ADHD and Me: One Month of Medication
Did I push off making this post for two days so that I could go to my doctor's appointment and find out if my script or dose was changing first? Yes. But hey, that led to the progress update on Observation so it's not a total loss!
It's been about a month since I started the medication portion of my ADHD journey, so I just wanted to share what progress has felt like so far. I know I sure would've loved a play-by-play to read through going into this process, and I hope that anyone else looking into getting a diagnosis for themselves or have an idea of what to expect going forward can use this for at least some reference to qualm the chaos spiral that is the unknown.
After the weirdly not as long as expected process of getting my diagnosis, my primary care physician quickly got me a script for extended release (XR) Adderall at a moderately low dose and told me to try it out. Eat with it and take it early, those were my two big recommendations. And for the last few weeks, I've done just that; I even mark each pill as taken in a tracker everyday to ensure I never miss a dose.
I was sure I'd forget how much or how little of an impact the medication really made, so I took notes each and every day about how I was feeling and focusing. While, I don't want to just copy/paste my unfiltered thoughts of each day, I thought giving a spark notes version was a better solution. Consider it an homage to how I managed to finish high school with only actually picking up one or two of the required readings.
For the first day, I felt like a different person. I have a note that reads, "I noticed a thing that needed to be done and just⦠did it? No hassle? No tricking myself into it? i.e. taking out trash, making bed, etc." I started reading for the first time in over a decade, and read the whole damn book in one day! I felt on top of the world... until nighttime.
That first sleep was the worst one. I couldn't get tired, I was restless and alert. I wrote ideas down for future projects until almost four in the morning. It was also daylight savings time, so really it was five in the morning. It felt like napping two hours then getting back to life the next day. I cannot express how thrown off it made me feel.
I think the cats could tell something was amiss, they wouldn't leave me alone for a bit once I started the medication.
The remainder of the first week was a lot of the same: piss-poor sleep without any large windows of consistent rest, jolting upright at night to jot down ideas instead of winding down, but offset by the unfathomable ability to actually accomplish things during the day. By day five, I could feel the exhaustion in my bones. I got nauseous, I had a migraine, and driving home from a friend's house, my vision became so blurry from tiredness that it felt like not wearing my glasses. While I only have a slight astigmatism, it was horrifying to see the toll trying to "fix" my brain was having on the rest of me.
But then, thankfully, I finally slept. Hard. Even though I woke up a few times through the night, falling back asleep was no issue.
Over the following two weeks, I settled into what I assumed was my new norm. Sleep balanced out a bit, though my dreams became vivid and wild. Each morning I woke up feeling tired but a more manageable amount, quickly finding myself more awake and alert knowing I had to get up and take my medicine before I started any other task. I found myself concentrating better some days without effort, while the days that did require a real effort were still much more manageable. I felt pretty dang good overall.
Then the fourth week was my period.
Overnight, it almost felt like I was raw dogging my mental illness again. The stagnation was back, killing my productivity the second I sat down. Distraction was a constant bane on my focus, construction outside and video games on the tv keeping me from making real progress on anything I wanted to accomplish. Everything was a struggle again, and it really put into perspective just how much the medicine was really affecting me 3 out of the 4 weeks each month.
All in all, I'm happy with my progress so far. I think maybe at some point I'll see if a higher dose makes a bigger difference, but I'm already able to do SO many things I've only dreamed of doing since starting the medication. Pomodoro timers work now (and even when I forget, I remember faster). I can recall information better. I can multitask without leaving this half-finished. And I can read. I can finally, finally read.
TL;DR (a thing I wish all posts had prior to medication and still sometimes now) these bullet points are what I'd hope anyone takes away from my journey so far:
- Be prepared for little to no sleep as your body initially adjusts (this isn't just for ADHD meds but a lot of mental health-related medications)
- Take your medicine as early as possible in the day to give yourself the best chance of sleep
- Your period can and most likely will tank the effectiveness of Adderall, but for me, it still gave me just a little bit of help
- It isn't a switch, you don't take XR Adderall then suddenly chug out everything you need done in two hours of hyperfocus; you take your medicine and it puts the tools in front of you to focus, you still have to choose to use them
- DON'T GASLIGHT YOURSELF; it's easy to think "wow, this is so easy, maybe I'm fine and this isn't doing anything" but it's a TRICK
Would I do this all again knowing what I've gone through since? 1000%, yes. No hesitation. I can do the things I want, even if it's still difficult. It's no longer impossible, and that's such a HUGE change for the better.