Hi everyone! I was diagnosed a few years ago in my early 30s, and started taking Adderall along with some different drugs for anxiety as well.
With Adderall and then Wellbutrin, even in small dosages, I notice that my HRV Stress (recorded on a Garmin 945 Forerunner) is significantly elevated for the entire day. When I used to take a midday and evening dose of (instant release) Adderall, it severely impacted my sleep. I also tried extended release taken in the morning, and that caused sleeping issues as well. So did an extended release of Wellbutrin.
Basically, any benefits those medications provide (and it didn’t really feel like it was helping) were offset by the bodily impact.
Has anyone had a similar experience with either of these medications? Any notable co-morbidities or changed metabolism or something that you identified as causing these symptoms? Did Ritalin or Strattera work for you when Adderall did not? I’ve been cycling through other non-stim medications with my provider, but haven’t found anything that provides benefits for ADHD (I’m currently on guanfacine and zoloft, which mitigates my anxiety at least).
Mydayis (dextro- and amphetamine salts) seems to be more stressful on me than Vyvanse. The extended release mechanism also varies things. But hey, there’s a new goddamn shortage every week and we go with what works well enough.
As it was explained to me, you basically got three options: amphetamines, methylphenidates, and the “other stuff” (Wellbutrin, strattera, qelbree, guanfacine etc). This is a purely anecdotal analogy and oversimplification of how stuff works as it was told to me:
Amphetamines (adderall etc) hit the front door in the front of the brain — more dopamine, intense concentrated focus. Methylphenidates (Concerta etc) hit the back door in the front of the brain — more norepinephrine, longer-lasting, more alertness. The Other Stuff is back of brain, like if you turned down the ambient noise of a room.
Long and short of it is that one of these three approaches will tend to work well for an individual with ADHD, but the other two not so much. It’s pure trial and error, and it sucks, but with a decent provider and time (and insurance) you can eventually settle on one at a particular dose. Best of luck!
This has been my experience as well.
Friendly interjection from Depression Lemmy.
Not so long ago I was discussing my meds with my psychiatrist and expressed to them that it felt like the medication wasn’t so much resolving the problem as it was redistributing the problems.
To my surprise the response was, “We’ll, yeah, pretty much.”
This didn’t help my depression much either. :|
Yeah, unfortunately meds don’t fix ADHD. They’re a treatment, not a cure. Meds are supposed to be used in conjunction with other treatments (such as therapy, as an example) to be most effective. I know, it sucks, but these are the cards we’ve been dealt.
Same from the depression side of things. I was really intending to share the part about medication redistributing issues. As even when something is working, it’ll always be unworking something else.
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Marijuana, fuck pharmaceuticals
I was just thinking how at times where I used it, I was much better at detecting and avoiding inappropriate / cringe behaviour on my part. Even when looking back at times where I took a break.
Just imagination from overthinking? I think I’m just terrible at it, and overthinking is just the right amount of thinking for me.
If it works it works. Stims fucked with my heart too much so this is my method as well.
Wellbutrin absolutely jacked my blood pressure. I’m on Pristiq now.
Sorry if this isn’t what you’re looking for, but my answer is basically “no”.
I can take a 10mg Adderall 4 hours before bed, and fall right asleep. Sometimes, I can take a 10mg Adderall in the morning, and fall asleep at my desk at work, only 30 minutes later.
Adderall makes me feel relaxed and totally unstressed. I’ve never had HRV stress measured, though. What is the experience like, to you, when you are having high HRV stress levels?
Wellbutrin and most other SSRI’s and SNRI’s make me feel a little TOO relaxed. Some of them make me feel less conscious, and a little bit brain fogged. At the time, I described it as if my soul was detached from my body.
To me, methylphenidate (Ritalin) gives the same effects as Adderall.
I don’t have a garmin, but methylphenidate (Ritalin) extended release gave me a high heart rate and exercise intolerance.
I’m on dexamphetamine now, that doesn’t seem to have the same issue.
For me, Vyvanse (lisdexamphetamine - a prodrug of dexamphetamine) caused the same side effects - high HR and working out felt bad. I stopped medication because it was a lot of stress for me.
one reason could be you were lacking salt. sounds stuüpid, but is very easy to test. just eat salt.
I was not lacking salt. My body was having a natural reaction to a CNS stimulant. Everybody reacts differently to pharmaceuticals, and I’m audhd which makes it worse.
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You’re not a doctor or you wouldn’t be playing it online. Please refrain from giving people unsolicited medical advice on the future.
No. people ask for help, I tell them what i think.
I didn’t give you medical advice. What I said about salt is Nutrition and common sense.
You don’t need to be a doctor to learn whats up with your body, how it works, what it needs, what stims do to it. doctors didnt tell you about salt, how stims speed up metabolic basal rate, why your hearth acts the way it does.
Vyvanse might work better, or perhaps modafinil. I was on modafinil for about six years and it was great. these days, I actually prefer ephedrine, I can buy it over the counter at the pharmacy. I don’t think that’s what you’re looking for though, but you can certainly try it
I had a similar experience with small doses of Adderall. It would improve my focus, but it left me feeling anxious in the evenings.
What helped in my case was consistency. I took the meds every weekday for a month and slowly the anxiety lessened as my body got used to the meds.
I took Adderall for about two years with slowly increasing dosages, so I definitely had the consistency aspect down. If anything it seemed to work well early on, but then started causing issues the longer I took it.
sounds like you depleted your storage of micronutrients.
Every body/brain is different. I tried three other meds for adhd before I landed on a combo that works for me. Strattera was extremely bad for me, but I know it’s amazing for other people. Sometimes you don’t really have a choice but to go through a few meds before you find one that works and is tolerable
I take Mydayis, Strattera and Zoloft every day. I’ve run the gamut of ADHD and anxiety drugs and this seems to work best for me.
When I noticed meds weren’t being beneficial anymore for me, I stopped taking them and started trying to spot where my focus-related issues were and how I could change them. It hasn’t been a smooth sail and requires a lot of discipline, but so far that helped me more than any medications.
Currently using Modafinil, which is rather bad on side effects and risks, hoping for an upgrade next month. So I had to work with that.
The Plan: Use it on about 50 days per year, and make them count. E. g. not on days full with unproductive meetings, but when I have a clear task and time to execute it. A task with high visibility. It’ll look to others as if I were rolling 200 days like that.
How about off-label stuff like guanfacine? I have a relative that got panic attacks, difficulty sleeping, racing heart and the like from the traditional meds, but the guanfacine did the trick.
I’m currently taking guanfacine. It works well for me for anxiety and sleep, but has shown no improvement to my ADHD symptoms
Sorry to hear it. Hoped it might have slipped through the cracks and been worth a try.
I took a spin on the pharma-go-round about 20 years ago. Went through just about every stimulant on the market over the course of two years. The only one to have a noticeable effect was Adderall… but the effect was panic attacks for routine issues at work. I was done at that point. I rawdogged reality for 25 years, how bad could it get?
Narrator: yes.
I went through some shit this past winter that basically required me to seek intensive mental health treatment. After one psychiatrist (who declared after 20 minutes of talking to me post-trauma that I didn’t have ADHD) and one useless APN that worked for the program I was in, I found a psychiatrist that listened… but he wanted to slow-walk the ADHD treatment due to severe depression and anxiety while the SSRI did its thing. After a few months of relative stability he wanted to try Lamictal… which promptly gave me hives. I said fuggit and asked for the DNA analysis. I’m not fond of getting put into yet another big database but shots in the dark take too long.
Sounds about where I’m at as well.
Did you get the results of the DNA test back, and get any valuable information from it?
No results yet, it just arrived yesterday lol. Fingers crossed it has some good info. Feels like I’ve been in a holding pattern for months.
Wait there is DNA analysis for ADHD?
I think it’s more to do with what drugs/classes will be effective/ineffective/dangerous based on known genetic markers. It’s not necessarily hard info, but it can inform the direction of treatment. I’m all for skipping as much of the pharma-go-round as possible.
Yeah, I’ve seen it talked about a fair amount.
Here is one of them, per Google: https://genesight.com/product/
