Dopamine isn’t a simple 1-dimensional axis that moves up or down with drug use. There are many different pathways that use dopamine as their signaling molecule. Some dopamine receptors are involved in recording positive events, while other dopamine pathways record negative events.
The role of dopamine as an answer to all things reward or motivation is greatly exaggerate in the pop-neuroscience articles online. Doing nearly anything goal-oriented or even remotely rewarding is associated with dopaminergic activity.
People also tend to overlook the fact that the stimulants used in ADHD treatment also have significant norepinephrine activity which contributes to their pharmacological effects. Purely dopaminergic drugs often aren’t as energizing as you’d expect. In fact, selective dopamine agonist medications can induce narcolepsy-like symptoms where patients struggle to stay awake due to the complex nature of dopamine activity in the brain.
In your case, it’s possible that you’re naturally motivated but THC is causing disinhibition to override whatever is preventing you from being productive (anxiety). THC is also known for making boring tasks feel interesting, but it’s also known for decreasing motivation and making people feel like they’re accomplishing a lot more than they really are. In other words, it’s not a solution to anything. You’d be well served to spend some time exploring this with a psychiatrist or two.
As someone who has ADHD and is also a heavy marijuana user, I've found the marijuana mostly helps me with the frustration of the ADHD experience. It makes it difficult for the frustration to reach a boiling point and that's what actually makes me productive. Adderall has been WAY more effective at this, though.
Similar experience for me. Marijuana definitely makes me feel stupider, but it slows my brain down enough that I can actually focus on one thing at a time so I actually end up more productive overall. Kind of a worse is better situation. I've found the best combination for me to be XR Adderall with a very low dose of THC. Unfortunately my addictive personality makes not abusing marijuana difficult, so I just don't use it these days.
I'm also wondering the same thing - I take 2.5mg of a sativa-dominant edible and I'm able to focus insanely well. I typically do this after I'm done with my real job for the day so I can study AI, for example to read an AI paper. I typically have much more trouble doing this without THC.
Funny enough, I'm also very prone to anxiety on THC. So there might be a correlation there somewhere.
It just sucks that I get addicted to weed because I'm super productive.
I just need a way to prevent myself from having marijuana before anything social or public.