Anxious about medication

[Atypical Sand]

So I was put on Strattera with the titration pack, starting at 25mg moving up to 80mg over a few weeks, took the 5 days of 25mg no problems and then the first day of 40 I had a disturbing feeling like my heart was being squeezed and I could feel it pounding, this only lasted about 10 minutes, then I felt fine, but I got worried and called my doctor. She said she'd just call in a Rx for 25mg for a while but then I found out it's $200 a month since my insurance only covers generics.

I know there's a lot of other options out there but won't stimulants also maybe have similar effects? I'm thinking about asking to start on the lowest possible dose for a few weeks or a month, to build up tolerance, but I still worry that if I raise it something crazy might happen. Apparently since there was no pain it wasn't a serious thing, but if it happened to you you'd understand that it was not a good feeling at all.

Does your body get used to the increased heart rate and everything? Also it really destroyed my appetite but I've read that after a while you can adjust to that.

It just seems like the solution to the ADHD is as bad as the problem, it just shifts to a physical issue instead of a mental one.

[Dogsquat]

You might have better results asking about this in the Strattera forum, but here's a very unscientific and subjective answer:

I work in health care (I am not your doctor, so take everything I say with a grain of salt) and I come into contact with 20-40 patients every shift I work. Since I have ADD, I like to talk to other people with it (situation permitting, of course). I've talked to a lot of people with ADD! In my informal talks, it seems to me that Strattera works for about 1 in 3 people who try it. For one person it works great, one person it doesn't do anything for, and the third poor ******* has side effects ranging from pain to metric tons of anxiety.

The common thread I see in people I talk to is that most of them have to try several different doses or medications until they settle on something that works for them. My psychiatrist (who is an absolute stud of a doctor, I think) warned me several times at the beginning of my treatment that I could expect about five changes in dosage or medication before we were both happy. Everybody's brain is a little different, and ADHD doesn't have treatments that are "one size fits all" like strep throat does.

Tell your doc all of these things, and be willing to experiment. I'm getting used to my meds now (Vyvanse), and the only side effects I have are the come-down and a little nervousness that lasts for 15-30 minutes when the med starts to work. Other than that, I don't even notice, except to marvel at the fact that my brain actually does what I want it to for awhile.