3w ago

Life Officially Changed

I made a post on here a while ago saying how uncanny the posts were to describing me near perfectly. I struggled with this disorder for 30 years. Nerfing myself for 30 years. Not being the best husband to my wife for 6 years. Not the best father to my son for nearly 2 years. All without knowing it.

I have now been on 20mg XR Adderall for a little over 3 months - it has been absolutely life changing.

I'm more attentive. Things are much more easily committed to memory. Menial tasks no longer feel like a huge burden anymore. I can actually read a page in a book I'm interested in without completely forgetting what I've read by the end of the page. I've had a small, but annoying headache for years every single day - chalked it up to genetics as my mom has a disorder than can cause the same thing. The headaches are gone. I can only assume they were brought on by the stress.

Gang, if you're at all considering you might have some form of ADD/ADHD, please go see your doctor. I had a thousand reasons why I didn't want to/need to go beforehand, but I'm so very glad I finally did.

41 comments

My man! I try to spread this gospel to every person in here who expresses the sentiment of:
“This describes me perfectly. Maybe I have ADHD. I’m doing fine though, so the medication isn’t worth the effort of getting tested. How good could it really be? I’m doing fine after all.”
Your post is amazing, and I know exactly how you feel, and I’m thrilled at the positive change you have experienced!
- Lit'rally me
  
  The good part or the bad or both?
- What if it costs 1 grand to get tested? Still worth it?
  
  If you have $1000, then ABSOLUTELY. If it means you go hungry, then of course not. Are you asking in regards to situations where someone doesn’t have insurance?
  
  3 grand here (public health care refuses to cover it if you can keep a job)
…fuck I think I need to get diagnosed
- The disease will literally do everything it can to convince you that it’s preferable not to make the effort. It’s extremely difficult to fight, but you can do it.
  
  And simultaneously society doesn't give two shits and does everything in it's power to make getting help as hard as possible.
  
  I think the issue is I’m high functioning. At least I’m able to get most of the things done that society requires of me. So I convince myself that I’m fine…. Maybe I’m falling for the disease lol
- Call your doctor asap and get your diagnosis. My experience was the same as OP's.
Awesome! I'm so glad you're doing well!
CSB: I brought up ADHD when I was seeing my doctor. His response was, "Oh, here we go." Fortunately got a referral to mental health services (where they told me I can't take meds due to having a heart condition) but at least they listened and assured me that I'm not broken and useless. If your doc doesn't want to listen, please keep trying, there's someone out there who will.
- I have heard that there are non-amphetamine based ADHD meds from friends that weren't allowed to take regular meds. Which might be easier to get a Dr to start with if brought up. They (the friends) said they didn't like the non-stimulant ones as they felt weird. But you might be able to try to see if they work for you. My boss's kids seem to have had luck with the non-stimulant versions. I might need to look into getting a small script for some whenever I finally am able to go to visit some friends in Japan. I have heard that it is hard to get approval to travel to a lot of countries with USA ADHD meds because amphetamines.
  The only time I have traveled outside the USA after starting ADHD meds was Japan, but had the benefit of being in my early 20's and more energy and not many years taking the meds. Now that I am in my late 30's and been taking meds for so long, I already get a lot of anxiety if my refills might get delayed. I just feel so spaced out and no energy aside from small bursts. Kind of like just a permanent state of caffeine crash (even with energy/pre-workout drinks). Some of it might be due to my normal meds counteracting some of the effects of my anxiety/depression meds' with regards to lower energy.
- It took me 40 years to realize that not all doctors are good at their jobs. In fact, many are terrible.
- “Oh, here we go.”?! Fuck that wanker! Change doctor and file a complaint. I'm sorry you went through that and that you can't take meds for it. There are natural things you can do. They're not as effective, but they're better than nothing in some cases. I can't take them, as they exacerbated depression for me, but they're out there.
- I was upset I only got diagnosed as mild adhd. I know its worse but I automatically cover for it very well.
  I have 110 unfinished projects to show for it.
Cheers mate! I was recently diagnosed and am currently figuring out an appropriate dosage with my therapist. Currently taking 27mg, it's already a game changer. Might try 36mg and see how that goes, I'm a big dude. I'm not really sure what an appropriate amount of focus is since I've never really experienced about it.
I'm working and recently started going back to school. I have an A so far, which is rare for me. The therapist is out of network so it's expensive (I'm in the US) but totally worth it.
Way to go, you deserve it, it's hard to make a change like this. New meds are scary AF.
Congrats. I had a similar experience, in that medication was life changing. It feels so great to find a medication that works, as well as validation about one's experience. I am chronically depressed, but the medication helped so much that my mood was buoyed for months.
Apologies for the unsolicited advice, but I'm going to tell you what I wish someone had told me:
At some point in the future, your medicated experience will become your norm, and you'll no longer feel the sharp contrast that you're feeling now. You may find yourself sometimes struggling with tasks in a manner that reminds you of before you were medicated. When that happens, I want you to remember that although medication helps a ton, it's not a cure. You will always have ADHD, and it's not something that can be medicated away. It's normal to experience "flare ups" of symptoms if you're experiencing extenuating circumstances, like life stress. That can creep up on you because when we're feeling capable, we tend to grow our lives to match our increased capacity. That's a good thing, but it can cause us to feel like we're doing worse than we are. It's easier said than done, but be kind to yourself.
The point I'm making here isn't "you might feel good now but you're going to feel shit in the future". Instead, I'm suggesting that whilst medication is necessary for many, we need more than that if we're to thrive. I've learned so much by being in community with other ADHD folk — concrete strategies that have helped me to better understand myself and engage with a world that can be incompatible with how I work. Those steps don't feel as life changing as medication was, but it's incremental, so harder to notice.
Just try to remember how you're feeling right now, and when you feel yourself struggling , use this to remind yourself that progress is always possible. Many ADHD folk have become used to thinking of themselves as broken, especially if they're diagnosed as an adult. A diagnosis (and especially meds) can be so liberating because it challenges this idea. We do ourselves harm by trying to force ourselves into a mould that we can't fit into, and I've seen a lot of people (including myself) slip into that pattern after getting medicated, because we feel like we're fixed. You can't be fixed, because you're not broken.
I hope my comment doesn't come across as too grim, because my intended sentiment is one of hope. Diagnosis can feel like an ending, with how it explains one's past experiences, but in many ways, this is just the start of things. Medication can facilitate the kind of exploration and growth that would've been impossible before — opportunities to craft a life that fits you, and to be a part of the wider conversation where we ask "how the fuck do we reconcile ourselves with a world that often seems hostile to our existence?". That's an open question that will never have one neat answer, but we can work on it together.
TL;DR: I'm excited for you, and I'm glad to have you here with us. A diagnosis isn't necessary to be valid or welcome here, but I know that it can feel hard to participate if you're not sure whether you belong.
- Oh I have no delusion that this is a permanent fix and I expect slip-ups, but the fact that I've even been given a glimpse of normalcy is just incredible.
  Given that I dealt with it unmedicated for this long though, I'm not concerned about the bad days. Bring em on.
Off topic... But with today's technology I don't understand how people still have to take preset dosages. Like why can't we titrate and find the perfect dose and the company sells that dose to us... The pill dose increments aren't one size fits all...
- That would mean each person gets a custom pill, right?
  Also I'm not a psychologist but from a control theory perspective, there might not be an optimal dose? The optimum might be an interval of doses, and/or the optimum might change with time. And then the consequences of using a suboptimal, preset dose might be at least a good solution. We could probably quantify this mathematically...but stepping away from a control theory perspective: I live this experience so at least in my case, the preset dosages have worked fine.
- This exists and is actually the way pharmacy used to work.
  Long story short, economies of scale led to today's system.
  In the field of pharmacy, compounding (performed in compounding pharmacies) is preparation of custom medications to fit unique needs of patients that cannot be met with mass-produced formulations. This may be done, for example, to provide medication in a form easier for a given patient to ingest (e.g., liquid vs. tablet), or to avoid a non-active ingredient a patient is allergic to, or to provide an exact dose that isn't otherwise available.
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compounding
  
  I immediately thought of compounding pharmacies.
- We can’t be trusted with such responsibility for our own health. Every single one of us would immediately overdose.
  _/s
- I would settle for it being seen as okay to vary your own dose. I'm on quite a high dose, and very much need it. But there are some situations (on holiday and just having a lazy poolside day) where I could take less. But despite being up with various doctors it doesn't seem like an option to them.
  Fortunately, I've ended up with some different doses because of the meds shortage (getting 2 packs of 20mg instead of 1 pack of 40mg) which let's me do it myself, but seems crazy how little flexibility there is for a dose level that was entirely decided by me trying them and saying which one worked best.
I wish the meds worked for my wife. :-(
- I'm a ADHD newbie but I know there's a lot of different options for medications.
Sadly, my blood pressure won't allow me to take the XR anymore. I had the same benefits while I could though.
Definitely worth a try if you can.
- I did start on non-XR but it was out of my system by 2:30ish if I took it first thing. My dad has high blood pressure so I'm hoping that won't become an issue for me as well.
  The ones without amphetamines might be a way to go? Evidently they're more hit or miss.
  
  Yeah... I'm starting on a non-stim now. I hope it works
Sadly doesn't help me. Works great for 2 days or so. My metabolism is too fast. Then I have to go off it on weekends and get headaches (never had headaches in my life otherwise)
Soo here's to depression and drinking to manage it :D

41 comments