Falling asleep before my amphetamine kicked in - delayed onset?

[SpunkySkunk347]

Here is a timeline of what happened:
7:00 AM - 120mg Adderall XR ingested orally upon a relatively empty stomach.

7:25 AM - Fell asleep

9:00 AM - Woke up feeling "weird", nothing too out of the usual, just the standard waking-up feeling. The first thought that popped into my head upon waking is "My amphetamine should be kicked in by now". Too my disappointment, I did not feel anything. I thought that this was merely due to momentary sleepiness, and that once I had been awake for a few more minutes I would be able to feel the effects - but after about 25 minutes, no effects still.

9:28 AM - Started feeling mild stimulant effects

10:30 AM - Noticing that the amphetamine is now in full effect as usual. It's almost as if I had taken the amphetamine at 9AM and it is now reaching full effect, but I am positive that I had ingested it at almost exactly 7:00AM, because I remember checking the clock immediately after swallowing the pills. .

My main question is, what caused this delay in onset? Why did I not feel the amphetamine when I woke up? Or an even bigger mystery, shouldn't I have woken up as soon as the amphetamine came into effect an hour after ingesting it?

My hypotheses was this:
Amphetamine mainly works by reversing reuptake of dopamine and a few other Neurotransmitters.
During sleep, the brain is not actively releasing dopamine. Perhaps by some mechanism, dopamine is blocked (short acting endogenous DA antagonist?) or perhaps by some other mechanism, dopamine is cleared from the synapse in a different route than the one amphetamine targets. Or even more simple, the lack of activity during sleep inherently causes lower amounts of dopamine.

Upon awakening, since no dopamine had been released prior to the onset of amphetamine, there was none to be pushed back out into the synapse. However, shortly after awakening, dopamine begins to be released simply because of the brain being active/functional.

Because of my recent lack of sleep, the initial onset of amphetamine did not disturb my sleep or awaken me. The need for sleep overpowered the onset.

Because the duration I slept was short (only an hour and a half), this might have allowed for the onset of the amphetamine's effects to simply have been delayed.

I'm really just taking shots in the dark, I am completely clueless as to why this incident happened.

Does anybody know anything about sleeping and the brain's levels of dopamine during sleep? Or anything about an endogenous DA antagonist that is released when a sleep-deprived individual is finally able to get to sleep?
Any input is appreciated

Also, I did not wake up on my own, the phone rang and that woke me up

A google search didn't come up with much for me, except an article about how schizophrenics have a lack of endogenous DA antagonists, which verifies that endogenous DA antagonists do exist, but doesnt really help my question much at all

28 views and not one person has anything to say

 

[pofacedhoe]

some people can sleep on amphetamine and even meth, its due to how your body gets used to it and individual makeup. also we dont digest much when asleep and the little bit of speed processed would have shut the process of digestive absorbtion down further.

i think?

 

[Panacea]

Tolerance can be a bitch

 

[Sustanon]

When your sleeping ur body isnt digesting food in a very fast way, u hear people saying dont eat after dinner cos ull put on weight. Once i ate 4 g of shrooms and it didnt kick in so i just went to sleep. 2.5 hours later i woke up and it just started to kick in. Everyones different tho. Ive even had pills which kicked in after 3 hours. Its weird i know.

 

[Trojan5851]

I can relate. As soon as I woke up this morning, i played with my phone for about 30 mins while pondering whether or not I should take my meds today since I have the day off work. While still in bed, I decided to take 80mg Vyvanse and get a little more rest before it kicked in for the day. I woke up to check the time on my phone and barely an hour had passed by. I still felt dead tired -- almost as if I never took the medication in the first place! I decided to get up and move around to see if physical activity would induce stimulation but nothing seems to work. It's been roughly 2.5 hours since i have taken the medication. I tried experimenting by working out and consuming a small amount of caffeine. I can detect a very small hint of the medication in my system but it isnt the same if I took it without falling asleep after. I experimented also with trying to focus on school work but it isnt the same. I have my B.S. in Chem so you would figure I would have some kind of hypothesis with this but I don't. It only takes a minute for blood to circulate throughout the body, and Amphetamines are water soluble, so you would figure that once your brain is awake and active, the stuff would kick in within minutes and you would feel the same way as if you took it without sleeping. But for some reason i feel much weaker effects, or else just taking a very long time to kick in. 80mg of Vyvanse has a higher amphetamine base than a 30mg Adderall IR, but the Vyvanse molecue (lisdexamphetamine dimesylate) is also much larger i.e. its basically a dextroamphetamine molecule coupled with an animo acid (L-lysine). Unless cleavage takes place between the dextroamphetamine and L-lysine, the amphetamine will remain inactive. Honestly it's a real mystery to me why this happens. Perhaps entropy is the answer to our question? Might it be possible that the amphetamine dissociates as it circulates throughout our blood stream while we sleep? That the amphetamine concentration is decreased (spread out through our body) by the time we wake up? Might that be the reason why we miss out on the amphetamine rush?

 

[Dresden]

The XR stands for extended release, so it takes a while to be absorbed. And Vyvanse isn't active till it's cleaved in the GI tract, which also takes a while.

 

[Trojan5851]

Okay update its been 3+ hours since taking the medication and now its in equal effect as it normally would 3 hours after taking it. Yeah i have hypothesis now. The levodextro amphetamine molecule is water soluble, so it can quickly spread out in your bloodstream -- even if you're asleep or close to being asleep (dont need to be near REM stage). Im no brain expert, but I'm going to hypothesize that while sleeping, specific chemical interactions are slowed down at the brain and while activity is decreased, particular receptors may be unable to take in the high concentration of molecules provided during immediate ingestion. While we sleep, the medication spreads out as it circulates throughout our bloodstream. Once we are awake and active, receptors become active/open again, but by this time, chemical concentration has decreased and therefore fewer molecules will interact with the receptors at any given time. There are less molecules interacting with the receptors at a given time, and as a result, it takes more time for the medication to kick in. In relation to Le Chatelier's Principle (a law in chemistry) if is stress placed on either side of a chemical equation, reactions will take place until equilibrium is reached. With that being said, the rate of a reaction is directly proportional to concentration. If concentration is decreased, the rate is decreased. If rate is decreased, the time it takes to get high is increased. Also, if concentration is decreased, the # of molecules in a given system is also decreased.. so if my hypothesis close to being correct, then our ultimatam is unfortunate. If we fall asleep after ingesting this type of medication, It seems probable that we lose both a duration and a percentage of our high. As the levodextroamphetamine circulates throughout the body during our sleep, some of it will be filtered and destroyed. Regardless of any scientific inaccuracy, I would reccomend not sleeping after taking the medication if you value its full effects

 

[Solipsis]

I'm not for the 'digestion' theory since the drug does not have to be ingested per se but only absorbed..

I take prescribed dexamphetamine and have also on occasion fallen back asleep after taking my dose in the morning. Usually when I take it in the morning, I'm too 'up' already if only because of anticipation of effects, but not always. The experience in the OP sounds familiar.
During sleep a lot of 'systems' are suppressed and still have to come back online when you wake up (although I don't think overall brain activity is diminished during sleep, on the contrary iirc, but it's certainly different.). My best guess is that the stimulation 'synergizes' best with an awake mind and I guess it could indeed take a little bit of time for that coherence to get up and running.

Peripheral stimulation probably doesn't work like that though and seems much less reliant like that and not really related to higher mental function... which is why you can certainly still feel buzzed upon waking up from certain stimulating drugs that were taken earlier.

 

[Trojan5851]

The real question I have is, why wouldnt i eventually wake up via. stimulation? I have been able to sleep for 4-6 hours after taking vyvanse, adderall (XR or IR) medication, but I can only do it if i fall asleep before stimulation normally takes effect. Once asleep (or close to it), I can stay asleep as long as I like. When I awoke, I didn't feel any sort of immediate mental stimulation. Even with instant release, it took hours after being awake for the medication have any effect. Additionally, it wasn't ever as potent. I'm quite confident that dissociation and chemical concentration is playing a role in this. What I dont understand is any brain psychology taking place in respect to amphetamine consumption when a person is awake vs. being asleep

 

[Trojan5851]

In all reality though, if for any reason the brain isnt consuming as much of the medication during sleep, then sleep may be a plausible method in postponing the effects while allowing the patient to still go to bed at a decent time

 

[Solipsis]

In fairness, it can be accounted for by a two-compartment model of kinetics and more elimination of the drug during sleep when certain blood flow is apparently less restricted among other things. Which I guess leaves more of the drug in your bladder.

But it seems hard to say for sure if that is necessarily it and the significance vs other factors.

 

[yoyoman]

I have many times taken my Adderall or Dexedrine then gone back to sleep, only to wake up fully AWAKE and ready to go.

Then there have been times when tolerance got high, or i lacked sleep, where I was able to sleep through 60mg Adderall IR or 70mg dex spansules. Without tolerance though they wake me up.

 

[serotonin2A]

In all reality though, if for any reason the brain isnt consuming as much of the medication during sleep, then sleep may be a plausible method in postponing the effects while allowing the patient to still go to bed at a decent time

Entry of amphetamine into the brain is completely passive.

 

[Seppi]

25 minutes isn't really long enough for even an immediate release amphetamine formulation to induce a strong effect, provided that it's ingested and not taken via another route.

People are able to fall asleep while under the effect of amphetamine and other psychostimulants despite their wakefulness-promoting effects. Several disjoint brain regions control wakefulness and sleep; stimulants generally promote wakefulness by via their effects on neurotransmission within the reticular activating system, although some stimulants (e.g., caffeine and amphetamine) also exert a wakefulness-promoting effect by enhancing histaminergic neurotransmission from the tuberomammillary nucleus. I'm not aware of any direct effects by any stimulants on sleep-promoting nuclei (e.g., the ventrolateral preoptic area or parafacial zone) or sleep architecture; so, stimulants don't really inhibit sleep so much as they inhibit the desire to sleep by promoting arousal.

As for how amphetamine affects the brain while asleep, AFAIK this hasn't been studied. Amphetamine might affect the brain in the same manner when an individual is awake or asleep; however, one can't discount the possibility that processes which occur during sleep influence the effect of amphetamine on vesciular transport, TAAR1 signaling, or any yet unidentified targets in monoamine neurons.

 

[yoyoman]

Some of this stuff makes me think "wow this still has not been studied by any curious people with access to certain machines?" is there a lack of curious scientists nobody needs a license to practice science.

Another good experiment someone could even run one at home would be to buy a cheap IV line off a vet website, figure out (maybe a nurse into psychedelics) how to time a DMT injection right when someone falls into REM sleep. EEG's aren't super easy to come by but one day when someone invents a cheap home EEG that can turn a 0 into a 1 when REM happens could easily set up a tiny dose of DMT to be injected to see if it does alter dreams. Or wake a person up, etc. Everyone wants to know if DMT has anything to do with dreaming so whoever studies it becomes a bad ass psychedelic hero.

Nobody needs a license to practice being a scientist. I think sometimes people forget that. Whole giant groups of curious people can do studies underground if they have a good reputation (of being correct, even under a pseudo internet name) if they have a great reputation for not lying the data will get out. I was just obsessed with the -PHP compounds and thinking "holy banana bats, I totally forgot its racemic!" (i believe some of them other than 4-methyl should be studied as they can wake a narcoleptic up better than 200mg adderall seems like there is no cross tolerance) I wonder if one isomer makes you see the Aliens and hallucinate (it is odd that the most hallucinatory of them all, 4-chloro-pvp, seems to almost make you tired rather than feel awake so maybe one isomer is responsible for certain effects the other the other half of the effects (probably!). I wonder how I can be a home scientist without much chem background could possibly separate the isomers (its pretty cheap to get a lot of it, worth splitting and loss of some) maybe a tartaric acid method never tried it don't know enough. I'm gonna look though. What if a bunch of people are frying their brains with neurotoxic meth and all they need is a little aPHP? (and i was staring at it wondering how to make a decent prodrug of it or 4F-PHP since the nitrogen is ring closed - stick something that begins with an acid off the alpha chain?

Rambling about all my strange chemical fantasies. Point being I hope everyone knows nobody needs a license to practice science and studies and experiments! Waiting for government approval is just slowing down the inevitable knowing. I'd rather be a hero scientist than the one that sat for 30 years trying to get approved for a shitty study. We need more Shulgin's to just go do it. Everyone believes Pihkal nobody questions (maybe now we know a few things in those books weren't 100% right mostly people taking his untested opinion as facts.. kinda like DMT is the dream chemical MAYBE if someone would test it. Have 10mg shot up their vein when they hit REM have them write down their dreams, increase dose to 15, 20, etc.

So much cool we could be all doing right now if we just decided aiight we're goin underground to get r done. I guess you could say a few people have inspired me lately... pretty sure I ran into a rouge scientist while getting an MRI kinda wishing I got his contact info he was talking about how cool some guy is for mass producing pure synthetics for human mass consumption cause he got sick of waiting for clearance. Gonna use supplement laws (they're doing it, why can't I, jury?) made me jump for joy.

======
Back to the topic, i'm pretty sure if you got a big IV shot of amphetamine while you were sleeping you'd wake up pretty quick. Like 100mg's of d-methamphetamine 10 second long automatic push. Actually I do not understand haven't they tried this on coma patients? Ambien woke one guy out of a coma (accidental discovery) of course...they have tried hard stimulants, high dose IV? Surely, someone has had this thought when watching a movie with a person in a coma besides me? 150mg's IV Desoxyn, STAT. i've always just thought "well duh of course they must have tried it and it didn't work" it would shock me if it has never been tried.

 

[pcp]

Don't want to derail the thread but I have some personal experience relating to this topic.

In college when I had a vyvanse script, it was a relatively common thing for me to set an early alarm, pop a vivy, and pass back out only to wake up in 60 - 90 mins without an additional alarm feeling the effects of the drug. I mostly did this around exam time, but I would guess I have done this around 3 dozen times without fail.

This was actually one of my favorite ways to take vyvanse. The feeling was akin to waking up after an insanely restful night of sleep.