Although my psychiatrist prescribed Ritalin, he also prescribed an atypical second-generation antipsychotic(Zyprexa-Olanzapine). One of them inhibits the reuptake of dopamine in the brain—in other words, it indirectly increases it—whilst the other reduces dopamine levels. Don’t these effects conflict? What did my psychiatrist mean by this?
>>17065487dopamine has several different receptors, there's D1, D2, D3, D4 and D5D2 = hallucinations, hearing voices, delusions, psychosis-like state when its overstimulatedthe others have varying functions from reward to eating food to cognition, and some antipsychotics have a preference for one or more of these types.Ritalin increases the level of dopamine which stimulates all those receptors, but only one of them is associated with paranoia, psychotic-like symptoms, schizo stuff etc so in theory this isn't retarded actuallyIt also reduces the abuse potential of ritalin, even though that's a really minor thing, ritalin isn't a fun drug because it also increases the firing rate of neurons which leads to a lot of weird emotional side effects if you push the dose up too much. Many emotions are defined by the timing of neurotransmitter release so fucking with the timing can be really problematic when the drug wears off. Your mileage may vary though, some people don't experience any side effects from ritalin and others are very sensitive to it
