Dextroamphetamine, day 1

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I took my little 10mg capsule when I woke up at 8 AM, and I felt it kick in during my shower. It’s led to a feeling of clarity and less chaos in my brain. I did a few put-off chores before work, and at work I’m not feeling totally overwhelmed by stuff. I’m still not focusing on what I mean to be working on, though.

Blood pressure is 131/89, heart rate is 65. Slightly elevated from my baseline but definitely nothing to be worried about. My hands are also slightly shakier than usual but not, like, alarmingly so.

This shows some promise and I’ll be working to adjust the dosage and timing accordingly. I might try supplementing with a caffeine microdose later today.

Also, last night was my first dose of fenofibrate, which hasn’t solved all my pain issues overnight but I’d expect that to take a week or so to be effective.

Vyvanse, day 1

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Today was my first day trialing Vyvanse, just a single 10mg dose in the morning. I took it at around 9 AM, and felt it kick in at around 10. It gave me a slight headache, and a slight vague spacy feeling, with maybe a bit of… something that I’m having trouble describing. Almost like my spine was being squeezed from the inside? I don’t know.

My blood pressure and heart rate did rise up a little, but not to concerning levels; my rest pulse is usually 50-60 and my BP is usually 120/80, and on Vyvanse it peaked at around 75 and 135/85, respectively. Nothing terribly concerning, and not so much that I could feel it myself.

I don’t feel like I’m specifically more focused than usual, although my headspace is at least a bit less cluttered. And I’m definitely more alert than usual. It’s not quite how I felt on the two good days of Adderall, but it’s also not like, say, Concerta or Strattera which had me feeling frustrated and, well, colicky, for lack of a better term.1

Anyway. It was good to try this experiment on a day right before a weekend, since that means it won’t mess up the rest of my week if something went wrong, and also this was on a day I wasn’t expecting to be very productive anyway, what with the everything. I’ll be skipping it over the weekend but now I’m feeling a lot more optimistic about resuming it on Monday.

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Armodafinil, day 1

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A few weeks ago I learned about armodafinil as an alternate non-stimulant ADHD treatment; this seemed pretty compelling to me because stimulant-based meds have always been troublesome for me for various reasons.

Unfortunately, it’s only off-label for ADHD; fortunately it’s on-label for a bunch of other conditions I have, and the theory of it working for ADHD is that it treats underlying sleep conditions that make ADHD worse, rather than treating the ADHD itself.

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