im confused as to why people with adhd have this and i have heard stories that my mother (who has adhd) has taken handfuls of methamphetamine salts and then just gone straight to sleep despite them being stimulants.
is this real and if so how do they work?
In: Biology
Your brain (and body) uses neurotransmitters as messengers to communicate and make cells do things.
Many neurotransmitters do a lot of different things, which can explain the various symptoms.
The whole pathophysiology (how it works) of ADHD is not yet clear: but patients with ADHD seem to have some sort of impairment in the neurotransmitter systems in the brain, particularly those involving dopamin and norepinephrine.
Stimulants (such as amphetamines) affect these very neurotransmitters with relatively high precision. They can act in different ways but in an easy way to understand it is that they make the existing dopamin and norepinephrine act longer by inhibiting their reuptake after release.
Think of it like two people calling each other, the stimulant makes the phone call last longer and make the two people on the phone call talk more.
Since people with ADHD seem to have a dysfunction in these very systems, making the messengers within the systems act longer or more efficiently is a good way to treat the condition.
Edit:
Some people have pointed out that this explanation, though simplified, is still too difficult to grasp. And that’s fair.
Here’s for a five year old:
Your brain is like a house with people in it. And people in this house needs to talk to each other using words.
Some people in this house have a hard time communicating with each other.
ADHD medications make the people in the house talk to each other better.
Source: Pharmacist student.
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