Hello, I was recently diagnosed and put on IR Adderall and even if I take my second dose at noon often I have trouble getting to sleep at night. I've read about the acidity and that will make you excrete it faster, but I tried taking some vitamin C's in the evening and it didn't seem to help. My hypothesis is that I really need the dopamine from stimulants but I don't tolerate extra norepinephrine very well. I know this because of my experience with noradrenergics (nortryptiline, effexor, etc.)

I think that after the 5 hour therapeutic window there is a lingering effect to Adderall due to the different salts and the racemic amphetamine. I looked into the history of this drug and it used to be an obesity drug. It makes sense that the racemic amphetamine was included in order to combat the rebound hunger commonly associated with dexedrine. Concerning how this actually benefits ADHD, though I have my doubts. One study says the mixture didn't improve attention over dexedrine, but patients could stay focused longer. This often cited study was funded by Shire Pharmaceuticals, however.

I will be asking my doctor for Dexedrine at my next visit. If anyone has any ideas that might help me I'd love to hear them. Did anyone else have any trouble sleeping on Adderall? Did the doctor switch you to Dexedrine or were they wanting to try Concerta/Ritalin and all that first? Were your sleep symptoms helped by switching? To what drug?

I know everyone's different but I just want to hear some experiences/expertise. Sorry for the length.

Insomnia is a common side-effect when starting stimulant medication. Just wait it out and see if it dissipates within a couple of weeks.

I just started taking Adderall XR 20mg last week. I had trouble sleeping the first night on the meds but I did not take the pill until almost 11AM that first day. Since then, I have always taken it before 8AM or 9AM and have not had a problem sleeping since (knock on wood).

Hi Mammalspod,

I'm prescribed adderall and have experienced the same issue, and believe it to be a common side effect. Everyone metabolizes the drug at different rates depending on personal body chemistry (whatever that means) as well as GI and urinary PH.

Like you were saying Adderall contains D and L subtypes. It's my understanding that the L subtype's half life is only 30% longer (13 hours vs 10). A secondary souce states this as 8-10 and 13-14 respectively.. So most likely switching to dex will only have a mild effect. Also, adderall IR is only 25% levoamphetamine (according to some random site... But XR is stated as being 50%) 25% kind of makes sense in IR if it's meant to just add a second layer to smooth the effects without mucking up the redosing too badly.

If this is true, let's do some maffs... weee..

Dose 15mg taken at 12:00 PM
Bed time 10:00 PM (10 hours later)

Starting concentrations
D-Amp: 11.25mg
L-Amp: 3.75mg

At 10PM given half lives of 10 and 13 hours respectively (I have no idea if these numbers include eating / physical activity etc)

D-Amp: ~ 5.6 mg
L-Amp: ~ 2.2 mg

15 hours later
D-Amp: ~ 3.95 mg
L-Amp: ~ 1.7 mg

24 hours later
D-Amp: ~ 2.1 mg
L-Amp: ~ 1 mg

The addition lf L-Amp even in small amounts adds more of an elongated tail to the total blood concentration...But doesn't seem to change it significantly.

In the end, what I meant to impart was that although Dex alone has a shorter half life and more abrupt termination of effects it shouldn't be a night and day difference.

Thanks for the posts, everyone. Testingpurposes, I think you may be wrong about the formula for XR. It is exactly the same chemical compostion as IR.The difference is in the pellet bindings (actually half of an XR pill is IR the other half is in slow release pellets. As for the breakdown of salts, its 75% d-amphetamine and 25% l-ampetamine. If you took away the salts the mass of the pure bases adjusts to around 72.5% d-amphetamine and 27.5% l-amphetamine.

I'm not really worried about the difference in half-lives, however. My issue with Adderall is the huge difference in selectivity of the two amphetamine molecules. The binding affinity ratio for dopamine to norepinephrine of d-amphetamine is approx. 5:1 while this ratio for l-amphetamine is 1:1. My curiosity for this subject started when i realized that racemic amphetamine is hardly prescribed for anyting while l-amphetamine is not approved for any pharmaceutical reasons.

My reasoning is that if there was really a therapeutic benefit to including the racemic salt(s) then it would probably be its own stand alone drug. I read a study today in Psychopharmcology that seemed to indicate that adderall has more dopamine release and duration, but how were equivalent doses arrived at?
Less selectivity=more norepinephrine=more peripheral (physical) side effects. Unless I'm missing something and norepinephrine somehow potentiates or slows reuptake of dopamine. Am I off base with all this? I'm not a scientist so I very well could be.

The 4-salts are included for their different release rates.

And yes, changes in one neurotransmitter can affect another (but it's not really known the interactions).