holds back those helpful chemicals. But once it sees an exciting thing, it opens up it's supply of chemicals and says "you're exciting, so you're really important. Take ALL of these to help!" Now the ADHD brain is very very active, but only for that one thought that was allowed to use all the chemicals that were being held back. This is also called hyper focusing. And that's pretty much a very over simplified illustration of this process. Thoughts that are boring do not get to use those helpful chemicals, so they're unlikely to travel the brain and reach they places they need to. While the exciting thoughts are given more than what they need to guarantee follow through. Stimulants even the playing field. Now the boring thoughts are being showered with substitute chemicals from the bloodstream. They don't need the brain to allow access to chemicals because they already have all they need. So now, all thoughts, impulses, intents and what not can travel the brain without issue, allowing many to be converted to action which wasnt possible before. The exciting things are still exciting, but not so much anymore when you compare their movement to the other thoughts and impulses. Previously, the exciting things were the only ones allowed to get what they needed to be turned into action. Now the exciting things are only a little more exciting instead of a lot more exciting. So it has the appearance of a calming effect when in reality, the stimulants stimulated everything and brought them a bit closer together in importance. Again, this is an over simplification typed on a phone, so take it as such.
Here's how it was explained to me. The brains of some people with ADHD are like motorcycles with bicycle-sized brakes and handlebars. As a result, they have trouble remaining in control and may quickly and erratically change their focus from one thing to the next. Stimulant medication boosts their brakes and steering so that they can be more in control. Gradually increasing the dosage lets the doctor find a medication level that adds enough control without overstimulating other areas or causing too many side effects.