Adderall & Mood Swings | ADHD Information

Hi Stessman,

Welcome aboard.  There is much good info here.  My storey is very similar cept i was not early 40's but early 60's before getting help...Better late than never.

Meds are VERY individual in their effect.   It was necerry for me to do a lot of experimentation and even change Docs .

 Now me my wife and my church are MUCH happirer with me and so am I....smile

pls keep us posted.

And most helpful to me was "delivered from Distraction" by Hallowell and Ratey.

 

Hello

I am a 43 yr old male who has been in treatment for depression and discovered that I have ADD.

I have been prescribed 20 mg Adderall XR which I take each morning.   Works well but my wife has said that I put on the asshole suit when I am taking this.

I know that I have felt particularly low and seem to really dwell hard on negative thoughts in the evenings on occassion.   This does not make me or life a whole lot of fun.  I recently emailed an awful manifesto to a group of people in my church and for the first time in my life have truly alienated a group of people.

I also am on 50 mg of zoloft.

I am getting ready to try a short acting dose of adderall to see if this helps.  I went cold turkey for a week but the anxiety was unbearable once returning to work on Monday (where I am a manager of an engineering department).

So any thoughts would be appreciated.

What nice posts.  I am glad to be part of this.

Please excuse my typos and misspellings.  my spell check is "not detected on this puter

I heartily echo John's comment to be easy on ourselves.

I do a meditation and exercise routine every day and when i don't I feel the difference.  I am less centered and less content and less happy.

on exercise

I was in New Zealand on a grand adventure years ago.  On the night I arrived in the biggest city aukland, there was a group holding a rally for some important cause.   I liked what i heard and joined them.  They were walking to Wellington the capitol city to give a petition and make noise.  We were a group of about 60 and we walked about 15 miles a day and slept in curches or schools.  I had never walked like that and it was very hard at first. at the end of the ten or so days I felt great.  I remember like it was yesterday the feeling and thoughts as i walked up a slight sloope the last day:  I felt better than I'd EVER felt! My (our) body was ment to be used physically.  I get goose bumps thinking about it now.  And i intend to increase my routine today.  smile

on meditation.

I have tried many types and length of times and routines.  The most important thing for me is the routine.  it made no difference how i did it as long as i did do it!  Since my mind is racing most (all?) of the time, "Mantra Mdeitation" is easyest.  No formal training or innitation is needed.  Google it and lots will be revealed but here is my simple explaination.   do it at a time best for you.  most people do it early in the am, often first thing.  set a clock alarm for 5 min at first then increase by a minut e or two till you find your perfered time of meditation.  for me it is 17 min.  (Commpulsive i am) The Mantra is any word you choose to repeat over and over.  so when you realize you are thinking of other things (very often, most of the time even) just come back to repeating the word.  Traditionally the mnantra is a name of G-d.  Choose one that satisfies you and repeat it over and over as you sit quietly and attempt to not think of other things.  Traditonally a Mantra if given by a guide and i will be happy to fullfill this function for anyone who asks.

 

picking up on IntegretyDespair's excellent comments:

on exercise:  How true that it's often when we are cast in some situation that takes us beyond our perceived limits that our eyes are opened as to our real physical capabilities, and how empowering that is!  That was a more common occurance when we were kids, I think, but as adults we more or less like to stay within our "comfort zone", even when it comes to exercise.  We tend to coddle ourselves, even when exercising, and fail to get that heart rate up there and sustained for the requisite minimum of 20 minutes or so.  Seems I've read from more than one source how, when exercising/exerting ourselves, our minds say "when" way sooner than our body is actually overtaxed (this goes only for aerobic exercise;  for weightlifting, stretching, etc we shold listen to our bodies and mustn't overdue things). 

on meditation:  I wholeheartedly agree that making meditation part of your daily routine -- no matter how well it goes (or doesn't).  I feel the same for exercise, for the same reason:  if I have to ponder each day if I will have time to meditate (or exercise) and then decide when I will meditate (or exercise), just that daily thought process becomes a bother for me and another source of annoyance if I forget or things don't go as planned.  It is only after I've decided that this (meditation, exercise, etc..) is a part of my day, every day, at this specific time--just like getting up or eating supper are things I do every day--that I can  experience and enjoy fully whatever benefits that meditation or exercise have to offer...  

Of course, there are days when things happen in such a way that i can only spend half the time i usually meditating, or I have only 10 minutes to exercise!  Here are opportunities to practice "letting go"-- of being thankful that i have 10 minutes exercise time-- rather than being annoyed or disappointed that i can't enjoy my usual 45 minutes.  Because it's part of my routine, I'll do it even if all I have is five minutes...because I've learned that once I start making exceptions and skipping a day here and there (after all, I'll eat something even if I only have 5 minutes for supper!), I've lost the "routine" aspect and all the benefits and simplicity that goes along with it being routine vs. optional.

 I found your post so helpful.  I am unmedicated for many long reasons, but I've been meditating again, and you're right.  You become more an observer of your thoughts, as you learn not to take them so seriously, but just gently release them.  Another method that has helped me with this is Acceptance Commitment Therapy, which teaches to acknowledge and feel the feeling, positive or negative, then treat it like medication does: let it go and move on to a more value-centered life. There was something else I wanted to say, but...so it goes with ADD, huh. Oh, yeah.  I like the book Wherever You Go, There you are, by Jon Kabat-Zinn. It says that we need to let go of a lot of the control of our life, and it often works itself out without us.  Kind of passive, I know, and definitely not the message our culture gives us.  But perhaps we need a little more balance.  Anyway, I'm rambling...

Mig58

Thank you for the words of encouragement.

I have made the transition to the 10mg adderall and it seems to be much better.  I have not had the crash at the end of the day over this first week.

I have an appointment with my doc on Monday so we will see what he suggests.

Now I have to begin a process of healing alot of hurt with my wife of 20 years.

I justed finished Driven to Distraction.   What a great resource.

Thanks again.

 

   yes,  welcome and wow!  you've experienced a lot of change in your life of late, for sure!  You're a wonderful person bearing a lot of extra "stuff" in your life--that's clear from the little bit you posted.   With your discovery of ADD and all your new-found wisdom reading and learning about it, it's hard not to be hard on yourself for all those past "sins".   In so many ways..."ignorance is bliss" when we go through life unaware of our ADD traits.   So, do try to go easy on yourself, especially right now!

  the meds are great, but even Hallowell and Ratey say they wrote "Delivered from Distraction" partially in response to the many ADD adults who read their first book and felt that it gave short schrift to the critically important and hard work we must continually do, in addition to taking the meds, to moderate our more troublesome ADD traits.

  so i suggest that you make exercise a regular part of your daily routine (see Ratey's book: "Spark") if you're not exercising now.   And as for saying (or writing) things that you regret, try taking up yoga or meditation (or both!).  It's not sissy stuff (Ned Hallowell even does yoga)! It really helps by training your brain what it's like to slow down naturally; and meditation trains you how to observe your thinking as it occurs (which, of course, is the first step in understanding how to control better what you think, say, and write! 

John D & Integrtydespair

Thank you for the sound advice.

I have been trying to take things slow - like trying to repair some damage with my wife before trying to carve out time for exercise but I clearly understand that I need to.

Yoga and meditation interest me.   I am about as flexible as a piece of rebar at the moment however.

 

Mig wrote: "...I like the book Wherever You Go, There you are, by Jon Kabat-Zinn. It says that we need to let go of a lot of the control of our life, and it often works itself out without us.  Kind of passive, I know, and definitely not the message our culture gives us.  But perhaps we need a little more balance...."

jon kabat-zinn is GREAT!  the notion of "letting go" of things can be considered passive i guess...until you try it and find out how hard you have to work at it!  But if we can let go, the reward is liberation...it's liberating not to get dragged down with all the energy and emotion spent trying to ensure things all go acording to our "plan" or our picture of what its supposed to look like. 

For a long time I told myself that my attempts to meditate would never succeed... what with my thoughts racing a mile-a-minute and all.  I'd sit for what seemed like an eternity waiting for my mind to clear itself of all thoughts and thinking...which, of course, it never did!  Turned out I was holding on to the wrong picture of what meditation is all about.  I had to "let go" of the idea that meditation means emptying your mind from thoughts, and instead, watch for  thoughts to appear, and once they appear, let them go.  Like sheep, jumping over the fence and out of sight, like "paying no nevermind" to your thoughts....


Thank you John D and others,
I never understood why I couldn't meditate. Not the way the instructors instructed me to anyway. I'm going to try this the next time I can't shut down the inner dialog. I'm going to look for the book, too.