MY ADHD MEDICATIONS JOURNEY

good morning adhds um today i was going to talk about i am going to talk about adhd medications my experience on the medications which has been overall fantastic um so i was diagnosed aged 44 and um a huge relief to me and the next day literally the next day i started on um on lvans for on 20 milligrams for a few days and then moved up to 30 milligrams and events even on the first day i just it was amazing it was really really amazing i felt as though well they describe it as suddenly wearing glasses and seeing it clearly and it it really was like that and um i was able to sit down and concentrate on something that was boring to me easily and i could maintain it and that was massive that was massive because my adhd that i didn't know i had all those years basically meant that um if i was interested in it i could hyper focus and if i wasn't interested in it or i found it dull boring repetitive monotonous pointless um it wasn't going to get done i'd start but it wouldn't go it wouldn't go anywhere near as far as it needed to go and on that first morning i just remember feeling i remember feeling the medication exactly an hour after taking it just sort of click in and i'd been told to sit myself down at my desk and to just put the thing in front of me that i wanted to complete or you know get going on and that's what i did and um i remember about an hour and a half after having started having got going on what i was trying to do i remember suddenly noticing the time and realizing that i hadn't stopped since since the medicine kicked in and i just thought i mean it was like a party in my head and i went straight back to con continuing doing it i i just it was revolutionary and i felt such joy and i still do and yeah it just got better i i i got to i got to learn how to get myself going my adhd coach had told me to go for a 10-minute brisk walk before i sit down to the work and to have the work ready on the table because the problem is if you've got focus the medication gives you the ability to blinker yourself and not see all of this but just to focus on what's like in this beam of light coming out and if you don't focus it on well if i didn't focus it on something that i really wanted to do get done then of course the focus could go anywhere i mean yeah so she described it to me as like one of those stage lights pointing down at the stage and you've got to focus that beam of light on what it is you want to achieve and when i did that i would just do whatever it was and but if i got distracted by let's say a a noise or something out the window you know if i started to focus on something something else then yeah i would um i would blink myself onto that and then i guess could waste hours but i just thought wow this is amazing i can point my direction wherever i want to um point my my focus my attention and so this was just yeah it was like party in my head it was just such relief such excitement at the possibilities and um so to go through my um my sort of different stages of medication so i started on alvance 20 up to 30 and then what i started to find the lvans is a slow release mechanism so you you ingest it and the white powder inside the capsule basically gets absorbed but it doesn't all get converted in one go to the amphetamine that stimulates stimulates us so there's a mechanism that uses enzymes in the in the blood um and basically they break it down over time so you get this slow release throughout the day but what i was finding was that this slow release didn't really work so well for me from about 2 p.m onwards to you know depending on what time i'd taken the first dose and so i was finding myself kind of just like crashing out in the afternoon crashing out sort of focus wise and it was just like really frustrating to me so i spoke to my psychiatrist who then said to me okay so you take the 30 at breakfast or when you wake up and then do take a 20 um early afternoon and that did work um it gave me the it gave me the sort of um the distance but it also um i i ended up having quite bad pan a bad panic attack and i ended up i was driving the car when it happened and i um i pulled into a a petrol station you know a motorway services i was on the m4 and um i i i was having a panic attack but it felt like i was my heart was racing too much and i the panic disorder that i suffered years and years ago which had been under control for years anyway kicked in and i found myself lying on the floor in front of costa cafe calling my psychiatrist calling an ambulance to come because i thought i was going to die and i just felt like i was kind of slipping away so it was a really scary moment and there were a couple of really kind people who just kind of sat with me and then the ambulance arrived really quickly and um and they took me into the ambulance and i had taken when i felt the panic attack coming on i'd taken a uh a car a carmen drug you know i'd taken a um um um a die i am a um god i'm having a mental block um a um sorry god this is just when this happens okay this is a whole separate video but uh yeah i need to remember that word now i'm focusing on it i can't remember it i'm gonna move on i took a pill to stop me having the panic attack or stop the panic attack from getting worse and that worked within 15 minutes i was fine my blood pressure had come down and that's right that's what sent me into the panic attack because i was taking my blood pressure to make sure everything was all right and what happened was that the blood pressure went over the sort of kind of the level that i was expecting it to be or you know needing to maintain it under and that's that kind of that's what started the panic attack i panicked that suddenly you know it had gone up too much and that it was going to continue going up and so that's i panicked about that and um anyway i was fine i the ambulance people released me and i got back in my car and i drove home absolutely fine but that kind of put the wind up me so i spoke to my doctor and i moved to um a different slow release medication concerto and so concerto is methylphenidate as opposed to amphetamine and that worked very well um you know it's very similar effect on my focus and um anyway i i that was also the problem was the the lasting through the day so i kind of found myself being really frustrated again and um so we then tried i then tried um a an instant release so the the same medication the same methylphenidate that's in concerta but in an instant release so i'd take one in the morning one at lunch one mid-afternoon and that was it that was that seemed to be the way that just worked for me and it worked wonderfully so yeah so um i think i was i was on ten i i varied it so i would take a 10 milligrams if i needed to work because that gave me the total blinkering um that i needed to to focus in on the work um if i was doing like family kind of stuff with um my family my children my wife or just you know normal sort of day-to-day stuff i would take a smaller dose of five milligrams um because it works for like three to four hours so um yeah so i was able to have kind of two different doses one for when i'm working and one for a lower dose for when i'm just like doing life the reason um yeah i found that when i was kind of doing life just being with the kids i found that being on the higher dose made me a bit impatient intolerant um frustrating it just edgy and so i started yeah that's how i discovered taking half the dose worked better for those moments like when they'd come back from school and you know being with them playing with them the higher dose was just i was a bit too much like uh so that that worked really well and um i didn't have that much in the right in the beginning i had especially on the lvans i had more of an appetite reduction i felt like i could kind of go through the day eating very little and then when the medication would wear off i would binge eat basically and that too is another video coming soon um but um yeah so then um then after three months of really putting the medication to work with me and just getting so much done um i it suddenly stopped working like that and it was i didn't know what was going on and so i tried taking a little bit more a bit less um and i and my doctor said to me okay just stop for a couple of days i think i stopped for three days and then i remember praying that please please please work again the thought of it not working anymore and especially considering how i'd felt through those three days because i really basically became a couch potato i wasn't good for much other than netflix and even netflix my you know it was just i got used to having motivation on tap and that to me was just magic so being without it was pretty dull boring and sad um because i couldn't do i couldn't do the things that i wanted to be doing and so thankfully i took it again and it just worked again and that was great and it worked for another three months and then i had another um drop like that sudden sort of just just stopped working i remember it was the middle of the day and it had worked the morning dose and i took the lunchtime day and it just didn't um it didn't switch on i was left there waiting and unfocused and so i started to think god is this going to be a regular occurrence you know is this going to happen every x number of months or is it going to get worse you know every few weeks or um so i did the same again and i can't remember if it was that one or the next time it stopped working but christmas time before christmas on 2020 um it stopped working again and it started i started feeling kind of nauseous and tired so i'd take the medication i'd feel more nauseous and tired than i did if i wasn't taking it and i ended up i basically spent a month off medication which wasn't easy i mean it wasn't terrible but it was it i was ineffective i wasn't productive and i was in the middle you know of doing stuff getting stuff done you know i'd been enjoying how many months of that and um yeah i it was hard but i did get used to it i did use some t strong tea which i don't know whether it work i was in a low state um and it kind of made me anxious about my the future of my medication you know was it going to ever work again and after christmas it worked again but i was quite freaked out by the idea of having to spend a whole month with it not working and it's now and then so the next bit of the story is that god i can't remember why why why oh no sorry it started working again but because i don't know if it was because of this but i my doctor moved me to try the other instant release type which is the amphetamine so like the lvans that i was on in the beginning beginning but in an instant release so that's called dexamphetamine and it was weird at the beginning it was kind of slow but it picked up and within a few days it was just as good as um as the methylphenidate had been the ritalin um so yes i was on dexamphetamine and i've been on dexam fertilis since uh new year this year 2021 and it it's great i mean this medication is just life-changing for people um in a positive way it's i don't know when i think about life without it and how i lived 44 years not knowing i had adhd not having the medication but i certainly my brain knew it needed more dopamine and my brain did everything it could to hunt down more dopamine whether that be through excitement risk-taking behavior self-medicating on substances um it it's nicotine you know smoking and that's the thing so when i started the the medication right back at the beginning i i was able to completely stop smoking um a month in because i realized that i didn't need it uh i have continued with nicotine replacement because nicotine replacement just seems to be i can't get rid of it i don't know but i'm not smoking and i i had had years of not smoking and then smoking i was a serial relapse and i just make that out to be a part of the adhd in that nicotine is a massive dopamine um stimulant uh it is a stimulant nicotine and very powerful one in fact i've heard that you know the the future of adhd drugs is potentially going to be not around um methylphenidate and amphetamine but based on nicotine because nicotine is such a strong stimulant and so i i i heard somewhere on the internet or maybe it was from a doctor that that that that's what the labs are working on at the moment is to replace what we currently use with nicotine based stuff i hope with my 25 years or whatever it is of a lot of nicotine that i won't be um tolerant to that and that it you know i'm just interested to see what happens down that line but yeah that's basically an outline of what my medication journey has been um apart from the moments where i've been terrified that it was gonna not work anymore it has been like the best thing that happened to me and what i would also add is that it has also completely removed my my thoughts of which come from the subconscious or came always from the subconscious of having alcohol to generate um dopamine and i didn't think i didn't know that's what i was doing looking for dopamine but it turns out that by taking the medication i mean i i haven't drunk since i i haven't had a drink since i took um since i started on medication and um that's a big revelation and that's another video that i will do about um my journey through addictions which was a pretty excruciating journey a long journey with a lot of great stuff in it as well because i i um i became sober um and i'll talk all about that in another video but i think that's a really relevant area for a lot of people out there who struggle with um self-medication but the good news is that when the medication when the when the adhd medication works it that it's not a thing anymore for me in my experience anyway so anyway i hope this is helpful to anybody who's starting out on medication or maybe has had some a similar journey i'm definitely really interested to hear that's kind of my biggest motivation to make this video is put my story out there because i'd love to hear other people's stories any similarities especially about the medication stopping working suddenly um i'd be really i'd be fascinated to hear what your doctor may have thought about that how you dealt with it um has it carried on um maybe there are people out there who've been on adhd medication for many many years much longer than me and who can offer up some some some interesting uh information about that anyway it's sunny and i'm so happy to see the sun and i hope you all have a fantastic day and i'll see you again soon bye

Channel: ADHD MAX - Max Lawrence Coaching

Views: 5,819

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Id: 8rO4Cik4uaQ

Length: 18min 18sec (1098 seconds)

Published: Mon May 10 2021