I recently had to stop taking my vyvanse due to some bad side effects and holy shit I forgot how bad this was. I can’t do anything. I have so much shit I need to do but I sit down to do it and it genuinely fills me with dread. I am just staring at my computer. Even getting to the webpage I needed took hours of convincing. This is horrible, even caffeine isn’t helping. What do y’all do? How do you manage?
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Honestly? Forty years of practice, anxiety spikes, external motivations positive and negative, fugue states… and I’m still barely getting by. I just paid $600 of late fees because I forgot to file my state income tax ten years ago. I’m sure I did them when I did my federal, I just… never sent it in? I guess???
Poorly. I’m unmedicated and trying to get on meds.
I wish you the best of luck, it took me years to get the right diagnosis and then about 7 months to get the appointment with a doc to prescribe me some meds.
Hopefully your journey is smoother than mine was.
Thank you. It’s… a bumpy ride, lol.
Are you in the US? What difficulties are you running into?
My current psychiatrist doesn’t want to prescribe me any stimulants because of the potential for abuse. For the record, I have no, uh, record of drug use. I don’t even fucking drink. I get the caution, but it’s deeply frustrating.
I found my current awesome psychiatrist at growtherapy.com. It took me a couple tries; I honestly don’t know how the first one still has a license to practice. No problems getting Adderall after that (other than the ridiculous hurdles the pharmaceutical industry has put in place). The behavior you are describing from your current psychiatrist is exactly the shit I was trying to avoid, and I spelled that out clearly in my first appointment with my current psychiatrist.
Before I was diagnosed?
Poorly, very poorly lol
It literally felt like I was try to fill a bucket with sand and the only shovel I had was a sieve.
I’d literally have to wake up 5-6 hours before I had to be anywhere just to make sure I could finish my breakfast and coffee before leaving. And then I’d still more often than not finish eating or drinking my coffee in the car on the way.
I feel you on the “Having to stop a med because of the side effects,” before I was diagnosed with ADHD I was diagnosed with anxiety and I tried about a dozen different meds for it ovwr the years before calling that off and just going unmedicated. Funnily enough after my ADHD diagnosis and getting on the meds I am now (Straterra) I’ve only had 1 panic attack in the last year vs one a week or so. And I’m able to start and finish tasks. It’s fucking witchcraft.
It literally felt like I was try to fill a bucket with sand and the only shovel I had was a sieve.
Couldn’t have said it better tbh
And the ‘sand’ is actually really gross used cat litter
I have been raw dogging life without meds almost my entire life. There was a 2 year period in high school I did speed, and then when I went to community college my wife shared her meds with me. The other 40ish years have taught me how to deal.
I have alarms for everything throughout my day. I have a routine. I have specific places to put certain things. When I deviate I am screwed.
Same. Lots of systems and a place for everything. EG if I leave the room and want to remember what I was doing when I got back, it’ll be the one thing that’s out of place and somewhere obvious. Unfortunately, it’s easily thrown off by others who forget to put stuff back.
What’s your relationship with travel? I struggle to pack up and mobilize so many systems. It’s been getting better as I develop travel-specific solutions (like having a dedicated toiletries bag that remains packed).
If I travel alone I am okay. I list what I need to take with me. If I travel with my family, I am horrible and yell and scream at every little thing that goes wrong as we are leaving. Once traveling I am fine, it is the leaving that is the issue.
I used to use caffeine but i stopped a few years ago. During the pandemic i went on adderall because i was struggling to help my kids do online school. I stopped adderall because i moved and adhd’d away my therapist.
Mostly i cope with routine. I eat the same foods for breakfast and lunch most days. I work on unmasking and being radically honest about my struggles with adhd to people around me. I setup auto billpay as much as possible and i cycle through the same few hobbies so i dont waste too much money.
I’ve recently found that sleep is very important to my body’s needs. If my sleep cycle is fucked then my symptoms get wild.
Chaining dozens of coping methods together helps a little bit, including:
- strictly working with lists. When I do it and it’s not on the list & checked off, it doesn’t count as done. What’s not on the list doesn’t get done
- implementation intention: Since my brain refuses “must do now” situations, use a trigger like: “If it’s not done by 8 p.m., work on it with a stopwatch for 15 minutes”
- for the list, turn everything into a module. Instead of “do the kitchen”, have subitems like “collect all garbage”, “sort by food / non-food”, “clean surface 1/2/3/floor”. For studying & work, a module is always 25 or 50 minutes of full focus, no distractions. When I have to get up to get water or pee, it counts as failed and is not checked off
Yay, life on hard mode.
Those are some top tier gamifications
Thanks! For my kid, I gamify it up a notch: His life works on “quests” such as 10 minute room cleaning, letter to a grandparent, 10 minute reading, homework etc., for which he gains loot boxes. Those are little physical boxes containing a made-up currency and other small rewards such as candy, 5 cents - $ 1 real money (his only way to get allowance!), stickers etc. The made-up currency can buy prices such as puzzles, books, toys. About 2 - 3 times per year, there is a legendary coin in it which can be traded for a huge price worth $ 50 - $ 100.
Not sure if saving him or messing up his reward system, but the stuff gets done and he’s doing great!
I don’t. I vaguely function for months on end, eventually get overwhelmed and panicky, then consume excessive amounts of caffeine and giggle to myself till the caffeine crash hits and I’m too tired to think.
ShameExternal motivation!
A friend stopped by yesterday and i havent cleaned so fast in such a long time. lmao
Im also preparing to invite a woman into my life and i am not able to do so if I’m a disaster. So i still have more cleaning to do but I’ve made progress!heart exploding levels of caffeine, just keep adding more it works eventually
(do not do this I had to survive college somehow and was desperate)
caffeine tolerance increases very quickly, so one has to constantly increase the dose for it to be effective. I am currently trying to get a diagnosis after procrastinating for too long on that (why the hell does getting help to overcome my problems require me to overcome my problems). Not sure how caffeine exactly works in adhd brains but for me as how i understand it works in neurotypical also it should be possible to reverse the tolerance for caffeine by spending 2-5 days without any. Having gone through that i can say you need to be prepared to just lay in bed for that time.
Brother I am a physics student. I already am doing this. Just didn’t have enough coffee today I guess
THC, caffeine, and more caffeine
I recently had to stop taking my vyvanse due to some bad side effects and holy shit I forgot how bad this was
FYI you are probably also dealing with withdrawal in addition to being unmedicated. Getting off of meds after having been on them is a very different experience from never having been medicated.
My wife is desperately trying to find out what medication will work for her…
Drink an abhorrent amount of caffeine.
Side note: too much caffeine can weaken bones.
What’s too much?
Under fifty, maybe 800+ mg daily. Over 50, maybe 200, depending on other risk factors. Oddly, it seems to affect the femoral shaft, and not notably others. Everyone should do a refresher on Rush factors, but especially AFAB, and small framed people.
Over 400 mg is bad for your heart.
It’s not great for the kidneys either, but I’m not sure the meds are great, either. Probably the best way is the slowest and requires more willpower: cut out refined sugars (that includes in breads, mayo and other stuff), switch from refined grains to whole, watch seed oils, increase Omega 3s, regular exercise, good sleep habits, etc. These things can be incorporated incrementally, but the sooner the better. Also meditation and therapy, the latter being cost prohibitive, for many.
Well, fuck. My joints are shit to begin with.
How do you mean?
The most normal movements can be painful for no apparent reason, my knees sometimes try to bend the wrong direction while I walk, sneezing too hard can make everything ache painfully for a good 30 minutes or more, etc.
I can move my calves up and down and feel my knees “scrape” together as they move.
Lovely family history of degenerative bone and muscle issues, as well as just plain ol pain.
I feel you. My hands and wrist are the worst. Pretty sure it’s arthritis.
Oh jeez, so sorry! Do you have any working diagnoses where you can search up anything? Regular osteoarthritis is helped by actually using the joints, so they produce more synovial fluids, but I didn’t know if it can help your condition.
In a sane nation, universal health would be a no brainer.
That would require my family to not be extremely tight-lipped about their medical history for no apparent reason. I know nothing beyond general descriptions and a few common names of conditions to watch put for (diabetes, heart, blood pressure, “endocrine issues”) despite explicitly asking for purposes of testing with a doctor. That and I haven’t been to a PCP since I was in high school (maybe longer). I’ll get there… eventually.
Oh, and im fat; not like, mobility scooter stereotype, but i could stand to lose a good 40-50 pounds. Legs and arms are actually fairly muscular, its all torso.
I can’t tell you anything you haven’t already heard. Buy the most healthy food you can afford, walk a little bit each day. I lost about 20 pounds in a month simply by switching from sweetened beverages to water, but that’s also because I drank sugar all day.
