This! I was diagnosed as a child but only started getting treatment a month ago, it’s incredible. I feel like I spent my whole life with the target lock on, bouncing from one focus to the next, and now I can choose when to lock on and when to free look.
I will say that in the US treatment has been made more difficult due to fail first treatment policies enforced by insurance companies. They will only give you effective medicine after you first try a non-stimulant with low efficacy and lots of side effects.
If I could do it again with what I know now I would have just thrown away the guanfacine and told them it gave me the side effects with none of the benefits. It’s a norepinephrine agonist, it does the opposite of the highly effective ADHD medication, and it was mostly only tested on children who had negative reactions to stimulants. If you have low norepinephrine to begin with (which many people with ADHD do) the effects are agonizing.
I’m one of the lucky few for whom a non-stimulant works.
Strattera paired with a low dose of Wellbutrin because my psychiatrist knows there’s risk of interaction if I take too much Wellbutrin.
It’s incredible having agency again, agency that doesn’t fade every few hours because ritalin would wear off and I forget to take the next dose because it wore off.
Also stimulants can make the body form a tolerance that subverts their effects eventually x_x but honestly I’m grateful to see ANYTHING working for ANYONE.
The reason I didn’t seek treatment for most of my life was because I didn’t want to believe that ADHD was real. I wanted to believe it was nothing more than an imaginary first-world-problem “affluenza” that only afflicted people who were too fortunate to have REAL worries challenging their survival. I wanted to believe that I could just LEARN to ‘be better’.
HAHA NOPE, that shit wrecked me for the prime years of my life.
Totally. At least Strattera is a reuptake inhibitor, so it’s moving in the same direction as a stimulant with less of the negatives. I do not recommend taking an agonist, I don’t know what my psychiatrist was thinking.
I’ve been trying methylphenidate and it’s really nice, it doesn’t have as much dependency or falloff risks as something like Adderall.
This! I was diagnosed as a child but only started getting treatment a month ago, it’s incredible. I feel like I spent my whole life with the target lock on, bouncing from one focus to the next, and now I can choose when to lock on and when to free look.
I will say that in the US treatment has been made more difficult due to fail first treatment policies enforced by insurance companies. They will only give you effective medicine after you first try a non-stimulant with low efficacy and lots of side effects.
If I could do it again with what I know now I would have just thrown away the guanfacine and told them it gave me the side effects with none of the benefits. It’s a norepinephrine agonist, it does the opposite of the highly effective ADHD medication, and it was mostly only tested on children who had negative reactions to stimulants. If you have low norepinephrine to begin with (which many people with ADHD do) the effects are agonizing.
I’m one of the lucky few for whom a non-stimulant works.
Strattera paired with a low dose of Wellbutrin because my psychiatrist knows there’s risk of interaction if I take too much Wellbutrin.
It’s incredible having agency again, agency that doesn’t fade every few hours because ritalin would wear off and I forget to take the next dose because it wore off.
Also stimulants can make the body form a tolerance that subverts their effects eventually x_x but honestly I’m grateful to see ANYTHING working for ANYONE.
The reason I didn’t seek treatment for most of my life was because I didn’t want to believe that ADHD was real. I wanted to believe it was nothing more than an imaginary first-world-problem “affluenza” that only afflicted people who were too fortunate to have REAL worries challenging their survival. I wanted to believe that I could just LEARN to ‘be better’.
HAHA NOPE, that shit wrecked me for the prime years of my life.
Totally. At least Strattera is a reuptake inhibitor, so it’s moving in the same direction as a stimulant with less of the negatives. I do not recommend taking an agonist, I don’t know what my psychiatrist was thinking.
I’ve been trying methylphenidate and it’s really nice, it doesn’t have as much dependency or falloff risks as something like Adderall.
Maybe guanfacine is just particularly unhelpful.