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  • BDD Moderators: Keif’ Richards

Euphoria in the beginning with therapeutic ADHD meds (amphetamine)?

logarithm

logarithm

Bluelighter
Joined
Aug 11, 2012
Messages
62
Hi,
is it normal to experience euphoria when you take adhd medication (amphetamine) in the first two hours? It seems that especially in the first hour after taking the med, I get a very good mood. But this effect disappears pretty fast and then my moods stabilizes. Where my moods stabilizes depends on the dosage. If I take a lot of meds, I get a pretty stable depressive and tensed mood. For me it is very difficult to find the optimal dose... but is this euphoria thing in the beginning common???
 
Did you just start taking the medication? I'm a little confused by your post, but yeah it's very common to experience euphoria when you start taking ADHD medication.
 
Euphoria from amphetamines is common, adhd or not. So I'd just enjoy it if you really need it and not feel guilty or anything. And yeah, too much amphetamine can cause depressive states. Adhd or not.

If what you're asking is if you think you're on too high of a dose?
 
sry for confusing you :-). I take stimulants since almost 15 years. Unfortunately I have problems to find the right dosage. My doc is a fucking asshole and only prescribes me 5 mg capsules which I can't divide. And I think the right dosage might lie somewhere between. So if euphoria is normal, then how do I evaluate if it is too much?
 
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^ What stimulant do you take?

Irregardless, most if not all stimulants give some sort of euphoria, it's nothing abnormal.
 
d/l-amphetamine. I think it is pretty complicated to find the right dose. It seems that you can accomplish different goals with different doses of the same stimulant. And the doses need to be adapted to different contextes. So a dose for school, might be not appropriate when at home. Then there are other variables like sleep or sports. This is so shitty. And this is just the beginning. Then you got interactions with other medicaments and long term adaptions. Especially long term adaptions is something I cannot manage. If you change the dose, then the effect need to stabilize. This can take over a week or so. This is so unflexible. You need to take all these variables together. Then they will also interact with each other more or less. And then there is another main problem: there is no objective metric with which you can measure if the dose is right or not. Its a subjective thing. Look and feel.

So you have a extrem complex system, which you try to control, but even doesn't know what you are exactly doing and doesn't know whats your goal.

Its fucked up. We would need to decrypt the functioning of the human body and psyche, and sophisticated technology for surveilling and delivering substances in our body. Everything else is walking with crutches.
 
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Yes, it's perfectly normal to feel euphoria. 5 milligrams capsules are also a very low dose, I don't think your doctor can prescribe you any lower dose than that.
 
^ It depends, no one can accurately estimate how long the euphoria will be, especially that euphoria is in part subjective.

For a 5 milligram dose, it wouldn't surprise me that the euphoria is only lasting you a couple of hours. That's a very low dose.
 
Does this mean higher doses are normal and then prolonged euphoria would be normal? Is it really possible to have prolonged euphoria with therapeutically use of amphetamine?
 
Well, length of action and intensity of effects are dose-dependent, but the euphoria from a constant therapeutic dose of amphetamine will rarely last more than a couple weeks.
 
I dont get it. I was reading that for adults the effect of stimulants often won't be instantly. It is more likely that the effects, like better conentration, calmness etc., build up over the time of a week or longer. I think that I read that this has to do with a reduction in dopamine transporter density. These transporters do reuptake the dopamine and if there are a lot of transporters, there wouldn't be enough dopamine in the synaptic cleft for enabling normal brain functions. So the ability to concentrate builds day after day up and euphoria (like you indicated) decreases more and more . So euphoria and the ability to concentrate are two different (but probably related) matters. This kind of effect building also seems to suggest, that you have to take the medicine regularly for properly working. Could it then be the case that a lot of users which only take the medicine occasionally rely too much on the amphetamine euphoria component because they see this component as an indicator for the ability to function properly? But so they don't see that the ability to concentrate is more unrelated from euphoria, which leads them to chasing euphoria? This results in threads like amphetamine tolerance prevention. I never experienced diminuished effects of my medication (only in times in which I had severe stress or in the very earliest phase of beginning the treatment).

Idk.... when I read what I had written it doesn't make complete sense. But I think there are really two ways to use the medication which will have different outcomes. Short term using and long term using and both are somewhat different in their experience for the user. Relying on the short term experience might mislead into chasing euphoria in longterm use.
 
Naw mayne, I think your body starts to adjust to the effects of amps. Why would people take it recreationally if it didn't have instant effects? Tbh, to most people I know, the more you space it, the more effective. Obviously that's not for treating adhd.
 
logarithm said:
I dont get it. I was reading that for adults the effect of stimulants often won't be instantly. It is more likely that the effects, like better conentration, calmness etc., build up over the time of a week or longer. I think that I read that this has to do with a reduction in dopamine transporter density. These transporters do reuptake the dopamine and if there are a lot of transporters, there wouldn't be enough dopamine in the synaptic cleft for enabling normal brain functions. So the ability to concentrate builds day after day up and euphoria (like you indicated) decreases more and more . So euphoria and the ability to concentrate are two different (but probably related) matters. This kind of effect building also seems to suggest, that you have to take the medicine regularly for properly working. Could it then be the case that a lot of users which only take the medicine occasionally rely too much on the amphetamine euphoria component because they see this component as an indicator for the ability to function properly? But so they don't see that the ability to concentrate is more unrelated from euphoria, which leads them to chasing euphoria? This results in threads like amphetamine tolerance prevention. I never experienced diminuished effects of my medication (only in times in which I had severe stress or in the very earliest phase of beginning the treatment).

Idk.... when I read what I had written it doesn't make complete sense. But I think there are really two ways to use the medication which will have different outcomes. Short term using and long term using and both are somewhat different in their experience for the user. Relying on the short term experience might mislead into chasing euphoria in longterm use.
Click to expand...

That's an interesting theory. But that has not been my personal experience. I have ADD and the very first time I took Adderall I had much improved focus, motivation and energy (yet felt calmer about tasks that would normally be stressful and overwhelming to me - or that I'd normally just forget, lol - like meeting deadlines for huge projects) within 30 min or less of taking it (this was with IR, not XR). The longer I took it the less improved my focus/motivation/energy were from the same dose. I found it much more effective if I didn't take it regularly.

Also inhibiting dopamine transporters is only one mechanism of Adderall. And long-term/lasting dopamine transporter reduction is not necessarily a good thing (look at meth addicts for example, many of whom are self-medicating for things like ADHD). Not all ADHD stimulants even inhibit dopamine transporters, (for example methylphenidate works in a different way). It also depends on the person's unique brain, ADHD is complex and poorly understood and there are many types. "ADHD" is just a collection of symptoms, you just have to have a certain number of the symptoms and for them to be causing you problems to be diagnosed. Some studies have reported people with never-medicated ADHD to have higher than normal dopamine transporter activity and some have reported lower than normal.
 
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Sounds the common issue i always get due to lower doses, of the kind prescribed therapeutically. In lower doses meth sucks balls and it feels shitty besides lacking the good effects. Increased dosage works but thats not really an option for you and those pharma aps have other issues in terms of desired effects. Not worth abusing for rec.
 
Swimmingdancer said:
That's an interesting theory. But that has not been my personal experience. I have ADD and the very first time I took Adderall I had much improved focus, motivation and energy (yet felt calmer about tasks that would normally be stressful and overwhelming to me - or that I'd normally just forget, lol - like meeting deadlines for huge projects) within 30 min or less of taking it (this was with IR, not XR). The longer I took it the less improved my focus/motivation/energy were from the same dose. I found it much more effective if I didn't take it regularly.

Also inhibiting dopamine transporters is only one mechanism of Adderall. And long-term/lasting dopamine transporter reduction is not necessarily a good thing (look at meth addicts for example, many of whom are self-medicating for things like ADHD). Not all ADHD stimulants even inhibit dopamine transporters, (for example methylphenidate works in a different way). It also depends on the person's unique brain, ADHD is complex and poorly understood and there are many types. "ADHD" is just a collection of symptoms, you just have to have a certain number of the symptoms and for them to be causing you problems to be diagnosed. Some studies have reported people with never-medicated ADHD to have higher than normal dopamine transporter activity and some have reported lower than normal.
Click to expand...

Did the effect of the medication stabilize over time or did it diminuish more and more?

I thought that especially methylphenidate blocks dopamine transporters?

Yes. ADHD is probably extremely complex. And its neurobiology probably has lot of relations to other issues like border line, addiction,... Recently I saw this diagram from the article "Attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder and reward deficiency syndrome". It gave me a glimpse how complex this stuff is.
 
when I used to take 10mg of adderall IR for ADHD when I was young I felt extremely amped the first few days, then it just calmed me down.
 
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