So I’m in titration and I’m currently on Vyvanse 50mg. I’ve already tried methylphenidate up to around 60mg I think, but they just made me jittery. The Vyvanse doesn’t seem to be a whole lot better. I guess I feel ever so slightly better but it’s somewhat of an out-of-body experience and I feel the crash before the end of the work day. What I really wanted help with was my memory and context switching, and to be able to speak more clearly. I think that might have fixed all the other disorganisation issues, etc.
I’m considering asking to try the non-stimulant ones but I can’t really find anecdotal evidence of their effectiveness. Anyone tried them?
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Maybe the key is that you feel the crash. I don’t feel the crash and I thought the drugs were making me anxious but that happened even when I forgot to take them 😐 turns out it was burnout lol.
Others have mentioned eating with the vyvanse and I did find that helped, as well as taking it later in the day (before I leave for work vs as soon as I wake up).
I understand that some people cannot tolerate stimulants because they do cause anxiety in some people. I’m not trying to suggest this can’t be what’s happening for you but rather sharing that I thought it was the case for me and it wasn’t.
I wish the drugs could fix me but they can’t and that sucks pretty bad. Apparently that’s expected. I’m not discouraging you from trying other meds but caution you against thinking there will be a med that will take away all your challenges. Stimulants were lifesaving for me, but they didn’t fix me.
While it’s not personal experience maybe this counts as actually answering your question a bit. Some discussion and evidence about the effecicacy of non stimulant meds:
Non-stimulant ADHD medications are considered second-line or third-line treatments because the level of benefits and response rates are significantly lower. Meaning, stimulant medications are more effective at relieving symptoms for a larger percentage of people.
This means they aren’t the go to because when you are scatter shotting the stimulants are a better bet. It doesn’t mean they work less for the people they work for!
This one talks about the different types, how they work and their effectiveness.
Today, the clinicians have a wide variety of non-stimulants for the treatment of ADHD. A large amount of research and data support the use of non-stimulants in ADHD. Although stimulants still remain the primary treatment, there is a growing trend in using non-stimulants, especially if the stimulants do not adequately treat the symptoms, are not tolerated, or are in the presence of contraindications for the use of stimulants
Stimulants have earned their reputation as the go-to drug of choice for ADHD. They are among the most effective medications in psychiatry, reliably reducing core ADHD symptoms and improving daily functioning when properly titrated and monitored. However, when stimulant and non-stimulant medications are compared more closely, the gap between them appears smaller than commonly assumed.
Hope you find something that helps you!
Thanks. I think I’m going to ask for a top-up for early afternoon and if that doesn’t work I’ll ask to try non-stimulants.
For me I felt like the meds never really did much, I started this year and gradually increased the dose. Now I realise how effective they are when I forget to take them.
Not ADHD but very much diagnosed and under the care of a doctor. You just have to keep trying stuff to see what works. There’s science behind it, but it’s broad. Getting specific (what works for you) takes a lot of trial and error. Don’t lose hope.
Thanks. The problem for me is that I’ve gone private so I’m paying approx £90 for each new medication. I can afford it but I’d rather not have to. As soon as I’m sorted the NHS will pick up the prescription costs.
If meds aren’t working, maybe tackling discipline would be worth trying? I’d imagine there are psychiatrists that focus on that instead of meds exclusively.
Discipline is something I’m okay with, I’m inattentive, not hyper-impulsive. I need help with my memory, context switching, and clarity of thought/speech. I was working on a project for a few months once and my boss sat me down in a meeting room and asked me to give him a briefing on everything so far; my brain completely locked up and I couldn’t find a single world. Discipline won’t fix that.
Look comrade, my instant instinct is to dunk on the take mercilessly but I am going to choose to be kind because I really want to share my experience with that approach and that (at least where I live) this is specifically not recommended by psychiatrists and other mental health professionals.
I’m glad this works for you. I have (unconsciously) been doing this for 40+ years and it works until it doesn’t. Maybe it’s the autism’s fault (in that I am unable to interpret bodily cues) but I spent the last 8 years trying to discipline my way out of objectively hopeless situations and recently my body just gave out completely.
To be more specific, instead of just accepting that there are systemic problems in my environment which make it challenging all people, neurodivergent or not, I thought if I just worked harder or longer than everyone else I could Fix It.
Every single professional I am working with to recover is telling me the key to a healthy life is building a life where I am not constantly trying to overcome my disabilities. The cruel cosmic joke is that maybe I can outwork my disability to some extent, but it’s going to literally kill me.
I’m sorry for being immodest but I’m really, really good at my niche job and well known for it throughout the geographic area in which it is relevant. Publications, awards, speaking invitations etc. When I told people I was going on leave the common response is confusion. They see the performance, not the fact that I work absurd hours because I need to check things over and over again and can’t work if people are interrupting me all day (which they do because it’s my job to help them do theirs too). So now my job is to figure out workplace accommodations, which feels more like boundaries for myself and how I work with others.
I suppose that’s exercising discipline too, but not in the sense that I’m masking my disabilities by just trying harder. I hate it lol. But I’m doing it for my family and to be a role model to other neurodivergent people in my field (we are over represented).
(I understand this is a super privileged position and not everyone can afford to say no to masking in this way in our current capitalist hellscape.)
I was on Strattera (atomoxetine) some years ago. It worked very well for me for about five years then kind of stopped making much difference. However even after I went off of it the symptoms seemed noticeably easier to deal with than they were before (and still do to this day), so I still count it as a win.
Now I will say though that Strattera is a bit harder to judge than the stimulants, as its action is longer term; you take it daily but it has to build up over weeks, so you don’t get that immediate feedback like with the stimulants.
I found that for me, Strattera made it hard to sleep if I took it at night, and caused stomach upset if I took it too close to caffeine in the morning, but mid-day proved the sweet spot for me.
I am on strattera now, it works great for my adhd. I much prefer the strattera to all the amphetamines I’ve tried over the course of 36 years I’ve been jumping from stimulant to stimulant. Gotta stay on top of taking it though, if I go more than like 26 hours between taking one I start to feel withdrawal symptoms and they suck (heavy brain zap).
TW: sexual side effect
side effect
It makes it so I don’t always orgasm when I nut tho… which is a weird experience, like 3 out of 10 times I’ll just have an anhedonic finish…
I’m also on Vyvanse 50mg. I’ve been much more fortunate with the side effects. Did you happen to start any other medication at the same time as Vyvanse?
Also, [email protected] might be a better place to post this, as it’s a serious non-meme community.
Do you eat before you took your meds? I had a similar problem and I just started drinking a protein shake in the morning. It might digest slower and last longer too?
I take it at about 8:30 with my porridge at work and it wears off around 2/3pm.
Iirc Strattera is about 25 pct points behind stimulants in terms of how many people it works for. I wasnt among them, I couldnt feel any change from it so i switched to methylphenedate
All it does to me is make me sleepy, but if I take it at night I don’t sleep. I don’t think it’s working…
i had to lower my vyvanse dose and felt a lot better. have you asked your dr about that?
I’m not really bothered about the side effects. If it was just that I could tolerate it but I don’t feel like there’s any improvement with the symptoms.
I’ve tried atomoxetine and welbutrin to no effect. Your results may vary.
