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How do I know if the meds are working?
(lemm.ee)
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this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2023
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ADHD
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Ask a friend or someone who knows you well. I started taking Concerta a few years ago and told a friend I was working with. I said "I took one this morning and I don't feel like it did shit".
He assured me that in fact I was a different person to work with, focused and detail oriented and not annoyingly chatty. ADHD meds should just quietly make your life better, not have a strong feel. Though the first time you take amphetamines or bump the dose you can expect to feel a little speedy I found. Good opportunity to clean your house.
One thing I noticed is that it feels like ADHD meds manipulate your luck. When you take them, things just go right. My wife informed me this is because I don't rush or make stupid oversights that feel like bad luck, but it really does feel like they are concentrated luck in pill form. If you feel like the bad luck and chaos that follows you around is gone, they're working.
Concerta helped me get my life together but I hated the side effects, thirst, flushing, exhaustion. I took Adderall XR for a year which was great, and then switched to pure dextroamphetamine XR because it was covered by my insurance and Adderall was not. It does the job without any side effects other than needing to drink a bit more water.
Love that luck analogy, I'll be using that.
When I'm told I've been lucky, it's sometimes that I've just been really deliberate and considered in my actions.
Felix felices
Same here, I didn't notice any real difference, even on the tiny initial dose my wife was the most impressed.
Pure Dex was covered but racemic amphetamine wasn't? That's super odd
Its better anyway but if you must, just do that thing where you ask for something not covered thatyour dr affirms might be helpful and gives them a history to check all the little boxes
Whatever the reason, pure Dex is a fraction of the cost here in Canada. With both pure and racemic being a generic XR capsule, racemic is $120/mo and pure is $30/mo, that's probably 90% of the reason.
Pure is in the provincial formulary and racemic is listed as only approved if others didn't work. Despite the big insurers being national corporations, they go by the provincial formularies in terms of what they cover for some reason. My doctor didn't know this and prescribed racemic ("Adderall") just because it was considered a standard treatment.
I felt personally like racemic gave me more energy and drive, but pure gives me a clearer mind and doesn't drive my blood pressure up as much. It's a trade off.