I’m in my 40s, and have been taking prescription amphetamines for ~20 years now. To this day, my experience is consistent and predictable. Before I take my first dose (which isn’t always in the morning), I have little ability to control where my attention goes. It’s not that I lack attention, mind you. There’s plenty of water in the tank, I just can’t control the firehose, and the nozzle just sprays water everywhere. My brain is a “noisy” place, different aspects of my cognition demanding to be the one that is heard. It’s a firehouse full of firefighters demanding to direct that wide-stream firehose. Every interruption, every slow driver, every unexpected sound, they’re all adding to the din, each one a firefighter demanding the firehose for their own purposes. If I’m lucky, I can fight them off and direct the hose where I want…until a new firefighter (distraction) walks in.
As a result, I’m anxious, irritable, fidgety, and impatient. You’d think I was on speed, given how quickly my attention jumps from one thing to another, and how quickly I lose the ability to focus on non-novel, boring things. It doesn’t matter if they’re “fires” that require my attention, I’m just ill-equipped to battle for the firehose.
About 20–30 minutes after a dose, the noise abates. The firefighters disperse. The flow to the firehose is narrowed and slowed, and I’m able to consciously hold on to it; I can direct the water (my attention) wherever I need to. Sometimes, I don’t even need to hold on to it, and it just stays where I pointed it (“hyperfocus”).
At the end of the day, when my meds wear off, I’m not exhausted from fighting my own brain all day long. I’m more relaxed. Peaceful. Calm. Patient.
I’ve seen no cognitive or physiological deficits as a result of taking prescription amphetamines for ~20 years. Because my wife and other adult friends/family members knew me before my diagnosis, they have a baseline to compare to when evaluating my behavior. I’ve asked outright, several times: they’ve seen nothing but positive improvements in my attitude, my ability to work, and my relationships with them and others.
"I didn't know my brain could be this quiet," is a common refrain from people with ADHD on taking a stimulant for the first time.
Having since been medicated for some time, I now take this for granted, but it was a real watershed moment for me, that first day.
Say you find some really bad side-effect in the future, can you live a normal life without it, and then you have to think how has your mind changed since getting used to the drug compared to before? And then if you have some other health problem, you always have to worry is it because of the substance or not...so you will think maybe I need to stop just in case...and then you realize you are addicted.
Side-effects can be real though, which is why during a therapy you're usually going through a variety of medicines closely watching for how they interact with your organism before settling on a particular thing.
Why do you believe so?