ugh meds, ugh work

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I’ve been on guanfacine for about a month now, and I still haven’t stopped feeling drowsy and tired all day, to the point that I’ll often just fall asleep in the middle of things. Even when I’m doing things like grocery shopping I’ll suddenly feel really tired and need to take a couple moments to brace myself. It’s almost like it’s causing narcolepsy or something.

Last week I talked about this with my psychiatrist and we decided to try combination therapy with strattera, a stimulant-based med, since my ADHD responded well to the Adderall (aside from my blood pressure spiking badly).

So far, it hasn’t been helping at all. I’m getting the panic and anxiety from stimulants, while also being drowsy all day. What’s even worse is I’m also getting frequent muscle spasms, which is apparently a common reaction to some ADHD meds. And ironically, the treatment for that? Guanfacine.

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Guanfacine and naltrexone updates

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I’ve been on low-dose naltrexone for a whole month now, and I don’t think it’s really helping with my pain.

And I’ve been on guanfacine for two weeks, and while I’ve noticed a slight improvement in my focus (and a general lowering of my blood pressure, which is of course to be expected), holy cow am I drowsy all the time. Like, to the point of nodding off while sitting still or whatever. I hear that this effect goes away after a couple weeks, and I really hope it does soon, because even though I’m generally getting a full night’s sleep every night I still wake up exhausted and end up taking little mini-naps throughout the day. Heck, even while going grocery shopping I occasionally feel like I’m going to fall over.

On the plus side, caffeine doesn’t give me as big of a panic attack now (although I still feel a bit of one) so that’s at least filling in the gaps while I try to stay awake at work.

Bonus thing: yesterday I tried coating my glasses with soapy water (based on seeing an article in Glamour) and it actually works pretty well! The article suggests thoroughly cleaning them, but I just mixed a little bit of liquid hand soap with a glass of water and dunked my glasses in them and let them drain. It’d probably also work pretty well to dilute some dish soap and swap it on with a cotton swab or something.

Miscellaneous goings-on

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I’ve been on guanfacine for a few days and so far I’m not noticing that my focus has changed any, but on the plus side my blood pressure is great now. So, that’s good.

I don’t know if it’s from the naltrexone or the guanfacine but my dreams have been pretty vivid and weird, but usually in a good way. Unlike when I was on the Wellbutrin and my dreams were vivid and stressful.

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