The above post is utterly false.
This was always known to be false, but was a popular opinion in pop-psychology for a time.
It is untrue.
Stimulant medications DO NOT have this claimed opposite effect on people with ADHD. This is not a view that is supported by science and is not a valid diagnosis method.
I’m not even saying you’re wrong, but it doesn’t match my personal experience at all (in both directions), and the belief is apparently widespread enough that real professional mental health providers believe it.
It would be genuinely surprising to me if someone who works all day with people who take these medications and talk about their effects wouldn’t be armed with a million counterexamples if at minimum the observations didn’t line up. Like they’ve got to be seeing some real effect even if the explanation is wrong.
I can comfortably take a nap after popping 10mg of dexamphetamine, whereas most people would be atleast moderately buzzed. And this has been the case since day 1 (I was diagnosed at 26), so it’s not just a factor of tolerance.
Another great example is the fact that the single biggest benefit to ADHD meds for me has been a complete reversal of my life-long anxiety.
I’m now zen as f..k, whereas before being proscribed meds I was a very anxious, hyper-self critical person.
I firmly believe this has more to do with dosages than anything else. Sure, give a random person a 10mg Adderall and one might be more sedated or hyperactive. Give them 100mg (almost double therapeutic max), and I guarantee they won't be calm sedated.
Sure, everyone has a different threshold that needs to be hit for whatever underlying reasons just like alcohol. One beer might make some feel buzzed, one beer might not do anything. But for an average person (not a chronic alcoholic), I guarantee they'll be fucked-up after 6+ beers.
There’s a REALLY obvious difference.
It’s visible as an effect in studies too. In various forms. At random, one paper of many which captures one aspect: https://doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1469-7610.2010.02333.x
ADHD is a diagnosis based on symptoms. It has a number of causes. Your mental health professionals would prefer different diagnostic criteria. Those other criteria would result in a different set of people being diagnosed with ADHD. The current diagnostic criteria are symptoms that cause problems for the sufferer. Thus successful treatment of ADHD as currently diagnosed improves lives. Why is the diagnostic criteria you describe better?
If you took a 6 month long tolerance break, I would be interested to see if you still had that effect. Insomnia is not that uncommon of a symptom of stimulant withdrawal.
Why? I thought there was a clear and insurmountable amount of evidence behind all their little psychometric tests? /s
> real professional mental health providers believe it.
Plenty of doctors and professionals believe incorrect information all the time. Just because one went to a fancy medical school does not make them infallible no matter how much their ego may try to convince you otherwise.
Do they, as far as you're aware, have this opposite effect one some people - but it's not considered to be correlated to whether they have ADHD?
But some of that may have been environmental because I had experience with hyper friends breaking my stuff and so learned to be cautious, so I might have developed increased caution in response to stimulation for non-physiological reasons.
That might not actually be real: https://www.science.org.au/curious/people-medicine/does-suga...