Question. How can you tell if you start experiencing some of those negative side effects medicines warn you about? Like, how do you differentiate it from your body doing sketchy things on its own? I've never done brain drugs before, but I'm on about day five of wellbutrin+adderall, and things have been going mostly well, but I'm feeling a nasty dizzy disconnect thing right now. It's not too different from being drunk. Everything else about my brain/body is somewhere between normal and better-than-normal. Confounding factors: I am just coming off the tail end of being sick, I am chronically short on sleep, I haven't eaten yet today, and I have not yet fed my caffeine addiction today. I'm well enough to scrape by at work and this has been a short badtimes so far, but if things slide further, I live alone. And if this persists, I'm worried about driving. People with more experience with brain drugs than me, how do you know when to call your doctor's office?
My bad side effects have been more emotional than physical, but basically I called my doctor when the bad symptoms persisted despite 1) giving it some time and 2) me changing the other obvious causes. Obviously you can't change much about being chronically short on sleep (and I'm assuming that's not how you normally feel when you're short on sleep), but what I would do is go get something to eat, have some caffeine, and give yourself a little bit longer to recover from being sick/adapt to the drugs. If your clinic has a nurse hotline, you could call for some reassurance, too.
both of those drugs cut your appetite, and if you're running on very little sleep then it's likely that the dizziness and disconnect are from physical causes! is the disconnect similar to, like... mild depersonalization? because that's more likely to be a drug thing. either way, unless it gets worse, i would give it at least another week before getting in touch with your doctor. a bit of weirdness is expected in the first couple weeks, and it usually settles down after your brain adjusts. i would work on keeping track of your food intake and try to get more regular sleep in the meantime, and if the weirdness persists past a couple weeks or gets worse, definitely tell your doctor. there is a lot of experimentation involved with finding the right adhd/antidepressant drug combo! i probably went through four or five different things before i found a combo that worked for me (54 mg concerta, 150 mg wellbutrin, 40 mg citalopram, if you're curious)
This, pretty much. If the bad stuff persists definitely talk to your doc about it, but new meds can be a bit wonky at first.
Thanks for the advice! I knew adderall would mess with my appetite, so I've been keeping tabs on how I've been eating (a little less than normal, but not by much), but I missed that wellbutrin did that too. I wwwant to say that this wasn't hungry-dizzy, but it felt more... physical that depersonalization has felt for me before. I think being drunk is probably the best comparison I've got. Things eased up for a bit when I got food and coffee, then came back, but I don't think it's as bad as it was. I'm probably going to get away from screens for a little, see if that helps. And that's good to have a rough time scale for how long I can expect things to be a bit wobbly, because I don't think I had that info before. Right now I'm leaning towards asking for a stronger dose of adderall (I'm on 15 mg right now, and everything is @_@ with trying to tell what is due to placebo effects and confounding factors and am I just distracting myself with obsessing over how my brain is ticking, etc. I think I'm improved a bit, but not up to where I've been in the past), and I need to grill my mom on how figuring out adhd worked for my brothers when they were little. Between the two of them, I think people in the house have been on adderall, ritalin, and concerta before. It's funny, because she's trying to get info from me about the depression diagnosis/treatment process (potentially for same two brothers) all while I'm trying to get info from her about adhd. Annnnd I just realized that my psychiatrist said NOTHING to me about side effects, drug interactions, things to watch for, any of that. I knew some of it, because I've been paying attention to this stuff for a while plus family history plus google is like... right there. But he didn't even mention that going on antidepressants carries a risk of increased suicidal urges. I'm not terribly happy with this guy, but I guesssss I'm seeing a different doctor at my follow-up, and he gave me the drugs I wanted and finding a new doctor would take spoons and would be even further away :T Hm.
when it comes to ongoing brainweirds, psychs aren't good for much besides initial prescription stuff to be honest!! in my experience your GP should be the one you talk to about adjusting dosage and side effects. there are interaction calculators online! take them with a grain of salt like any medical thing online, but they usually cover the big, dangerous/important interactions also take all of my advice with a BIG grain of salt! all my experience is in the Canadian healthcare system with doctor parents to smooth over any complicated things, so my experience probably isn't typical.
Hmmmm. The dizzy-ish thing hasn't been as bad, but it's been persistent, and it feels like it starts when I take my meds. But taking my meds is the last thing I do before leaving for work, so lots of other things in my day are changing at the same time. And also it comes on surprisingly fast, so I could just be psyching myself into it at this point :T I guess it's something to talk about at my appointment if it keeps going. But I really don't care for the feeling, my brain moves at a million miles an hour, I am sharp, and this makes me have to struggle to cut through a fog. But okay, the weird thing. I've had KILLER insomnia issues for as long as I can remember, of the 'I don't want to go to sleep, that's boringggggg' variety, and even when I'm trying to behave, I struggle to go to bed before midnight. In the last week or so, I've been getting tired WAY early for me, like I came back around 9 tonight and was like 'okay sleep time now.' That corresponds to beginning the meds and nothing else, but casually poking at the internet for wellbutrin and adderall seems to suggest that they may cause insomnia issues, not fix them. I'm not a huge fan, because this is tiredness like 'I cannot function through this haze of exhaustion', and I hate that feeling. I mean, there's not really anything to do at this point except mention it to my doctor in december, but it seems super atypical for those meds, so I don't know what they'll do short of shaking everything up, which is not exactly what I want either :T (and I'm pretty sure I need stronger adhd drugs, I'm functioning again wrt Fun Things, but I really need to function at work, and I'm still not quite doing that)
hmmmmMMMMMMMMMMM So I had a follow-up today, and mentioned maybe getting stronger ADHD meds. And the doctor (a different one than I saw the first time) just went OFF about all the hazards of these medicines and how everybody wants more, and I'll be risking my arteries, Parkinsons, my lungs, my heart, all kinds of things. And she said that those are pretty uncommon side effects. But also addiction. And also DANGERRRRRRRRRRR. Which is really weird to me in contrast to how the first doctor didn't tell me jack diddly about any hazards. I am a wet paper towel who is impossible at arguing with people, but she can't change my prescription anyways (I guess my normal doctor is on a trip for a few weeks), so it didn't really matter to push the issue right this moment. And it's not like I'm just after the strongest drugs I can possibly get, I just want to be able to focus at work. Also this was literally just the very first test of putting me on any drugs at all??? For only a month? My first doctor did say that we'd start with this. And presumably I'm the one who's supposed to be self-evaluating to see how well it worked. So, yeah. Typing that out, it was actually weirder than it was in person. I wonder if maybe I just ran face first into the brick wall of this one doctor's personal medicine biases.
