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.

  • AmbitiousProcess (they/them)@piefed.socialEnglish
    61·
    8 hours ago

    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.

    Kinda depends honestly. As I’m sure you know, these meds aren’t something that perform consistently across different people, but your experience isn’t uncommon.

    For me personally, I had a fairly calm feeling start, and it took me till the end of the day to realize that I had barely touched social media, gotten 3X the normal amount of work done, and also had near zero anxiety.

    A few weeks in, and it was more of a subtle effect, after slightly bumping up my dose after experimenting with it a bit to get some better results. I’m not sure if it was placebo, or just my body adjusting, but overall things are still way better. When I’m on my meds, I don’t overthink things anymore, my anxiety is lessened (though not gone like it originally was), and I find it easier, but not guaranteed, to switch from social media to more productive tasks, and to stay focused on those tasks.

    Personally, based on what I’ve seen and heard, and what my psychiatrist has told me, I’d say you’ll probably have an experience like this:

    1. Kaboom, everything is amazing, life is perfect (lasts anywhere from a few days to a few weeks)
    2. Doesn’t hit as strongly as it did the first time, but still works okay
    3. Not working as well, requires bumping up the dose (dose increases are incredibly common for the majority of people on ADHD meds, all part of the process, don’t sweat it!)
    4. Taking your meds helps you consistently stay focused the majority of the time, and you’ll probably find most anxiety you experience will only be anxiety over something truly worthy of it, like an imminent deadline, rather than just anything under the sun.

    If you want to help keep your meds effective, or just generally wanna try to make things easier for yourself, you can try supplementing a little caffeine in and seeing if it helps give you a boost (be warned this can cause headaches or anxiety spikes too, so start with a small amount of caffeine and go from there. I find it causes headaches and anxiety for me, but drastically increases my ability to hyperfocus on things, ideally something worth my time)

    Or if you have extended release and instant release meds, you can try taking a small amount of instant release and your extended release at the same time to give you a boost, so you can start being productive on something, and then the extended meds will just help you continue well throughout the day after you’re already on track doing whatever it is you need to do.

    I’d say that “too good to be true” feeling is true to the extent you probably will never reach the exact same high as when your brain wasn’t used to it yet at all, but overall, the meds will help a lot, even if it’s not “every day is world changingly good”, and that’s perfectly fine :)