ADHD

I’m on day 13 of Strattera, and I wanted to see if anyone else had a similar experience to mine.

Pros:

• My ability to focus is still better than without it, but it’s not as good as the first few days when paying attention was fascinating. I have to make a conscious effort to engage at first, but once I do, I stay focused and can even stay stuck in what I’m doing.
• I have relatively little social anxiety. I’m not worried about upsetting anyone. This is very weird to me.
• I take my time with things. It’s like I’m calm and can focus without concern.
• I fall asleep relatively easily compared to before. I don’t need to take melatonin or anything. I just lay down and fall asleep. Super weird because before I would have to distract my brain by reading until I fell asleep while doing so. Prior to Strattera, if I laid down with nothing to distract me from my thoughts, I wouldn’t fall asleep.
• I'm much less depressed than before. It’s like I’m ok. I’m not great, but I’m not in despair.

Cons:

• My sexual functioning has tanked. I can’t even get a full erection, though my libido is still 100%. It’s frustrating and hampers my desire to meet women. I only sleep about 6 hours. When I wake up, it takes me at least an hour to get going.
• There’s a peak time period per day when my attention is good, and that’s somewhere between 1p & 6p. Before that, I’m too groggy. After that, I’m too tired from intensely focusing.
• I’m a bit more physically lazy. It’s like, I'd rather watch a video or read than fold my laundry.
• Urinating is more difficult to get started. I go to sleep every night feeling like I have to urinate, but when I go to the bathroom, nothing comes out.
• Despite the ability to focus, I feel stupid and slow. It takes me a while to process data.
• I’m much more forgetful. I used to be able to hold several streams of consciousness at the same time. This used to help me do a task and hold a thought in reserve until I was done. Now, that thought disappears into the void. For example, yesterday, I remembered like 5 times that I had to transfer the towels from the washer to the dryer. I never did it because I would forget 2 seconds later. Previously, I would have remembered. I think that this paired with the forgetfulness, I look pretty stupid when talking to people. It takes me a moment to react to what they said, and I forget to say parts of what I wanted to say. I probably look pretty dumb and slow.

Neutral:

• Dreams are incredibly vivid. Last night, I even started dreaming while still awake. It was very odd. At first, I thought I was hallucinating, then I realized that it was a dream kicking in while I was getting sleepy.
• Aside from laying down to go to bed, I cannot just sit and let my mind wander. I need to actively be engaged in something. This is most evident when I'm driving and waiting at a red light. I immediately pull out my phone to engage in something.

I’m trying to get a conversation about this going so I can decide if I want to stay on this medication or not. I’m in between, as you can see that there are some good pros, but there are also some remarkable cons. I also know I’m only at the end of my second week, and this med can take up to a month to hit full force, so I’m going to ride it out until I see my psych in just over a week.