Dose - Is my patient's tolerance abnormally low?

[dr. swim]

Hi, a patient of mine enjoys adderall a lot, however he claims that when he uses it to study he only needs to swallow about 5 mg and when he wants to use it recreationally he crushes up and insufflates 10 mg and claims that this dose gives him a very intense euphoric high. Now from what I've read from other sources most people prefer 30mg minimum to get any recreational effect. Is my patient low tolerance or is this normal?

He also claims that he is not sensitive to stimulants, and used to consume 6-8 cups of coffee per day, but now prefers adderall for the most part.

[stratry]

My dead grandmother got nothing but a very short-lived nervous energy out of insufflating 90 MGs of Adderall. Same was the case with 108 MGs of Concerta. Point being, everyone responds differently, and nothing about your patient's experience sounds out of the question.

[Potter]

Abnormal would be a heart attack at 5mg, or falling asleep at 100mg.

Everyone is different. Nobody personally has found their own sensitivity/tolerance levels for various drugs have fluctuated dramatically over the years. If a person is capable of gaining benefit from such low doses, they should consider themselves lucky, depending on the situation, there's a lot of fringe benefits from such use (i.e. extra pills)

Should this person decide to see if they can handle a large dose by dropping 50mg? Probably not. There's no logical reason to take more simply because you can. That sort of thing can backfire badly, or at least uncomfortably. Especially if this individual is extra sensitive to the drug.

And over time this can change too. A few weeks months down the line a larger dose may be needed. Especially if the underlying problems have been severe, the first few times you get something that corrects it, there's some magic in the experience, but as the body gets used to it and some tolerance develops...

[dr. swim]

Well apparently my patient recently tried a dose of 40mg, taken over the course of two hours, and found that he did not feel much different from how he usually feels but the effects lasted much longer.

Also, he's not a chronic user.