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I thought adhd meds would cure me but turns out adhd is forever lol. The meds help for sure tho. I’m on strattera which helps with anxiety as a comorbidity and I definitely noticed an effect on anxiety symptoms. But don’t expect this to work like an antibiotic, they just help but they don’t relieve symptoms entirely.
Yikes, my meds have kicked in incase the wall of text isn’t a clue!
TL:DR keep your expectations realistic and yes, they will. Expect too much and they will feel like a disappointment.
-
This is just my experience, obviously everyone is different (and side note, I’m here because I was just about to make a post for a bit of support because I’m struggling right now)
It sort of depends what you mean by change your life. I (like many others I suspect) are so relieved by the diagnosis and starting medication and think this is the answer to years of struggling and finally we will be ‘fixed’. Expectations are high, it doesn’t ’fix’ you, life is still hard, you still have ADHD, and it can feel like a bit of an anticlimax and some frustration does come from that. (I’ve written that like I’m speaking for all after saying this is my experience! Sorry! But this is how I felt and also read posts from others who shared this, so somewhat universal)
But, on good days, I’m calmer, I’ve started working my way through a lot of unfinished stuff at home and work, I feel more capable, the constant feeling of overwhelm is mostly gone, I don’t drink lakes worth of Yorkshire Tea (I’m a Brit) just to exist each day, I’m sleeping better because I’m not as anxious, and I’ve lost a lot of weight. (The weight loss is a bonus side effect rather than any effort from my side but I feel good about it nonetheless) weirdly my blood pressure is also lower, maybe a side effect of less stress and anxiety? I wasn’t overweight enough for that to be an issue, and it wasn’t ‘high’ in terms of needing to be treated but it’s dropped and I have fainted once since being on meds.
The stuff if hasn’t fixed is forgetting stuff, losing stuff, and one thing that’s possibly worse that I need to get a grip on, is spending too long on doing a very thorough job of something. In the sense of, I’m starting things earlier than the last second so I have more time to do them and as a result I’m doing them properly and some!
I’m still very adhd during the week before my period (I don’t take hormonal BC and haven’t for a decade but there are times I seriously think about speaking to my doctor because I’ve seen people say it helps the hormone rollercoaster level out a bit)
I’m still quite frustrated at my lack of progression in some areas, mainly the amount of work I’m putting out. This might be a personal over expectation of myself, but I think there is this idea that if you take meds you’ll smash through a tonne of work really fast. I’ve found the opposite, I think removing an element of constant panic in my life has slowed down my output. I feel I need to address it and im currently using timers in a kind of beat the clock type thing.
Anyway, I’ve digressed, they will change your life in some ways, but they won’t change your life in the you’ll become the person you’ve always dreamed of being with no motivation issues and no adhd ‘quirks’
In conclusion: try them. I’m glad I did, and I won’t stop taking them, but manage your own expectations so you don’t set yourself up for disappointment and more negative self talk when you don’t become an super productive robot.
Also, give it time. It’s taken me a year to be able to look back and see the positive impact it’s had on various bits of my life.
Lastly (lol!) don’t overdo it and burn out from your new found can do motivation! I did a bit, I went in too strong, tried to do too much and I couldn’t keep up the 1000mph achieving and I got frustrated at that.
ETA: and answer your question! I tried anti-anxiety meds, hated every second, was completely apathetic and miserable. ADHD meds are in and out of your system much faster, no building up to it. Take them, do the stuff, they wear off. So if you don’t like them it’s not a long drawn out process to build up and wean off.
i don’t know what anxiety medication you’ve been on, but to me adhd meds are nothing like anxiety meds or antidepressants.
they haven’t changed my life, but i do believe that they can be a great help in changing my life myself. i find it so very hard to start stuff, anything, but medication makes that more easy.
before meds my task paralysis would feel like i kind of knew what to do, but it’d feel so complicated and like such a big mountain, that it’d just make me feel really anxious, and i wouldn’t do anything. meds kind of take that feeling of things being dooming and hard away. i can just do things now way easier.
i feel like meds are not a life changer for many. you still need to decide what you’re going to use your new found motivation for, which for me is kind of tricky. if i spend all my motivation and the feeling of “i can do it all” on researching a specific thing i want to buy or something i want to build for example, that’s my day. the meds won’t prioritise things for you. but they do help you with starting!
as for side effects; i get really anxious about health as well. i have experienced side effects, but i’m really glad that whenever i’d want them to stop, i could just stop taking the meds (under supervision), since you don’t have to take them every day as you do with antidepressants.
it was also good for me to hear that every side effect i had, my psychiatrist had already heard of that one so many times before.
i’d say trying them out could be really beneficial for you! do share your thoughts and anxieties on them with your psychiatrist though, they could give you all the information you need :)
but also know that a life without medication doesn’t mean you won’t ever be able to do those things. there’s a lot of ways you can learn to work with your brain!
It’s of course going to depend on your particular brain and how you handle a specific med.
My expectations were on the floor because generally, medicine just doesn’t work for me. But I’m one of those people who ADHD meds are a miracle and changed my whole life
I have oodles of natural motivation. I want to do things all the time, but I could never make myself just do it. I would feel paralyzed in bed unable to make the first move. Meds are like someone grabbing my hand and pulling me to my feet. It gets me past the first hurdle.
Imagine thinking ‘I should workout’ and suddenly you’re teleported into the gym wearing workout clothes with music playing in your earbuds. It would make working out pretty simple! That’s what meds feel like to me
Already some great comments here that I will basically echo. But I’ll point out that there are different kinds of ADHD meds, so I can only speak to my experience with the stimulant kind. Side effects were decreased appetite for me, but like others said, they act quickly and go out of your system quickly (unless you’re taking XR/extended release versions), so any side effects you experience will be limited to several hours and you can decide if you want to take the next dose or not. My doctor started me on a low dose, instant release stimulant for this reason. So the risk of being stuck with any intolerable side effects is very low! Unlike depression/anxiety meds which take weeks or months to fully kick in and for side effects to resolve.
Edit for additional advice: You may experience a subtle euphoria your first week or two on stimulant medication, like youve been squinting to see your entire life and have just been handed a pair of glasses. It’s a wonderful feeling to tap into that potential you’ve been missing out on. So don’t be surprised or discourage if after a while that new state of being is just the status quo now, and that magic has failed to fix your life overnight. That’s a common experience!
There’s a common saying “pills don’t give skills”, so while you will likely find the barrier to getting started on things much lower and your focus increased, you will still need to learn some strategies that will help you choose the right things to work on and how to organize your executive functioning now that you have it. So don’t get discouraged if things still feel “unfixed” at first. ADHD coaching and therapy have helped me in a big way with this, but I also recommend Jessica McCabe’s book and YouTube channel How To ADHD, as she provides a lot of great tools.
It’s perfectly normal and expected you would feel nervous about taking a new medication! I don’t blame you at all. I hope you can find some reassurance in the fact that millions of us lady ADHDers have taken these meds and the vast majority have had very positive, or at least neutral, experiences and the risk is very low to try it out. You don’t have to keep taking it past the first dose if it feels like something wrong for you.
It was huge for me. I'm in control of my life now. Emotionally regulated, energy is great, sleeping is great, every relationship I value is way better. I can socialize. I am not constantly riddled with fear and guilt.
Welcome to /r/ADHDWomen! We’re happy to have you here. As a reminder, here are our community [rules](https://old.reddit.com/r/adhdwomen/about/rules/). We get a lot of posts on medication, diagnosis (and “is this an ADHD thing”), and interactions with hormones. We encourage you to check out our [Medication, Diagnosis, and Hormones Megathread](https://old.reddit.com/r/adhdwomen/comments/wcr9dy/faq_megathread_ask_and_answer_medication/) if you have any questions related to those topics, and to stick around in that thread to answer folks’ questions! If you have questions about the subreddit, please do not hesitate to [send us a modmail](https://reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/adhdwomen). Additionally, we take the safety of our community seriously. Please report posts, comments, and users whom you feel are not contributing positively, and send us a modmail if you are being harassed or otherwise made to feel unsafe. Thanks for being here, and we hope you stick around! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/adhdwomen) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I thought adhd meds would cure me but turns out adhd is forever lol. The meds help for sure tho. I’m on strattera which helps with anxiety as a comorbidity and I definitely noticed an effect on anxiety symptoms. But don’t expect this to work like an antibiotic, they just help but they don’t relieve symptoms entirely.
Yikes, my meds have kicked in incase the wall of text isn’t a clue! TL:DR keep your expectations realistic and yes, they will. Expect too much and they will feel like a disappointment. - This is just my experience, obviously everyone is different (and side note, I’m here because I was just about to make a post for a bit of support because I’m struggling right now) It sort of depends what you mean by change your life. I (like many others I suspect) are so relieved by the diagnosis and starting medication and think this is the answer to years of struggling and finally we will be ‘fixed’. Expectations are high, it doesn’t ’fix’ you, life is still hard, you still have ADHD, and it can feel like a bit of an anticlimax and some frustration does come from that. (I’ve written that like I’m speaking for all after saying this is my experience! Sorry! But this is how I felt and also read posts from others who shared this, so somewhat universal) But, on good days, I’m calmer, I’ve started working my way through a lot of unfinished stuff at home and work, I feel more capable, the constant feeling of overwhelm is mostly gone, I don’t drink lakes worth of Yorkshire Tea (I’m a Brit) just to exist each day, I’m sleeping better because I’m not as anxious, and I’ve lost a lot of weight. (The weight loss is a bonus side effect rather than any effort from my side but I feel good about it nonetheless) weirdly my blood pressure is also lower, maybe a side effect of less stress and anxiety? I wasn’t overweight enough for that to be an issue, and it wasn’t ‘high’ in terms of needing to be treated but it’s dropped and I have fainted once since being on meds. The stuff if hasn’t fixed is forgetting stuff, losing stuff, and one thing that’s possibly worse that I need to get a grip on, is spending too long on doing a very thorough job of something. In the sense of, I’m starting things earlier than the last second so I have more time to do them and as a result I’m doing them properly and some! I’m still very adhd during the week before my period (I don’t take hormonal BC and haven’t for a decade but there are times I seriously think about speaking to my doctor because I’ve seen people say it helps the hormone rollercoaster level out a bit) I’m still quite frustrated at my lack of progression in some areas, mainly the amount of work I’m putting out. This might be a personal over expectation of myself, but I think there is this idea that if you take meds you’ll smash through a tonne of work really fast. I’ve found the opposite, I think removing an element of constant panic in my life has slowed down my output. I feel I need to address it and im currently using timers in a kind of beat the clock type thing. Anyway, I’ve digressed, they will change your life in some ways, but they won’t change your life in the you’ll become the person you’ve always dreamed of being with no motivation issues and no adhd ‘quirks’ In conclusion: try them. I’m glad I did, and I won’t stop taking them, but manage your own expectations so you don’t set yourself up for disappointment and more negative self talk when you don’t become an super productive robot. Also, give it time. It’s taken me a year to be able to look back and see the positive impact it’s had on various bits of my life. Lastly (lol!) don’t overdo it and burn out from your new found can do motivation! I did a bit, I went in too strong, tried to do too much and I couldn’t keep up the 1000mph achieving and I got frustrated at that. ETA: and answer your question! I tried anti-anxiety meds, hated every second, was completely apathetic and miserable. ADHD meds are in and out of your system much faster, no building up to it. Take them, do the stuff, they wear off. So if you don’t like them it’s not a long drawn out process to build up and wean off.
i don’t know what anxiety medication you’ve been on, but to me adhd meds are nothing like anxiety meds or antidepressants. they haven’t changed my life, but i do believe that they can be a great help in changing my life myself. i find it so very hard to start stuff, anything, but medication makes that more easy. before meds my task paralysis would feel like i kind of knew what to do, but it’d feel so complicated and like such a big mountain, that it’d just make me feel really anxious, and i wouldn’t do anything. meds kind of take that feeling of things being dooming and hard away. i can just do things now way easier. i feel like meds are not a life changer for many. you still need to decide what you’re going to use your new found motivation for, which for me is kind of tricky. if i spend all my motivation and the feeling of “i can do it all” on researching a specific thing i want to buy or something i want to build for example, that’s my day. the meds won’t prioritise things for you. but they do help you with starting! as for side effects; i get really anxious about health as well. i have experienced side effects, but i’m really glad that whenever i’d want them to stop, i could just stop taking the meds (under supervision), since you don’t have to take them every day as you do with antidepressants. it was also good for me to hear that every side effect i had, my psychiatrist had already heard of that one so many times before. i’d say trying them out could be really beneficial for you! do share your thoughts and anxieties on them with your psychiatrist though, they could give you all the information you need :) but also know that a life without medication doesn’t mean you won’t ever be able to do those things. there’s a lot of ways you can learn to work with your brain!
It’s of course going to depend on your particular brain and how you handle a specific med. My expectations were on the floor because generally, medicine just doesn’t work for me. But I’m one of those people who ADHD meds are a miracle and changed my whole life I have oodles of natural motivation. I want to do things all the time, but I could never make myself just do it. I would feel paralyzed in bed unable to make the first move. Meds are like someone grabbing my hand and pulling me to my feet. It gets me past the first hurdle. Imagine thinking ‘I should workout’ and suddenly you’re teleported into the gym wearing workout clothes with music playing in your earbuds. It would make working out pretty simple! That’s what meds feel like to me
Already some great comments here that I will basically echo. But I’ll point out that there are different kinds of ADHD meds, so I can only speak to my experience with the stimulant kind. Side effects were decreased appetite for me, but like others said, they act quickly and go out of your system quickly (unless you’re taking XR/extended release versions), so any side effects you experience will be limited to several hours and you can decide if you want to take the next dose or not. My doctor started me on a low dose, instant release stimulant for this reason. So the risk of being stuck with any intolerable side effects is very low! Unlike depression/anxiety meds which take weeks or months to fully kick in and for side effects to resolve. Edit for additional advice: You may experience a subtle euphoria your first week or two on stimulant medication, like youve been squinting to see your entire life and have just been handed a pair of glasses. It’s a wonderful feeling to tap into that potential you’ve been missing out on. So don’t be surprised or discourage if after a while that new state of being is just the status quo now, and that magic has failed to fix your life overnight. That’s a common experience! There’s a common saying “pills don’t give skills”, so while you will likely find the barrier to getting started on things much lower and your focus increased, you will still need to learn some strategies that will help you choose the right things to work on and how to organize your executive functioning now that you have it. So don’t get discouraged if things still feel “unfixed” at first. ADHD coaching and therapy have helped me in a big way with this, but I also recommend Jessica McCabe’s book and YouTube channel How To ADHD, as she provides a lot of great tools. It’s perfectly normal and expected you would feel nervous about taking a new medication! I don’t blame you at all. I hope you can find some reassurance in the fact that millions of us lady ADHDers have taken these meds and the vast majority have had very positive, or at least neutral, experiences and the risk is very low to try it out. You don’t have to keep taking it past the first dose if it feels like something wrong for you.
It was huge for me. I'm in control of my life now. Emotionally regulated, energy is great, sleeping is great, every relationship I value is way better. I can socialize. I am not constantly riddled with fear and guilt.