I recently had to stop taking my vyvanse due to some bad side effects and holy shit I forgot how bad this was. I can’t do anything. I have so much shit I need to do but I sit down to do it and it genuinely fills me with dread. I am just staring at my computer. Even getting to the webpage I needed took hours of convincing. This is horrible, even caffeine isn’t helping. What do y’all do? How do you manage?
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A casual community for people with ADHD
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I used to use caffeine but i stopped a few years ago. During the pandemic i went on adderall because i was struggling to help my kids do online school. I stopped adderall because i moved and adhd’d away my therapist.
Mostly i cope with routine. I eat the same foods for breakfast and lunch most days. I work on unmasking and being radically honest about my struggles with adhd to people around me. I setup auto billpay as much as possible and i cycle through the same few hobbies so i dont waste too much money.
I’ve recently found that sleep is very important to my body’s needs. If my sleep cycle is fucked then my symptoms get wild.
I have been raw dogging life without meds almost my entire life. There was a 2 year period in high school I did speed, and then when I went to community college my wife shared her meds with me. The other 40ish years have taught me how to deal.
I have alarms for everything throughout my day. I have a routine. I have specific places to put certain things. When I deviate I am screwed.
Same. Lots of systems and a place for everything. EG if I leave the room and want to remember what I was doing when I got back, it’ll be the one thing that’s out of place and somewhere obvious. Unfortunately, it’s easily thrown off by others who forget to put stuff back.
What’s your relationship with travel? I struggle to pack up and mobilize so many systems. It’s been getting better as I develop travel-specific solutions (like having a dedicated toiletries bag that remains packed).
If I travel alone I am okay. I list what I need to take with me. If I travel with my family, I am horrible and yell and scream at every little thing that goes wrong as we are leaving. Once traveling I am fine, it is the leaving that is the issue.
heart exploding levels of caffeine, just keep adding more it works eventually
(do not do this I had to survive college somehow and was desperate)
Brother I am a physics student. I already am doing this. Just didn’t have enough coffee today I guess
caffeine tolerance increases very quickly, so one has to constantly increase the dose for it to be effective. I am currently trying to get a diagnosis after procrastinating for too long on that (why the hell does getting help to overcome my problems require me to overcome my problems). Not sure how caffeine exactly works in adhd brains but for me as how i understand it works in neurotypical also it should be possible to reverse the tolerance for caffeine by spending 2-5 days without any. Having gone through that i can say you need to be prepared to just lay in bed for that time.
Yeah I’ve been thru a couple periods of avoiding caffeine and you can definitely tell when it wears off. About 5 days seems to reset most of my tolerance.
Badly
Childhood trauma, caffeine, nicotine. And some positive feedback I have routines. I have a routine for getting ready in the morning, I have a routine for when I come home, I have a routine for night time. When the weekend comes if I have things to do I just load up on caffeine. My work day is filled with schedules and timelines.
I suppose I cope by having almost 40 years of coping mechanisms that I use to keep me mostly okay. I let my mind fugue in the morning when I wake up. I have a routine that I try to stick to. I have a job that allows me to hyper focus on problems and get the dopamine hit from solving those problems. I don’t have to interact with others for the most part to do my job. I spend a lot of time at home, use ear plugs, or headphones etc. if I can’t make my mind focus I try to do something else. I take breaks. I set alarms for just about everything. And reminders. So many reminders. I also have a very supportive partner. I’m sure there’s other stuff I had to learn to do to mask that I’m forgetting. But for the most part things just work because I put a lot of work into making them work and even then I am not always successful.
Have you been able to try Adderall? The only thing ever found helpful besides caffeine is coffee fruit extract. It’s the active ingredient in Neuriva for instance, but there are alternatives online as well. It’s not a great improvement, but it s something I think.
Only way to get through dread is to go through with it. If you want something to stop, finish it. I have pretty light adhd, but for me it was like steeling my mind before base jumping. Sometimes you don’t want to do something. You’re scared or tired but you must FORCE yourself to do it. I have a mantra that kind of helps me. I tell my self that I must do what must be done. And kind of make the action feel like it is inevitable like I will do it even if I don’t want too.
My wife is desperately trying to find out what medication will work for her…
Chaining dozens of coping methods together helps a little bit, including:
Yay, life on hard mode.
Those are some top tier gamifications
Thanks! For my kid, I gamify it up a notch: His life works on “quests” such as 10 minute room cleaning, letter to a grandparent, 10 minute reading, homework etc., for which he gains loot boxes. Those are little physical boxes containing a made-up currency and other small rewards such as candy, 5 cents - $ 1 real money (his only way to get allowance!), stickers etc. The made-up currency can buy prices such as puzzles, books, toys. About 2 - 3 times per year, there is a legendary coin in it which can be traded for a huge price worth $ 50 - $ 100.
Not sure if saving him or messing up his reward system, but the stuff gets done and he’s doing great!
FYI you are probably also dealing with withdrawal in addition to being unmedicated. Getting off of meds after having been on them is a very different experience from never having been medicated.
May I ask what side effects? I’m on vyvanse 40/d and love it.
Its a bit embarassing lol but I guess its fine. I was one 70mg and noticed somwtimes it’d be hard to pee, like I really had to strain and all I got was a week stream that cut in and out sometimes. For a few months I said fuck it I guess its a shitty side effect I will have to deal with being at such a high dose so I just ignored it and went on with life. Then a few days ago I felt some pelvic pressure around the bladder and began to leak semen. Like just a dribble but definitely not something I want and the pelvic pressure was pretty uncomfortable. This all occured around the peak of the meds. My guess rn is that I have an underlying issue with my prostate that is exacerbated by these meds for one reason or another. I also lost a 6-10 lbs over the summer (pounds I needed tbh I don’t weigh a ton) which might also have something to do with it.
Maybe take less? Sometimes less is more. It was for me.
Gonna try taking less tomorrow and see how it goes
Are intending on just splitting open a capsule? Because a consistent dose will be hard to attain that way
So far so good. I can piss just fine on 40mg
Good to hear it. That’s closer to the dosage I’ve settled on.
I am splitting the capsule and I know people with pretty precise scales I can borrow but honestly getting a consistant dose is less of a priority than getting my work done. I’ll take what I can get
Good luck.
That sounds more like an atomoxetine side effect than lysdexamfetamine. Weird. I would suggest to get your prostate looked at.
Damn brother, sorry to hear that. When I was on straterra I had some similar issues. Leaked semen, and a couple of times right after I started taking it there was blood in the semen (???). It was not a good medication for me, but many people do well on it.
Wishing you the best in finding something you replace it.
This was my experience with the generic atomoxetine as well, but without the blood which would definitely freak me out. That, wild constipation, heart palpitations, and somehow more brain fog. The dependency warnings with stimulants worries me, but I just started on 40 Vyvanse after testing 20. Fingers crossed.
Therapy? I react badly to all ADHD medications so I am not medicated for it. What has helped me the most is working through things with a therapist who also helped me with implementing coping mechanisms. Things like pomodoro method (this got me through college!), organizers at “drop spots,” and learning how to self talk made a huge difference for me. It is not impossible to do well without meds…it is just harder.
I am starting therapy on the 10th lol
Buddy, I’m like this medicated. I don’t cope, I don’t manage. I can’t get a proper job and I’m increasingly ready to plan my exit.
Get thee some therapy bro. Medication is a tool, not a magic fix. You still gotta do the work on yourself. The meds just make it easier to do
I have had a lot, but I didn’t find it very helpful for ADHD, and genuinely prohibitively expensive for someone like me who has no idea how to make money. It felt like I was spending all my money talking about my broken leg, if that makes sense.
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