51. Increasing ADHD Medication (Elvanse/Vyvanse) A Personal Review (2/2)

Welcome to A Day for me and Kids. Yes, another ADHD podcast. With your host Sparky and Show. Join us each week and we can hyperfocus together on all things ADHD. This is our journey to diagnosis the challenges, frustrations and humor that come when living with ADHD as adults. Let the interacting begin. Hello everyone and welcome to episode 51 of A Day for Mind Kick. Today we're going to be carrying on from a previous episode and talking all about advanced medication. So those of you who listened to last week's episode will know that we were talking about all the symptoms of ADHD in attention, and we said we was going to do hyperactivity this week. But what we're going to do is we're going to talk about our bags this week because we've got a little bit of an update for you regarding that medication, and then we'll jump straight into the hyperactivity stuff next week. So please make sure you stick around. If you haven't already, please subscribe to us and leave us a review as well because we'd like to know what you're thinking. Obviously we changed the podcast recently to be more about ADHD and we'd like to know what you think. So that would be great if you could do that's fab. So I guess we'll start things off with a little bit of background about what's changed. So for those of you who've listened to our episode on our Vans, you probably noticed that I sounded quite. Sedate. State on that episode, sort of quite monotone and it was quite monotone. I wasn't really laughing very much, and what I realized quite rapidly, especially when I listened back to myself, is I was really sedated on 30 milligrams of elements, so much so that when it was at its peak effect, I just didn't feel safe to drive and I didn't feel safe at work. I didn't feel like I was making I didn't feel like I was able to make appropriate decisions. So I stopped taking it. Just a just a disclaimer. Well, just an appear sorry. This is one of Cheryl's episodes that she hates the most. Is because I sound awful. It's like one of our most popular episodes. People seem to love it, but I just sound like a robot. Well, I don't think you sound like a robot. I think, obviously, it's good for people to hear the effects that you're having in the episode. You can definitely hear it in my voice. You you can definitely hear that something's not. Yeah, well, I mean, I did say in the upside, you do sound really like calm and you were really calm throughout the whole thing. And, and the fact that you had the added stress of going to a wedding and you were just like, No, it's fine. I mean, that's so unlike you. So it did definitely do something. So you're saying that it made you feel really sedated? Yeah, because I kept saying that didn't. I kept saying, I feel really calm. I feel really calm. And then sometimes I would say, like, I feel a bit like like a zombie. And it took me ages to finally realize, no, I'm. I'm sedated. That's what it is. I don't feel calm. I'm just sedated. And it was kind of like an eerie calm. It wasn't, you know, like you said, I was really late for a wedding and I had loads to do and I was just sitting there like, Yeah, that's bad. I'm probably going to be late. Like, that's not a normal behavior for anybody, ADHD or not. Yeah, I know. But but I do think when you say it like that, people listening will be like, Oh, I want to be like that. I want to be, I want to I don't care about, you know, we all have feelings of anxiety and you think, oh, I don't really care. I want to be I want to get to a point where I don't I don't think about what's coming and I don't have the stress. But you were saying to me it felt really induced. Yeah, it just felt like I was drugged. It didn't it wasn't like I genuinely didn't care. It just felt like I was drugged up and that's why I wasn't having appropriate reactions to things. It felt similar. So I've had I've been prescribed diazepam before for backache and that really sort of sedated me, made my body feel really have a my mind was like foggy and I couldn't think properly and it felt kind of similar to be honest. Mhm. So maybe it did do something for your anxiety but it didn't actually do anything for your symptoms of ADHD focus and. Yeah. Yeah. Oh no, it definitely did nothing for that. But again, just a disclaimer, if you are listening, everyone is different with medication. This is just Cheryl's experience with ailments. So we'll continue talking about our events because it's going to be helpful for people listening just to get a get an understanding of how people react on the drug. And I know when I was looking at medication, that's a good thing. I like listening to people. Stories might be a bit too much. Out there, is there? It's quite hard to find, like personal accounts of people when they're just starting out. Yeah, definitely. I agree with that. I think sometimes you look and you think what kind of fine tune, which is. I mean, there's a few things out there, but it don't go into too much detail really. So obviously that's what we're trying to do in this episode. It's. Yeah. So anyway, I cut you off. So I spoke to you had a review with my psychiatrist. We agreed that I'd come off the vents and would start on Concerta instead. We should methylphenidate. There was a bit of a holdup with the pharmacy, so the medication took, like two and a half weeks to arrive. So in the interim, I emailed my psychiatrist again and said, Look, I've heard from a couple of people online who have said, you know, they were quite sedated and zombie like at the lower doses, but when they took a higher dose, they felt much better and that disappeared. So I emailed asking if that was something that I should consider trying as well. And he replied with a reply That was not a no. Maybe strictly wasn't a yes either, but I definitely interpret it as that. So he basically said he wouldn't rule out returning to advance in the future. But let's just stick with the concert for now. When I didn't have any concerts to take, so I decided he's not said no and he's not said it's medically dangerous. And I know that I'm still within the dose range if I just take two because the maximum dose is 70 and that would be 60. So I just did it. I don't recommend. So you couldn't. You could. Not myself. You couldn't. That we saw of impatience. Yeah. I don't recommend that. You should always follow your prescribers instructions. But you know, I have ADHD and sometimes I make poor life choices. So I tried double tablets, don't we all? So what was the difference between the lower dose and the higher dose? So really bizarre. When I took the six day, the first day, I felt almost nothing like all of the side effects. I'd had a 30 positive or negative effects, like pretty much none of them were there. I really struggled to even realize that I'd taken anything, whereas at the 30 I could definitely feel it straight away. That's so strange. Yeah. So I had less effects and like things like Pounding Heart, which she just thought would be worse at a higher dose. I didn't get that at all. Really strange. So, yeah. So initially I was pretty positive. I didn't have too much in the way of of positive effects, but I was happy that I wasn't having the negatives and that, you know, maybe because I have heard from other people as well that they had to take it for like a couple of months before they started seeing the positive. So I'm, I'm quite realistic in my expectations and not expecting to take a tablet and then settling on my life problems, effects. I know that it's a process. So what I was really looking for from that higher dose was that the side effects weren't so severe that I could continue taking it until I reached that point. Yeah. So I ended up taking it for four days and by the third day I definitely felt a bit sleepy. In the middle of the day, nothing bad, but it like

00, which is when that at the end of the peak medication was off. So I knew that it wasn't genuine tiredness. And then the fourth day I could definitely feel like my body was heavy again and my mind was a bit foggy and it was kind of hard to get up and do things. It wasn't it was nowhere near as bad. And, you know, I had my secretary said to me, you just need to up with this for a month and see what happens then. I would have been happy to do that, but because I only had only had like ten days worth of tablets anyway, I thought, well, it's not really much point in carrying on with this. So I stopped after four days. Okay. And what sort of side effects did you have from the 60 milligrams dose? I'd say the biggest one is I felt really obsessive over everything. So it was like, you know, when you get into a hyperfocus about something like a hobby, new hobby of something in Sydney, so you could think about your obsessive, you want to like buy all the gear for it. So you want to do, like you feel like you've suddenly found your life's calling. And then a couple of weeks down the line, it's like dropped it. All. The time. Yeah, I felt like that. But about every little thing like I would, I found it quite easy to get into something and focus. But then once I was focused, I just couldn't get off. So I was really like woefully when I was talking to people because I just couldn't stop. I just I'm just just thinking, like, these medications, they work. We all want to get more focused on things that we need to focus on. But what happens like how does the medication know the different? I mean, I know this is a question that I probably should be asking the the pharmacy or the drug makers or whatever. How does it know what to focus on? So you're saying they're kept on your phone, so it kept you focused, but for all the wrong reasons. And obviously, we talked about dopamine for the wrong reasons. How does the medication how is he ever going to distinguish between what is a good focus on what is a bad fine? I did because I don't think it does. I think normally it just is what it's meant to do is it's just increased the number of neurotransmitters so that your brain makes those connections itself. And this could just be my reaction. I haven't particularly found too many people who said they've had a similar reaction to this, but I literally felt like a robot, like I would get into doing something and not just would not be able to stop. I would just have to do that one thing to the exclusion of everything else. And like, yeah, it was just like it was like being a robot. So when you picked up your phone and you were on your phone, for example, when you tried to put it down, did you have thoughts about trying to put it down or did or what did those thoughts not go for your mind? And you would just go. No, that's the thing. So normally I would be on my phone and I'd be like, Oh God, I really don't have time to this. Like, Why are you on your phone? It's got so much else to do. You need to put your phone down. But I'd still be on my phone, but I'd have all these thoughts running through my mind. But you'd know you were doing it. Yeah, yeah, no, I was doing it. Whereas on the six day I. I was just like just so focused on it. And there was, I didn't really accomplish anything from the sun, which is constantly on my phone. And so it. Took away your inhibitions really, didn't it. Like your, your thought process. Yeah. Which is which. I know ADHD. It can be unorganized anyway, but it kind of took all that away. And. And even at times when I did put my phone down, I just felt this, like, compulsive need to pick it back up and get. Back to it. Texting again. Yeah. Like it was it it was like it was it was like it was a drug. Like, I just couldn't, like, I had stuff that I was trying to get done. And so, for example, my daughter made like loads a mess of a breakfast through a breakfast all over the place. And so my husband took her outside in the garden and they were just doing stuff out there. He was like mowing the lawn and stuff, and all I had to do was clean the kitchen, like wipe down the table, wipe the floor. And I was going to go out and join them and they were out there for like 3 hours. And I didn't make it out. Like I sat on the table for an hour and a half. I was then stood up, standing next to the table. I then walked over to the sink to get a cloth and I stood there for about half an hour just on my phone. Like by the time they came in had accomplished nothing. The kitchen looked exactly the same as when they'd gone out. All I'd done is move around areas of the kitchen still on my phone. Oh, my God. Do you know what it sounds like? It made you more ADHD. Wow. Yeah, because that's what I do on a daily basis. Well, I don't want to get things done. But it wasn't like, so normally. So I will do that kind of stuff if I'm procrastinating, if I'm thinking like, Oh, I need to do this, need to do that, and I'll just be like on my phone. I really messed up, but I didn't have any of those thoughts. I was just so obsessed with my phone that when they came back inside, I was like, Oh, that's quick. And he's like, No, we've been outside for hours. And I was just like, Where has that time gone? The whole. My life. This is what I'm saying? No. Is it the symptoms that we have? We've ADHD all the time. Where's the time gone? Not being able to do things. So I don't understand. Like maybe maybe exacerbated symptoms. Maybe maybe I am just literally broken. But don't think you are broken. Obviously, we discussed ADHD symptoms of inattention last week and you have every. Single one of them. So. You know, I think sometimes we have a tendency I know both you and I do this, so we'll sit there and go, Oh, there's things wrong with us. We've broken. But if we don't have this and we've got something else, but I mean, come on, when you look at the ADHD symptoms and you look at the inattention symptoms, we've already gone through this. We have every single one. We may have co-morbidities. Who knows? Obviously, as we've turned this into an ADHD podcast and you've been diagnosed with it as well, you know, so medication can affect people in so many different ways. And just because your even if your symptoms have been exacerbated or it's done something because it's made you focus, but it's just made you focus on the wrong reason, the wrong reasons, the wrong thing, the wrong things. So maybe trying a different medication would be more helpful to you. We know that not everybody's going to get on well with our events and some people do. So just before we move on to the next question, did you have any more side effects? Is there anything else that you can think the standout features of know. About it really? I had intermittent headaches, but I had those before. Yeah, they weren't as severe as the ones I had before. I didn't have any migraines like I did at the 30, and the headaches responded really well to just paracetamol and increasing my drinking. So overall the experience wasn't positive, but it wasn't immensely negative. For example. It wasn't immensely negative. I would try. I would try again and, you know, consider trying it for longer. It just if it had stayed at, that wouldn't be a medication I would stay on long term because it wasn't really bringing any positive benefit to my life. And are you still taking it? Well, you've just answered the question. Yeah, I stopped taking it, so I stopped taking it on Wednesday. Yet Wednesday was the last hour to get. Yeah. So then Thursday, Friday, Saturday, I didn't take anything. And Saturday my concert arrived, so I took that this morning. So you're starting on concert tonight? Yeah. So next week, when I've had some time on it, I would do an episode on what Concert two feels like. So if you're interested in learning about medication and ADHD, and we know medication is not for everyone, but this is something that both Shelly and I have been thinking about. And one is wanting to go down the route of this because it's like you think, well, if we don't give it a chance, how am I going to know if the world is better without it? And some people would do well with it, some people choose not to. So it's a personal choice. But if you do want to know more about medication, then stick around because we're going to be talking about concerts now, and then we'll do an episode on the differences between our events and concerts. So that might be very interesting for some people to listen to as well. So we've got a lot of medications coming up, but we also have stuff coming up. If you don't if you know, if you're not interested in medication or you want to find extra things, we'll be talking a lot about ADHD anyway. So hopefully there's something in the episodes going forward that you're going to enjoy. I still haven't had my epiphany. I'm still waiting for that. You know, you see on Tik Tok and people are like, Oh, is this what normal people feel like? And this is what the world looks like to normal people. I've missed so much. I have not had that in the slightest. Just one question. When did you take the concert? I took at 630 this morning. So what we are now 1130, so I of hours ago. So I think we need to give it a little bit more time. Yeah. Before you have that epiphany. I know some people seem to get it for the first time, like they take one tablet at like the lower strength and they're like, life's changed forever. I'm very envious. Yeah, but, you know, we talked about this, didn't we? And we, we have a tendency to watch the paper or listen to the paper and go. Why don't we. Act like, Yeah. I want. That. I want it now. I think it's interesting that you talked about co-morbidities as well, because that's something that I've also considered. There isn't an awful lot of literature that I can find about people having these paradoxical sort of opposite to expected fact effects on stimulants. But the few bits of information that I have found is that the theory is all around a brain that's like exhausted basically, and just never had a chance to rest before. Suddenly getting like a big have deep meaning and finally being able to shut off. So there's a couple of different things I'm also doing that we may or may not discuss on the podcast depends how useful it ends up being. So the first is I've been referred to a sleep clinic because I have really messed up sleep, possibly sleep apnea as well. So I'm going to find out, make sure I don't have any sort of sleep disorder that could be exacerbating things. And then the other one is, I'm going to be working with a psychologist. So I start my first appointment on Tuesday, and we're going to be working to try and help my mind, my brain get out of just being in like a permanent crisis mode and just sort of learning to be able to switch off a bit more and relax a bit more. So I'm hoping that those two might improve my response to medication as well, because it might be that actually, if I can, you know, there's something that I need to sort out there. And if I can do that, yeah, that the medication will work better for me and maybe then I'll be able to have my epiphany. I really need to get Julie on this podcast. I need to talk to her because I really feel that meditation could be something that helps you. I know it helped me a lot, took a long time, but she can just explain in a different way. So hopefully that's going to be something that you can learn from and benefit from as well. And people listening because I think meditation is a great tool, but I'm just not very good at explaining it. And I think every time I've come on here and I've tried to explain it, I just don't think I, I really give the positive benefits of it. I just watch fall and I'm just like, Oh, and then I just lose my train of thought. And I don't know what I'm saying, so I really do want to get her on. So I'm definitely still going to get her on, even though we changed the direction of the podcast, because I still feel like it's going to be helpful to a lot of people as well. Well, I mean, it is helpful for you and you have ADHD, so. Exactly. And you know, maybe there's techniques that she can bring to the table for people that do really struggle with meditation, because I know she's said stuff about that in the past, so I'm going to get on to her about coming on just so that we can have her on here. And I think it will be beneficial. I'm super, super keen about that. Like whenever you describe Meditate. You know, you do do a good job of making it sound amazing. It's just always very elusive to me. And then we've also got our like, wow, it's not a little kicker anymore, but it's like something at the end that we just say each podcast every week that's funny, or some that we've done this week. So I know that we've both had really I wouldn't say dramatic weeks at all. Like just we've had a lot on this week, but is there anything show that you can pinpoint this week that something that you've done that so ADHD that you've just got to tell us? Um, so ADHD, I mean, probably the medication is a good example. When my psychiatrist emailed back and. Said. Not to do it or didn't say not to do it, so let's shelve the idea for now. And I went ahead and did it anyway. It's pretty ADHD. Yeah, well, I saw a meme about ADHD tax and I didn't know what this meant first. But apparently ADHD tax is like when you do something that you shouldn't really no, you shouldn't really do, but then you do it and you end up paying for it. So they call ADHD. Doing this like not filling out forms in time and. Yeah. And it's all, it's all the things that we do like all the time. So it's just interesting to note that, you know, we do have an ADHD tax and there are things that we do that make us financially responsible. Yeah. And you've just explained that, you know, obviously didn't really take your psychiatrist advice, took the 60 milligrams, didn't have a great time and doing so. So I would say that's a tax, wouldn't you? I would say. You went through all that drama. That's true. So I think that's it for this week's episode, isn't it? Yeah, I think so. Short and sweet. Well, I mean, you say short and sweet. 24 minutes. So people. Listening to us drone on for any longer than that and start getting. Bored today as fuck. Today. But we'll see you next week for an episode on hyperactivity and or the symptoms to do with that. So enjoy weight, guys and we'll see you next week for another episode. See you next time. Bye. All right. That's everything this week, guys. But if you want to carry on with the conversation, join us over on our social media platforms. We're on all the major channels and our handle is I dopamine. We'd also be super grateful if you could leave us a review on the podcast wherever you're listening, as it helps us to grow our audience and help more people. Okay. We'll see you in the next one. Bye bye. Bye.