To do, to done, and thoughts about how my ADD medication is or is not working.

[xiphias]

A month or so back, our psychopharm decided that there was a reasonable chance that I have ADD, and started me on dextroamphetamine and amphetamine salts, generic for Adderall. I'm still on a fairly low dose, so I don't know if it's helping or not. But it might be. Or maybe not.

The first thing is that I tend to feel suddenly tired right after taking the stuff, and my mornings haven't been particularly productive. But when the stuff wears off, THEN I find myself weirdly jittery -- and often productive.

Yesterday was weird, though. I went out in the morning to Home Depot to pick up stuff, and wandered around the place for a while. I was being kinda productive, but a lot of it was just sort of wandering around. I was shopping for about two hours. Then I got home, around eleven or noon, and soon started doing stuff -- and I kept going until eleven at night.

It seems like, when the thing wears off, THEN I have amazing productivity. WTF? Or at least, I do a lot of stuff, most of which is more-or-less productive.

Also, I've not been able to sleep well -- I can't fall asleep, then I keep waking up -- but I haven't felt particularly tired. 'Cept for that sudden hit of "tired" right after I take my uppers. I wonder if this is what hypomania feels like.

What I've been working on, of course, is the house. Ford's moving in tomorrow afternoon, so I'm rushing to finish things up. I installed new locks on two of the downstairs doors, replaced the damaged bathroom ceiling tiles, and tore up the old crappy bathroom flooring. I still need to put in the new bathroom floor, and hook up the disposal.

That last one requires my father, who'll be here tonight.

The bathroom floor is, of course, more complicated than it originally appeared. After getting through two layers of stick-on vinyl tiles and two layers of stick-on sheet vinyl, I got to what I thought was the plywood subfloor. But there was a cutout in it so that it went AROUND the toilet, and, usually, the subfloor is supposed to have a cutout just for the sewer PIPE, but the toilet itself sits ON the floor. AND that plywood was really deteriorating. So I'm ripping up THAT subfloor, too, and getting down to the ACTUAL subfloor, which looks like its hardwood. Hundred-year old UGLY hardwood, so it's getting covered back up, because it's a good subfloor, but not so good as an actual floor. I might put plywood back down over it, again, though, depending what it looks like when I get the deteriorated stuff up. Dunno. After that, it gets stick-on vinyl tiles again, but this time, they'll at least be better quality stick-on vinyl tiles.

So, yeah. That's my day.

Comments

Ask an Pharmacist

[cogitationitis.livejournal.com]

At what time of day do you take the amphetamines? You might try earlier. Or ask about a time-release version, and possibly even take it at night, before you go to bed.

Amphetamines do have a paradoxical effect on people with ADHD; it's not quite clear why, or how they work.

If you're still on medication for depression, you might want to get that switched to one that does cause drowsiness--most of the newer ones don't--and take that at bedtime.

Re: Ask an Pharmacist

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

No, we're specifically NOT doing time-release yet, because we want to be able to track effectiveness and effect over the short term. And I'm NOT switching my depression meds -- it took me thirty years to find one that works. :) (It's a med for bipolar, actually. I've got Bipolar 2 -- the kind that isn't actually bipolar.)

Re: Ask an Pharmacist

[wotyfree.livejournal.com]

Is it possible that they're interacting? The med you take interacts with a *lot* of things--is the same doctor prescribing both?

Re: Ask an Pharmacist

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Yep; my psychopharm is the only person who's prescribing meds for me, and he's got quite a good deal of experience with all these drugs individually and in combination.

[jehanna.livejournal.com]

It's actually Friday afternoon, so don't rush TOO much. :)

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Hunh. It's on my calendar for tomorrow. I'm going to still treat it as "tomorrow," anyway.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

I know you aren't *feeling* tired, but some of the symptoms you're describing look suspiciously like sleep deprivation. I know the non time-release version of adderall is supposed to be completely out of a person's system in 6 hours, but I've found it interferes with my sleep if I take it 12 hours before bedtime. If you've been compensating for your sleep problems by staying in bed longer in the morning, that could set up a vicious cycle. I found it helpful to skip the adderall for a day to catch up on sleep (apparently, lots of kids take it 5 days/week and skip weekends.) Then I have to get up at a consistent time...until I have enough days of bad sleep in a row to get sleep-deprived again, and need to do another reset.

Sometimes it's useful to compare what you're doing with how productive you were before the meds...rather than with how productive you WISH you were. (Would you have made it to the Home Depot at all? I wouldn't. On a bad day, I'd roll for initiative to get the stuff, and get a critical miss.) YMMV. I'm dealing with depression, not ADD, so your mileage may vary a lot.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Actually, Dr Bayard says that up to 20% of the Adderall stays in your system for 24 hours, and that there is therefore a cumulative effect.

[403.livejournal.com]

I don't know much about Adderall (aside from the fact that a child's dose gives me a splitting headache), but the adults_add community is a font of information on this kind of thing.