I know this has been asked a lot of times on the forums (don't want to bump), and I want to make sure, does anti-psychotics affect the effectiveness of stimulants?

You could try this: http://www.medscape.com/druginfo/druginterchecker?src=google

Add whatever drugs you're taking/thinking of taking and it'll tell you if there are interactions.. I think someone else may have posted it on another thread, but I just googled drug interactions and it came up.

I'm not looking for interactions. I was wondering if an anti-psychotic would decrease or increase the effect of the stimulant. (like make it work better or worse).

Hmm. . . I'm glad someone has the sense to ask this question (as there seem to be more and more people on this type of combo). Bear with me as I indulge myself with a thought experiment.

Thinking about the mechanism of action it does seem likely that *something* would happen. What, I'm not quite sure.

The way these things work is kind of complicated (and involve more than just dopamine, but bear with me as I think this through with just one neurotransmitter system!)

The stimulants generally increase dopamine release from nerve terminals, or increase the amount of dopamine that's available to stimulate receptors on the neurons. These receptors can either be on dopamine neurons themselves, or on other neurons. Stimulating the receptors on the Dopamine neurons *can* act as a "brake" on the system, causing the dopamine neurons to produce and release less dopamine. However, you still have the dopamine being released and stimulating the other receptors, and the spillover and increase in the amouth of dopamine outside the cell I think outweighs the "brake" effect.

The typical antypsychotics (and the atypicals to a lesser extent) work by blocking a specific type of dopamine receptor that is present on the dopamine cells themselves. This can, at very low doses, actually also increase the amount of dopamine being produced, as you basically disable the "brake". At higher doses, though, the drugs also hit other receptors on other types of neurons, and the effects are more broad. So my guess is that lower doses of antipsychotics may increase the effectiveness of the stimulants. Not sure about higher doses, as you've got mixes of antagonist and agonist effects which can be quite confusing!

Intersting theory TygerSan. I'm gonna ask the doctor next month about it and see what she says. This sounds true. I was told by another forums user, name: keith, that he took abilify to increase the adderalls effects...

You can take this at face value as I'm not a doctor myself, but my P-Doc and my therpaist both wanted me on the atypical anti-psychotic, Abilify, because they said it would actually augment the Adderall XR I take. I did some googling, and sure enough, Abilify is different from even the atypicals. It seems to regulate rather than just raise or lower brain chemicals like Dopamine. I take 25mg Adderall XR 2 X day + 5mg (low dose) Abilify at bedtime. So far it's been agreat combo, not just for my ADHD/Asperger's, but for my mood as well.

Keith

Good to hear Jay Jay. I'm planning on combining Focalin XR, Zoloft, and Risperdal...

Now, this may appear to be a Medical Nightmare, but I take several anti-psychotics in addition to Adderall:
Lexapro-20mg
Lamictal-200mg
Seroquel-800mg
Adderall-80mg
I have had NO side effects from any of the afore mentioned drugs, nor have I experienced any side effects from the drugs' interactions. Just me though.

I only see one anti-psychotic drug in the list and that's the seroquel. Lexapro is an SSRI Antidepressant, Lamical is an anti-convulsant "mood stabilizer", and I'm sure you know about adderall...

I figured to ask because I read that anti-psychotics reduce dopamine and stimulants increase dopmine it seems like they would cancel each other out. That was my theory anyways. I understand how abilify is an exception but I'm generalizing on this one...