add and adhd
community.
27 apr 2005
I've been off of strattera for about a month now, and I don't miss it.
My concentration didn't really change at all; the major effect is that
I'm no longer nauseous a good portion of the time. This means I gained
some weight, but eh. Ritalin seems to be doing a lot better for me.
I stuck with the Strattera for so long mostly because everything else is sched 2, not for its efficacy; looks like I'll be hitting the pharmacy and turning over scrips a lot more often now. Ah well.
9 jan 2005
Wow, I <heart> playing 'guess the dosage' with psychotropic chemicals.
These days, I'm taking 50mg in the morning, and 50mg at night. The only
drawback I've found, so far, is that I tend to get really quite nauseous
before lunch, because I don't eat enough for breakfast; fortunately, as I'm
no longer taking Wellbutrin, I don't have to worry about its nausea-inducing
properties as well. The difficulties sometimes make me wonder
if it's worth going to Ritalin. (It also makes me wonder if
my Asperger's has anything to do with the difficulties in fixing the precise
dosing regimen - it causes weird side effects sometimes.)
23 mar 2004
My Wellbutrin SR is down to 200mg once a day - and the weird sort of panicy
feelings I got when my blood sugar dropped have almost completely disappeared
as well. Looks like I'm really sensitive to norepinephrine levels, much more
so than I thought.
16 feb 2004
I've gone to 25mg of Strattera after lunch and 75mg of Strattera after
dinner; this seems to be helping my concentration a bunch. Once-a-day,
my ass.
18 jan 2004
I tried taking Wellbutrin and Strattera at the same time... and eight
hours later I woke up because my stomach was hurting. Bleah. Sounds like
I should stick to my "Wellbutrin before eating dinner, Strattera after" plan.
10 nov 2003
Last night, I forgot to take my Strattera at lunch; no big deal, I thought.
I'll just take it over the course of a few hours in the evening. I went to
bed at 1:30, and woke up at 4:30 on the dot. Spent the next hour or so
tossing and turning, and just couldn't get back to sleep. I think next time
I'll skip rather than take late.
8 oct 2003
Last night I had an additional 18mg of Strattera with dinner (bringing my
total for the day to 98mg); while I didn't have any stomach discomfort, thank
goodness, I slept like utter crap, woke up for longer than usual at 6AM (after
having gone to bed around 12:30), and found my cold had gotten appreciably
worse. I felt kinda jittery at lunch, but that could be attributable to the
antihistamine I took earlier.
The extra Strattera was tried under the theory that since I take the 80mg during lunch, it may be running out in the early morning, and that's what's causing me to wake up mid-sleep. If my sleep continues to be ass, I'll be stoppin' that real quick.
28 aug 2003
For the past 3.5 weeks I've been at 80mg, and it seems like an incremental
improvement. No new side-effects so far that I can tell (except I may have
even less of an appetite now; I was down to 165lbs at one point.)
1 aug 2003
I'm still on the same dose of strattera; I'm on so many other drugs
right now that my psych doesn't want to muck with that stability. It feels
like it's not quite enough - but I don't know if this is as good as it gets
or not.
9 july 2003
A few days ago, I missed my evening dose of Wellbutrin for two days
running - and after the second day, I definitely noticed more ADD symptoms.
It seems pretty likely that when I go off of Wellbutrin, I'll have to have
my Strattera dosage re-figured.
mon 23 Jun 2003
It's been a month, and I'm still at 70mg. I'm not really sure at this point
if increasing the dosage of Strattera would help or not; I've gotten so
used to the overall effects that it would be fairly difficult to discern.
While the Strattera certainly isn't a panacea - I have to cart my journal/
to-do list everywhere, I frequently forget to take my medication unless I
pull out my pill tin the first time I think about it, I'll still walk into
a room and forget what I went in there for - things are definitely a lot
better than when not taking the meds. About the only thing I could ask for
at this point is how I'd react to other drugs (I've never taken Ritalin,
the methamphetamines, etc) in comparison with or in concert with the
Strattera.
Wed 4 Jun 2003
I've been at 70mg for a while, and seems like it may be just a wee bit
high or low. Not sure which. Overall effect is pretty good, though. I'm
still slightly forgetful - but had remembered enough to have get out of the
habit of writing everything down. Oops. Need to start that up again.
Thu 22 may 2003
65mg was too spazzy for me, so we reincreased it back up to 70mg - about
.9 mg/kg. I've been
on that for two-three weeks now, and it's better than either 65 or 80. Not
sure if a little more would help or not, but this seems to be the best so far.
I'm really quite pleased, overall.
sun 20 apr 2003
After talking with my doc, she said that too much Strattera can be just
as bad as too little, and so reduced my dosage down to 65mg from 80mg.
I feel a bunch better now, although my system is still adjusting to the
difference; last night I felt extra spazzy for a bit, and had a bit of
the tunnel-vision-mentality and too many thoughts overlapping at once.
Today things seem better, though.
wed 16 apr 2003
It sounds like I'm having the same thing happen as my friend described,
where I wake up at 7am all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed - after going to
sleep at 2am. The urge for a nap kicks in around 10 or 11, and I can
doze for a while longer. Gah.
Also found out that if I don't eat enough lunch, Strattera still makes my stomach feel like ass. Bleh. I'm down to 169 lbs, slightly under the weight I was in Boston; I averaged around 173 there, IIRC. If the waking up to early, nausea, and/or lots of weight loss keeps up or gets worse when I ramp up to full dosage, I think I'm gonna have to try some other treatment. That doesn't thrill me much; the idea of possibly getting turned down for an alternate therapy and not being able to stomach the side-effects of Strattera makes me want to burst into tears.
sun 13 apr 2003
Taking Wellbutrin early in the morning, strattera for lunch, and then a
sensible dinner, er, wellbutrin in the afternoon seems to work pretty well.
The problem is that it feels like the Wellbutrin is becoming less effective;
my attention is wandering all over the place. Quite distressing.
mon 7 apr 2003
Bleaaaaah. It seems that taking wellbutrin and strattera at the same time
just does not work for me; I get too nauseous. Sounds like I need
to remember to take my wellbutrin as soon as I wake up, rather than taking
it at lunch. Sigh.
fri 4 apr 2003
I'm still at 80mg, still below the optimal dose for me; my psych wants
to make sure my system has settled down enough to tolerate it fully. One
of the weird things I've been noticing is that while it feels like the
Strattera has been less helpful as of late, I think what's actually happening
is that I'm noticing the ADD behaviors more, and that the effectiveness
is the same or better. While I've been my normal scatterbrained
forgetful-as-hell self, I've gotten a bit better at remembering what I've
forgotten. This is encouraging.
Thu 27 mar 2003
Had a little tiny bit of nausea today, but that was it. My motivation
sucks, but that's because I'm in a depressed state and not due to ADD.
Postscript: I think I may have lied; my stomach is feeling not so hot right now, but I've had a lot of food in it yesterday evening and today. The Strattera may have taken longer to start digesting.
Wed 26 mar 2003
Thank goodness, the nausea seems to have subsided an awful lot. I seem
to be a little more lightheaded than usual, but I'll take that over nausea.
My motivation still seems kinda low, but today's been kinda eh ever since
the sun went away.
Tue 25 mar 2003
My stomach continues to be unhappy with me, but it's less unhappy today
than it's been on previous days; while my stomach feels oogie, I'm still
sort of hungry. I'm not sure how my attention span is, since I got all of
three hours of sleep this morning (after thrashing about for five hours
in the night, getting up, eating a waffle, and then going back to bed) so
signs aren't terribly clear. I felt sorta extra-ADDish during my interview
this afternoon at 1; this seems relatively unsurprising, since I usually
take the Strattera with lunch, and thus I'd have the lowest dose in my
system. I'll have to compare tomorrow and see what the difference is; my
attention span could be getting better and I'm not even noticing it.
Sat 22 mar 2003
Ow. My stomach is Not Happy with me. I had some drymouth earlier, but
that's mostly abated. I don't think it was just lunch that induced a
whole lot of nausea. The weird thing is that the nausea didn't kick in
until about five-six hours after taking the strattera. While hot dogs
ain't exactly the kindest thing to one's GI, it's certainly not the sole
cause of my discomfort. I'm also extra-yawny, but that could have been
due to sleeping crappily.
Fri 21 mar 2003
I went up to 80mg today; my final destination dosage is supposed to me 100mg,
but I'm taking it slowly to avoid any nasty side effects. So far I haven't
really noticed any big changes from yesterday; my concentration seems a bit
better, and I seem a bit sleepier when walking around, but those two effects
are
fairly mild. I forgot my morning dose of Wellbutrin, however, so tomorrow
will probably be a better indicator of what the change in dosage induces.
Wed 12 Mar 2003
I've noticed that my writing isn't quite as even in the mornings as it
used to be; I imagine that as my body is getting used to the side-effects,
it's also getting used to the drug in general. Good thing I'm not at the
max dose yet. It could also be due to the vagaries of my digestive system;
I take my dose at lunch to avoid an upset stomach, and it takes on average
two hours to start to be absorbed, so it's possible that the amount of drug
in my system is low by the next day. My short term memory is fairly awful,
but less awful than without the Strattera.
One other pleasant thing to report: I forgot one of the afternoon doses of Wellbutrin one evening, and I didn't get much (if any) of the hyper jitteriness I did before. That's encouraging.
Fri 7 Mar 2003
I've been taking Strattera
since 6 Feb 2003. I had a
really bad initial
experience with it; it seems my body is rather sensitive to
norepinephrine levels, so I've had to ramp up much more slowly than
is 'normal'. Here's the recap of my experience, followed by
my current status.
A month ago, 6 Feb, I started taking 25mg of Strattera a day. I weighed 82kg, so it was only about a quarter of the optimal dosage. I've also been taking 200mg of Wellbutrin twice a day, another SNRI. The only real effect I noticed was some nausea, which was mitigated by taking it with food. My concentration wasn't affected. There didn't seem to be any cross reactions with the Wellbutrin as far as I could tell. A week later, my dosage increased to 40mg; I didn't notice anything different from when I was taking 25mg.
Two weeks later, 19 Feb, my dosage was increased to 60mg. As noted above, this was slower than the standard regimine - usually, 1/2 the final dosage for four days, and then the full dosage after that. I didn't really notice anything that first day, other than a bit more nausea than usual, but the second day (the 20th) I was rather spacey and very distractable, but I also hadn't gotten a whole lot of sleep. The side effects also started in earnest: achy gums, and dry mouth, primarily. I noticed that when I got tired I got 'tunnel thought': I'd be working at the computer, the room would shrink to 3' x 3' x 6' and I'd be completely oblivious to anything outside of that area - until I'd sort of 'come to' and notice that I had surroundings again.
On 25 Feb, things changed a bit. The achy gums and drymouth subsided a bit, I felt real twitchy mentally, and my fine motor control was a little bit jerky, too. I didn't notice it at the time, but my writing had started to get less scraggly - the line heights were more regular, spacing was more even, and the writing had gotten a bit more legible overall. On the 26th, I didn't record anything out of the ordinary, but it looks like I got an awful lot of work done. The 'tunnel thought' had started to abate by that evening, but my thinking still felt a little bit 'sticky' (whatever that means.)
On the 27th, I noted that while I still had some dry mouth, it was much less of an annoyance. It looks like this is when my (physical) writing style stabilized, too; the lines are fairly neat, regular, etc. Furthermore, it appears that the effects hit somewhat of a plateau; I don't see any further changes in my writing, and it looks like my concentration hasn't changed much since then.
My sleep is a bit more disturbed, but nothing too bad. I find that I get real sleepy (but not tired) when I exercise, which is kinda strange. When the blood gets pumping, I start yawning. A friend of mine has this to say about its effects on him and sleep:
*friendofmine* yeah, I found it too sedating
*friendofmine* though i was taking 80mg
-> *friendofmine* the only sedative effect I've noticed is that I get really sleepy when I walk around vigorously. not tired, mind you, but sleepy.
*friendofmine* yeah, it's the sleepy that gets me
*friendofmine* like, languor
-> *friendofmine* the drymouth was what really got me. if the effects get really bad at 80mg, I'd be happy to stay at 60mg. (I'm also on wellbutrin which makes me not sleep enough, so the two sorta cancel each other out, I think.)
*friendofmine* Hm, I got an effect from Strattera where the morning after a dose, I'd wake up at 4 AM all bushy-tailed.
So, that's where I'm at now. It seems to be doing pretty well for me without much in the way of side effects - mostly dry mouth. I'm curious to see what the effects will be like at 80mg.