ADHD/amphetamine dosage question

[morphine-dreams]

I have very bad ADHD that I've recently begun medicating with Adderall. The first time I tried it (a few weeks ago) I started with 5mg which did not turn out to be effective enough, so I took another 5mg and that was a perfect dose for productivity. Since then, I've been taking 10mg, at most twice a week, and it already seems to be losing its effectiveness. I use it to do clean, study, things like that, and would like to continue doing so without gaining too much of a tolerance, hence why I use it twice a week at most. I've read that 15-20mg is a pretty standard dose for adult ADHD, especially more severe cases, but I don't want to raise my tolerance too much, and I'm also a bit concerned that it already seems to be growing (though I also have read that amphetamines will always affect you much more strongly the first time). Basically, I'd just like to know what a good dose (in your experience) for ADHD on the severe end would be. By severe I mean I'm unable to give my undivided attention to anything for more than 10-20 minutes, and that's being very generous. For what it's worth, I experience no adverse effects at my current dose other than insomnia, but I've been using benadryl for that and it seems to do the trick. Thanks!

 

[PriestTheyCalledHim]

Are you getting it from a doctor? If so talk to him or her about the dose, and about how often you take it.

If you don't have a script, why don't you see a doctor and tell him/her how you have ADD and get prescribed Adderall and put on a dose that works for you instead of trying to do it yourself?

 

[Znegative]

This is a basic dosing question so I'm going to move it to BDD.

That aside, I'd say anywhere between 15-30mg would be the range I would shoot for if I was lucky enough to get an adderall prescription again. With no tolerance to amphetamines, 10mg was the lowest dose that I could take that would produce a noticeable effect. I ended up 'maintaining' however on a dose of 15-22.5mg most of the time, and every once in a while I'd take the whole 30mg pill, but dosing above that made me kind of worried about raising my tolerance too much (though I have on multiple occasions gone way beyond 30mg for sure). I always found it best to try and keep my tolerance as low as possible, I seemed to get a pretty consistent effect even with daily dosing, and every once in a while when I found the tolerance starting to rise to much I would just reduce my dose by a quarter for a few days, which worked pretty good for me.

After a while though, even with breaks it's going to lose some of the magic, but amphetamines are nice in that you don't lose too much of it IME, as opposed to opiates (with which I feel I will never get 'the magic' back lol).

 

[morphine-dreams]

Thank you both, and no, I don't have a script, which is another reason why I'd like to keep my dosage as low as possible while still being enough to allow me to maintain focus.

I think I'll give 15 or 20mg a go and maybe use 30 only when I really need to, if lower doses aren't enough to fully manage my symptoms. 10mg does have a noticeable effect but it's just not enough to manage my symptoms, it works pretty well around the peak but after that it's just not strong enough. It's good to know that even daily usage of a therapeutic dose didn't cause too much of an increase in tolerance. I don't think I could use more than 3 times a week anyway because it'd probably begin to mess with my sleep schedule, and I'm an insomniac to begin with.