How does ADHD medication affect your brain?

Today we’re going to talk about how ADHD medication affects your brain.

ADHD medication can be helpful when diagnosed and prescribed by a qualified psychiatrist. But the scary part is that 25% of middle school and high school students report using ADHD medication without prescription.

The purpose of this newsletter is to:

1. Help you understand how these medications affect your brain so that you’re more informed when talking to a professional

2. The dangers of taking these drugs without the supervision of a psychiatrists

This is not a newsletter on whether or not you should take these medications as I am not a psychiatrist. This is me doing research and sharing what I’ve found.

Okay ready? Let’s dive in.

Why stimulants work

Common symptoms of ADHD include:

• hyperactivity

• impulsivity

• difficulty concentrating

ADHD affects everyone differently so I’m painting with a broad brush here.

It seems counterintuitive that people with these symptoms would need stimulants to become more calm and focused.

The reason is because people with ADHD tend to have lower dopamine baselines.

What is dopamine?

Dopamine is a neuromodulator that is responsible for motivation, pursuing goals and the pleasure that comes from achievement.

So when people have low dopamine baselines, they try to find ways to increase dopamine through their environment.

Which results in the difficulty concentrating and increased hyperactivity.

What ADHD medication does is that it increases the dopamine levels in your brain. This suppresses your need for constant stimulation from your environment.

There are two most common forms of ADHD medications that work in different ways to increase dopamine. Methylphenidate and Amphetamines.

Methylphenidate

A popular form of Methylphenidate is Ritalin.

When your neurons send out dopamine it usually collects whatever dopamine doesn’t get picked up from the next neuron.

Methylphenidate, prevents that collection from happening. Which leaves more dopamine in your brain.

Amphetamines

The most popular Amphetamine drugs are Adderall and Vyvanse.

These drugs work by simply increasing the dopamine in your brain.

Considerations before taking the drug

Now that you know how these drugs help, there are few things you need to consider.

Dosages

Everyone’s body responds differently to these drugs. Which is why it’s so important to work with a professional on this.

They should typically put you on the lowest dose possible and see the affects.

If nothing happens then they slowly increase the dosages to see what works best for you.

When you take these drugs without a prescription you are likely taking the drug at a very high dose and this can result in addiction.

If you take very high doses of these drugs, you become less sensitive to dopamine and you need more of the drug to get back to baseline. Over time this builds a level of dependence and potential addiction.

Side Effects

Before choosing to take these drugs it’s also important to be aware of the side effects. These side effects include:

• Loss of appetite

• Sleep problems

• Mood changes

• Fast heart rate

Remember everyone responds differently. Not everyone will experience the same side effects.

Unfortunately these drugs are still relatively new so there’s not a lot of information on the long term effects.

Alternatives

Finally before we end off I just wanted to share some alternative options. It’s common to simply see ADHD as a chemical imbalance in the brain that can be fixed with a pill.

But a lot times there are deeper factors at play.

For example, the symptoms of ADHD we described above ie. hyperactivity, impulsivity, difficulty concentrating are also present in people with trauma.

It’s easy to get the two confused. Especially if the traumatic experience isn’t shared with the psychotherapist.

A pill simply won’t heal your trauma. It requires a completely different type of intervention.

In addition there are other ways to increase you dopamine levels naturally like getting good sleep, nutrition, exercise, etc.

Unfortunately many of these natural ways of increasing dopamine are overlooked and pills become the default prescription.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. I hope this gives you more insight into how medication can help with ADHD with the help of a professional psychiatrist.

Feel free to reply if you have any questions.

I’ll see you next week, cheers!