Eli5 Why do some drugs (ie party drugs) work immediately while others need time (weeks) to get in your system? Could a higher dose get them in your system faster?
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Taking more of say, antidepressants won’t increase the antidepressant effect speed much, and can harm you. The reason antidepressants take so long to reach peak efficacy is that it involves more than just the drug being in your blood.
It actually involves increasing the serotonin able to signal in your brain, and waiting for the brain to adapt to that by turning down the sensitivity of parts of the serotonin system. Specifically, there’s one receptor called 5-HT_1a that the weeks to months adaptation making it less sensitive when exposed to the extra serotonin, and we believe this plays a large role in the effect of antidepressants. A receptor is a basically a tunnel into a cell that is normally locked, but the presence of a substance like serotonin can cause it to open. Each receptor is keyed a bit differently, so different compounds are better able to open them than others.
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