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Wellness Wednesday for March 15, 2023

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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I (probably) have ADD and I've been taking dextroamphetamine for it for a year now. It works well for me: my only complaint is that when I take a day off of it (which I do once a week to try to stave off desensitization) I get very irritable and snap at people. However my provider is concerned about my blood pressure, which has stayed decently high over the last year. I've tried exercise and losing weight, but it's still high. I know that high blood pressure will kill you eventually (if not your heart, then your kidneys) and have been trying hard to get it lower to no avail.

So she prescribed me bupropion instead. It's a norepinephrine and dopamine reuptake inhibitor (NDRI) used for depression and anxiety but often used off-label for ADHD. She indicated that since it's not a stimulant it will probably have less of an effect on my blood pressure.

So far I've only been on it 4 days, and it's supposed to take 2-4 weeks to really kick in. It's been okay so far: I've been taking a smaller dose of dextroamphetamine along with it to get by until it kicks in. So far I've been less productive at work and more distractible than when I'm taking dextroamphetamine, but I'm also not getting irritable. And while I'm less focused I also seem to have an easier time getting mundane tasks done. Usually when I'm not medicated I despise cleaning, yet the past few nights it hasn't been a problem. Heck, I had a bit of free time earlier than usual and decided to get a head start on my nightly cleaning chores instead of reading a book or playing a video game, which is definitely unusual.

I also seem to have some emotional instability or magnification: I was watching Peter Pan with my kids and when the pirates had Wendy walk the plank I suddenly got choked up and teary eyed. Very unusual, normally I am emotionally detached from fictional works.

Anybody have experience with bupropion?

What about adding intuniv, a combo anxiety/adhd/blood pressure medication, to dex? I love the combo.

Do you love it because you have experience with it and it works, or because it's theoretically the perfect solution? I may have to suggest it to my provider.

Both. I've tried five or ten anti anxiety meds - SSRI, Buspar, lavender, SNRI - and it's the only one that I like. Everything else made me spacy or depressed or sleepy.

I also like that it's easy/fast to titrate on/off. A few days should be enough to know if you like it. It should also be cheap and unlikely to raise flags.

Like everything else ever, may not be great for your appetite or dick.