I am new to this site and I have a question. I am currenly on Adderall 30mg twice a day but I usually don't take the second dose unless i am in school. My doctor just recently asked me to stop the week before school starts then start up again.
I have noticed this before when I forget to take my pill and I am wondering if this is normal. When I don't take my meds I am so tired to the point where I am unable to function. It feels like a fog has settled into my brain.
I thought that if you have hyperactivity then you are bouncing off the walls rather than sleeping against them.
The opposite is true for night time. Even though I am fatigued throughout the day i can't fall asleep at night.
Does anyone else have this issue?

Yes.

Have no idea what to do.

I can't go on without meds now. I just fade away, unmotivated and tired. Wishing I lay in bed all day long while at nights I just can't shut my eyes.

This is the bounce-back effect from being on the meds. You get used to being on the medication, that when you quit, you noticed the negative effects of ADD more.

hyperactivity changes into internal restlessness in adults. or anxiety. or verbal speediness, IME.

I have noticed this before when I forget to take my pill and I am wondering if this is normal. When I don't take my meds I am so tired to the point where I am unable to function. It feels like a fog has settled into my brain.


That happened to me just today! I forgot my meds (ritalin), and about halfway thru the morning, I got so sleepy, tired, and even a little off-balance. The trouble was, I wasn't absolutely SURE I had forgotten them...kept trying to remember. Finally, at noon, I just decided that must be what was happening, and took them. Felt better in about an hour.

Okay, so I started taking my meds again and I feel better. But how come I didn't notice my ADD before I started taking medication? I was diagnosed late, at 29, and I never noticed these problems before. It seems the older I get the worse the symptoms get.
I recently acquired my school records from my mom and I looked through all my years in grade school. It was enlightening. It shows a progressively worsening of my personality/attitude as I have gotten older.
Does this mean when I am in my 50's that I am going to be in a padded room?
And why am I so short tempered with my child and husband? How can I help my attitude?

One of the things about ADD and ADHD that shows up later in life (including adulthood), is that it's often been there your whole life, but you've been able to compensate for it earlier in life. However, as the demands and complexity of things begin to pile up, your ability to override it cannot keep up. So to answer your question, you probably aren't "regressing", but rather an underlying symptom is just coming out more than when you were younger. On the flipside, typically later-onset ADHD is usually more common in intelligent individuals! This is often due to their ability to compensate for the disorder in the early grades, but the disorder eventually catches up when the material becomes more challenging.

As far as the med thing goes, Adderall, can be very tricky to balance. Sometimes, an overdose of meds results in similar symptoms to an underdose and lead one to erroneously increase the dosage (and thereby worsen the problem). Here's a good blog article by Dr. Charles Parker on this, called the Therapeutic Window (http://www.corepsychblog.com/2008/11/add-adhd-stimulant-medication-dosage-underdose-or-overdose.html), which deals with over and underdosing on ADHD medications.

Okay, so I started taking my meds again and I feel better. But how come I didn't notice my ADD before I started taking medication? I was diagnosed late, at 29, and I never noticed these problems before. It seems the older I get the worse the symptoms get.
I recently acquired my school records from my mom and I looked through all my years in grade school. It was enlightening. It shows a progressively worsening of my personality/attitude as I have gotten older.
Does this mean when I am in my 50's that I am going to be in a padded room?
And why am I so short tempered with my child and husband? How can I help my attitude?

Well the progression of ADD symptoms can be slow, and people have a propensity of developing coping mechanisms to compensate.

Also, ADD'ers are very poor self-diagnosers - because we have poor memory, we can't see the whole picture.

As for your short-fuse: that's another ADD trait. We have low tolerance for frustration, but medication should help with that.

Another thing to remember is that the stimulant you take is affected by your estrogen level. I can almost tell you the day that I started peri-menopause.

You can consider taking a low dose birth control to replace the estrogen in your system. Many women do well with that. If you don't want to add a new pill to remember (or forget!) try adding a B Complex supplement. That has been working well for me.

When I don't take my meds I am so tired to the point where I am unable to function. It feels like a fog has settled into my brain.




Occasionally I've run out of my medication or decided to take a short break from my meds.Whenever I feel my medication isn't working as well, I find it helpful to go off it for a few days. It seems to be more effective when I restart it. If you work or go to school you could do this on a week-end.

However, when I do go off my medication, all I want to do is sleep!

I have inattentive type ADD so our reactions to meds may be different, but this is what's helped for me.

Per my request, my doctor gave me a prescription for Provigel. I believe the dosage is one half of a 200mg tablet. This is a medication that is stimulating, but NOT in the amphetamine class of drugs. The main effect of this drug is to increase alertness and reduce daytime sleepiness. The benefit is that it will not effect nightime sleeping and it's not a controlled substance so you don't have to go through all the gyrations of filling a scheduled 3 drug prescription. It works well for me to reduce the sleepiness and fatigue, although it's not been proven effective for reducing ADD symptoms.

Ask your doctor about it. Hope this helps.

I have the same issue. I just go into such a sleepy tired mode and feel like I can barely function. Generally I don't take my meds on the weekends to catch up on my sleep but sometimes by Sunday I can barely stand myself and will have serious regrets for not taking the meds. I do find though that my meds seem to work best for me with a break here and there. My dr. said for me there was no reason I needed to do it more of a personal choice.

Hope you are feeling better soon.