There are so many kinds of chemical stimulants why are amphetamines the thing ADHD patients need?
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I can only speak from experience. I’m a former meth addict that got into meth from doing copious amounts of cocaine. I also was diagnosed ADHD as a kid and have been (and am actively on) many different stimulants. The closest experience I had to my stimulants being very similar to meth/coke was when I was on Vyvanse. Before anyone gets upset, everyone’s brain is different and reacts differently to meds.
When I was on Vyvanse, once it hit my system, all I could do was hyperfixate and hyperfocus on “urges.” That is, I had no control over where my attention went to and I had no control over what I wanted to focus on. The Vyvanse would hit and I’d be stuck hyperfocusing on ONE thing for the next 8-10 hours with no way out, and it was rarely ever things that were productive or helpful to focus on. Yes, it helped the factor of my ADHD where my attention was constantly bouncing around different things, but it made the whole “I can’t choose what to focus on” somehow 10x worse.
That’s how cocaine/meth was for me. I’d get high and do one single thing for however many hours and get completely lost in it. Often it was whatever thing fit the most with dopamine-seeking. But I didn’t have any actual relief from the inability to control my focus. Of course I wasn’t taking it to get work done, I was taking it to get high. It was also just so incredibly easy for me to get addicted to these drugs compared to any of the stimulants I’ve been on simply just don’t provide enough of a rush of endorphins/dopamine for me to want to abuse them.
I take a set of stimulants now where I actually feel like I’m in control of my own mind/brain when I’m on them. I have authority of what I want to do, what I want to focus on, and can go about changing tasks accordingly to how I need. I can’t do that without stimulants, and I couldn’t do that on coke/meth.
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