New to Vyvanse. Not sure about it.

[stockholm]

Hello everyone,

Forgive me if this has been covered extensively already.  I’m new.

I am 29 years old and was diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 12.  At 12, I took Ritalin for 6 months, but was so preoccupied with fitting-in that I abruptly stopped.

Then, at the age of 24, after taking a friend’s Adderall a few times, I was prescribed Adderall IR 10mg.  I was/am perhaps ultra-sensitive to amphetamines, because around 3-4mg of Adderall would give me energy day.  If I took more than half of a pill (5mg), I would have feelings of anxiety and waves of depression.  After the initital 30 day trial, I stopped immediately.

Flash forward 5 years.  As an adult, I learned organizational skills and tricks to allow me to function in society.  I took a high-energy, high stress job in public relations that suited me well.  My coworkers always notice that I seem “spacey” sometimes.  I am unable to remember small details, I am clumsy, and extremely unfocused during certain meetings.  I have all of the characteristic ADHD symptoms.  3 years ago, I moved to a new country.  During these 3 years, I’ve gotten progressively more depressed and antisocial.   It is often difficult for me to make eye contact with the teller at the bank or order food for dinner  (although at work, I am often able to switch this “extroverted behavior” on).  Considering this new behavior and my history with ADHD, I decided to begin treatment again.

My doctor immediately prescribed Vyvanse 30mg, being that Adderall is unavailable in Europe and the duration is longer.   He decided to handle depression/anxiety later.

Day 1 was great.  I felt as though I was back to being myself.  Day 2 was a very stressful day, but I felt even more disorganized/confused than I normally would on a day like this.  Days 3 and 4 were awful – I felt waves of depression and anxiety (similar to what I felt previously on Adderall, only worse).  My vision seemed blurrier.  I had a hard time making eye contact.  My word retrieval skills were awful – I couldn’t remember the word “glass”!  The duration was also short.  The effects seem to last only 3 hours, followed by a “hangover/zombie” type feeling that kept me up each night until 1am.  After day 4, I realized that I barely remembered my previous 4 days.  It seems like they had gone in fast-forward and I had missed all the details.

I took a break day 5 and called the doctor to see what I should do.  “Increase the dose to 60mg,” he said.  Scared to do this because of my previous experience with Adderall, I took 30mg in the morning and 15mg around 2pm.  Seemed to help a bit, because the peak of the medication lasted a solid 7 hours.   After 7 hours, I became a zombie again staring off into space and avoiding people.  I still felt depressed the entire day, though.

Now we’re on day 7, and I tried 60mg in the morning.  I felt very anxious today and unable to give a powerful presentation at work.  What was worse today was the “rebound” – the worst so far.   I’ve contacted my doctor to see if I can get a “booster” or something to extend the duration of the positive effects of the medication.  His response is to “increase the dosage to 90mg”!

1.  Should I be worried about increasing to 90mg?

2.  Is it common for people to get very depressed/introverted/anxious on Vyvanse?

3.  Do you think an antidepressant will help my situation?  Vyvanse seems to increase my feels of depression and social anxiety.

Thanks very much in advance for your advice and stories.   It truly means a lot!

//Lost in Stockholm

 

 

 

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[Patte Rosebank]

@Stockholm, I can understand your concern about those unpleasant effects.

I’d suggest discussing this with your pharmacist, because they often know more about meds than doctors do.

Your pharmacist can look up the product monograph for every drug they dispense. That monograph includes every detail about it, including dosages, good effects, interactions, and (most importantly) bad effects including ones that warrant seeing your doctor immediately.

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[Scattybird]

Hello @stockholm – as far as I am aware Vyvanse is amphetamine packaged to be slow release.  So if you are sensitive to amphetamine then I would suggest that you need to be careful.

that said, I take fast release amphetamins and I notice the blurred vision and often I can’t find words and I get a headache when it wears off.

However I took a double dose last week by mistake and felt great and actually completely cleared out my office so it’s nice and tidy. So it increased my productivity and I felt fine. Getting the dose right is trial and error. But if you feel awful o n a low dose you need to discuss it carefully before you increase it. Something that makes you feel anxious is not the right drug for you. It sounds more like the dose is too high.

Excuse typos – am using my iPad and if I go back to correct it crashes me out. Leaving in the typos is good for my OCD tendencies……aaaagghhh.

 

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[stockholm]

Hi @larynxa,  Unfortunately as Vyvanse is very new to Sweden, they pharmacist barely knew anything about it and had to look online.  Thanks for the tip, though!

Thanks, @Scattybird.  It was nice to hear your experience.  I think the main issue for me is my metabolism.  Perhaps I am very sensitive to the medication, but it leaves my system too quickly and I begin to feel the rebound within a few hours after taking it.

The last few days I have actually split my dose (30mg around 9, and 30mg after lunch at 12:30).  This seemed to help, although between 1:30-5:30 I felt more anxious and less articulate than normal.  I wonder if I should be taking small doses of IR dexadrine throughout the day.  Does that work for anyone?

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