aripiprazole

Just cracking something out quickly and will make proper articles when the inclination takes me.

My response to aripiprazole was unusual to say the least, but I think the medicine has a lot of very valid use cases due to its unique effect on the dopamine system. I have ASD and ADHD, which I believe results in low tonic (baseline) dopmaine and high phasic (intermittent) dopamine.

Aripiprazole might not have the same effect on neurotypical individuals, but for people like me it both raises the baseline and lowers the volatility. This is - on a purely neurochemical level - the equivalent of a lifetime of meditation in a pill. It literally feels like enlightenment, and from a chemical perspective it is: monks and long-term meditators have been shown to have moderate tonic and low phasic dopamine. This is equanimity and access to the deep strata of your mind.

Anyway - use cases:

1 - ADHD dopamine system ‘reset’

I was one of the most insatiable folks around. I did all the things, to the max, and just stopped short of killing myself, to the max. Since having aripiprazole sit on my dopamine receptors for 2 months I feel like my entire dopamine system has been reset.

I lost all of my cravings, all of my unhealthy desires, while I was taking it. I no longer checked my phone, instead observing the world, and I just felt so much more at peace.

I am now appx 1 month away and I still feel this peace, despite some heavy withdrawal and general exhaustion.

My cravings are still gone.

A fair chunk of this might have been because of the self-guided meditation, but I think a lot of it is because my type of adhd is caused by either receptor degradation or junk accumulating within the receptor. And whatever that enlightenment event / seizure was, it certainly resulted in some instant and permanent rewiring. But...

Either aripiprazole gave the receptors time to recover, or it scraped out the junk because of the larger molecule size. 

Whatever happened, it seems to be permanent.

2 - Trauma therapy; specifically for low-tonic-dopamine individuals

Low dose aripiprazole results in an overall increase in perceived dopamine because of its activation curve. Higher doses, paradoxically, result in lower perceived dopamine. If my doctor had known this he might have spared me 3 weeks of chemical enlightenment, but I’m kinda glad he didn’t.

Anyway this sustained hyper-dopaminergic state enables you to reprogram your memories with unprecedented results.

If you could get a qualified trauma therapist and have 3 weeks in a retreat, you could be looking at some very potent trauma therapy.

I remember one of the seizures / hallucinations I had as a complete flushing of all trauma from my brain and body. 

The 88hells period is where I kind of ‘lined up’ the synapses I wanted flushing, and then when the dose was increased I felt a backlog of molecules force their way into this new, log-jammed neural highway I had cultivated through those weeks of meditation and self-export.

This eventually reached what felt like a physical tipping point and what I termed the ‘global cascade’ happened, where all of these synapses just flushed at once, and joined into a new neural network.

I saw my mind as a graveyard of scarred, blackened flesh, and I felt it all just scrubbed away by diamond particles, leaving supple pink folds of fatty matter in their place. 

It was… amazing. Nothing can describe how that felt, and how I was born again when it happened. 

And again - the changes seem to be lasting.

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I’m only a month away from the drug, but it seems that for people like me it could be an absolute life-changer.

Maybe my unique reaction was because of undiagnosed subclinical epilepsy (hallucinations, strange behaviour) and ultra-rapid flushing of cyp2d6 (incredible addiction and withdrawal, on a minute-to-minute basis). The hope would be that these are not replicated, of course.

This needs real real scientific study. It's a potential cure for adhd, which afflicts more of us every year. A cure for modern life.

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