I should probably start with expectation management about ‘enlightenment’.
As mentioned I do not think this was the big one nor do I think I am the buddha, but the description of theravada stream entry is the only thing that fits and people have been having these experiences for millennia.
I believe that this was a spontaneous alignment of my front and mid brain, which means that my emotion aligns with the lessons of my life. This is not in the scientific literature and requires study because I can tell you without a doubt that it exists, but also that it is not permanent and is more of a pruning of unconscious behavioural and thought patterns so you get a genuine fresh start.
So.
Adhd.
Sorry to say that adhd is suffering in-and-of-itself in my new understanding of the world. Or rather, a propensity toward suffering.
I came to the realisation that the craving of which the buddha spoke - the clinging and grasping and trying to escape negative feelings and prolong positive ones - is caused by high phasic dopamine. This is adhd. It gets worse as we age, not better, though this is contingent on behaviour.
I reached a critical mass of adhd-ness by living a life of trauma and extremes; the beast was fed and it was hungry. I am also autistic and probably have low levels of tonic dopamine along with high levels of physical and emotional sensitivity. These combined to make a man who was always moving, always craving, always doing, but always feeling the pain of rejection and inadequacy in an exquisite manner.
Adhd only became a diagnosis around the year 2000 and was only recognised in adults in… 2008 I think? But dopamine dysregulation has been around as long as humans. Some of us are just more motivated than others, and that was ok, to a point.
This would mean that childhood adhd got bad in the 80s or 90s, right as television and computer games became more pernicious; more colours and more advertising and more flashing lights to be rammed into our kids’ minds. More illusory ways to escape the negative feelings of life, thereby exaggerating and extending the cycle of suffering. Imagine how the tiktok generation will be in 30 years.
At the start of this I asked a researcher in the sector his thoughts on the cause of adhd and he speculated it was receptor degradation. I think he is partly right; I think this is why it gets worse in some of us as we age, though the coping mechanisms we develop mean we hide it better.
This also has terrible implications for the current treatment landscape because… well… stimulants just throw more dopamine at receptors, and we only have about 25 years of data on the longitudinal impact of them. This is not enough data; people can drink for decades before things get bad. I was and am confident that stimulants would have killed me.
So aripiprazole was a drug I identified using my recruiter ‘spidey sense’, honed as a hypersensitive autistic pattern-spotter in a career defined by rejection.
This med just jumped out to me. It sits on the receptors rather than throwing more dopamine at them. It lowers phasic dopamine by occupying said receptors. This seemed like a far superior approach to managing the condition than just ‘moar dopamine’ and luckily I was autistic (and had a bad doctor) so could get it prescribed here in Japan.
… and it has fixed my adhd.
I am confident in saying that now. It has reset my system to childhood baseline, and did so in a rather explosive manner which felt like enlightenment. The world is full of wonder again.
But I still have the natural propensity toward adhd and if I do not manage this effectively I will drift back into craving and suffering. This is my nature. It is how I was born, and that is ok.
So I believe these enlightenment events (we need a new word) are likely inaccessible to most people because their dopamine systems naturally calm down as they get older. If you look at the elderly they seem clearly delineated between the kind and the bitter; the gentle and the angry. I think this is because of their dopaminergic trajectory.
I believe some people gradually drift toward enlightenment (moderate tonic / low phasic) while others drift the other way (low tonic / high phasic), depending on how they are born and the life they lead. This is why meditators can seem enlightened despite not having a ‘eureka moment’ along the way; they have trained their dopamine systems through years of steady practice. The eureka is reserved for the more traumatised of us.
So.
I think aripiprazole is a cure for adhd.
Or rather: a reset for the receptors.
What happened to me was extreme. I had fed the beast and was successful in almost everything I did. I did not have the usual adhd struggles, because I had figured out how to hack this dopamine system. But this hacking set me up for a life of misery.
The buddha figured out one cure for adhd: vipassana. You observe the phasic dopamine but do not engage. Over time, this becomes your default response, so your adhd tendencies die down.
Aripirazole sits on the receptors and does this for you. For most people it can be used long-term without issue, but I do not think this is necessary. I think you can use it for a short while, maybe add in a bit of supercharged trauma therapy, and then cease the drug and off you go.
This is what has happened to me.
Surely it can happen for others.
The buddha emphasised that his path was for everyone. I believe his path was an oldschool cure for dopamine dysregulation. A life of extremes will water the seed of adhd, while a life of quietude will trim it back.
This is not a ‘once-and-done’ thing. I will always have the seed of adhd within me, as do we all, but it has been trimmed back to a manageable and even pleasant level. Now I understand it, I will not water it any more. The bliss of what I experienced will pass, but the understanding will not.
So I believe the basic mechanism is:
born with a propensity toward high phasic dopamine
fed by flashing lights, advertising and trauma
receptors become damaged / down-regulated / desensitised
the joy fades from life
we develop coping mechanisms to hide our dysregulation
the burden of coping mechanisms and lack of joy result in misery, seclusion or suicide
I love my family so much but became unable to feel it properly; this hurt me deeply. I hated myself for being unable to express the love for my family adequately. My mind was so loud I could barely even *feel* it never mind express it. My nervous system was saying one thing and my endocrine system another.
But I think this can be cured. It's been cured in me and I have a second chance.
The narrative around adhd right now is one of misguided defeatism. Adhd is *not* a defined thing. They do not know what causes it because it is a catch-all for connected symptoms of general dopamine dysregulation. It is just a natural proclivity toward motivation, and our rewards are too easy and too big in this modern age.
Aripiprazole has the potential to be a reset for the system. It could save lives, rebuild families, and make people happy with what they already have. And it doesn’t need to be taken forever.
One of the business models I started building while high was ‘buddhamed’, where we take people to an island retreat and allow them 3 weeks away from all the vicissitudes of life while they take low-dose aripirpazole in a controlled environment. Qualified trauma therapists guide them through some of the more deep-rooted problems of their life and then they are tapered off the drug and sent on their way.
I know this will work, because I have experienced it.
So if anyone actually cares about curing this horrible condition, get in touch. Some think this thing which is not defined cannot be cured. I think it cannot be cured because it is not defined.
Stop hedging with the safe hypotheses and instead go for the one that can change lives.
/jb202508170745
the word cure is used provocatively