As previously stated, the effects of Ritalin and Adderall on the brain are similar in chemistry to amphetamines and cocaine, especially in large doses. The doses taken by a ADHD patient are usually around 5 to 20 mg, 3 times a day. Someone taking it recreationally or to study better would probably do 15 to 50 mg at a sitting, maybe once an hour. You also can get around the time absorption by breaking up the ‘Rid and snorting it like coke. This will give you a powerful high and a feeling of acute mental performance (and the need to talk to anyone and everyone). These effects are very similar to cocaine, they both act on the dopamine receptors in specific parts of the brain (such as the medial forebrain bundle, giving you a sensation of pleasure and well-being). Whereas 10 years ago a student may go to a local shady neighborhood and buy an 8-ball of coke to get through finals week, now they just hit their roommate up for some black-market rids. You’ll write the paper no problem (and probably immensely enjoy doing it) but good luck sleeping or feeling somewhat normal the next day (I tried a bit in college). The other likelihood is waking up the next morning, reading your paper, and asking yourself what the hell you were writing about last night.
The biggest danger besides the obvious system stress of an amphetamine is the possibility of graduating on to a stronger drug. A few people I knew tangled briefly but intensely with cocaine after getting started cracking ‘Rids.
Depends. Now that Adderall XR is on the market, why take 3 doses a day when you can take just one that lasts all day? In fact I wonder why they’re even still making the non time released Adderall.
20mg 3 times a day sounds like a bit much, but the non-time released pill did metabolize in just a few hours. I think back when I was first diagnosed I took two 20mg doses a day.
50 milligrams AN HOUR? Not if they want to end up dead!
As I said, Adderall is amphetamine. It’s not like amphetamine, it is a mixture of d- and l-amphetamine, and the reason it does similar things to the brain as speed is because it is speed, in a prettier package.
Slight sidetrack, if I may: what kinds of experiences have people had with *legal, over the counter * products to aid alertness? Are caffeine pills any different from coffee, in terms of desired effects, side effects etc? (My own experience is that it takes a lot longer to feel a benefit from a caffeine pill than from coffee, but it’s a lot easier to keep caffeine pills around.) Some people have used Sudafed and other cold and allergy medications. If the product is labeled something like “non-drowsy” chances are it will probably actively help keep you awake. Same question about them: desired effects, negative side effects?
The preferred “legal speed” for many years was phenylpropanolamine (PPA), the decongestant that used to be in CONTAC capsules and other OTC cold/allergy remedies. It was also a featured ingredient in a lot of “legal diet pills” sold to the school set. It was withdrawn from the market in the 1990s after linkage to strokes, with most products switching to pseudoephedrine (the active ingredient in Sudafed).
Pseudoephed and PPA have cholinergic-blocking (or is it adrenergic? been 18 years and the course material is getting hazy) effect, it acts on the autonomic rather than central nervous system, kind of like a mild hit of adrenalin or atropine. It reduces secretions and GI motility and constricts distal blood vessels (good for stuffy, runny noses), and it suppreses appetite and drowsiness (“speed” effect). Later, more advanced cold preps like Seldane and Claritin have since come along that go non-drowsy w/o the “speed” effect.
Both PPA and pseudoephed by themselves (w/o the cold medicine’s antihistamine) will give you the “speed” effect of keeping you awake and feeling more energetic and like you don’t need to eat or go to the bathroom, but in my experience, they don’t focus you like a true CNS stimulant would. Frequent or heavy use is also more likely to be accompanied by jitters, palpitation, irregular heartbeats, headaches, elevated BP and other such effects – often these medications will come with warnigns to avoid them if you have HBP or other circulatory problems, prostate problems, ocular pressure problems, etc.
Personally, the “more dangerous” PPA actually had milder side-effects on me (when taken as a cold med) than pseudoephed when taken as over a longer period. But still both PPA and pseudoephed caused me some serious sleep-stage disturbances when sleep finally came. Not fun.
Piracetam, which is legal to buy in the US now, gives me an energy boost when I take it. However when I go over 2g at once I get ADD and can’t concentrate on anything. At a dose lower than 2g I concentrate a little better and am less sleepy. I have heard other users have the same effects.
Combining Piracetam with a choline booster like DMAE or choline can improve its benefits too.
Fish has lots of choline. Why not eat a steady diet of salmon and always get a good night’s sleep? I’d be willing to bet money that would be better for your overall performance than taking psychostimulants, and a hell of a lot more friendly to your heart.
[QUOTE=Abbie Carmichael]
Now that Adderall XR is on the market, why take 3 doses a day when you can take just one that lasts all day? In fact I wonder why they’re even still making the non time released Adderall.
[QUOTE]
I’ve never been able to use an XR product of any kind. At least one of the given XR drug’s effects last into the sleep period and gives me serious sleep latency problems / insomnia. That’s at least one reason why they keep making non-XR formulations.
By the way, I’d like to add my voice to those who think there has been some extreme over-criticism of Ritalin and the like here. It’s a legitimate medicine, folks, and shouldn’t be the political volleyball of the chronic complainers it’s come to be.
Piracetam is not a psychostimulant. The mechanism by which it supposedly improves choice accuracy and memory(both long and short term) is not known for certain, but an increase in the utilization of acetylcholine has been suggested. Mostly, it affects cerebral metabolism and boosts blood flow between the hemispheres of the brain.
I just got some of it on monday - 750 grams for $25! That’s an amazing price, considering a few years ago I paid $60 for 48 grams. I do believe that it can be useful, even for healthy individuals such as myself. The thing I’ve always noticed about it is that it increases the sharpness of my vision considerably. I am mildly nearsighted, so this change is very obvious. I gave some to a friend who a similar case(in extent) of impaired eyesight and he was pretty amazed.
Piracetam is virtually non-toxic, BTW. It has been studied in Alzheimer’s patients using daily infusions of 38grams, without any side effects.
bulknutrition is where I got mine, if anyone is interested.
Yep, its gone down in price alot. And since it utilizes acetylcholine in higher amounts stacking it with an acetylcholine booster is supposed to make it work even better.
Piracetam is thought to both positively and negatively modulate voltage-gated calcium and potassium channels (esp. the former, where nifepidine has been shown to antagonize the effects of piracetam), and in that regard appears to have a similar action to D1 receptor agonists on potentiation of NMDA/glutamate receptor signaling. Piracetam also seems to antagonize the effects of GABA on glucose uptake (meaning it increases glucose uptake). Dopamine and glutamate are both excitatory neurotransmitters, while GABA is an inhibitory one. Drugs that hit the dopaminergic and glutamatergic systems are typically thought of as “stimulants”, and it is thought that dopaminergic drugs have indirect nootropic properties due to their effects on NMDA-receptor-mediated signaling, which is in turn invovled in changes in synaptic plasticity; most notably for memory-related effects is long-term-potentiation in parts of the hippocampus.
In that case, it could be said that Zoloft is a stimulant. Since piracetam reduces seizure intensity and can ameloriate the toxicity of alcohol withdrawal, I would not place it in the same category as the drugs already mentioned in this thread. Unless we are talking in very general terms.
Piracetam an anticonvulsant? Levetiracetam, an l-enatiomer analogue of piracetam, is being studies as such, but I’m not familiar with that term being associated with piracetam. There’s evidence piracetam is good for treating myoclonus, which is a certainly the “convulsive” symptom of epilipsy we usually think of, but that’s just one aspect of a tonic-clonic siezure, and might have nothing to do with complex partial siezures (such as are often seen in patients with TLE). By what mechanism it does this, I don’t think anyone knows.
Serotonergic drugs potentiate serotonin, obviously, which is an inhibitory neurotransmitter, but they also increase the activity of 3-alpha-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase, which is involved with the production of various neurosteroids like allopregnanolone, which are allosteric enhancers of GABAA receptors. I’m not aware of any “excitatory” mechanism by which serotonergics function, with the possible exception of low-level dopamine reuptake inhibition by sertraline, which is probably negligible in clinical doses, and 5-HT2C blockade by fluoxetine, which can have transient anxiogenic effects.
I’ve seen some reports that piracetam increases the concentrations of all monoamine neurotransmitters, which would include serotonin, but I’ve no idea how important that property is, compared to its effects on voltage-gated Ca2+ channels (and their associated ligand-gated ion channels). It’s weird enough that an NMDA-R potentiator or agonist of some sort could even be an anti-myoclonic, as NMDA-R agonists are typically proconvulsive and eventually excititoxic.
AFAIK, it is not consistently effective for preventing grand mal seizures. It has been studied as an adjunct to true anticonvulsants, with good results.
I think there is some inhibition mixed up in there(stares at his head) somewhere, directly or otherwise. It could be something like nicotine, agonistic and antagonistic at once - dirtier, though.
If it IS a stimulant, it’s absolutely nothing like all those others ones I tried so that I could study longer… in my previous life.
I’d never considered that and that makes perfect sense.
Looking back on my days on the non-XR stuff, I doubt even 3 doses would have lasted 15 hours for me, as one dose of the XR stuff does. If I sleep in and take my pill in the afternoon, I will be awake for 15 hours regardless of what time that 15th hour is.