7 months is nothing. You’re in the honeymoon phase. Everyone with a recent adhd diagnosis thinks life is rainbows and butterflies but you’re on a stimulant drug. If you give someone cocaine daily they’ll tell you the same thing.
I’ve been on and off heavy stimulant meds since 2012. They only work for a short period of time. Dosage needs to go up. Consequences need to be managed. At some point you’ll hit a ceiling and they will no longer be effective. It’s just a matter of time.
Honeymoon phase on stimulant meds lasts days, weeks at most. Not 7 months, like you say here. I feel that, were GP to write that they've been on Vyvanse for two years, you'd call that "honeymoon phase" too.
Even if the meds would stop working entirely after couple of months, that couple of months of improved ability to function is a lot - enough to regain lost self-esteem, and introduce lifestyle changes that will remain even when the drugs are gone or no longer effective.
What are you talking about? I’ve been on the same dosage for over 12 years, and it is just as effective for me today as it was on day 1. Still waiting for those consequences I guess..
Are you coming across any habituation issues? I've been taking ritalin for a while (and it has made a huge difference in my life) but it does concern me that my dosage has been slowly increasing.
I take dexedrine (which is basically just what vyvanse turns into once you take it), and I have some tolerance after just 3 months.
Which is incredibly unfortunate, because my prescription started at 30mg/day because my body is just resistant to stimulants for some reason. Going any higher causes a hypertensive crisis, but tolerance is evil.
Why does homeostasis want me to have ADHD again? Wish someone could find the genetic crap that controls this and fix it.
My doc told me that the stimulant amd appetite suppressant properties would attenuate quickly, and they did, but that the effect on dopamine and epinephrine reuptake don't show the same down regulation over time. It seems like ahe was righ, a year and a half later I can't tell I'm on the atuff except I can start tasks I find boring. And remember meetings.
Well, the problem is that once tolerance builds, I become unable to stay up for the entire day. "The entire day" being from around 4 AM to 8 PM.
So my sleep schedule starts to get stupid again.
My current routine seems to work around this by re-fixing my sleep schedule every 3 days or so.
Before tolerance, I could wake up at 4AM without an alarm, stay up until 8PM or so, then sleep until 4AM the next day, and repeat that for a month or two. Good times. Internal clock actually worked and everything was running smoothly. Makes me wish I didn't require such a dangerously high dose.
Yes, meditation is extremely helpful to those who suffer from anxiety or ADHD. Daily meditation, on the order of 10-20 minutes at a time: that is a good goal.
Many who practice regular meditation find that they can subsequently live drug-free lifestyles, because drugs are a crutch for the body, but meditation is an enduring and efficacious cure for what ails the spirit.
> meditation is an enduring and efficacious cure for what ails the spirit
Meditation reduces the urge to actually use drugs to fix problems if you no longer perceive any problems to fix. It's just getting to this point that people have trouble with.
Accepting yourself and working within your flaws rather than trying to achieve perfection.
Do you feel that they make a difference, in terms of tolerance resets? I've tried going no/low-dose on the weekends in the past, but I found it made me feel kind of resentful that I was saving my 'good' time for work.
Yea it really does. I personally only need like 1 day every 2 weeks to reset to a good level…mind you, it never goes back to that euphoric beginning but that’s also ok.
To be totally transparent however, there are a lot of other things I do because I’ve learned that they contribute essentially to my medication working and I waited to respond to give you a full response.
Exercise is one. I don’t need a lot of it, I always try to get it done before taking medication that day and it’s a mix of long distance running and personal training. I know the latter is very expensive so if I had to recommend an alternative, I would say something like p90x is good. Great even. It’s almost a full hour of working out, full body, cardio mixed with weights, never very heavy either…you really feel like you did something afterwards.
Make sure to follow that up with a day at a lower dosage or no dosage if the medication is murdering your appetite. I think part of the rest medications don’t always work is honestly lack of glycogen from reduced appetite. Or the inability to use it? We’re entering bro science here for sure.
Besides breaks and exercise I find that some supplements work really well and become necessary to balance the whole experience out. A lot of people will recommend magnesium (glycinate for better absorption). I take it in the form of ZMA (with zinc), alongside it tyrosine seems to really help, fish oil, b complex (to make up for bad appetite) and recently added this other mixture of citrulline, arginine and dipotassium phosphate (6% dv/serving).
That last one is supposed to improve circulation and the potassium I find helps me relax. Takes the edge off of the medication.
Besides that, pay close attention to the side effects. Eating a big meal almost always has a positive effect on me. If I’m not thermoregulating well I look at circulation and exercise. I’ve been monitoring my blood glucose levels too and they seem ok throughout the day but sometimes I wake up at I get readings of 100 (forget the unit here, ng/dl?) so I’ll talk to my doctor about that.
Let me know if you have any questions about anything here. I’m more than happy to answer them. I know how hard it can be to take such an effective yet punishing medication.
I appreciate your response, and it's interesting to me that we've come to many of the same conclusions. Exercise has always felt good for me, but it became an absolutely necessity once I started taking ritalin. I took up rowing (it's a great full-body workout) and it's been a boon for my general health.
I also take magnesium (threonate, in my case), although I did that initially to help prevent migraines, along with fish oil, zinc & B vitamins.
I have not tried citrulline, arginine, or dipotassium phosphate. What benefits would you say those provide?
The citrulline, arginine + potassium is a recent thing I'm trying out. I'm getting good results from it in the form of lower anxiety. I had an experience with potassium from a trip to Mexico.
They have this drink there called electrolit and I remember it making me feel super relaxed, to the point where flying in turbulence didn't bother me anymore (I'm a nervous flyer). The only thing that stood out was its potassium content clocking in at 7% d/v in one bottle...really hard to get those kinds of numbers from even a potassium supplement, which come in at 1% per pill in the US. I guess it's because overdosing on it can potentially be fatal and slow down your heart too much? But for someone taking a stimulant it might be really good.
Then the citrulline/arginine is meant to help w/ vasodilation, which I think is hampered by the drugs and presents itself in the form of cold extremities. It's a lot of stuff to take just to be able to function but for me the difference is night and day. Off of it, I've been expelled from every school I've ever attended, on it, I've published half a dozen scientific papers and made a career for myself, so I'm never stopping.
Long term though, my goals are to eliminate or reduce my dosage and supplements by training to get my resting heart rate down a few points. It's what I'm working on with my personal trainer and so far it's been working.
One of the big problems with ADHD is usually that you can't complete personal goals and tasks because it's too much effort to switch to it. For example, hobby projects and such.
ADHD sort of... disagrees with you over what it finds worth doing versus what you want to do. It can make you feel like you're not in control of your own body, and that can lead to dysphoria and depression, or at the very least intrusive thoughts that you're not doing something that you should be.
For example, I've been working on an image upscaler for the past three weeks or so. Would I have been able to do that without my meds? Probably not. I will probably even end up finishing it soon.
While I'm writing this comment (and indeed, while I hung out on HN all day today) I've been thinking of the work I'm not doing and then just... being okay with it, because I'm on my meds and I know I'll be able to get to it.
I've even been making little steps throughout the day whenever I felt like a moment, but I'm not afraid to take breaks or do what I enjoy at the moment, because I know I have a choice.
If I weren't on my meds... it'd be a different story. I'd be at the mercy of whatever my ADHD felt was worth doing, and it'd feel a lot less reassuring.
Being medicated during leisure time is important, too.
I have not increased dosage beyond the 30mg they gave me at the start. Every month I try to take 3 days off. I make sure to always take it at the same time every day and I try to sleep as best I can and eat at the same time every day.
Yeah ive done the research. I just take the starting dose once in the morning every day and i take 3 days off a month. Im not binge eating and im not yoyo dieting anymore. All the dopamine seeking habits i had of gambling and playing video games are gone. I get 8 hours of sleep every night, i eat three meals a day.
Everyone i know that had to stop ended up abusing it. They took it at night to study or party. They took an extra dose if they needed to work extra hard.
Im not going to go up in dose so i have no reason to think my experience now will change in 5 years
