1w ago

ADHD medication question for my Neurotypical homies

What does it feel like for you when you've used any ADHD medications? I have looked at a bunch of

posts but I feel like there are never good answers for this. I have heard that they can help NT people with focus and such, or that y'all build up a tolerance after a bit. And then I hear for people with ADHD, that the first couple of times you take the meds, or if the dose is too high, that you'll feel speedy/high.

I've been trialing meds with my psychiatrist for a while and I feel like I don't even know if I have ADHD because of all this conflicting info and how I feel on them. I know it can take a lot of trying different types and doses but I just doubt my diagnosis I guess.

TL;DR: What do stimulants feel like for you've taken them semi-regularly?

14 comments

Isn't it possible to be diagnosed ADHD and not benefit from stimulants?
- Absolutely, yes. There are non-stimulant medications that you can take for ADHD such as Strattera. The success rate of those is much lower than with stimulants, but when they work for people, they can REALLY work. Some people don't find relief with any type of medication, too. Rawdogging life with this diagnosis suuuuuuucks though
- Definitely, there are several subtypes of ADHD and stimulants don't work equally well among them.

I’m thinking maybe you got it backwards? I know that my NT friends who’ve tried stimulants (controlled substances or illegal drugs) before say that it gives them a high, like they’re very energetic and have euphoria. I’ve got ADHD and OCD and adderall makes me feel just kinda more normal. Normal+ if you will. Like I can fold laundry and text someone at the same time without feeling mentally exhausted.
Shout out to my therapist from long ago who told me, “You know, typically when people take cocaine they don’t want to sit down and read a book.”
- Shout out to my therapist from long ago who told me, “You know, typically when people take cocaine they don’t want to sit down and read a book.”
  lmaooooo they are real for that.
  I mean I know that stimulants are supposed to help with motivation/focus/mindfulness if you have ADHD, but I feel like I have read that once NT people get "used" to taking it or something that they can focus really well. Maybe it's more like they hyperfocus to the detriment of everything else while ND people can focus but shift when needed when on medication? Maybe that's where I've gotten confused. Because why else would a college kid want to take Adderall to study if it just makes them all gacked out and speedy?
  
  From my experience, taking high doses of ADHD meds (or taking them in the line format) will still make a person with ADHD “speedy.” However that speediness I still helpful for getting things done (maybe not done well though). I would never recommend getting to that state to study (retention likely very low) but I definitely got a handful of college lab reports done in that state.
  But also don’t forget lots of people are just looking for an easy fix for lacking understanding or work ethic. The difference for someone with ADHD is their work ethic isn’t a simple matter of discipline and the line between undisciplined and ADHD is often hard to spot.

It depends on the medication and the person. Everyone's experience is slightly different. I'm diagnosed with ADHD and on Aderall so that's what I'll be talking about. For me after the first dose, the main thing I noticed is that everything got calm and quiet. But it was subtle. At the time I was playing a game on my computer and watching a youtube video on the other monitor and my first indication that it started working was that the youtube video suddenly went from being necissary background stimulation to being a mildly anoying distraction. When the adderall is working I find that I am suddenly able to take a task and just do it. It doesn't necissarily give me the desire to do things but it gives me the motivation to do them if I decide to do so. Where when I was unmedicated I could be consiously anxious about a task and telling myself that I need to do it but being incapable of actually doing it for weeks or months straight. When I'm medicated I can just go and do that task.
One thing to note, euphoria is a common startup sideffect that people experience on adderall. That is not the intended effect and it is not supposed to keep feeling like that. For me that went away within about a week. When people say it stopped working really quickly or they built up a tolerance really quickly they are often just talking about the euphoria going away. But when you're adjusted to it and it's working properly then you shouldn't be jazzed 24/7. Adderall just happens to have a pleasant start up side effect.
In the following weeks after starting adderall I felt significantly better and, while some of that was due to the euphoria, much of it was just due to being able to properly function. I was able to focus on catching up on all of the things I neglected and I wasn't perpetually anxious about every little thing. When new tasks popped up I was able to fairly effortlessly prioritize them and figure out how to deal with them. Like I said it doesn't make me want to do things. I definitely still leave dishes in the sink ocasionally. But I can just decide to do something.
After about a week or two I also started to get a bit depressed. Before I got diagnosed I had spent nearly 30 years being nonfunctional and while I was working on fixing everything now, over those nonfunctional years I had dug myself a pretty deep hole. That depression was mainlydue to realizing that even though I'm functional now I would never be where my peers are just due to how incredibly I was set back. A lot of it was me kind of mourning what could have been if I had been treated sooner. Among the people I know who have been diagnosed as adults this also seems to be a very common part of the experience.
As far as other effects I have noticed that I tend to clench my jaw and shoulders ocasionally and when I first started it I had headaches for a couple weeks. But mainly it has just worked. There's nothing really overt. I can just do things when I tell myself to and I can can have an actual train of thought rather than a heap of thought.
- Thanks for sharing. I guess I want to know how folks who don't have ADHD react because I really can't tell if the meds I'm taking are working or not. I've tried Focalin IR and XR, Ritalin LR at different doses, Strattera at two different doses, and now Vyvanse at 3 different doses and the stimulants makes me feel pretty similar. Like I feel like I have more energy and less resistance to doing things, but just barely. I don't feel like my brain quiets down at all and I still feel quite scattered. And when I first started trialing meds (Strattera) I tried really hard to get a good routine going so that I could keep it up when the meds worked, but after that it was Ritalin, then the second or third titration of ritalin I started to lose the routine, then I kept losing it more and more on Vyvanse even though I had more energy; I was just obsessive about cleaning. So like, I feel like I don't have a "control" variable to even be able to tell what works and what doesn't, or if I don't ACTUALLY have ADHD at all and I'm just feeling the effects like an NT person would
  
  Was the "quiet and calm" something that was extremely obvious to you? My psych seems afraid to even say the "A" word so I don't know if she will even prescribe me Adderall, even though I think it did work for me yeaaaaars ago when I did it recreationally. I could never tell her that though
  
  Stimulants help with facilitating executive functioning, but that doesn’t mean they give you those skills. You do have to practice things like prioritization and planning.
  I might experience things a little different because of OCD, but I remember early on in my ADHD diagnosis feeling like I had to “use” my time on Ritalin. And it was hit or miss for a while.
  It took a long time to become proficient in day-to-day living. No one teaches you how to put away dishes. NTs might just “put them away” but that never made sense to me until stimulants. Slowly I learned to parse out what’s important about “putting them away.” Where as I used to become overwhelmed by the amount of dishes, now I simply start. I used to question whether or not this shelf is the best place for the plates, now I think “maybe I’ll try putting the plates elsewhere this weekend if I have time.”

14 comments