#ADHD treatment

[walkawaytall]

I really wish there was more interest in how to handle ADHD other than just addressing the symptoms that affect the people around us.

Like, the best pharmaceutical treatment we have right now is stimulants, and I agree that being on stimulants 24 hours a day, 365 days a year is probably not good for your body. Hell, I’m on a less-than-ideal dose of my medication from a concentration perspective because the ideal dose had my resting heart rate sitting at a cool 115BPM. I know taking med holidays is important. I know all of this.

But because ADHD isn’t just an attention problem (or may not actually be an attention problem at all at its core), it sucks that the only time period medical professionals seem to be concerned about treating are the “important” times: the length of a school or workday. Forget the fact that ADHD affects executive function, forget the fact that people with ADHD often experience chronic and unending anxiety and/or depression as a result of the ADHD, forget that there are important times that have nothing to do with an 8-hour school or work day, forget the rejection sensitivity dysphoria, the sensory issues that make things like clothing, food, and group situations a nightmare to try to navigate, the household stuff that has to be taken care of outside of the 8-hour school or work day. It feels like none of that matters because it doesn’t affect a group of fifteen or more people.

On top of ADHD, I have been plagued with anxiety-related issues for the majority of my life. I likely have a form of OCD and I have a history with a restrictive eating disorder; both of those conditions are very closely associated with high levels of anxiety. I’ve been on anxiety medications before. I was first given an as-needed medication that took the edge off but also made everything feel a little fuzzy, like there was a pane of glass between me and the rest of the world; I was put on an SSRI that somehow made my OCD-related intrusive thoughts about 50x worse than usual and had me wondering at one point if I should be hospitalized; and I’m currently on buspirone, which is doing what it’s supposed to do without the side effects of the others thankfully. But nothing, and I mean nothing, has reduced my anxiety as much as my ADHD medication.

Two hours after my first stimulant dosage, I just suddenly didn’t feel on-edge any more. I estimate that being on ADHD medication has reduced my anxiety by about 70% (buspirone’s for the other 30%). I started taking it in the summer of 2020 and I remember, in 2021, when I saw my boss in person for the first time since lockdown, he remarked on how much more confident I seemed, how I was more likely to speak up in meetings, etc. And I was like…yeah, man, it’s a wonder what not feeling anxious every second of every day will do for someone.

ADHD affects so much more of my life than just attention and anxiety, too. I have sensory issues with mine, which is pretty common, and they make eating — an already sometimes-complicated task due to the ED history — difficult at times because, while I can eat foods that I don’t particularly like, if something is what I call “the bad texture”, I will gag no matter how hard I work to overcome it (believe me, I’ve tried). And my brain sometimes decides that foods that were previously fine are now “the bad texture” and they may or may not shift back to being okay eventually; I don’t know.

The sensory issues affect me socially. My therapist and I have recently come to the conclusion that I’m probably not actually an introvert, but if I’m around larger groups, that means noise and movement and probably being touched, and too much of that causes my brain to either freak out or shut down. I used to always say, “I love people, but when I’m done, I’m done.” And that was likely because the overstimulation was building and building in the background, and at a certain point, my brain would just be like, “We gotta get outta here.” I was Queen of Irish Goodbyes for a very long time because of this.

And the executive dysfunction affects…well..everything? Not just work, not just school (but also those because if my environment is chaotic, my brain feels chaotic, and it is difficult to maintain a non-chaotic environment if you keep getting stuck on order of operations when picking up a room).

I’m not saying that I want to be on longer-lasting stimulants or that I want to be on the higher dose that I know helps my concentration more, cardiovascular system by damned. What I’m saying is, I wish treatment research had been more holistic rather than just figuring out what would give teachers and managers an easier time despite what the person with ADHD might be dealing with as soon as their meds wear off.

Maybe current research is working on it; I don’t know. I just know that, the older I get, the more frustrated I am with my brain and the more apparent the deficiencies I used to be able to counteract with pre-chronic-illness energy and crushing perfectionism become, and I wish there was an answer to this that actually helped me most of the time rather than forcing me to pick which parts of my day/week is “important” and making sure I’m medicated for those parts.

[butterfly-in-progress]

I cried over the dishes today

Happy tears, mind you

It's been about a month on this new ADHD medication. The stimulants weren't working out for me. One gave me heart palpitations, the other I couldn't remember to take reliably.

But I've been on a new medication for a little over a month now, one that I take every day like my antidepressant. It's supposed to increase the precursor to dopamine, which ADHD people struggle to regulate. Like an antidepressant is supposed to give me the ability to make my own serotonin, this is supposed to just give me the ability to make my own dopamine.

It's a rainy day, I've been productive and pushing myself all week, I was going to take a rest day. But I still did the dishes, because the dishes needed doing.

And as I almost finished, I realized I felt satisfied. I felt good about it. I did the dishes.

For so long I thought the "good" feeling you got when finishing something was relief. Relief that it wasn't hanging over your head, the loss of shame that you felt for Not Doing the Thing. It was a passive sort of thing, the removal of an ongoing internal punishment rather than a reward.

It wasn't a high, it wasn't like I felt elated doing the dishes. I was just... satisfied. I was glad I had gotten that out of the way. It felt nice.

And I went to my mom, and I asked her, "is this how it feels for everyone?"

She held me, and we cried together, cried that I had missed out for so long, cried that I was buried in shame for so long thinking I was lazy and broken, cried for joy that things are looking up.

To think I spent my life without this basic neurotransmitter doing its job properly. It's like putting on glasses for the first time.

I wasn't faking. I wasn't lazy.

I'm. Not. Broken.

[communistmishka]

Also, I'm getting medicated for my adhd IN TWO HOURS. No more constant suffering and feeling like a failure, IN ONLY TWO HOURS, after years of waiting to even get diagnosed.

[ineedfairypee]

Fml 🙃

Trying to study without meds feels like trying to build a house without mortar. It can work on a day when the weather's really good but even then it can all fall apart so easily, let alone if there's wind and rain!

I've studied med free before and I'm sure I can do it again but whether I'll achieve all that im capable of is another thing entirely!

Time to stock up on good diet and exercise and other compensatory strategies, take cover and hope for the best! 😩

[bomberqueen17]

how it's going

yah my second experiment with adhd meds is like. well, this time it's making it so i can't sleep and my appetite gets shitty, which is what they normally say but i didn't really have that problem last time. i do now!!!

cut for discussions of eating/weight gain/loss shit, and the Horrible Yearnings

lil PSA, because a friend said something about this-- yah SSRIs make you fat (i gained 25 permanent irrevocable pounds on Celexa in 2012 and that's that, it's never gone away no matter what I did and it never will short of some other medical crisis I think), and it's reasonable to in a kind of not-healthy but understandable way wish that the amphetamine ADHD meds would thus make you thin. Seems like it, yeah? If you have no appetite and your metabolism is higher? I'm not finding that, though, so here to nip that in the bud is my observation that if you have trouble with comfort eating, losing your appetite does not take that impulse away, it just makes it disgusting. I actually am not a big comfort eater, but I do, like many humans, tend to derive comfort from eating food I enjoy? This takes that away without removing the need to do it. I still need to eat; if I don't, I get heartburny, emotionally distraught, and more, just like always. But now instead of enjoying the food at least, I find it unappetizing, have to force myself to prepare it, and then eat it so slowly it's always cold/mushy/melted by the time I'm done, and it's not satisfying. And instead of an occasional Fun Lil Treat as a pick-me-up, I wind up roaming the house with Formless Yearning, because I know food won't make me feel better, but nothing else is making me feel better, and I'm not getting any pleasure chemicals from anything I do, any more than I ever did. Friends have reported the dreaded afternoon/evening time when their ADHD meds wear off as being always a notable time for the Yearnings, but I'm finding that I get that just Whenever, so.

It ain't fun and it ain't cute.

But I'm determined to stick this test out to the end of the week because every day has been somewhat different at least, and I'm really trying to write down what happens. Because I was given two weeks' worth of this shit, and I tried it for a week and hated it so much I stopped, but then I didn't write down what happened so I have no fucking idea what to tell the doctor. (I also collapsed into despair and stopped calling that doctor back, but like, that didn't solve anything, and being bitter that finally getting a chance to attempt to fix my ADHD didn't work on the first several tries and in fact seems to still be beyond my capabilities because it requires me to have pattern recognition skills plus medical knowledge I simply don't have... well, it isn't helping anything.)

So we shall see. I have no attention span whatsoever and a MUCH worse working memory than usual, I routinely get up and leave the room to go do something and by the time I get to the next room I have NO memory of what it was, and unlike my normal life, I don't ever get the memory back. Usually I can retrace my steps but now that entire train of thought is JUST GONE, which is way more severe than the problems I normally have. And my usual coping mechanism, where I get up the oomph to do something by daisy-chaining several tasks together, is WILDLY ineffective now because the moment I add a second task the first one falls off and vanishes and I again, cannot recollect what it was.

I normally am no great fist at to-do lists, but I was told it's the Only Way To Make Vyvanse Work, but what I'm finding is that i am also even less capable than normal of making a to-do list have any relationship to reality. Plus I forget I made them, so. They are in fact not helping me.

I have had reasonable (like... 5 hours or more) sleep two nights this week so far, all other nights have been significantly less than that, two or three hours in most cases, which is not all that unpleasant-- at least my bed is comfy-- but does mean I have even less that I am capable of doing when I am awake, since I am so fuzzy-headed from lack of sleep. Also I can't nap, which is usually what fixes me; I am a world champion napper, but this is actually an issue from about the last six months, I cannot actually fall asleep during attempted naps, so it's futile to try. Discouraging!

Last night was a reasonable night though, so I'm carefully observing my capabilities and let me tell you I am not impressed.

So, what I'm finding is that stimulant medications make me MORE ADHD than I was before, which is. I don't know what that means and neither does my doctor so far.

I was going to write about my writing process but now this seems too whiny so I will not, I'll do that separately lol.

[alulapop]

New ADHD meds just came in let’s hope they help!

[chemicalcarousel]

Any tips on self-medicating adhd? Not as in substance abuse, but something that genuinely helps and is somewhat accessible? I am desperate to try just something that fucking fixes me so I can have a life and the psychiatry has failed me

[this-is-me19]

Depression stole my memory

I started with postpartum depression that didn’t get caught. I was lying to myself, and with my first child breastfed him, eating one meal a day, and lost 25lbs. I eventually, like 18 months later got a full neurological psychological exam by a neuropsychiatrist. I was depression and had adhd.

I chose to treat the adhd only for two or three years. I don’t barely remember my eldest child’s first two years of life.

It helped but wasn’t until a few months after my Mom passed away that I finally saw a Psychiatrist and got treated for Depression and anxiety. I’ve been on medication since and I will be for the rest of my life.

I was medicated while pregnant with my second and it was much better, easier than I felt with my first. I wasn’t so stressed or agitated when he got fussy and I remember it all, pretty much.

Want to know more about memory loss and depression? Click here to read about the science of it.

[communistmishka]

Ritalin headaches are not for the weak

[kosmic-songbird]

Trigger Warning: Animal Hospital Visit

TLDR: I had to take my dog to the vet last night because I left a baby gate open so I'm looking for tips and tricks to be less forgetful.

Had to take my dog Sadie to the emergency vet last night.

This is our second time this year. The first time was for arthritis. We didn't know she had arthritis and we thought she had popped her hip outta place. But turns out she was just very good at hiding her symptoms since she has severe arthritis. Her daily meds help and she hasn't had another flare up.

But last night she came inside and her stomach was severely bloated. I was super scared it was GVD because Dobermans, like all deep-chested dogs, are more prone to having a stomach flip.

I kept my cool better than expected. The grounding techniques I've been learning in therapy really helped. I still was a mess but not as big of a mess as I could have been.

At the vet, we found out it was just a food bloat. I knew she had gotten into the cat food earlier that day, but, truthfully, she's gotten into the cat food before and nothing out of the ordinary happened. That's why I didn't think of it too much when it happened.

The vet was sure it was dog food and they showed us pictures but I was pretty sure it looked like our cat food. When we got home I checked the cats gravity feeders and sure enough they were both almost empty. The dog food has not been touched at all, so it was for sure the cat food.

Really this shouldn't have happened. We have a baby gate that the cats can get through but blocks the dogs from getting to the cats food and litter boxes (she's eaten out of the litter box before too). But I accidentally left the gate open. So it's my fault.

I'm so so relieved this wasn't something worse and I'm not upset with Sadie for what happened. When I got her four years ago she had been abused and was starving. If I had grown up starving I probably would eat myself sick every chance I got too.

What this has made me do is evaluate my current state of living. I have ADHD and am stereotypically forgetful. I leave lights on, the curtains open at night, the garage door open, etc. If I had been paying attention to what I was doing this never would have happened. It's not my fault that my brain works that way, but it is my responsibility to be better.

So if anyone has any tips on how I can be less forgetful and more intentional I would be very grateful if you shared them. I don't want this to happen again and I want to improve as a person.

One thing I'm going to do, if my fiance is okay with it, is write a list of things I want to do better and check it every day. And have him compassionately check me when I forget or just don't do something. Only if he's okay with that. I don't want him to feel like he has to babysit me, and I told him that, so I'm waiting for his response to my request. He's at work rn so it may be a bit before I find out.

And of course, I am very grateful to Hekate for watching over my baby. I always pray to her when it comes to the dogs and she always listens. And to anyone that has made it this far, thanks for reading.

[mossy-petrichor]

Does anyone else's ADHD meds (stimulants) make their suicidal thoughts vanish?? It's SUCH a clear thing it drives me insane because I've never seen anyone talk about this??

[homeo-care-clinic]

ADHD

ADHD is the most common neuromuscular dysfunction. ADHD is termed Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder. Children are more prone to these abnormalities. About 30 percent of children in the US suffer from this disorder. ADHD was first diagnosed in the year 1798 by a Scottish Doctor named Alexander Crichton. Later in the year 1902 British pediatrician Sir George Fredric further gave an opinion saying children who are diagnosed with ADHD due to their abnormal moral behavior are still said to be intelligent enough to progress in life.

Causes

Trauma to brain

Exposure to lead poisoning after the first trimester.

Pre-term labor

Low birth weight

Sugar

Excessive alcohol during pregnancy

Drug overdose

Stress

Anxiety

Symptoms

Inattentiveness in class

Laziness in doing studies

Forgetting things immediately

Incomplete daily tasks

Not able to perform daily routine things

Not able to follow any instructions

Having problems getting involved with others at school

Do not remember words during any conversation or speech

Read more: Preventive Tips

[oddishfeeling]

how do we feel abt ritalin. please weigh in

[cilawarncke]

On ADHD and Exercise

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash When I was 12 or 13, an older girl at my school taught me to run. Like any kid, I was familiar with the concept of moving my feet faster when being chased, but she taught me to run with intent, to pick up my knees and let my body slope on uphills, to relax on the downhills, to keep my elbows light and my shoulders back. Like the givers of most priceless gift,…

[sillycourtjester]

How did i function before adhd meds. If I am off of it for one day I will pass out with exhaustion and get incredibly emotional.

[inovize]

A Short Guide to ADHD

If you are a teenager struggling with hyperactivity, mood difficulties, behavioral issues, or sleep problems, you may have ADHD. (This is not a diagnosis, please see a doctor if you are interested in a diagnosis of any medical condition.)

🌐 healthyteen.org/shorts 🌐