I am new to ADHD medication. I have been on generic Focalin XR capsules for a month. This has been my experience.
On my first dose, I had about one hour when I felt exactly like I had hoped: alert, able to control my mental impulses, ready to do tasks that are normally hard for me to think about. Then, after that hour, I started to feel overstimulated. That night, I couldn’t sleep till 5am. I messaged my doctor, and he said to give it a week to adjust, but try to take it earlier in the morning. As the week went on, the overstimulation calmed, but not enough. I felt like I was trapped in a rollercoaster, and the longer it went, the more unhappy I was. It was like the medication was giving me more ability to focus, but then took away all that focus while I sat waiting for the minutes tick by till it got out of my system.
So, the doctor said to try opening up a capsule, separating out roughly half the granules, putting half back in the capsule for the next day, and spoon-feeding myself the other half. I couldn’t really tell that this dose was having much effect at all. Maybe I was paying better attention in meetings, but it wasn’t enough.
Next the doctor said to try making myself a 3/4 dose. Maybe a little better, but still not enough.
So he said that on the next refill day, he would switch medication families (I’m assuming to the Adderall family).
In the meantime, I decided to give a 7/8 dose a try. This seems to give me the worst of both worlds. Ineffective, but still a little overstimulating. My brain did kind of feel more relaxed in a certain way, but it wasn’t helping me like I needed it to.
So, now I’ve gotten myself anxious that no medication is going to be right for me. Is that overstimulated feeling something everyone deals with?