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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Party drugs are usually going after easily accessible targets and you generally accept the side effects.
Long, slow acting drugs like antidepressants are going after much harder (more complex) symptoms and trying to minimize side effects. It’s a harder, slower job.
It’s also true that party drugs are just better drugs from the efficacy point of view, and usually worse from the side effects and safety points of view. Fentanyl is an amazingly good painkiller, hugely better at killing pain than ibuprofen. But fentanyl kills you if you overdose a narrow therapeutic range and ibuprofen doesn’t, so the latter is in common use.
Antibiotics are best of both worlds. They are usually fast acting on bacterial targets and have no mammalian targets so you get fast and high efficacy!
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