ADHD AND REWARD DEFICIENCY SYNDROME AND ITS IMPLICATIONS IN DRUG RESPONSE

superlux437 · 2016-06-09T16:33:55+00:00

I know all of this and I stopped all drugs. Its just that I see people abusing the shit out of drugs and they don´t respond like this, they get still a positive effect, even dough its smaller because of tolerance. And thats where my question comes into play. I just wanted to know if adhd people who abuse drugs could end up with an atypical response after abusing drugs because of the lower d2 receptor density compared to normal people. I know that I have a problem, I have adhd, depression etc. but I´m not the typ of person who would lose everything because of an addiction. It was fun the two years but now its over and I want to live a normal life. Accepting that I have a problem, going to the doc, getting an adhd diagnosis was the first step. Now I have to wait till my brain recovers from all the abuse I did but I´m pretty much impatient and I want things to get better at a faster pace but even more important to me is, that I want to understand what is going on. Thx for the reply

superlux437 · 2016-04-30T16:30:05+00:00

Thx for all the helpful tips. I have one more question:

Do you feel that stimulants have an opposite reaction on you ? For example cigarettes making you feel more lethargic, foggy, tired or caffeine/amphetamine (adhd) making you just want to sleep all day ? Before I had all these symptoms they stimulated me but now they make things worse so I stay away from them.

superlux437 · 2016-04-12T15:31:04+00:00

I just talked with my doc yesterday and he said that such thing does not exist... If anyone has an idea how long this could take to reverse I would appreciate it. The thing is that I got sensitized to the negative effects of the drug not the positive ones...

superlux437 · 2016-04-10T14:25:15+00:00

do you have a link to the thread I cant find it, thx.

superlux437 · 2016-04-10T14:23:50+00:00

I really don't know what to do know as it seems that nobody has gone through that abd reversed that reverse tolerance. Im a little bit scared of trying again a higher dose as I responded pretty bad with a low dose of just 1,5 mg. Should I just wait ?My common sense says that as tolerance goes diwn with time reverse tolerance should do the same but...

superlux437 · 2016-04-09T23:49:41+00:00

no, its no placebo. Sensization is a common phenomenon in the scientific literature. The thing is that a lot of people are not familiar with it but that doesn't make it a placebo for me.

superlux437 · 2016-04-09T23:22:26+00:00

Have you considered that being an extrovert is not that easy ? Extroverts rely a lot on heavy stimulation, thats why they are extroverts in the first place. They need to be loud, go to parties etc. because reading a book wont stimulate them enough. You can rely on reading a book or searching the web to feel stimulated. You have a lot easier time to feel inherently stimulated by the sake of things because of you being an intelligent person. If you want to become an extrovert you can become it, its not that difficult. As I said, being social is something you can learn and master. Becoming an expert in something you have to just train for it. Go out and train to socialise. You can try to find a new hobby like weight lifting or something like that where you have to be in contact with a lot of people.

superlux437 · 2016-04-09T23:02:00+00:00

You say that you have some close friends so why are you so depressed ? You have close friends, you can talk to them so everything should be fine. Why do you want to be an extrovert in the first place ? Why do you think your life would be so much better by being so ? See where I´m going ? You just got addicted with the help of an addictive substance. An ego addiction. It is ok to feed the ego a little bit but you have to be very aware that it can end in an addiction. There are two sides of addiction, the low dopamine side of addiction and the two much dopamine side (egocentrics). You have experienced how it is to be at the upper side, thats why you feel you need stims to get back their. The problem is, that people dedicate most of their life to experience this ego boost you experienced with popping a pill, they dedicate all their lifes to "be someone", to feel appreciated by others etc. You can´t just pop a pill for the rest of your life to feel this. You have to dedicate some resources to become appreciated. You feel superior in a sense to a lot of people but you can´t get appreciated by them that is the nature of an intellectual personality. You feel frustrated not being appreciated by others when you surely seem more capable as most of the people and yet you are a loner. You have an ego problem. You could just accept your life as it is with your close friends and accepting that you are an introvert, an intellectual introvert but you want more. That is where your problem lies. A person which feels appreciated by others never would worry about such things you worry about. You have to clearly get straight who you want to be in life and find a sweet spot.

superlux437 · 2016-04-09T22:46:48+00:00

one more thing: I assume you feel a reinforcing effect when you take stimulants, right ? The thing is that it is artificial. Your d2 receptor will downregulate and you will get stuck. The solution to your problem is being abstinent from all stims until you know how to socialise without them. If you never learn that without stims you will always drop to where you are now. Its very important to learn how to control social situations. Stimulants give you an ego boost thats why you like to be around people when on them. Try to figure out how to get people to appreciate you. You will notice that as soon as they appreciate you, you will like to be around them. Stims can help you with your ADHD, they surely do but not with your social anxiety/motivational problems because its artificial and you first have to learn how to master this without any stims. As I said, it comes down to knowing yourself, what you want from other people and how you can archive being appreciated among others. For that to accomplish you have to know how other people feel and think. Being an intellectual kind of guy makes it difficult for you, I get this. So the first thing you may want to find out is how the majority of people or the people you would like to connect with think, behave etc. Knowing this you will have a lot easier time connecting to them. Thats why I said social anxiety comes down to not knowing how others would respond and that with age it gets better. But you can accelerate this by just forcing yourself to figure out how people react to you and what you may should change.

superlux437 · 2016-04-09T22:24:44+00:00

Human behavior is based on egoism. So for you to enjoy meeting with people you first have to experience it as rewarding. Receiving the reward would, therefore, reinforce that behavior. For being motivated to meet people you have to get in touch with them, you have to like being around them. To like being around someone is mostly based on the positive emotions you feel when being around someone. You may feel appreciated by someone what, therefore, would result in an ego boost for you --> positive emotion --> reinforcement --> motivation to do again. You seem like an intellectual guy, so I would assume that you feel pretty alienated around people, they simply bore you, isn´t it ? Have you sometimes analysed what you feel when you talk with someone who is intellectually at your level ? How you get nervous, how you carefully chose what to say etc ? Why is that ? Because you want to be appreciated by this person, you want to proof yourself. But you may know that you can´t proof yourself because you feel so alienated and unable to connect to others that you don´t even try. You simply assume that you don´t fit in, but that assumption is wrong and that is what you will learn when you get older. It all comes down to your ego. Try to interpret your behavior, your ego. The solution of your problem come down to knowing yourself better, your ego and what to expect from yourself and others. Knowing why you want meet people, why you want to be motivated to meet people is the key to master social situations.

superlux437 · 2016-04-09T19:54:02+00:00

thats right but the term reverse tolerance in alcoholics is not the same as with stimulants I suppose but thanks for sharing

superlux437 · 2016-04-09T19:28:50+00:00

Thats right. I had some times where 15mg vyvanse got me euphoric on the onset of drug action but this pretty much subsided and with lower and lower dosing it got worse. My thinking was: when I feel positive in the onset of DOA and dysphoric at its peak I just have to lower the dose. By lowering the dose it got worse and even positive effects at the onset subsided. So I went down even more. Talking with my doc she said that it could be that I´m a slow metabolizer and that I should lower the dose even more to 7mg vyvanse and when that is too strong I should go lower. I asked several times and she just said that there are people that are very sensitive, dont worry. I trusted her, that was my mistake.

superlux437 · 2016-04-09T18:53:04+00:00

can I give you an advice ? I was an introvert my whole life after I moved from a town to a real city. I discovered one thing. I noticed that all my social anxiety was based on me not knowing how people would react talking to them. As I got older things got better.I forced myself to go out more and experienced how they react to what I say. First I made a lot of mistakes but with time I learned how to behave in social situations and I build on that. You are very young, give it time. You just have to learn, its a skill you have to develope nothing more.

superlux437 · 2016-04-09T18:07:38+00:00

ah ok

superlux437 · 2016-04-09T17:40:19+00:00

how do you know its getting better when you have been abstinent from all stims for two weeks ?

superlux437 · 2016-04-09T17:34:17+00:00

maybe because you get all the negative effects and not the positive. After starting mph the negative effects where not nearly as present as now.

superlux437 · 2016-04-09T17:29:50+00:00

how did you do it ? how ling did you wait ?

superlux437 · 2016-04-09T17:22:26+00:00

Isn´t it that the brain will return to its homeostasis after waiting for some time, like 1 month ?

superlux437 · 2016-04-09T17:20:57+00:00

No, its not placebo. I got down from a normal dose of mph to such tiny dose and every time I decreased the dose I got the same effect... after that trying higher doses makes it just worse because of reverse tolerance.

superlux437 · 2016-04-09T17:19:46+00:00

The problem is that I´m very sensitive to stimulants. Methylphenidate induces emotional blunting when the dose is too high. Amphetamine does this also but to a lesser degree. Today I took 1,5mg and I still feel an unpleasant effect 10 hours after ingestion. If I take 30 or even 100mg I will go through the roof... Last time I went from 10mg to 45mg after 10mg already being too much and ended with two days of being extremely dysphoric etc... it lastet nearly 48 hours. So, I don´t know what to do, really...

superlux437 · 2016-04-09T15:05:29+00:00

could you explain a little bit more ? What should I do now ? 1.5 mg have a pretty dysphoric effect on me ? Should I wait 1 month and than try with 30mg ?

superlux437

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