#me taking my SSRIs after 2 days unmedicated

[liminalpsych]

After two weeks of no adhd meds for the first time since I got on them in 2017, I finally wrangled a way with my pharmacy to get them filled (turns out they’re not backordered on the brand name, just the generic, which I hadn’t thought to check until a client mentioned success with this approach).

They still don’t have enough of my dose in stock so I’m not getting them until Monday, but I’m getting them soon instead of indefinite waiting, and now I have a route to take when the generic is backordered in the future so that I still get my meds on time.

(It’s a little more expensive, but still cheaper than the adhd taxes I’ve been paying with dopamine seeking behaviors for the past two weeks.)

The silver lining has been that I now have a very, very clear understanding of exactly how adhd stimulants help me, and how much they help. (I used to live like this. Only it was worse because I was on an SSRI instead of an NDRI as my antidepressant; my current antidepressant at least takes the edge off some of my adhd symptoms.)

(Did you know serotonin can inhibit dopamine production? That’s possibly why some ADHDers have paradoxical reactions to SSRIs. We don’t have enough dopamine to begin with and then it makes us produce even less? Terrible times.)

Anyway. Might make a separate post about adhd meds on Monday. But for now, here are the things I’ve noticed:

oh right I used to be tired all. the. time. 9 hrs of sleep + a nap = still tired all the time, pre medication. Properly medicated, I’m good on 7.5 hrs. Half medicated (no stimulants, but NDRI), I’ve been doing okay on 8 hours but still pretty fatigued. I have not been getting deep/delta sleep (which stimulants help with in ADHD, adhd brains tend to spend a lot of time in REM sleep and not enough in deep delta sleep, and stimulants increase deep sleep in many adhd cases for some reason). There’s been a couple nights of 0 hours of deep sleep despite 8 hours of sleep. It’s been great. Fabulous. /s (help i’m so so so tired)

Focus/motivation, obviously. Oh right, this is probably why I haven’t written much fiction since college. For the past several months I’ve just been able to choose to write, make myself write and it works. For the past two weeks that has been much, much harder and even impossible. I am able to make myself spend time with my WIP each day to maintain momentum (still using all my adhd coping skills) but writing prose has not really been happening.

Social anxiety. I knew stimulants helped with the rejection sensitivity, social anxiety, overthinking social situations, because I went off of them for 2 days in a row once and had a terrible RSD flare up. But two weeks off of them has been… not great. Also generally just feeling insecure, having self esteem issues flare up, anxiety in general, harder to self-soothe and talk myself through catastrophic thinking, etc etc. (and trust me, I have skills. So many skills. So many well practiced skills. I teach them to others and use them personally. I’m functioning, it’s just extra hard.)

Dopamine seeking. Siiiigh. Back to snacking on sugary things that make my digestive system angry at me, in a desperate subconscious bid for tiny insufficient hits of dopamine. That had mostly stopped.

Task switching has been extra hard, unsurprisingly. Also lots of zoning out.

My driving skill/safety. D: yeeeeah. there are a number of studies out there showing that unmedicated adhd (especially in younger drivers, it improves somewhat with age/experience) shows up as similar levels of impairment as being at/over the blood alcohol limit. I was horrified the first time I drove while medicated. “oh. Oh no. I have not been particularly safe to drive all these years.” Been extra cautious as a result, and haven’t driven the wrong way down one way streets or anything like that the past two weeks, thankfully. (Yes, that was a thing that happened pre-medication.)

In before anyone tries to suggest this is indicative of a dependency or is because I was on meds for a long time: no. This is how I lived 32 years of my life. Until the tiredness got so bad that I got desperate enough for a med change that might work a little better than just “not having intrusive suicidal thoughts,” which is all the SSRI managed to do for me. For the past six years of adhd medication, I haven’t been tired all the time, things haven’t been so mind-numbing hard, it’s been a complete game changer and opened up so much more capacity for living that I didn’t have before.

It sucks to have to go back to my old exhausting norm where I had to drag myself through tasks with sheer force of will and could barely get anything done. I am so relieved the end is in sight and I’ll be back to my modern norm on Monday.

[whatiwillsay]

hi cam it’s adhd anon. it’s been a while lol

so i finished junior year and i passed all the classes i need to graduate, so that’s good

it’s been summer for a almost a month now and i feel like shit about that lol. like i feel this intense pressure to use this time Correctly, since i know that next school year is going to be really hard again and i’m not going to have much free time or spare energy. plus i’m still trying to recover from last school year (i burnt myself out really badly trying to pass my classes). and so i have this big list of things i want to do this summer, like sell some of my old clothes and write fics and read fics and listen to lorde’s album and catch up on your podcast. like it’s all simple things that don’t take a lot of energy and that i know i’ll enjoy doing, yet my brain has a lot of trouble doing them. i have this tendency to just get Stuck on one thing, like researching the full history of medicare advantage plans yesterday, and then i just felt sad about the state of healthcare in our country and sad that i wasted a whole day of summer.

it’s a lot easier to do things i want to do when i take the medicine. like i’m actually able to initiate shit and transition between tasks. and i also take less time trying to do basic things - like it isn’t a two hour battle to get myself to brush my teeth. it takes me like half an hour to mentally get myself to go do that. and stuff like that does make a difference.

but so there’s two issues. first, i feel guilty every time i take the medication. i know i shouldnt hit myself with second darts, but it’s hard not to feel guilty when my dad feels the need to remind me that what i’m taking is basically equivalent to heroin. logically i know it’s not, but every time i have the audacity to take the medication i was prescribed, he grills me with questions and gets mad when i say that the medicine works a bit bc he thinks that makes me a drug addict.

and more than that, i also feel this really intense responsibility every time i take it? bc each pill costs $11 after insurance and coupons. it lasts 8 hours tops for me, and if i forget to eat lunch, then it lasts like 4 hours. and so, every time i take it, i look back on what i did that day and wonder “was this worth $11.” because the medicine doesn’t work great lol. like there are some days when the only difference i notice is that i’m able to get myself to take a shower in 30 mins rather than 3 hours of working up the mental energy and fending off distractions and remembering all of the tasks associated with getting ready to take a shower, etc. and is that worth $11? sometimes the difference between medicated!me and unmedicated!me is so subtle that it really doesn’t feel like it’s worth $11.

the other issue is that my dad formally revoked his consent for me taking the medication. what happened was that 2 weeks ago, i had a bit of a break down in front of him, and he decided that it was the medication’s fault. which is dumb, because i’ve had Plenty of break downs in front of him before. (literally the day before he saw me cry for two hours over the sound of the fire alarm needing a new battery). but this was the breaking point for him i guess.

so the bad news is that i can no longer get prescribed adhd meds until i turn 18 in 6 months (and even then, it’s complicated, bc i’d have to find a new prescriber since my current psychiatrist is a pediatric psychiatrist, and also i’d still be on my dad’s insurance and living in his house, so it’s complicated). but the good news is that he’s now open to me going on SSRIs. for context, i was diagnosed with anxiety/depression back in 8th grade, so like. this has been something my mom has wanted for me for a long time, so she’s happy that he’s finally open to me going on SSRIs. im not sure how i feel about it, but yeah.

so now i haven’t taken the adhd medicine in 2 weeks. we have an appointment with the psychiatrist in a few hours, which i am dreading. i’m so bad at talking lol. plus my dad’s gonna be at the appointment, and last time he attended one, he got really angry and i started crying and then the psychiatrist asked me if i was a suicide risk in front of my parents. and the answer is genuinely no, but that was really humiliating for me. and also after that my dad started not wanting to leave me home alone (and like. why. the only reason he’d not want to leave a capable 17 year old home alone is if he thinks i’m a suicide risk.)

so that’s everything i think. sorry about how long and negative this was lol

"it’s all simple things that don’t take a lot of energy and that i know i’ll enjoy doing, yet my brain has a lot of trouble doing them" yep! that's me every day for as long as i can remember. it's just hard to Do Stuff. even stuff that i like. one thing I've found is that if i start doing the thing i need to be doing whether it's working out or paperwork or even editing the pod after i start doing it it's a lot easier to just do it and finish it. so don't look at the task of "doing the whole thing" just convince yourself to start doing it. if you wanna take a break after 10 minutes of your task tell yourself you can.

here are some more tips on how to improve this issue (executive function)

and to me, meds/treatments that are at all effective are worth the money and the good news is hopefully someday vyvanse will have a generic.

hope things get better with your dad and be careful with ssri's they don't work for everyone. stay mindful and positive babe! try and have a really fun summer ❤️❤️❤️