Backstory: I first tried to go to college almost 8 years ago. Immediately there were problems: I was very distractible, fidgety, irritable/frustrated easily, hypersensitive to sound, social problems... a few classes and labs where people often grouped off and worked on projects were a nightmare for me, everyone talking all at once, bustling about, etc... I would have small panic/rage attacks and have to leave class. It was getting humiliating and affecting my performance on tests, everything. I was also dealing with migraines and have been most of my adult life. I went to the counseling dept and they referred me over to be tested for something called auditory processing disorder and put me in a therapy course for it and strongly suggested I take ativan on school days. I refused to use any benzo (only allowed myself ambien because regular sleep was vital for discouraging migraines) and just white-knuckled it for one more semester, then one day in a psychology class I had an attack so bad I went straight home, skipping other classes, and I didn't leave the house for 3 days (it takes me several hours to recover just from being outside among people on average days, so that time was particularly bad). By the time I was ready to go back outside again, I had lost the will to go back to school, so I never did.
Fast forward 7 years, I now have had medical coverage for about a year and have been to a slew of doctors, most settling on some combo of anxiety/depression, asperger's w/schizoid traits. With the new treatment and some assistance from stuff like piracetam, tryptophan and theanine, I went back to school. My RXs at the time were wellbutrin, ambien and sumatriptan. But I started having the same problems in class. Doc keeps wanting to give me ativan and I say no, but I do agree to gabapentin and I also start taking small OTC doses of lithium. Some help, calming and making me a little more comfortable in class, and I can find my words a little easier, which is important because I'm taking two music classes, ear training and choir, this semester as an experimental therapy for some of my psychological issues + tinnitus. But things were getting so bad I was terrified of falling out of school again so I finally agree to fill an ativan prescription and use it for class. A significant improvement in some things, such as music, though I still hate sitting down in choir and sometimes irritate others around me by bouncing my leg and fidgeting in agitation, but no real effect in classes like English, where I have all of the same frustrations and performance problems (just in class, I still get As on every paper even though it takes me twice as long as most people to do my work, and haven't yet lost my 4.0 gpa)
One of my teachers (who remembers me from 8 years ago LOL) commented that she thought I was mostly reacting to the stress of boredom, watching how my mood changes with the level of interest I have in whatever task she has us doing in class, how my boredom is easy for her to see and how it quickly turns to irritation with everything getting on my nerves. These are things I had never been aware of in myself. She says boredom actually puts the brain in a stress-state, kicking up the amygdala and whatnot. Well, docs tell me I always manifest anxiety as anger which is why they think I have an anxiety-stress problem instead of a classic anger management problem and keep trying to give me anti-anxiety stuff.
I told this to my doc at the last visit two days ago, also telling him that the gabapentin/ativan combo isn't really helping with the major problems, only some minor ones, and he suddenly looks at me sideways like something just clicked in his head. He says maybe I've been have an attention deficit problem this whole time, since a lot of the symptoms I've been having most of my life look like anxiety/depression but also asperger's and could just as easily be add/adhd... and there is my family history of dad with dsylexia and brother with ADHD. He thought maybe because I was a girl and my symptoms were not as extreme as my brother's or other boys', docs were likelier to diagnose me with anxiety instead of adhd. So now he wants me to try adderall. I balked at this immediately because of what I know about the amphetamines and using them long-term, both from my extensive readings about nootropics and from my little brother's experiences with ritalin. I told him no and he said to just think about it, to consider at least a small trial of it, and then he sent the script to the pharmacy in case I decided to get it. So I mulled it over the past few days and after today's English class and all the usual horror, I said 'fuck it', went down to the pharmacy and got my adderall.
My question to experienced adderall users is this: how should I work this into my usual stack? I'm usually sensitive to stimulating stuff like oxiracetam, phenylethylamine, phenylalanine, sometimes citicoline, even coffee and fish oil, though I've been known to chain-smoke and chain-vape when I have to do a lot of reading or writing.
What I'm doing now: mostly a combo of migraine prophylactic stuff, minor nootropic use, others to make up for the restrictive diet due to avoiding strong migraine trigger foods... (none of these are large doses, most are actually lower than average doses because my system is highly reactive, one of the reasons I'm a migraineur in the first place, mostly powders mixed and taken in one shot)
multi w/o copper or iron
activated b-complex, extra 100mg riboflavin, 300mg pantethine
coQ10 w/tocotrienols
lithium orotate
butterbur
l-lysine
l-tryptophan
d-ribose
l-methionine
l-carnitine
creatine
citrulline malate
tri-calcium w/K & D
magnesium malate
potassium amino chelate
ginger w/ turmeric, usually have tea later in the day instead of second capsule
probiotic
(often but not always) flaxseed, cod liver oil
(cycle together) taurine, beta alanine
piracetam never exceeding 1 gram /day (low dosing w/o choline works best for me)
zrytec & claritin 10mg each (people say don't do this, but it's doc's orders lol since an mri showed lots of calcium deposits in my sinuses)
wellbutrin sr 150mg 2/day
gabapentin 300mg 1 or 2 a day
ambien 10mg every night
(as needed) theanine, schizadrol a, citicoline, n-acetylcysteine, melatonin
Ideas? Should I make sure to take theanine with my adderall doses? He gave me 10mg tabs but told me to break them in half if I wanted. I see rumors that ginger may help negative effects of adderall on the dopaminergic system, but no agreement on dosage, I already take it for migraine but I could increase the dose if necessary. Is there anything else like this?
Thanks for reading all of this
