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???
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.
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 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.
Routine, write down EVERYTHING (because anything verbal doesn’t register for me), and struggle through it. I’ve been trying for years to find the right medication, I don’t even know the name of the one I just had to stop due to severe insomnia and dizzy spells. Which has been the theme for every single one where the dizzy spells are so bad, it’s no better than my scatterbrained ADHD brain. Yes, even Vyvanse made me very dizzy; I was so hopeful for that one…
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.
THC, caffeine, and more caffeine
Lots of coffee in the morning and thc at night is the only way for me. I walked away from actual medication years ago because I couldn’t afford it anymore.
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.
Yeah I’ve been thru a couple periods of avoiding caffeine and you can definitely tell when it wears off. About 5 days seems to reset most of my tolerance.
Brother I am a physics student. I already am doing this. Just didn’t have enough coffee today I guess
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.
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!
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!Drink an abhorrent amount of caffeine.
Therapy? I react badly to all ADHD medications so I am not medicated for it. What has helped me the most is working through things with a therapist who also helped me with implementing coping mechanisms. Things like pomodoro method (this got me through college!), organizers at “drop spots,” and learning how to self talk made a huge difference for me. It is not impossible to do well without meds…it is just harder.
I am starting therapy on the 10th lol
