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Tell me about your experiences with Adderall
Heir
Ausitn, TXRegistered User regular
Ausitn, TXRegistered User regular
First off I want to caveat: I'm going to talk to my doctor about all of this! I've got an appointment with my doctor after the Thanksgiving week to discuss my concerns about ADD and concentration/focus problems.
That said, I am going to see my doctor in a couple weeks after talking to my best friend who has recently started taking Adderall. He's had overall good experiences with it, and we share very similar symptoms. I feel like I'm always in a cloud or mental fog, have a hard time focusing on and remembering conversations, and have difficulty absorbing what I'm reading (it usually takes me a couple times to really get the details of a book for example). I've always felt like I've suffered from some type of ADD/ADHD since high school (I'm in my mid 30s now), but to be fair have not significantly suffered from it in a way that affects my career too much. However, it seems like it does hold me back from being as productive as I feel I can be, and trying non-medicative methods has not produced productive results regardless of level of effort.
So, I'm curious to hear some thoughts on your experiences using Adderall or if you have alternative suggestions based on your own experiences. Thanks!
That said, I am going to see my doctor in a couple weeks after talking to my best friend who has recently started taking Adderall. He's had overall good experiences with it, and we share very similar symptoms. I feel like I'm always in a cloud or mental fog, have a hard time focusing on and remembering conversations, and have difficulty absorbing what I'm reading (it usually takes me a couple times to really get the details of a book for example). I've always felt like I've suffered from some type of ADD/ADHD since high school (I'm in my mid 30s now), but to be fair have not significantly suffered from it in a way that affects my career too much. However, it seems like it does hold me back from being as productive as I feel I can be, and trying non-medicative methods has not produced productive results regardless of level of effort.
So, I'm curious to hear some thoughts on your experiences using Adderall or if you have alternative suggestions based on your own experiences. Thanks!
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I'll also add that because of my ADD my mom realized she had also gone through her life with ADD and she got medicated at the same time I did. She found adderall did not work for her, and she went with concerta instead which worked great for her.
But fuck you — no, fuck y'all, that's as blunt as it gets"
- Kendrick Lamar, "The Blacker the Berry"
Not trying to threadjack because I'm curious about how you go about asking for it because you think you are having difficulties?
I'm not in school, but do study for certification exams and did poorly when I was younger because it all seemed so boring and I couldn't focus. I had always assumed it was just me being a kid, but 34 year old me still had trouble trying to focus on something that was immediately necessary to get a job and I really really cared about. I still test well and force myself through stuff, but I'm thinking life may be different/better if I had an improved attention span. I can't quiet things down enough, and I feel like it actually made me afraid to go to college when I was younger because that costs $texas and I'd just fuck it up.
Back when I got it I just asked my general practitioner and told them I thought I had ADD. They basically just started trying me out on different things and eventually settled on adderall because it was the only thing that worked. I think it's stricter nowadays because my GP (different doctor) told me I had to go to a psychiatrist to get it now.
But fuck you — no, fuck y'all, that's as blunt as it gets"
- Kendrick Lamar, "The Blacker the Berry"
This is exactly why I want to spend some time going through the "process" of figuring out what the underlying issue is with a doctor. For example, Depression definitely runs in my mom's side of the family. That and hypothyroidism, of which I am right on the edge of having myself based on my last physical.
Your experience with Adderall sounds exactly like my friend's. He said he felt "inspired" in the sense that he would focus on any task much like he would with any activity that he was passionate about. For example, he is a photographer, and loves pretty much anything associated with it. He hates reading. But on Adderall he feels that level of attention and drive with reading as he does with photography.
Ok, so my regular doctor is just extra cautious about it. Sigh. Still irritating.
But fuck you — no, fuck y'all, that's as blunt as it gets"
- Kendrick Lamar, "The Blacker the Berry"
Not really. Adderall is a controlled substance. A GP should only be prescribing it for you if you have a confirmed diagnosis that they can review. Adderall is a highly desirable drug and controlled for a reason, so no good doc should ever be taking someone's word for it that they have ADHD. They're typically going to want to see records from a previous physician, or at the very least be able to see that it has been prescribed regularly for you in the past if/when they review your prescription records electronically.
Some GPs are comfortable making an ADHD diagnosis for kids, but none should be comfortable diagnosing ADHD in an adult with no prior history. That doesn't mean that doctors who will do so don't exist (as you obviously know from experience), but they're going beyond their actual expertise in a way they shouldn't be if they do.
Adderall does have a history of abuse.
I mentioned my concerns and such with one GP and she was very skeptical of ADHD in general let alone adult ADHD. She begrudgingly prescribed a low dose drug and and I was on it for a few months.. didn't notice any changes but was so discouraged by her I didn't bother continuing as she was the expert and perhaps it is just me.. this was several years ago when my wife was just starting med school.
Now my wife is a 5th year psychiatry resident and I am thinking of giving it another go as I only did the short course of drugs at only at a lower dosage.. at the very least try different ones or the same one at a higher dosage. She is convinced I have inattentive attention deficient disorder (which looking at the criteria.. and how I was a kid and how I am now.. I agree completely.. I might as well be a text book case for it.)
Lots of GPs don't have the training they should have as first contact physicians when it comes to Psychiatric issues, some subspecialize or have more interest in it so it is really up your GP. I know my wife has run classes and such for Family Practitioners and a good chunk don't have basics like how do to a mental status exam or they learned it once during a short psych rotation in med school.
Well for an example of what it's like for me: Last year I took some classes having not taken into consideration my earlier schooling 10 years ago (or rather I thought "since I'm coming at it fresh I won't have any problems.") The first semester of the class went well: the information was basic and so required no real studying. The second semester was a slight challenge, but still easy enough that I could figure it out on my own. The third semester required studying, and this is where I came to a road block. It's not that I didn't set aside time and a quiet space to study: I did both of those things. But I found myself trying to read and learn things from the book and the independent lab projects we were doing for class, and it was physically painful trying to get my mind to focus on it. I would read a paragraph over multiple times and not be able to comprehend it. I'd spend hours a night on one single project because of this problem, when I had three due that week. It finally occurred to me that this same problem happened the last time I was in school, and I remembered my medication. "generally feeling uninspired or unproductive" is not how I would describe my problem. It's as if there's a physical barrier keeping me from my goal, and no amount of "willpower" or "proper environment" causes that barrier to go away. It's a problem I don't generally run in to at work, where I'm a quick study on even supposedly "complex" things I need to learn. It's absolutely a barrier to being able to go to school and learn things that are actually difficult.
But fuck you — no, fuck y'all, that's as blunt as it gets"
- Kendrick Lamar, "The Blacker the Berry"
it would work very well for me. total focus, very productive. stopped using it because I would crash afterward
it was never a horrible crash or anything, but it was enough to where I had to really think about my day and when/where I wanted to use it
i was concerned about repeat dosing leading to dependency so I quit it
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
These drugs also work differently for everyone so you will have to try them to really see if they work for you. It's a fine line to walk when talking to your doc about it, a lot of the language you end up using can be very similar to an addict looking for drugs, especially when you think you need a higher dosage. You must have a very comfortable and open relationship with your doc when talking about this, and any doc worth anything about ADD will know and understand this, but if your doc goes about this the wrong way it can end up with a permanent "drug seeking behavior" flag on your medical record (Thanks Psychologist that had never dealt with ADD!), so please be aware of this as well.
Adderall can make it super hard to get it up for a non-zero percentage of users.
So I made an appointment and went in, and when he asked me what I was there for I told him that my therapist thought I might have ADHD, but I also have all these other issues and maybe it's just one of them. He had me fill out a short questionnaire, and then talked to me for a little while and I guessed watched what I did.
That day I learned:
- Diagnosis of ADHD, especially as a child, is one of the most sexist processes in that girls are supposed to be quirky and daydream a lot. Boys and girls express differently: boys have the stereotypical hyperactivity, where girls tend to fidget in their seats and drift off a lot. For a long time people thought girls couldn't have ADHD, and so there's this whole group of freshly-diagnosed middle-aged women who weren't caught as children and never grew out of it.
- My prescribing doctor said that researchers have only recently decided that ADHD CAN coexist with a bunch of other disorders, in my case bipolar (II). I *think* it's still not meant to be diagnosed alongside bipolar (I), but I forget. What it meant though is that he had to futz with my medication a bunch just to make sure that wasn't the problem, and while he was fairly confident he had to make sure I was properly medicated for my other diagnosed conditions (physical and mental) before he would prescribe Adderall.
- Rapid, involuntary eye movement is a pretty surefire symptom. He told me when he decided on the diagnosis (pending medication adjustments) that he was confident because of the way my eyes moved when I talked, or looked at a paper, or looked around the room. And he's right... I always thought it was normal; in specific circumstances involving some kind of hyperfocus I can stare quite intently, but otherwise within about five seconds it becomes physically painful to try to keep my eyes from moving. It's not because I get bored with what I'm looking at; it is actually, physically painful.
Possibly the biggest thing though: Adderall is not your only option for treatment, and for a lot of people it's not even the best. I don't see that doctor anymore, and in my efforts to keep getting it prescribed I've had about four different prescribing doctors try to force me over to Strattera instead, citing that for most it works pretty well. There are a bunch of reasons I avoid it for myself, but I think most doctors these days will want you to try Strattera first, as much because Adderall is a pain to prescribe as anything.
So keeping in mind that I was properly diagnosed by a qualified mental health professional with months of observation before and after I started taking the Adderall, I will tell you that for me it's not like I feel when I'm feeling inspired. There is an energy about inspiration that I can't really put to what the Adderall does for me. If you'll bear with my ridiculous metaphors for a moment: if my brain is an ocean with waves and currents and eddies (wherein thoughts are just about as easy to pin down), about 20 minutes after I've taken a pill it becomes a quiet lake. I don't get any energy at all from it, it calms me down so completely that I can utilize the energy I have. If I don't have any, I almost immediately fall asleep because I can. :P
I was scared of it, I was afraid it would make me rage or something, but my doctor assured me that my dose is so small that there isn't enough of it there to get me high; it would either work or not. The first time I took it, though, I felt a peace like I have never felt in my entire life. It was about as far opposite what I thought it would be like as it could have been. Like I said, it didn't give me energy, it just sort of... cleared things up. All the fidgeting, all the weird muscular zapping when I tried to sit still, it just stopped. My eyes stopped doing that stupid thing and I could think about the thing I was looking at. It is the closest to normal I have ever felt in my entire stupid life. Suddenly I knew why most people could throw away wrappers and stuff without really thinking about it and without having a breakdown, and why no one else seemed to feel like they are constantly moving through sludge.
I so wish it had been caught when I was younger. I mourn for my entire academic career; I could have done so, so much more with it.
If you have any questions please ask. I'm not sure what specifically you want to know, but I'm always happy to discuss my experiences with the medications I've taken.
Keep in mind that this is also exactly what you would expect when you give a normal healthy person amphetamines. Feeling "inspired" to do things you normally avoid is not an indication that you have ADD*/ADHD, though it not a reason per se to say you don't either. But ceres's experience is much more in line with the expected result for someone with ADD/ADHD: Adderal/ritalin essentially calms the person to the point where they are able to do the normal things most of us have no trouble with.
In general just keep in mind that exhibiting ADHD like symptoms occasionally is common for all adults, and a real diagnosis requires A) symptoms present from childhood and
*or Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder predominantly inattentive as it's now called.
Island Name: Felinefine
Ugh. Please don't come up in here with how a drug is "expected" to interact. Every human body is different, and often "expected" means "happens with 70% of patients" which still leaves a huge 30% of the rest of us.
I personally don't think Adderall will work for me anymore, though I haven't been to the doctor yet, because I have increased sensitivity to amphetamines since my stomach surgery a few years back. That doesn't mean anything in regards to my ADD diagnoses, and it doesn't mean anything in regards to how Adderall worked for me before and how it works for other people. The reason my ADD doesn't effect many portions of my life is that I have an abnormally good memory that means I don't really have to focus on things for very long to memorize them. That's how I got through most of my college experience without a diagnosis, and how I do fine at work without having to be medicated. It is only once information is so dense that I can't memorize it in one sitting that the ADD throws a wrench in things, because I have to focus for long periods then and am entirely unable to.
I had to face my father down and tell him I had ADD and needed help, only to have him say he didn't believe me and he wouldn't help me. That was one of the worst nights of my life and I cried the whole day, not knowing how to fix my problem without my parents' help. Luckily my mom did not agree with my dad, she got me to a doctor and I got medicated, and it was only because of that that I was able to graduate. Please don't use this internet forum as a reason to be skeptical of peoples' diagnosis. Leave that for a doctor.
But fuck you — no, fuck y'all, that's as blunt as it gets"
- Kendrick Lamar, "The Blacker the Berry"
I'm not being sceptical of your diagnosis, and I'm sorry that you've experienced resistance from your environment about it. My point about the expected result is also about the desired result, at least from the doctors point of view. Getting the typical reaction to stimulants may be fine for a while, but it's not really an option for long-term treatment because you're essentially getting your patient hooked on speed.
1) Straying from personal experiences and being a debating each other about adderall and ADHD diagnosis.
2) Straying from personal experiences and speaking for Heirs doctor.
Please do neither to the best of your abilities. See Ceres post for a model example.
It is very effective and for 6-8 hours after taking I get basically the same sort of feeling that Cambiata and others have discribed, it helps me to focus on whatever task is at hand and work on it with more concentration than I could normally muster through force of will. I do have to make sure I eliminate distractions when working, because even though it helps focus and makes it easier to get into a groove I have to make sure that the thing I'm focused on is work and not checking on a forum thread or accidentally falling into a flash game or something.
I also get the same sort of crash that Jasconius mentioned, I take it in the morning around 6 or 630 and by 3 or 4 in the afternoon I can feel myself coming down and I'm noticing it much more now than I did back in high school. I've also found that having caffeine or eating a large meal during the day seems to bring on the crash even earlier, but that may just be me. I also feel like I've been gaining weight over the last 6ish months, which I hesitate to attribute that to the adderall because I'm not really the healthiest eater or most active person but still is something I've noticed.
From 2011ish until June of this year I was actually taking Vyvanse which I much preferred because it has a slower release so I didn't experience the same rush and crash I feel with adderall. Technically I am supposed to take one pill in the morning and one in the afternoon but I only ever do that if I need to be in focus mode because I'm working late/have class/need to study because after only a day or two of taking both doses I start to feel a little bit strung out. Which isn't to say that you will experience the same things or that you should ask about Vyvanse instead or whatever, just that there are options and like any prescription for something related to mental health it is important to talk to your doctor if you have an issues with it.
For what it's worth I thought I had some kind of ADD even when I was in high school. My brother has it, and I exhibited many of the same symptoms as he did. But this was the mid-90s when ADD was just becoming a thing. My brother performed poorly in school, so there was a drive by my parents to try and help. I did not perform poorly, so long as I didn't have to study much. So, when I would bring it up, it was something my parents didn't want to pursue with me.
I met with my doctor and he is referring me to a specialist to see about getting diagnosed. He said he is not qualified to make that diagnosis, but I have enough of a history with my doctor that he feels comfortable enough to say I exhibit some of the symptoms, and would prefer that I see a specialist to better pin down what's going on and how to best tackle it.
I was not on Adderall for long.
A better test would be to see how focused the kid is after caffeine.
and i can guarantee from having had both they induce the notions of "energy" and "focus" very differently
caffeine is largely physical in its effects. adderrall is distinctly mental, its like putting glasses on your brain.
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
I don't recall that Vyvanse was one of the ones I was tried on, so I'm looking forward to having a chance to try it. It sounds way better than what Adderall did for me, especially considering how anxious the potential of getting hooked on it made me so that I didn't take it as often as I really needed it.
But fuck you — no, fuck y'all, that's as blunt as it gets"
- Kendrick Lamar, "The Blacker the Berry"
caffiene is kind of like speeding on a highway, you don't really get there much faster, but it sure feels like it
Edit: Got bored at work and asked a few doctors.
Stimulants such as caffeine can definitely have a sedating affect on people with ADHD, but yes, they operate on entirely different receptors and neurotransmitters (caffeine is an adenosine antagonist, and amphetamine and methylphenidate, from which all ADHD treating stimulants are derived, are both DAT inhibitors, so they functionally increase the level of dopamine in the brain).
This, uh.. surprises me, to say the very least. I want to talk to this doctor.
Anyway, if Adderall works, Vyvanse probably will too - it's just Adderall with a lysine attached, so it breaks down into amphetamine in the liver (hence its slow release)
I asked a few people about experiences as adults that I know. One was obviously just abusing it to get through nursing school, but the others said it took a while to get the dose right and sort of plan around their "best hours". One mentioned it took a couple of tries, they had used it when they were high school age and couldn't handle the slowdown after school (they liked varsity sports) so they stopped taking it after freshman year, as an adult though they said extended release was almost a panacea, though it took a lot more effort to get back on it as an adult because healthcare has changed and HMO's guard referrals to specialists. I presume due to the way HMO's work by avoiding paying for care. (This is one of the biggest of HMOs, so I imagine they're all similar)
If I were to try to seek help/medication it was suggested to me to try through the normal referral process, but be prepared to pay out of pocket for a second opinion from a non-network specialist for at least one visit. I do not work with general practitioners, but I do work with Anesthesiologists many of whom were Pharm. D.'s before they decided to go to medical school. The changes in prescription policies pretty much across the board have been crazy so we're in an age where persistence will be required I think.
Edit: I apologize for this being third hand, it was just a little slow at work and a few CRNAs and Anesthesiologists I have a decent working relationship with seemed like good opinions.
I have ADD and I went from Adderall to Vyvanse which I'm currently on. I was the quiet kid in the back of class that sat there and did the school work without any problems, until I had to try because I didn't instantly understand what I was being taught. I could not focus on anything, even my favorite video games I couldn't stay interested in playing for longer than 20 minutes at a time, until friday and saturday night when my parents left me in charge and I was able to down a whole 2 liter of pepsi on my own and suddenly I could sit for 4 or 5 hours straight and successfully ignore any and all distractions.
I also drink a shit ton less soda and coffee when medicated without a single change in my routine or diet or anything. 3 1.5L bottles were my daily intake, and it'd easily double if I had to seriously do some concentrating. This was also before I even contemplated anything might be wrong other than the "fact" that I couldn't try hard enough, but now I'll commonly go days without drinking a single soda or cup of coffee and a can that would be gone in 5-10 minutes will now sit next to me for hours before I finish it.
I will just say I am glad I do not go to your doctor as it sounds like she would not be willing to provide the medication I need because the science says I don't need it.
See and I'm sitting here and I know there's a reason I started typing this post and I legit don't remember what it was. I don't usually take the stuff at night. :P