– ADHD brains are said to be constantly searching for dopamine – aren’t all brains craving dopamine? What’s the difference?
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Say you have two people:
– A person who’s not eaten in 2 weeks
– A person who ate 3hrs ago, but is feeling peckish
What’s the difference?
Replace food with dopamine, and that’s your answer. ADHD is a **chronic** lack of multiple neurotransmitters, one of which is dopamine.
This is why ADHDers LOATHE the phrase “everyone’s ADHD once in a while”. We’re not ADHD once in a while, we’re ADHD every waking moment of every day, with some days being much worse than others.
In general, the reason for this is that ADHD brains aren’t really good at aiming at their dopamine receptors.
Instead of firing with decent accuracy, the dopamine just kinda spatters everywhere, most of it missing the target, or not getting there quickly enough. The brain then collects that undelivered dopamine and recycles it as waste, which means your brain doesn’t get enough.
That’s where reuptake inhibitors (meds) come in. They slow your body’s recycling phase down, so that more dopamine has enough time to slowly reach the destination before getting recycled
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It looks like the technical side of things is well covered in the answers. I will offer an perspective of the difference from an ADHD sufferer’s point of view.
When my brain (presumably) is swilling around in good dopamine and serotonin supplies when my meds kick in, I feel calm, lucid, focused, happy, and engrossed in whatever I am doing. I have an intellectual curiosity about whatever is at hand, and what may be behind it. Nothing is a problem. Nothing.
When my brain does not, I feel lethargic, mentally foggy, have massive task resistance, and feel incredibly dysphoric. Efficiency or effectiveness is a foreign concept.
When I am medicated and it is kicking in just right I feel like I have an extra 40 IQ points. No exaggeration.
Being unmedicated is like trying to listen to the radio and the signal keeps cutting out or being drowned out by static, as opposed to beaming in in full surround sound, Dolby, stereo, whatever you young kids listen to these days.
ADHD brains do not deliver nearly adequate amounts of dopamine or serotonin without pharmacological prodding. One can have no idea of the difference that makes to every moment of one’s life unless one has experienced both. I expect that non-ADHD people are far more likely to have experienced both than neurotypical people for obvious reasons.
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