Hi all I need a sanity check.
Diagnosed ADD as a kid, struggled to pay attention and care in school, was on concerta for a decade. Parents would up my dose if my grades went down and expected me to grow out of ADD once I turned 18.
That didn’t happen and my life fell apart and I vowed to never take medication again because I saw it as a conspiracy to sell pills and get people messed up in the head.
After 15 years of emotional dysregulation and crippling anxiety I spoke to a dr and tried an extended release amphetamine yesterday.
My whole world changed. No emotional noise, no background feeling of “I’m a bad person and I don’t know why”, social anxiety is gone (was able to respond to all my messages and even make a phone call AND talk to a cashier!!!). Was able to do tasks I left behind because the anxiety to start was too bad.
I feel like I can do anything I set my mind to now. My self confidence is up. I don’t dread things. I woke up calm. My mind used to be a firehose of thoughts and emotions all at max level. Now it’s calm and orderly and logical.
This seems too good to be true. I didn’t even know existence could be like this. Is this normal? Is it the honeymoon phase? Is it just because I’m taking an amphetamine? I’m beside myself and life feels like I’ve got all the cheat codes now. It seems too good to be true.
yeppp, i was late-dx and when i first got put on rits about 90% of my anxiety dissolved and i was walking around like “holy shit…is this what normal people feel like?? they just get this shit for free?!”
it was just mind-blowing to me that i could finally follow a train of thought and not be constantly overwhelmed by brain noise and other people just… didn’t have that going on at all
The biggest thing for me was honestly just walking past a piece of trash or something that fell on the floor and just… Picking it up. Nothing groundbreaking or momentous. A simple action. An action that everyone else seems to do with no issues. There was no internal debate or fight with myself to pick it up. Just “oh, lemme grab that as I’m walking past.”
I was convinced I had an anxiety disorder on top of it all. Turns out it’s all just from ADHD. Your description matches mine to the tee. Did the dissolved anxiety stay that way? Did it creep back?
Similar case here. Been on slow-release meds for a few years now and the anxiety has not come back.
i haven’t been able to have consistent access to meds in the last couple years unfortunately so i can’t speak much to how things shake out with long term usage, i do remember some anxiety did come back a bit while i still had regular access (i do have ptsd as well so maybe not so unexpected) but for me it was still nowhere near the level of unmedicated. for some people i know that have been on it a lot longer than me they say it takes the edge off just enough, then other people i know say it actually made their anxiety worse so there seems a bit of variety in experience with it!
Thank you :) I’m sorry you haven’t had proper access. Hoping things change for you. I’ve also got PTSD so I’m curious to see how things go. Happy to see that even when anxiety comes, it’s nowhere near unmedicated. I used to be in bed for 2-6 hours completely losing all my time to panic attacks, weird half dreams, personality changes, and other nastiness.
thank you, i sadly relate very much to what you describe and i hope you have a lot more peace in your brain & life going forward! it’s hard being in the rough seas but i know those calmer waters are there, and now so do you :)