What unintended ADHD medication were you taking before you realized?
What unintended ADHD medication were you taking before you realized?
Image not quite for ADHPeeps but I feel this sort of thing happens regularly for us as well.
Extreme anxiety.
For the longest time, I couldn't recruit enough concentration to get homework or big projects done until it was this huge looming threat. Frequently, that would involve an all-nighter since it was something due the next day. Other times, it meant cranking out last night's math assignment in home room mere minutes before it was due. It turns out that adrenaline and other stress hormones are great at shoving all the ADHD noise out of the way, however temporarily.
Interesting experience. My partner who we suspect has ADHD always used to be up all night writing essays on the deadline in uni too.
I'm a heavy tea drinker. When I got diagnosed with ADD at 40 I realized I was probably (lol) self-medicating with the copious amounts of tea.
Still better (and tastier) than meds IMHO. Of course don't take my advice always, ALWAYS, talk to your doctor.
You should know that there is data that backs you up: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8875377/#sec5-nutrients-14-00739
And also on the self-medicated front: nicotine is effective too. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8741955/
What this makes me wonder is how much of the population is self-medicated in this way but doesn't know it?
Yup didn't mention cigarettes because I kicked the habit but nicotine also does wonders for ADD. LOL
Reminds me of when people find out I do cocaine and Adderall.
"Oh Michael likes to get high"
No, Michael doesn't have health insurance and has very severe adhd. I can't live a normal life without stimulants and drug dealers are cheaper than doctors. welcome to America.
Damn mate, that's really rough. I did see recently how US companies are taking advantage of the made-up scarcity to scalp people with ADHD to the point where the black market is more affordable. I only you know what you're doing vis-a-vis risks from tainted batches.
Eh, cocaine seems kinda too much. I understand lots of adderall.
BTW, where I am normal ADHD medication is illegal, unless you get it and the recipe in another country. As you might imagine, that is kinda expensive to do every few months.
Caffeine is a very good stimulant for treating adhd symptoms as well. It has a very similar wake up affect to cocaine when taken sublingually or snorted. Take this with a grain of salt, as it needs to be carefully dosed still to avoid heart damage, so much more so when taken in those ways. Not recommending it as a substitute for real prescription meds of course, but it is a world better for you long term than cocaine.
Why the combination? I have no idea about either.
It's not a combination. I'd try to buy Adderall which is what a doctor would prescribe but there is an Adderall shortage because... Well because people sell their meds to drug dealers so the FDA clamped down.
So if Adderall isn't available or too expensive I buy cocaine and use small amounts to combat my condition.
Alcohol. Before getting formally diagnosed and medicated, drinking was the only thing that would quiet the inner restlessness. It worked but it's not a healthy lifestyle at all.
This is something I like to bring up to people who are hesitant to medicate their kids. Yeah, I know you think Timmy is fine because he's not completely failing in school, but you should at least show Timmy that he has options and that it's OK to talk to a doctor and take medication if he needs it. He doesn't have to rely on Jack Daniels and Folgers to eek his way through life.
This one surprised me, too.
I had a nasty habit of waiting until the evening to do my papers in college, because that was when it was acceptable to have some wine or whiskey while I wrote. But it was amazing just how much easier it was to stay on task after having a drink, and during finals - or after college when i was on deadline - i would alternate between liters of coffee in the morning and several drinks in the evening.
Now that I'm medicated both coffee and alcohol are just occasional indulgences... well, alcohol is at least. But I didn't expect it to help curb my impulsive consumption habits like it has- it's been a game-changer.
Neurotypicals think they have this superior discipline and attitude to "get on the task", and I believed them, too! Now, medicated, I realise that they only work on these constant dopamine micro rewards in their prefrontal cortex. Which I now get, too.
I've been cutting back on caffeine finally because I thought it was my medicine giving me anxiety, and I'm pretty sure it's the caffeine. Now I'm usually at about two cups of coffee in the morning (the mug I have is American large, and I always seem to fill it up).
I think I got this from lemmy?
Look, as long as I can convince myself to go to sleep and not hyperfocus on whatever is in front of me I'll be fine. Problem is, it's a 50/50 toss up whether or not I can ignore my brain on any given night.
I had this too, everyone around me went "just close your eyes and sleep" and that had the exact opposite effect on me, now I take meds (seroquel at a low dose) and I finally understand NT people, I get sleepy at about 11 pm and can sleep in 5 minutes from laying down, if you have the chance to talk to some doctor about it, please do, it changed my life
What if caffeine doesnt work on me?
I got 10 hours of sleep last night, drank a coffee at noon. Still crashed at 130 and had to take an afternoon nap like normal.
Ditto. I've tried "coffee naps" but with tea. I just end up sleeping through it.
Started with caffeine as a child and never really stopped. School was a problem and I sought solace in cannabis as a teen. Eventually cannabis became toxic to my mental health and I quit it in my twenties, and alcohol somewhat filled the void. A ten year hiatus from all substances ensued but I hated my job and went back to education to retrain and this is where I really got into it with drugs.
Motivating long and boring tasks is ADHD kryptonite, as I'm sure many here are familiar. This particular motivational mountain was a PhD thesis and my weapons of choice were opioids, cocaine, amphetamine and benzodiazepines. Opioids are great for motivation, stimulants sharpen the concentration and benzos let me sleep. I was unaware of ADHD at this time but I knew something was wrong and that this cocktail was completely unsustainable.
Fast forward three years and I finally learn why I seek these things, it's ADHD, duh. Now I have the correct medication and therapy I never think about drugs. I'm happy and productive, I can work on undoing forty years of pretending to be someone without an attention deficit.
So much fucking coffee. My god it was too much.
I became a pothead because it made the cacophony of thoughts in my head stfu. I didn't realize that my thoughts were like that because of ADHD, since I was only diagnosed in my 30's (started smoking weed when I was 19).
people do the same with caffeine and nicotine - both calm us down and allow us to function a little better whilst having pretty much the opposite effect to the expected one (instead of faster we get slower, but being slower makes us faster as the usual speed we go at can easily be too overwhelming)
not such a fan fact: adhd folks are nearly twice as likely to be smokers than non-adhd people
This seems sooo extremely common among software engineers.
Same here. And I consume a lot less pot the days I take my ADHD meds.
Snap
Similar but Pistachios. The mechanics of opening the shells and eating them allowed me to focus on the college professor's material after an 9-10 hour work shift. If I showed up to class without pistachios or sunflower seeds I was nodding off in class.
When I was younger they gave me Ritalin, mostly to stop me from burning the building down. It worked, because I never burned the school down.. can't say the same for the neighbors shed... plus there was that incident with the bridge, luckily the fire department showed up quickly.
good stuff, keep up the flame! 🔥
Apparently videogames are a "medication" for my adhd because since i started adderol they don't "pull me in" like they used to.
I miss it a little bit, it's also kinda weird but its also nice to not be compelled to play like before
Your brain is dopamine deprived, video games are designed to get our dumb monkey brains to squeeze out all the happy juice. Adderall floods your brain with dopamine so the video games just don't hit like they used to.
They suck me in easily, that's why I stopped playing completely
Weed to let me take things slowly. Otherwise thoughts spiral out of control, I want to do 1000 things at the same time and can't focus on a single thing. Weed gives me focus, and those eye blinders that people used to put on horses so they would have a narrower field of view, whatever they're called. I'm not english I'm so concentrated I almost forget to eat on days I have an edible,... and I'm a foodie
My exam trick was no coffee for two days before the exam, then a couple cups the morning of. Worked great. In other news, holy crap, do I have ADHD??
ADHD, self-medicating behaviour from childhood in the form of candy seeking. Impossible impulse to control and occurs when experiencing a dip in concentration/boredom. It helped me focus for very brief moments.
Ooooh man as a kid I didn't really like stuff that was strongly sweet or sour. But as an adult sour candy were my thing to the point that I burnt out them even tasting sour. I'd eat a family size bag of sour Skittles on long drives to help me concentrate.
Only sour candy though.
I used to drink 4 red bulls or 2-3 rockstar energy drinks per day. This was on top of any coffee.
Now, diagnosed and medicated, I'm down to zero and I rarely drink coffee.
I was clearing three, sometimes even four Rockstars per day not too long ago. Just got to where they didn't even affect me much, and cracking open fresh ones throughout the day just made me feel alert and good. I got it back down to just one every morning around 5 or 6am, with maybe a second in the afternoon once per week -- usually on a Saturday or Sunday when running errands and trying to survive parenthood. I'm in my late-thirties now, and need to find an effective alternative, but coffee makes me feel poisoned.. almost like there's toxic metals coursing through my veins.
Tried pairing coffee with taurine to counteract the negative side-effects of the caffeine, but it doesn't work quite as well without whatever witch's brew they throw in with it in energy drinks.
I'm in the middle of diagnosis. I do have Bipolar and have been medicated for 4 years or so. My shrink and I suspect that ADHD is there. It seems to be a common comorbidity. I was self-medicating with alcohol, until I got to a very bad place.
Both bipolar and ADHD have a frightening percentage of substance abuse, often as a form of self medication.
I went to the shrink around the time when I got sober. Quitting drinking and meds literally saved my life.
BTW, I got sober thanks to SMART Recovery. SMART is science based and behavior oriented, so even if you don't have an addiction problem (substances and/or behaviors), You can learn a lot of stuff applicable to behavioral problems. Much of the program is based on Cognitive Behavioral therapies, no higher power required. Confidential. Free.
I've stopped taking lots of strong tea with sugar, because despite kinda helping with work, it makes me really depressed.
Chewing gum almost every waking moment of the day. People used to assume I was trying to quit smoking, I would joke that I was actually trying to build my way up to starting.
I used to love chewing gum until a dentist scared me away from it. As a result, my undiagnosed grinding destroyed most of my teeth...
Mini thins (gas station speed) and Red Bull. At least that’s what I did in the 90s before I was diagnosed. Oh and pulling all nighters since my tired brain worked more like a normal brain.
Nicotine. I started smoking at 16. Vaping now but nicotine and caffeine are carrying me through my unmedicated life
I read somewhere that nicotine decreases the half-life of caffeine in your system, allowing you to consume more caffeine and feel fewer effects from it.
This would explain the common trope of people smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee.
That being said, this is pulled out of my memory and I would have to spend quite a while trying to find any evidence of it, although everybody I know that smokes are consumes nicotine also consumes quite a bit of caffeine.
Got curious and looked it up, you're right!
Same, nicotine is the only reason I can hold a job.
Wow people that drank redbull have kids in college already, I guess it does make you move quicker
Red bull was invented in ’87…
True, but it depends on their country. Wasn't brought to the UK until '94 and the US in '96. And on top of that when did they become widespread in their respective country?
Very well could be true, could be an anachronism, or could be someone who refers to all energy drinks as red bull.
But the real irony is doing this research for an ADHD meme.
This is caffeine acting on brain and unlikely any change in blood pressure per se. You can try measuring bp a few time before and after chugging red bull to see how much it changes.
Holy shit! This post gave me an epiphany.
I was a cartoonist for the student newspaper, and drawing a funny comic strip every day was grueling. But I did better when I drank a Coca Cola before I started to brainstorm. Later, guess what - diagnosed ADHD.
Anyway, I probably took 2-3 hours on each comic, and was paid $5 per strip. And spent some of that on soda. So, it was a labor of love and foolishness. Also, I was semi-famous on campus for edgy cartoons that were occasionally funny, most of which I am embarrassed about in middle age.
Recently got diagnosed with asthma and just have an albuterol inhaler till I can see a specialist in 4 plus months, haven’t been able to get an ADHD test despite my doctors referral, just so you have a preface for my story here.
On days I work toward my goals I generally start with a 16 oz doubled tea, gives me stimulants which I can’t get at the moment and I generally am able to focus on my tasks for 2 hour stents or so. I have some days though that despite getting rest and having a dose of caffeine I get real low energy around my first hour. Recently, during one of these moments I was trying to take a break and realized my breathing was quite shallow and I was somewhat short of breath, so I used my inhaler and I had a rush of energy and was able to knock out all my tasks with energy to spare. Turns out most of my low energy days have been actually about my low blood oxygen and the effects of having undiagnosed asthma. This has happened to me several times now and it blows me away each time. I think to myself “So this is how normal people breath and get so much done.”
My sympathies as a fellow asthma sufferer, but congrats on the medication at least. It’s really crazy how much easier everything in general is when you can breathe!
Dang a pug with ADHD. I'm glad you have it somewhat sorted, though.
Too accurate lol.
For my own research purpose, would you be able to test your oxygen levels with those check oxygen meters that we get or may be one of those inbuilt Oxygen meters in smart watches?
What were your oxygen levels?
I was put on bupropion for depression and, while it didn't work perfectly, it worked far better than the other antidepressants I had been on. Then I found out that it's frequently used off label to treat ADHD and I started to have some suspicions. Long story short, now I'm diagnosed and on a stimulant and it's amazing.
I have some heart issues, so my doctor put me on bupropion to see if it would touch my ADHD symptoms. I don't think that it has, but it has helped a bit with my depression.
I wish there was a stimulant out there that didn't risk making my heart issues worse. I think getting my ADHD under control would also go a long way towards helping with my depression and anxiety. Unfortunately we've mostly been addressing the symptoms of the depression and anxiety and not the ADHD.
A friend of mine has the same issue and they just got put on a beta blocker along side the stimulant. According to my psychiatrist, that is fairly common.
But also yeah, controlling my adhd almost completely removed my depression and anxiety symptoms. Doctors tried to treat just my depression/anxiety for over a decade with only marginal results. I had the same experience with the bupropion, it helped with the depression but it didn't do much for the actual executive function.
suprised nobody said smoking weed, i smoke like 10 times a day minimum
Weed can be very helpful for focus. Not necessarily very helpful for clear thinking, but it can be very good for getting started on something so that you can come back to it later when you're sober.
My dad still swears it was the red bull and snickers and not the medical ...
Wild that someone would think the Red Bull and Snickers are doing it directly without going through the some-ingredients-in-these-products-are-affecting-your-body route.
When I start having a feeling of getting a cold I drink Bayer's Aspirin Plus C. It's literally just aspirin and vitamin C but I swear it works. Not drinking aspirin and vitamin C but only this overpriced combination. When it is dissolved in water, grossly enough. Nothing else works. If I don't drink it, I get a cold.
I literally worked in pharmaceutical science and I know this is complete bullshit borderlining homeopathy but I still swear by it. I wrote a whole academic work on vitamin C supplementation having no effect on getting a cold. And I still do it 😭
placebo is one hell of a uh not drug!
i noticed that sometimes when i have something important coming up, and i start feeling ill, i can just, force myself to stop? Literally tell myself "nuhuh, we're not getting ill right now, that's not the time" and it works? well not always, but more than it should
I learned about Linus Pauling's ideas on Vitamin C supplementation. Pretty interesting stuff, especially wrt heart disease. I'm paraphrasing but if I remember correctly he theorized that our appendix used to produce vitamin C and that it somehow mutated away from that, and the lack of the vital nutrient causes heart disease problems with humans and all the great apes. Apparently we all get heart disease like cats have bad kidneys. He thought huge doses of vitamin C were the answer.
pseudoephedrine
my Adderall script is in USA insurance purgatory and pseudoephedrine is probably the only thing keeping me employed tbh
I was about to say same!
Accidentally, though.
The story is roughly like this: I had bad allergies and fucked up sinuses - I thought. Got sinus headaches every day during bad periods. Lots of sinus infections. Went on for like 10-15 years through periods of being intense and focused and stressed with sinus issues and periods of checking out, being aloof and dippy without sinus issues.
In 2019, sinus rinses, pseudoephedrine, nose sprays, and pain killers weren’t doing it. Resigned myself to having to get the sinus roto-rooter, where they scrape out your sinuses to make it easier for all that junk to drain off. So I went to my doctor to get that in motion. Doctor sent me to an immunologist, who sent me to an ENT, who sent me to a neurologist, who looked at my records for 30 seconds, declared that I had migraines, and sent me on my way with a preventative script.
I was so fucking mad. Didn’t think he could possibly be right. But he was. And then Covid hit and by the time things got normal again, I realized I wasn’t able to work like I was before. So I got got tested for ADHD, and… here I am, rambling.o/
We got you.
Same, was taking a few Advil Cold and Sinus pills a week which are sold on the shelf in Canada till I recently got a Strattera prescription (which is causing constipation unfortunately)
here in Freedom Land we gotta show ID to get the pseudoephedrine and promise not to be naughty and make meth with it lmao
oof. sorry to hear you got such an unpleasant side effect :[ i can't recommend psyllium husk enough. i don't know how ancient humans who didn't live near psyllium plants managed to survive 💀
Pseudoephedrine has been my thing lately when I need that extra focus for work. Out of curiosity, what dosage do you take?
started with 30 mg but now need 60 (sometimes 90 on bad days...) but I try my damndest to not take them unless I feel like I'm genuinely going to fuck shit up at work. Taking cold medication off label makes me feel guilty 😞
I also tried the 12 hour extended release (120 mg) but that fucked up my sleep which is already precarious
I fucking hate that half the days at work I'm constantly sniffing from the runny nose it induces. Makes me paranoid that my coworkers will think I'm hiding being sick (or worse, a coke habit...)
Tea. Extremely strong tea, the kind russian convicts drink.
W dad
Wait what, I have below average blood pressure and have always leaned on caffeine to focus better. I never had any idea the two might be connected.
Drinking a litre (~32oz) of espresso every day... ETA: I also have narcolepsy. its rough out here
What was your experience finding out you had narcolepsy. Does your narcolepsy come in cataplexy flavor? I’m sorry that you’re dealing with that. It’s not fun.
I’m basically mainlining caffeine too though I don’t think it really helps, lol. I can sleep 6-20 hours and still be ready for a nap. I fell asleep driving once. The only time I ever feel normal is when I take Adderall.
My doctor referred me to a neurologist but I can’t get an appointment until next summer.
Not saying I have narcolepsy but I worry that I have some kind of untreated sleep disorder. I know someone who was diagnosed with narcolepsy but he also suffers from cataplexy.
I do suffer from cataplexy as well, yes.
I actually found out I had narcolepsy by doing a sleep lab for sleep-apnea as an adult. It kind of came as a shock since everyone else in my life thought I was just lazy as fuck. The ADHD diagnosis came years later.
I'm not an expert, but narcolepsy isn't the only outcome for what you describe. It could also be hypersomnia, I think
When I was a kid I read that mint flavorings can help the blood vessels in your head dilate, increasing the amount of blood flow to your brain and therefore helping you do better on studying and tests.
Whenever I have a test to study for or to take, I made it a point to keep some sort of mint flavored candy around, and consistently across the board I have always done better on tests than my peers.
That being said, it is entirely plausible that this is a placebo effect, but I like my placebo and it works for me. Perhaps it will work for you as well.
I've heard that chewing a specific flavor of gum while studying for a test, and then chewing the same flavor while taking the test, tricks your brain into recall by association.
this is how i justified going to exams stoned back in my undergrad days. i studied high, figured i better test high.
It was incredibly common at my school for teachers to hand out lifesaver mints before standardized tests.
I always start chewing gum before a licensing exam. Minty gum and not fruit gum. It also helps me concentrate and eat less. When I was skinny skinny I chewed gum like a candy kid and worked retail.
Rockstar and pseudoephedrine Claritin with a fresh made breakfast burrito. Discovered I could focus easily for hours as the stimulants with a full stomach of food kept me from being overstimulated. Ironically cost me a lot more than Ritalin does as I didn’t have the time or money to pursue a diagnosis at that time.
A friend of mine chews nicotine gum. I have another friend that vapes and drinks like 12 energy drinks a day.
I used to be the one weirdo who could shoot an 8 ball of coke and be perfectly calm, at least for a few minutes until it started to wear off. That was a long time ago, and I was just diagnosed a couple years ago.
✨ alcohol✨
My daily Monster and blue flavored nicotine and weed air is working a lot better and some how has less side effects. Although, longevity is outside the scope at this point.
blue flavored nicotine
I developed this unique tea leaf / tree bark mix over 20 years ago, and I could swear it changed my life. I studied for 14 hours per day sometimes and absorbed all my training within a few years. Then the effect was gone.
Looking at it objectively, maybe the trick was that it had just the right amount of caffeine, but unlike pure black tea, not too much at once and with a lot of water. Possibly also compensating a micro nutrient deficit. Could also be complex indirect effects, e. g.: ADHD related to gut biome, additional problems due to bad bacteria / yeast overrepresented, medicinal plants in the mix fighting that, to a mild degree.
Treating digestion problems with medicinal tea in combination with caffeine and love for black tea started the whole idea, IIRC, so it's not entirely impossible.
I'm also from a family with low blood pressure. And sugar is a great trick when it falls down even further. It also help me to study longer but it is hard to strick the right balance with extra-energy and reduced concentration.
I’ve noticed when I eat mcdonalds my heart races afterward
McDs is packed with sugar. I quit eating mcds out of spite for 2 months and when i finally gave in and had em again i thought i was gonna have a heart attack. Then the stomach ache hit. Shit hardly counts as food. Anyway I think i either was used to their poison before or i never noticed the cramps, cuz it's happened every (scant) time I've eaten em since.
Banger fuckin fries tho