Meds Experiences Thread!!

I just started on 20mg about a month ago. Definitely needs more time, but it's just annoying because I have a terrible memory especially for feelings stuff so I really struggle to compare bad feelings of today to bad feelings of the past.

 

@VernalBee I feel that so hard. I basically didn't realize I was having a nervous breakdown until my mom (who I'd been calling every day panicking) told me :/ Best of luck with the prozac!!

 

Thank you!!
Yeah, so much of my motivation to seek help came from my girlfriend, who is very observant and notices patterns, and after about 8 months of dating me was like, 'you sure do seem to go into a panic/self-hatred spiral every time certain things happen'. and i was like. huh. i guess i do. I am very good at putting bad feelings and memories in the Trash folder and pretending that my problems simply Do Not Exist until someone notices, whoops.

 

when i noticed my panic attacks had gotten a lot more common i started using the tag function on my period tracker app to track my panic attacks and related high-anxiety days, which honestly really helped me identify patterns. when i started i thought my panic attacks had ticked up to maybe weekly only to find it was 2-3 a week, with a lot of high anxiety days

my method was one tag simply called 'panic attack', when i wasn't sure if something counted, i would count it if it changed my behaviour in a distruptive way for sustained time (a lot of my panic attacks surrounded my fear of having a heart attack, so if i felt the need to make sure i was around people/repeatedly check my pulse over 10-20 minutes, etc)

I had a tag for when i used buspirone, which i take to help manage the panic attacks themselves, which was also a decent marker for me to remember what were the more clear/bad panic attacks

aand i had a tag called 'didn't die of paranoia' which was my tag to use any day i had heightened anxiety to the point of noticing myself doing a lot of self-check scrutinizing on my health, etc

so, that helped me a lot with tracking how well i was doing, and later now that I have it back under more manageable control, I had about 4 months where i only had 1 panic attack a month and no more than one other high anxiety day, and they all landed during my period, so i've been able to ramp up the copes during my period which like... i havent had a panic attack in like two months now, it's weird

 

That sounds very helpful. I had been journaling before but it was less structured, I think doing a daily 'did you have the Bad Stuff' note will be very helpful for me. It's a little hard because my stuff (anxiety?ocd? still unsure) doesn't always have physical symptoms so sometimes it's literally all in my head, but nonetheless very distressing. Just makes it harder to have an objective 'Bad Time' marker.

Although now that I think about it, there are some physical tangible behaviors that I only exhibit when I'm really fried, so maybe I'll make special note of those.

Thank you for the advice everyone!

 

I say, and then have a panic attack a few hours later

 

Prozac's the branded version of sertraline, right? I've been on it for a couple of years and I can't say the sleepiness has ever entirely gone away, although it's helped me enough with the badbrains it's been a tradeoff I was happy to make.

 

Prozac is fluoxetine, not sertraline. Sertraline is branded as zoloft in the us, I believe.

Edit to add: when I was regularly taking Prozac I did tend to nap in the middle of the day, but also I have ME so I am not a reliable indicator of side effects by any means.

 

oh hey i was using my vent thread for this

So! I was given the option of cipralex (escilatropram), effexor (venlafaxine) or remeron (mirtazapine). After research, decided with effexor because I did poorly on zoloft (sertraline) which made me hesitant to try cipralex, and remeron had side effects I wasn't super keen on. Plus, I've seen some people online say they were given Effexor for their fibro as well so three birds, one stone, let's go.

... Is five hours after first dose too soon for cotton mouth to kick in? Because squirtle I'm dying. Two extra large teas, two pocaris, and a small box of mango juice in the span of 5 hours and my mouth still feels dry.

(Edit: dose in AM, dry mouth at noon, its early evening now)

 

I'd forgotten about that but yeah. That's definitely a thing I had too.

 

I know Strattera can mess with your appetite but I wasn’t expecting this much. They upped my dose a couple days ago and now I could only eat like 4 ravioli before calling it quits.

 

Doctor's got me coming off Risperidone because it's fucking up my prolactin. I'm already having mood issues... I'll see how it goes.

 

Coming off Risperidone might have positive effects on your sugar cravings, it's well known to increase appetite.

 

Anyone have any experience with Strattera? I had my dose increased to 80mg and am getting some odd side effects. The biggest ones being having no appetite at all, a bit of dizziness, and my tongue feeling kind of numb and thick without really being any different.

oh and it seems if I drink coffee to soon after taking it I crash hard.

Should I call my doctor or wait and see if it improves a bit since it’s only been a week?

 

I got put on a tiny baby dose of Adderall recently and since I didn't know if it would actually do anything for my personal brainweird (hardcore executive dysfunction + What Is Time, but doesn't look a lot like ADHD Classic), I ended up taking pretty detailed notes. My general conclusion is that Adderall is magic, but magic in the manner of a Brandon Sanderson novel or the gimmick in a high-concept platformer, where it does one very specific thing perfectly but there are all these restrictions about exactly how that works, so I figured I'd report my anecdata:

• I don't feel any different moment to moment when I'm on it vs. off it. It does not feel like I'm having a high-spoons day or I have any more energy, and at least at the very low dose, I can't feel it hit at all. I feel the caffeine in my morning tea more, and caffeine does nothing for my executive function, it just makes me less sleepy.
• What it does do is that if I decide to initiate a task that's usually a spoon drain, the activation cost is gone. Things that would normally involve me spending twenty minutes trying to scrape together the brain cells to escape the gravitational field of the chair/bed/couch or asking someone to tell me to do and then dragging myself through molasses to begin I can just like... do. I'm also not wiped out afterward the way I typically am, even after the Adderall wears off, and I even notice the passage of time a little better.
  
• The downside I wouldn't have seen coming is that since I don't actually feel any more functional, I can completely waste the buff uptime, so to speak. Suddenly all that stuff about organization and self-direction that everyone spent years telling me that was always a completely useless waste of time and energy actually, like, matters, and all the time-filler habits I've picked up like tappy phone games and scrolling social media really can be a problem instead of a symptom. I'm used to trying to jump on random waves of motivation when they roll through, but to get real use out of the Adderall buff I have to actually sit down and brainstorm a list of things I want to do that day (which is much easier on meds, at least).
  
• It only lasts about 4 hours, so if I'm going to do anything that involves being out and about for longer than that, I pretty much have to carry the bottle with me. All my usual spaciness and having to slog uphill to accomplish basic tasks comes back full force as soon as it runs out.
  
• It's an appetite suppressant, which I can definitely tell- a couple of times I've noticed it wearing off because I'm suddenly really hungry out of nowhere. I'm already dealing with some disordered eating, so that's. A problem, but not an entirely novel one. At least it also makes it easier to acquire food.
• Hyperfocus is still an override, for good or ill. A related issue is that being able to initiate tasks doesn't necessarily mean I'm also choosing them well, so I might end up doing something that actually looks a lot more ADHD Classic than my normal resting state: e.g., I went into my bathroom to wash my hands to make dinner but then I noticed that there's dusty grime in a couple of spots by my shower, and it'd just take a minute to wipe them up, and you know now that I've got something to clean with anyway why don't I wipe down the shower walls real quick while I'm thinking about it, and honestly the rug in that bathroom definitely needs washed now that I think about it, and I'd better sweep the floor since that rug always picks up so much dust and debris, and 15 minutes later I still haven't started dinner but my bathroom's a lot cleaner, because redirecting myself away from a certified-productive task that I have the mental resources to complete is not a skill I've ever had the chance the cultivate in my life.
• I've stumbled across a few things that are still a huge effort that remains unchanged, which is very mixed-feelings-inducing. Because on the one hand, no magic pill to make problem go away. On the other hand, it means I can separate the hardware problems from the things that I can probably actually improve by, like, working on them.

 

Very useful!! Working from home has basically made me go 'but what if it is ADHD' every few months because apparently the only thing allowing me to work 8 hours a day without having a mental battle with my own ability to focus and think nearly every single dang day was the peer pressure of being around other people working. (i occasionally feel like the only person who actually actively dislikes working from home, lol. I adjusted, after nearly a year and a half, but like...)

a lot of my trouble working past 4 hours in a day is that brainfog comes in /hard/ and I stop being able to identify what I need to do and how to do it without a lot of struggle and upstart cost.. I get around it most of the time by saving simple tasks that don't require thinking and will take at least an hour to do for the end of the day, but that's not always available to me and then i just end up spending 1-3 hours a day angry at my own brain.

i was thinking of getting a therapist & psych soon anyways because I want to get off my sertraline soon, i'll def bring up my 'i don't think it's adhd but what if' thoughts when i get into that.

the sertraline worked great, by the way, did the thing other SSRIs have done for me where I can bounce out of a mental health crisis and it makes the negative self-talk shut up but I only got onto it as an emergency stopgap when June 2020 was hitting me hard with... y'know, June 2020 feels. I'm in a lot more stable situation now and I went off of prozac at a similar point in my life back in good ol 2019, so i'd like the one less pill thing.

while I'm rambling, it's relevant to this thread, I went on birth control two months ago because I'd noticed in my period tracker, where I was also tracking my panic attacks, that my panic attacks once I had them under control were near-exclusively occuring during my period, so I brought this up to my GP and she thought the hormone nonsense of my cycle might be contributing and put me on the basic pill to try it out. It has legit been great!! I only had once panic attack since and it was a very high stress day regardless- and already my period is insanely lighter and my cramps are just gone so like.... 11/10 being a woman disease was indeed the source of my hysteria lmao

 

This was my entire education experience, lol. Did perfectly in elementary school because school was where you Did Things right up until I started getting homework that I couldn't finish in class. I still consistently stay on task, any task, much better if I'm in a place that I don't typically spend time in doing recreational activities, and especially if there are other people there working. I've had the option to do most of my job remotely for a long time and I've made a point not to even when getting to work is a huge pain because it's so damn hard to do anything work-related at home.

 

Honestly, I do think a recent medication change to Buproprion (Wellbutrin) was increasing my suicidal ideation.

I know antidepressants CAN do this theoretically, but I didn't expect it to be something I experienced. And especially not from this medication.

Other than that, not much to say - since I don't think it really worked out well for me. It definitely suppresses appetite though. I often felt nauseous on it.

 

I'm recently on Equasym for my ADHD (smolest dose because we're only just starting out) and it's been an interesting experience so far?

Like, I don't feel it doing anything in a tangible way, but oh hello, I can start tasks and stay on them in a way that feels novel compared before. Writing is usually Brainfog Hell for me if I'm not feeling it, but it seems like I can now sit myself down and where usually my head would rapidly begin to fill with cotton wool the moment I hit a stumbling-block (usually 'the first word of the sentence', lol) now it doesn't. I can feel that it would, usually, and I'd hit intense overwhelm-shutdown immediately, but I've been able to sit down with my word document and actually mull on what I want to write, and then noodle something down.

Also, tidying up is no longer executive dysfunction hell, which, nice!!!

However, just because I can start a task doesn't mean I will. XD I've not felt any real adverse side effects at this dosage, I expected my appetite to be worse (though I definitely don't compulsively snack like I used to! ....until they wear off, anyway) but I do still get hungry and want food, and truly it's rebound that's the most noticeable aspect because there's a point when my 8 hours are up and my body goes, 'nap? a nap? a nap and a whole tube of pringles? also you can Feel Your ADHD Again, time to be big scatterbrain now'.

Got my follow up appointment later today so I guess if I end up adjusting my dosage I'll update!

(I was on Sertraline for a while this year and I'd be really curious to hear ADHD/autistic folks' experiences with how their executive function...functioned on sertraline/zoloft? Because me, my partner, and her partner have all shared similar anecdotal feelings and the scientist in me is intrigued whether the trend we observed is present in others.)

 

Yeah, that's a lot how I've been feeling with Adderall. I'll be like, "Ugh, time to put on my big kid pants and do the thing" but then I don't actually have to go through the "putting on big kid pants" step, I can just do it after I decide to do it.

I've been on fluoxetine, sertraline, and bupropion at various points in my life, and my experience on all of them was that if I was having a nasty bout of depression, they stopped it from turning me into a zombie, but they didn't do anything about the underlying broken spark plugs in the way Adderall does. In my worst unmedicated depressive episodes I could barely get out of bed: antidepressants fixed that, but even when I was consistently medicated I couldn't do homework.