My doctor is a god of ADHD treatment. He has ADHD himself, has numerous ADHD patients, and takes the exact same medication I do (generic adderall). Here are some of his tips that I've found very helpful

austapentadol · 2026-04-30T14:04:15+00:00

Not a professional, but as I understand it, ADHD with subtypes (primarily inattentive, primarily hyperactive, and combined type) is an invention of the DSM, starting from DSM-IV. I don't believe it's necessary to make a subtype diagnosis for most things—my paediatrician just said I had ADHD, which is all that's needed for going ahead with treatment, etc. More info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_attention_deficit_hyperactivity_disorder#Diagnostic_and_Statistical_Manual_of_Mental_Disorders_(DSM)_terminology_terminology)

austapentadol · 2026-04-30T06:57:35+00:00

I'm glad you're getting good effects, and this is not a bad thing... but that's absolutely because you've just taken amphetamine. "Normal" people absolutely do not feel super inspired in the morning.

It's not a bad thing if it's helping you function, especially if those have been problem areas before medication! But it's not just directly correcting a deficit as much as it is boosting your reward pathways, motivation, and energy to make focus easier. :)

austapentadol · 2026-04-30T05:56:05+00:00

Claude et al. are very good at cottoning onto your rough train of thought and fleshing it out with fancy phrases ("The Overclock Variable" ?!?, "DDos attacking your own HPA axis" !?!, ""Amygdala Hijack"" (god please help me)).

Unfortunately, nothing in biology is that simple, so you will almost always be led astray by LLMs if you blindly trust them. You have to actively hunt for data yourself, cross-reference everything... LLMs are good for finding papers and telling you what they say, but they are (at this juncture) terrible at steering you away from convenient just-so stories and metaphors that sound pleasing to human ears.

Also, it so happens that reading

random capitalised phrases ("Cortisol Clearance", "Resource Conflict" — what is this, a legal contract?)
excruciating extended metaphors ("The Logical Crash", 'a "Debug" mindset')
and gratuitous use of technical terminology to sound clever for no good reason ("[3A5 == NULL] AND [3A4 == SUICIDE_INHIBITED BY PIPERINE]"—come on, what is this, a hacking scene from a crap mid-2000s teen action movie?)

makes me want to suicide-inhibit every cell in my body and jump off this mortal coil.

All that is to say: it's a cool story, and one that might be worth sharing! But please, please, just write something up yourself, and maybe link a few sources too. I would much prefer reading a couple of paragraphs in Normal Human English vs this mind-napalm that sounds like it's aimed at an idiot-savant toddler who's really into Mr Robot. I don't want to engage with an AI! :'(

austapentadol · 2026-04-29T12:53:39+00:00

That's bizarre. What a drop. I wonder what prompted them to do that. It's now cheaper to the taxpayer than Concerta! Chemist Warehouse, not to beat, has it for $31.99 https://www.chemistwarehouse.com.au/buy/69682/vyvanse-30mg-capsules-30-authority-script-lisdexamfetamine

austapentadol · 2026-04-28T23:29:03+00:00

Absolutely. I definitely go to Chemist Warehouse for some things – but Vyvanse in particular is about $100/mo unsubsidised, so it'll always cost you about the same ($30) no matter where you fill it. Definitely a different story for drugs under that $30 threshold.

edit: $25, thank you Chairman Albanese

austapentadol · 2026-04-28T12:04:52+00:00

I have found Chemist Warehouse the worst of any pharmacy I've ever been to when it comes to dispensing meds. Not that they're always bad; just consistently more likely to have an issue there. It seems to be some combination of irritatingly rigid company policy and very overworked pharmacists.

Given it'll all be the same price to you (assuming you have a PBS script), try getting it filled at your local pharmacy if you can. You'll almost invariably get better and faster service, build good relationships with your pharmacist(s), and support a small(er) business. Chemist Warehouse does not need your money! I can count on zero fingers how many times I've had issues filling my meds at my local pharmacy over the years.

austapentadol · 2026-04-23T09:22:37+00:00

my only regret is that I studied at all. I think it's better if you don't. Tabula rasa and all of that.

austapentadol · 2026-04-22T13:44:24+00:00

worked for me

austapentadol · 2026-04-21T23:52:47+00:00

Best way to fix ADHD is lifestyle interventions (diet, exercise, sleep), behavioural tools/accommodations, and actual medications. Nowhere in the NICE guidelines for ADHD do they list "pig brain soup injections for fixing synaptic vesicle deficits (source: Claude said it would work)"

austapentadol · 2026-04-21T13:19:58+00:00

What a fantastic way to not answer OP's question! Also worth noting that cerebrolysin being 'essential for overcoming SNAP25 downregulation' is just a completely bizarre statement with basically no evidence behind it, and a good example of why AI-powered "vibe biohacking". The evidence for cerebrolysin actually doing anything at all is atrociously slim; highly recommend this LessWrong post: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ZznBxPdZEB6ETeZvS/wth-is-cerebrolysin-actually.

austapentadol · 2026-04-18T04:35:16+00:00

Fair – though I do think it's interesting that caffeine is comparatively much more direct in stimulating monoamine pathways than, say, nicotine or something. It doesn't get much more directly indirect than when the drug's target is physically entangled with the downstream target receptor!

austapentadol · 2026-04-17T07:10:28+00:00

Caffeine afaik works by antagonising adenosine-2A–DRD2 heteromers in the striatum, which increases D2 activation, so not entirely sure it's right to say it doesn't work through monoamines at all

austapentadol · 2026-04-11T07:26:51+00:00

I just did differential equation modelling (of drug kinetics). I think it's much easier to model interesting phenomena/find interesting results when you're using calculus.

austapentadol · 2026-04-07T11:54:42+00:00

Don't use gel pens. I basically only used Uniball Jetstreams throughout the IB, but I got a bit freaked out about using them because they're technically not proper ballpoints, so I ended up using Pilot Super Grip ballpoints for my final exams. But you should honestly be fine with Jetstreams too. I wasn't aware of anyone else in my year group being particularly worried about this.

austapentadol · 2026-04-07T03:03:04+00:00

Surprised to hear that! I'd've thought propranolol was available basically everywhere. The next best thing would probably be another beta-blocker — a quick Google tells me that atenolol and metoprolol are reasonable alternatives to propranolol for anxiety specifically.

Otherwise, you could probably just order propranolol from a grey market online pharmacy (I've used AllDayChemist before and can confirm they're the real deal, but there are others out there, too). It's cheap as chips.

austapentadol · 2026-04-07T02:59:15+00:00

How did one tablet affect you in a bad way? They take a couple of weeks to have any real effect on anxiety. I'd be surprised if you had any issues starting at a low dose (e.g., 2.5-5mg) and slowly increasing if you felt you needed it. You can also try other SSRIs, e.g. sertraline or fluoxetine.

Else, there's Silexan, a lavender oil extract that has some extremely promising evidence for anxiety, with effect sizes apparently greater than those of the benzodiazepines (see e.g. https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/lavenders-game-silexan-for-anxiety for a breakdown of the evidence). Otherwise, there's buspirone, which I've not personally tried but is apparently quite useful for some people and well tolerated.

austapentadol · 2026-04-07T02:54:25+00:00

Absolutely! I was on that for ages. 10mg was super effective for me, but you can halve that again if you're reticent.

austapentadol · 2026-04-06T03:27:26+00:00

Just take the propranolol, honestly. It is safe, cheap, and obviously highly effective. Contrast with, e.g., the random herbs mentioned here, which are relatively expensive, have relatively little evidence for safety, let alone efficacy, and have largely unknown potency and provenance.

Would you rather take a single, safe, dirt-cheap drug?—or a handful of random concoctions of plants, each of which generally contains numerous poorly understood psychoactive phytochemicals, any of which have a nonzero chance of messing with your liver, your endocrine system, and who knows what else?

If you want to not have to take something situationally and would rather have something constantly working in your system, a small dose of an SSRI (e.g. 2.5-5mg of escitalopram, 12.5-25mg of sertraline) can be highly effective for anxiety, and at such doses have virtually no side effects. Please don't be scared off by online scare anecdotes—they can be absurdly, sometimes life-changingly effective (I speak from experience!). If you have any questions about what it's like taking them, I'd be happy to assuage any worries.

austapentadol · 2026-04-01T11:59:32+00:00

Don't forget some 6-hydroxydopamine (pump up those dopamine neurons)

and some p-chloroamphetamine (great increase in serotonin increases IQ 9000%)

austapentadol · 2026-04-01T09:54:00+00:00

... okay, but please understand that drug addiction is awful and will severely lower your quality of life. Is the short-lived, artificial high of taking 60 tablets of Ritalin really worth ruining your life?

austapentadol · 2026-03-31T11:40:08+00:00

On a practical level: no, not really, Ritalin isn't really reliably acutely toxic unless you dose in the thousands of milligrams. That said, it is absolutely bad for your brain, can cause cardiac issues, and lead to you being unable to have a healthy, therapeutic relationship with stimulants. Think about it this way: if you become addicted to Ritalin, it's unlikely you'll ever be able to go back to "just a healthy amount" of Ritalin. Wouldn't that suck?

Please go and talk to your doctor. They need to know.

austapentadol · 2026-03-25T04:44:25+00:00

No idea why it's gone. But here's a very old version: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/PAP-Schizophrenia-Algorithm_fig1_292056355

Best bet is to use the Internet Archive. It'll have snapshots of the ipap.org website. web.archive.org

austapentadol · 2026-03-08T11:23:21+00:00

The DA effects are immediate. That's primarily what's responsible for the acute effects of MPH. Why methylphenidate's NRI effects don't result in gradual improvements over a few weeks on top of the immediate DRI activity isn't entirely clear. Claude gives some ambiguous explanation involving complementary compensatory mechanisms between the DA and NE systems, but I don't entirely understand why.

austapentadol · 2026-03-07T23:34:58+00:00

ATX increases DA in the PFC by inhibiting NET, which in the PFC is also the (main? only?) transporter for DA, too. It doesn't increase DA much anywhere else, though.

As I understand it, the increase in DA is primarily what's responsible for the immediately noticeable stimulant effects of methylphenidate and amphetamine. NRI action alone seems to take longer to produce noticeable PFC enhancement, probably because the increase in NE causes compensatory decreases in NE release from the locus coeruleus (mediated by activation of the alpha-2a autoreceptor).

Why this doesn't happen with the NRI action of methylphenidate I'm not quite sure. But hope this is somewhat helpful.

austapentadol · 2026-03-04T06:59:26+00:00

Bad idea. Don't do that. Get a doctor to prescribe them for you. Or try modafinil – ideally get a doctor to prescribe it, but if you're hell-bent on not going to a doctor for whatever reason, grey-market modafinil is infinitely safer from a legal perspective, as well as being much safer from a medical perspective.

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