Your meds will work better and you’ll get a meal in before the medication suppresses your appetite. Like you, I just assumed I was terrible at coping with things everyone deals with. Love the puzzles that is figuring out the crap software we make work, and troubleshooting it when it still manages to break. This hasn’t changed since taking medication. The following may increase your risk for ADHD: Being born prematurely, or being male Hopefully the therapists and doctors I've finally managed to engage will help me navigate that. Hopefully now that you're on the medication, you can do the things that will lead you to better opportunities, and that when you're presented with one, you can act on it. I'm 25yo and suspecting I may have ADHD (for a while now). This is scary. I also noticed that your handwriting changes a lot in the before. You need to throw the drug think garbage on the bin where it belongs. We hit it off right away; we think alike, code alike, approach our jobs in much the same manner. My high school notes looked like this too. ADHD may also cause you to have problems getting along with other people. I've alway been an introvert, and I drag myself to work (always been hard to fall asleep, so I don't sleep enough). I have lived a cigarette-free, alcohol-free, drug-free existence my entire life. Pill shaming happens when someone expresses negative opinions about you taking medication.They may say things to you like “Anyone who takes Adderall will develop psychosis”, and “Adderall is just a legal form of meth”. In one incident, in high school I showed up for a test on “The Human Comedy” without ever having read the book. I coasted from job to job, from opportunity to opportunity, failing to capitalize on them despite a great desire to do so because I just couldn’t seem to start. Keep in mind that I've been taking Adderall for all of two months, so take what I say with a grain of salt. I rarely stayed at one job for very long. I hope you can find a dr that will understand that and help you. But! A black box would flash on the screen in front of me for a fraction of a second. I couldn’t do the stuff I needed to do. A lack of appetite, weight loss, sleep troubles, headaches, and stomach pain are common side effects of ADHD medication. How is ADHD Treated? I started wanting to do my work. Now I get to enjoy all the psychological benefits of Adderall all day, not just after 3 p.m. My husband has said that since he’s seen how well I’ve done on it, he wants to get checked again to see if medication might be right for him. I’m seeing Dr. At work, a new team lead was hired, a guy a couple of years older than me. My conjecture is that it's more a change in the patient's perception: Before medication your 'average' day feels like a 2/10, for example. It doesn’t matter if you’re late or you don’t like to eat in the morning. ADHD Medication Mistake #2: Not eating breakfast. I could have done so much better in school and in my career. These notes will serve as a baseline you can use to compare before and after medication patterns. And once you get the job, the Adderall will help you keep focus enough to keep it. ADHD usually starts during childhood and may continue into adulthood. Look at the effects your adhd has on your life and multiply it with 20 years and that should be motivation enough. Best friend. Getting started seemed a little easier, but really not much. I told my psychologist afterwards that the experience was worse than my colonoscopy. But what I can say, is that my handwriting was absolutely awful, and I never even read my notes or prepared for any tests in my life, anyway. If nothing else, do it just to explore you're options. And the more I read, the stronger the feeling became: This is my life! I just had to keep the pen moving in order to listen at all, and I couldn't really focus on writing down notes and listening at the same time so I doodled instead. It really sucks when I'm drawing a circuit diagram, and then I get distracted and start drawing doodles inside the diagram. Sometimes it looks like godly cursive, others the Zodiac killer's. 83 votes, 32 comments. When my non-performance became something that might threaten my employment, it was easy to get a job at another company. ADHD is a real disability and can severely impact your quality of life if left untreated. I can also work A LOT compared to many of my peers. That's when you know you have found a good job. >.<. I have dyscalculia. • Often does not follow through and fails to finish work (e.g., loses focus, side-tracked). Ahhh yes, all my notes are covered with those damn doodles. God I fucking hate grocery shopping! I'm both impulsive and "day dreamy", Sometimes I just lose my self in my thoughts and before I know it, a couple minutes had passed in what seemed like just a moment. log in sign up. Boo me :/. CBT didn’t work out (they weren’t really prepared to deal with ADHD on the service I went to) so I’ve asked to be referred back to the ADHD clinic. Im surprised a decrease in ur adhd medication wasnt suggested with wellbutrin at night. My talents are in high demand at the moment and it’s easy to make good money this way. If only teachers were trained to notice that... my notes at the end of an hour long class class would have like 5 actual bullet points interspersed between 7 drawings of eyes, 4 random noses, 2 pairs of lips, the word "Nucleus" written over and over again in fancy bedazzled script and a bunch of geometric squiggle monsters on it instead of actual class notes like everyone else was taking when I was actually trying to listen and pay attention. The difference treatment can do for you multiplied over 22 years is a lot, I would imagine! I described my experiences, and he told me he’d expected little effect given the small dosage and my weight. Get ur adhd meds back and maybe a new dr. Only you know whats best for ur body. May your days be happy, and your life yield the sense of accomplishment and serenity we all deserve from such herculean efforts. I can never focus/remember to get everything so I end up going 4-5 times a week, sometimes multiple times per day. EDIT: I was diagnosed at the age of 26. Best thing to ever happen to me. If that black box contained a smaller, white box inside its boundaries, I was to press the button. I was tested over two appointments. The experience I had was that my brain was finally quiet. ; Concerta (methylphenidate): Concerta is a long-lasting methylphenidate medication that uses a unique delivery system called OROS (osmotic controlled … I wake up at around 6am each day, shower, and take my medicine. Cure for treatment. Thanks again just for putting it out there. If you don't have 5 different items at the end of the store and cant think of the last one, call home. You can take wellbutrin with ur adhd medication. Before Medication. I'm just scared of turning into a 9 to 5 zombie.. numbed.. you know. I couldn’t focus. • Is often easily distracted • Is often forgetful in daily activities. At 51, I was diagnosed with ADHD. My team lead called me at 9pm to tell me that now the news was out in the open, Microsoft was accelerating the timeline even more, and asked if I could log in and do some work that very night. You would be no more dependant on a "drug" than a diabetic would be dependent on insulin. There’s a passage from “Wicked” by Gregory Maguire, as Glinda ruminates on why her education isn’t going as she’d hoped: “She supposed, glumly, that she had meant to be a sort of living marble bust: This is Youthful Intelligence; admire Her. Mine is just like that before picture. However, when I take my medication, I'm so energetic. Not only did I get an A, but my teacher read excerpts from my answers aloud to the class. This is probably a thing with ADHD because my handwriting is unreadable even by me. In conclusion: If meds work for you: Do them. Oh, and it helps me play video games more, and practice them better. Maybe there’s something on this line of work for us. I've just been questioning the benefits of getting an actual diagnose aka "a label".. New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast. I can't take notes well at all.. seeing this, maybe I'd better push for adhd meds.. Forgot my medicine one day and had a very similar outcome. Thats not uncommon at all. I'm hoping for the same thing now that I can focus. So I know ADHD. It didn't fix all my problems—therapy is huge for that—but it has been a scaffold that has made my weird, unstructured life easier to live. The next year is gonna pass anyway, you can either try meds and see if they help, or not try them and continue wondering if maybe they would. I look up expecting it to be 5pm and that I'll have to push stuff off until tomorrow and it's only 2pm! I just… couldn’t. But histories can be faked and I could have colluded with my wife. There, it required actual work to get good grades, and I couldn’t just get by on my brains alone. I can't believe how much time I spend when unmedicated idly shifting around between tasks never getting any real work done. I will never forget when my 8th grade math teacher told my mom (in front of me) that the way my eyes glazed over, and how I vaguely smiled at him when he was teaching, made his blood boil, and he despised me. I'm 44 and I wish I'd understood earlier. I eventually found that being a Systems Administrator was good for me. I thought to myself, if this is what normal is like then no wonder normal people can get shit done. I'm a board game designer, I don't have regular "hours" in the relevant sense of the term, basically at all. I had maybe 1 or 2 thoughts going on at the same time. That is what I do. Medication and therapy have made all the difference for me! the very first thing i noticed, i didnt feel like killing myself when i went grocery shopping. Am I the only one who looked at it thinking "Well the top guy has been drawing more and the bottom guy just changed layout...". I can’t focus myself, and the stark contrast is unsettling. Little things were easier – like I could easily remember that my wife asked me to get milk from the store on the way home, where normally there was a very good chance I’d forget. But anyways, thankyou for your story! It was great to read your story. The closest I came was when I was taking some classes at the University of Minnesota and tried to get an appointment with a counselor there, only to find they had no openings and maybe I could try next semester. A I still take Concerta for adult ADHD and I can now feel the change between pre- and post- dosing every day. Press J to jump to the feed. Remember the sum of different items. During the open-book test I skimmed it and answered as best I could. 'When I started taking ADHD medication it was as if someone flicked a switch' After having been treated for depression unsuccessfully and asked to … Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. r/ADHD: A place where people with ADHD and their loved ones can interact with each other exchanging stories, struggles, and strategies. Oh, right, don’t sleep in contacts. I'm medicated now but I can still hyperfocus on that, hence this wall of text ;). I can't find nicotine; apparently it's highly toxic to spiders. We got to talk about our very similar work habits, and he mentioned that he’s been on medication for ADD for many years. 15 December 2016. So I just stopped taking notes, Not to mention that when I was taking notes I couldn't focus on what the teacher was saying, It was better off just not writing a thing and get a chance to actually learn something. How I got there was a strange odyssey. Common Symptoms of ADHD. I’m on Concerta XL 54mg with an extra Ritalin 10mg early evening to top it up. I'm very lucky to be doing what I do. ADHD usually still persists into adulthood; however, some people have learned how to manage their symptoms better so it may not be as noticeable. But it's a consistent style afterwards. Yet even then, there were challenges. I continued taking the medication, and still I felt nothing. Well, almost. I have some routines that help me get into a workflow, but I activate those routines at all sorts of odd hours, and I collaborate with other people who have weird schedules, and it's just a free-form mess. A few days ago the Intel bug hit the news, which explained the previously-incomprehensible behavior of Microsoft, who had been forcing us to move our virtual machines from one host to another in an accelerated fashion without explanation. Eyes are open. My doctor said this could be due to low blood sugar from not eating or dehydration. As a long-acting medication, it provides symptom control for 10–12 hours. I think I'm going to save it for future reference. It's undiagnosed officially, but I mix up numbers constantly, and can't remember a number for longer than 2 minutes-- but I'm fine with remembering words and I never transpose letters. My son on the other hand would not fare well without the meds. If my wife gives me a short list. Medication is a tool for you to use. “Sara was wild, cranky, arguing constantly,” says Debra. I grew to like him right away. I recently went on vacation and loved it, but also found myself looking forward to returning to work. Over a million users here say they 'feel at home' and 'finally found a place where people understand them'. They're still all over the place since I don't know proper note structures and stuff but they're loads better now. Still, it wasn’t satisfying. Not only were my reaction times measured, along with the number of errors (I pressed the button incorrectly four different times), but he was also observing my behavior as I was taking the test. Over a million users here say they 'feel at home' and 'finally found a place where people understand them'. Cure, in turn, prescribed me the combination of amphetamine and dextroamphetamine known by the brand name of Adderall. I’ve got to say, I’ve never felt better in my life. Editing to apologize for my atrocious handwriting, but you'll notice it's way better on focalin. Dr. Bradley's studies on the use of Benzedrine was once thought of as heralding the modern era of ADHD treatment, but that role has likely now passed to the newer, once-a-day ADHD medications that most kids take. For me, taking the medication allowed me to start reading in public places with noises around me, or heck, even just reading really long texts on the internet. My whole life is better now that I can focus just a bit more than I could previously. I have been putting it off since I was diagnosed 5 years ago because I thought I was too old to start meds. Two brothers with ADHD, dad, wife and one kid diagnosed. Suddenly, there’s enough quiet to be able to say, “Hey, you’re bit hungry. On the other hand, I notice that your handwriting changes. I was anxious to give it a try. She was captain of the cheerleading squad. Being diagnosed at 35 isn't cool either. Not sure I would quite qualify myself, I'm like you, the inattentive type, but I definitely do have some of the symptoms. He noted my weight loss – no danger there, I have many pounds to go before “obese” is removed from my description – and increased my medication, directing me to step from 10/10 to 20/20. Concerta is an extended release medicine, whilst Ritalin is the same active component (methylphenidate) but shorter duration. ‘punches out of sleep tracking app on phone’ Hmm… New text. Wow! My suggestion is to try it and use that time to build routines. At the age of 51, I was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or ADHD. Armed with the information that this might be ADHD, I made an appointment with my physician, Dr. My mental torture was obvious in my mannerisms – a leg I set to bouncing, the sighs that grew louder and longer as the test progressed. The third appointment was to discuss the results. Before taking the medication leap, it’s imperative that you do your research and find out everything you can about your options. But no, they required actual work, and rather than do it, I fled across the country to move in with a woman. Thank you for the kind thoughts. This was a shock to my coworkers when I first started taking it. I coasted through high school doing as little work as possible because I hated doing the actual work and just got by on my brains. I would be so happy if mine looked like your "after"! Most problems occur before the medication starts working or when the dose doesn’t last … It's going to a job that you like doing, medicated or not. here, I'm glad you also experienced better note taking abilities, too. I used to be against medication. thanks for this! Close • Posted by 1 minute ago. ADHD and some of the medicines you take to treat it -- Adderall, Ritalin, Vyvanse -- could lead to unexpected changes in your body weight. New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast. The second appointment involved me sitting in front of a computer monitor. I could sit and not actually have 10 different thoughts in my head at the same time. Ur dose seemed high. I was anxious to see the day. Started a top up dosage of Ritalin at early evening to enjoy the benefits whilst I’m home as well. At the age of 51, I was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or ADHD. The fact that this might all be a mental disorder that could be easily treated never, ever occurred to me. Whether you’re an adult or child taking ADHD medication, you’ve likely experienced guilt, and pill shaming.