ADHD

Hi !

Just to go straight to the point, my doctor is thinking of trying Strattera in me, since it was recently made available as a generic and I tend to have prevailing side effects with stimulant medication (ritalin, Rubifen, elvanse).

I have some questions that would like to hear from people that are/were on this medication to share:

1. I understand this is non-stimulating and seems to work akin to an antidepressant. Therefore, do I have to take it every day? Even on days I do not need ? With stimulant medication I only take it when doing theoretical work, and skip it when on the laboratory or other minor tasks and would never take it in days I'm not working, because I can't just interact with people and gives me a baseline anxiety the whole day.

2. What benefits did it gave you ?

3. Any prevailing side effects?

4. How does it compare with stimulant medication (after taking it for some weeks)?

For a bit of context:

I've been diagnosed for about 6 years now, and started with Ritalin XR. However, I could only keep using it for some months since it gave seriously side effects that persisted 3-5 months after stopping it. I later switched to Ritalin IR, which worked for some time and gave me less side effects. But it started to be ineffective after some months.

Then my doctor tried Elvanse (Vyvanse), it worked on keeping me focused, but the anxiety and the huge time frame of action of the drug led to me only taking it once or twice a week.

I'm now back on Ritalin IR, but always feel the anxiety and aversion to interact with people that I always feel with these 3 stimulants.

I just started interning and it's my first office job (Yay!) but most of the clothes I feel comfortable wearing are not really office attire. Especially shoes. I have no "appropriate" shoes because shoes have always been a particular source of sensory issues so I wear the same black pair of mesh trainers. I have to commute in a big city so I end up walking a decent amount, and shoes that are tight and/or heavy really mess with my focus.

Do you guys have any advice on how to find comfortable shoes that are at least a bit more office appropriate? Maybe solid clean white sneakers? For reference I'm female.

For me showering means standing in a windowless room staring at a blank wall for 20 minutes (I get lost in my thoughts). Also there are several steps and I have to think about each of them.
This means that I only end up showering when my fear of coming across as dirty becomes bigger than the dread of being bored.
What do you do?

Holy fucking shit.

I love these guys. It's not the first mental health video they've done, but now there will be at least one about adult ADHD. I'm actually excited to see this.

I feel seen.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/14974194

Me irule

So I've noticed a pattern in my life that I was hoping someone could empathize with.

I've been training for over a year for a physical test that I really want to pass. The other day I tried to do the exercises that I'll have to do in the test and I completed all of them successfully and now I feel that I've lost some of my motivation to get better. It's as if I was trying to prove that I could do it and I feel that I have, although I really haven't since I haven't taken the test. I've noticed this before. A couple years ago I tried really hard to get into a prestigious degree in a reputable university through my own merit. I managed to get in and soon after I lost interest and quit. Has anyone experienced something like this before?

Thank you for your time :)

Ps.: I'm not sure this is related to ADHD, I just figured it might be and the people here might be able to advise me.

Cooking my dinner, best set a timer because I'm bound to forget it's in the over.

Get bored and start reading book.

Timer's done - I'll turn off the alarm and just finish the page.

Ten minutes later ...Wait, what's that burning smell?

I do

I am going to an appt. across town, in part to get my meds refilled. I wasn't paying attention and missed my stop, but I also overestimated the travel time required, and am on my way in the other direction with plenty of time to spare. 😸

Just what the title says. I'm taking atomoxetine since 13 months, and this week will be my first psychological session. I've severe ED issues, to the point I can't do almost anything productive (including meditation itself), no matter how much I want to.

I had to buy a plane ticket which costed 80 $, and since I needed to do two super quick checks before buying it I obviously waited a month. Plane ticket is now 280 $. Cheers

How do you stayed focused on a task when the task involves some type of waiting?

For example, I have a really hard time staying focused at work. The problem for me is, our software can be really really really slow. While I’m waiting for Outlook to load an email, or our internal tooling to populate data, I find my mind is wandering. Often, I’ll start on another task or pick up my phone and just completely forget about the first thing I started.

At the end of the day, I have to figure out why I have 8 half written emails open in the background of my PC.

How do you stay on track when your tasks require patience?

I've found that breaking a daunting task down into concrete steps and eating away at it in baby steps helps me get it done. When I take Concerta, it helps me focus on the boring nitty-gritty bits, and it enables me to focus on activities like reading where you don't have to do any planning. But the actual process planning/task breakup stays just as cognitively straining as before and becomes the new bottleneck to my productivity. Can this also be fixed with a pill, or does everyone have it this hard and is it a skill that you get better at over time?

Not my vid. Just YouTube algorithm recommendations combining my technology interests with my ADHD.

And guess what is on back order at every nearby pharmacy? I'll give you a hint: it's not the $300 per month name brand.

So I guess I switch to Adderall xr tomorrow?

So when I went through school you'd have two types of struggling kids:

Kid A would struggle to pass tests, but work hard and get every assignment done so they can keep their average in check. Teachers like this kid. Not that there's anything wrong with this kid, but teachers project virtue on them sometimes just to shame kid B when kid B asks for consideration.

Kid B is who I assume many people here were and who I was. Kid B struggled to get from start to finish of all of the assignments that kept popping up and per haps couldn't do the same task for very long. Kid B, however, could get high grades on most tests. If Kid B asks for some consideration to pass the class as they've gotten the information but weren't able to finish all of the assignments and are told no, because Kid A exists and "I can stand someone who struggles with the tests but does the work, but I'll never tolerate someone who is lazy".

I have cptsd from years spent as kid B, but I'm pretty sure that's a generic thing that happened to others as well. I had that quote shoved down my throat by a double digit number of adults. And the too-radical thought is this: I believe the teaching approach that holds kid A as a paragon of virtue and kid B as a lazy snot is quite discriminatory and maybe those are just two differently struggling kids. And maybe some consideration should be given to both. And maybe PTSD causing trauma should be withheld from both groups

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/13788914

Internal conflict [Haus of Decline]

https://www.hausofdecline.com/

I've long had problems with random, unfounded bouts of anxiety. I've been taking Strattera and it has partially helped with this: when it works (which is 80% of the time), I can feel it keeping me in a mellow headspace at moments when I would have previously had racing thoughts and mental tunnel vision. Specifically, the source of the anxiety is still there, because I can feel it spark into action and put adrenaline into my blood, but the Strattera seems to be blocking it from affecting my mind in any way. While this is a significant improvement, it's still not perfect because the adrenaline in my blood still tires my body out quite quickly.

Recently I went a whole day on 2 hours of sleep, and I realized the sleep deprivation stopped my anxiety more optimally than the Strattera. My brain was too sleep deprived for the unfounded anxiety/fight or flight to even be initiated, which meant there was no adrenaline to block from affecting my mind in the first place. What's more, my mind was just generally more chilled out and slowed down (no hyperactivity or hyperfocus or anything), kinda a bit like if I was stoned, and I felt far less inhibition to spontaneously blurt out thoughts that appeared in my head without thinking about them, which I actually quite enjoyed because it meant I was being my peak authentic self.

Whilst the Strattera helped stop the immediate effects of my anxiety, the sleep deprivation got me into the actual overall target state that I want to be in. Now I obviously can't go about being sleep deprived every day from now on. Does somebody understand the chemistry of what Strattera does vs. what the sleep deprivation does? Is there any medication that could create the same desirable effects as the sleep deprivation?

I'm sure many of you are familiar with the issue of making excuses for everything. I don't just mean excusing your unfinished chores by saying "I have ADHD", I mean excuses and fabrications in general - at work, you might say you're nearly finished with a project, but really you're halfway done at best, at home you might say you couldn't start the dishwasher because of how angry your pregnant wife was at you for choosing the wrong program on the washing machine, so you were scared to start the dishwasher - fully ignoring the fact that you were supposed to start the dishwasher BEFORE even being confronted about the washing machine. The last one is a stupid example, but it happened an hour ago and it's a pattern I hate about myself.

If you've had a similar issue and identified it, what has helped you improve yourself? I may never be perfect to the point I'll get everything done that I need to, but I'd like to at least stop making stupid excuses that just bring up fights that could've been avoided.

Hello. I was diagnosed with ADHD one year ago already (I was 35 back then), but since then I'm only with medical treatment, in other words, with medication. This medication can keep my ADHD symptoms under control, at a degree. But it does absolutely nothing against my executive dysfunction and my focus issues, and I don't have proper tools to handle my ADHD.

On a Discord server someone told me to look for therapists that do online sessions from third world countries for ADHD people, but I don't know where to look for them, and I don't know whether they're actual therapists or random scammers either. I live in Spain (pointing that out in case you try to push your US narrative), and a psychologists charges between 40 € and 60 € per session, being one session per week. And I can't afford spending 160 €/240 € per month when I don't even have a job.

Does anyone can give me some advice or recommendations, or webpages where I can look for someone?

Having issues gathering vyvance, which is slightly working for me. A friend suggested that she has friends who can help get some from Brazil, where the DEA isn't down everyone's throat. Just curious about people's experiences

I recently started taking Vyvanse, it's been about a week. It really does make things easier to do. Previously I had taken it for about a week and everything was going well but then I started getting anxious and depressed. Quit it for a while, started it up again and the same thing is happening. Anybody else experienced something similar? Does it go away?