I am FINALLY going to be able to trial Adderall after taking a long break from meds and want to track how I’m doing daily. What do you do so that you can know the meds are having a positive/negative effect? What are the indicators you track?
Worksheets, your own indicators, apps, etc. would by great. I’m leaning towards making my own worksheet but idk what some of the most important things would be to keep track of.
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dunno about the others, but the effects were immediate and obvious from day 1 of taking ritalin. as i’ve described it to my wife, after about 20 minutes of taking the pill, it felt as if a loud air conditioner had suddenly been turned off.
Man it’s been such a wild ride for me. I’ve tried Strattera, Ritalin, Vyvanse, and now Adderall, and especially with Vyvanse and Ritalin the effects were kind of all over the place for me day to day even though I’d try to be consistent in my eating/sleeping/routine. Adderall has been weird as hell, today is only day two but none of these have had that magic bullet effect that a lot of people seem to experience, so far. Yesterday on my first dose the Adderall made me SO TIRED and hungry lol
Keep track of?
Maybe if I can keep it up for more than two weeks I’ll know the meds are working!
that’s the spirit!
I haven’t uh, gotten around to putting in the leg word for adderall…
For some reason
Hmmmmmm wonder why lol.
When/if you do though, I would suggest working specifically with a psychiatrist or psychiatric nurse practitioner, my last prescriber was a physicians assistant and they were an idiot
Vibes.
But what if I can’t tell what my vibes are
i dunno for me it’s basically an on/off switch. every stim has a different range but it’s always very low but not quite a micro-dose
if i get a little sleepy when it hits followed by this sort of “brain smoothing” i’m in the neuro zone
That sleepiness after taking amphetamines is always a trip for me
The first time this happened to me it was very weird but then after I read a little about it it made sense
God I wanna be in the neuro zone so badly lol. So it sounds to me that, overwhelmingly, people are able to notice a difference when it does work. I just can’t believe that the efficacy of the drugs are just so specific like I’ve tried 4 different types, this will be my fifth so I am convinced I’m missing something or actually don’t have ADHD
my brain responds really well to many stimulants for some reason but all the dopamine reuptake inhibtor types barely work without far too high effective dose. so it could be the mechanism of action for you as well, maybe a full agonist/releaser works best.
and don’t get me started on selective reuptake inhibtors.
Yeah I think Focalin and Ritalin just made me more agitated and irritated and that was it. Then I’d crash; I think I might metabolize these things really quickly cuz I’d always crash st like 1pm, that happened with Vyvanse as well!
Do you mean SSRIs? I will never take one again I feel like Prozac did long term damage to me as a kid
Focalin or Wellbutrin for selective reuptake inhibitors. i’ve also tried some experimental/“research” ones that were incredibly disappointing as well. but yeah exact same just get agitated and no other effects besides feeling wonky
i’m surprised about the Vyvanse since that’s a full agonist/releaser. i wonder if you have a liver enzyme thing going on. ever tried straight dexamphetamine or even instant release adderall?
I haven’t tried those, I’m on 10mg XR adderall now and after 3 days of it I don’t think I feel much so I might ask for 20mg which I think is the typical starting dose, then maybe ask for IR if that doesn’t do the trick.
I have also been a drinker all my life so wouldnt be surprised if I have liver issues (luckily I don’t drink as much anymore). Would enzyme issues change how you metabolize meds?
On a spreadsheet I just started after forgetting about the other spreadsheet I started 3 months ago to do the same thing and then never used
lollll I’m sure I totally have one all made up hiding in my google drive somewhere
I could never do that, I’d either fucking forget or I’d have crippling executive dysfunction and couldn’t do it even if I wanted to.
Same here lol. But I want to try, the last time I was trying out meds I could NOT tell whether it was working or not. At least the autism in me enjoys lists and things like that so it kinda helps
24 – (time spent laying in bed doing “nothing”) + ( 0.25 × (time spent in bed “getting stuff done”) ) hours ≈ my indicator of how my meds are working. Higher is better. 0.25 is an arbitrary coefficient between 0 and 1 that I set based on vibes and plans; higher values decrease the importance of physically getting out bed.
Despite the formula…I’m too lazy to rigorously track this. I suppose you could do it with a spreadsheet or a few lines of Python. But this is the kind of calculation I make when I evaluate how my meds are working. And then during the psychiatrist appointment, I’ll roughly average the above formula using a vibes-weighted sum over a few weeks.
Today I’m at 0 😭
that’s really creative that you came up with a symptoms formula! But alas, I suck at math lol. I’m sorry you were at a 0 yesterday though, hope today was/is better!
How many dishes are cleaned
Hmmmm that could be a good one…Tracking tasks that I despise the most and how often I do them lol
srry i fell off our megathread convo about this! the truth is i personally just didn’t really lol, i just noticed i was overall more able to Do Shit and felt that was good enough. it’s probably good to be more intentional about it than i was though!!
I mean just being able to tell that it’s effective is ideal lol. Tomorrow will be my first day, if it feels like a light switch flipping I will be so relieved
I carry a little notebook, remember to use it regularly for a week, then forget about it mostly go off vibes lol. But yeah, I try take some time in the mornings to reflect on how I’m feeling and what actions/factors are causing that, and then via notebook or vibes track the trends (“well well well if it isn’t the consequences of my actions”).
I’ll also use the notebook if it’s something I’m really ruminating on and need to think through.
When I was trialing meds I had a worksheet but it was for tracking side effects, the is it working bit was very obvious. How quiet my head is, basically, and if I’m able to sit still. Brain quiet = working, standing up and pacing = worn off.
I think I have a photo of the side effect sheet somewhere that I can dig up if you’re interested.
if it wouldnt be too much trouble I would love to see the sheet! No worries if it’s elusive though.
I really hope I’m not one of those people where none of the meds work because idk if I can go on
I think it had columns for 1 hours/2 hours/4 hours after doseoooo cool thank you so much for sharing! I assume W and B are for “worse” and “better?”
Yup
got no adhd
take mine pls
no
Rude
lol
