Anxiety and adhd medications

[daybyday365]

I can't keep my anxiety down sometimes. I had a job interview today and sometimes my frustrations and insecurities come out. I can't keep my emotions in check. I know it's my medications and caffeine. I like the way the meds and caffeine make me feel. But when I'm overly anxious than it's a bad recipe for trouble.

[Mamamichl]

my doc told me to stop caffeine altogether with the adhd meds. I still wake up ok and alert. Ask your doc about an emergency anxiety med. look into hydroxyzine and propanolol. Propanolol gave me asthma and hydroxyzine didn’t do anything for me, but they all work differently for everyone. Some of my friends think their hudroxyzine is amazing. You would take the med before an anxiety inducing event.

[Ampersand1]

I had to cut my caffeine back to only one 8oz cup of black coffee in the mornings. Otherwise I'd get jitters and almost uncontrollable anxiety. The anxiety is almost certainly because of this combo of meds+caffeine, so it's up to you to decide if feeling good with the current situation outweighs the discomfort of anxiety. You already know the best ways to address your problems, and if it is a regular enough thing, then adding anti-anxiety medicine as a bandaid is not likely a good idea.

[FocusAndFlow]

I hear you... It can be a job interview, or any given situation, someone's response to something in 'the wrong tone', etc. Then I get upset and anxious at the fact that I get upset and anxious, and a vicious cycle is born again that can last a few hours to a few days. I hate this.

I'll tell you, having gotten off benzos about five years back, I firmly believe that more meds is not the answer. Those things made all my anxiety worse and by quite a margin. I got off them cold turkey and it almost killed me, but I did it. That said, they left a lot of damage in their wake and I'm still healing from it. If anything, I'm using my current Rx (Ritalin) to understand it as a crutch that helps me change BEHAVIOURS instead of trying to complement it with other prescriptions. I'm training swimming laps again, white-knuckling my recovery that way. Honestly, it's taken months of almost going into a full blown panic attack every time I got in the pool (I used to be a swimmer in highschool), but now I'm at the point where I train almost every day and the exercise is the biggest medicine. The ritalin only makes me a bit more 'able' to execute on the exercise. It makes it easier for me to get around the 'wall of awful', and just get in my car, drive to the health club and get in. Without it, it is extremely stressful and my success rate drops significantly. That said, It's the swimmign that helps more in the end, not the Ritalin. I believe this approach is much, much better overall.

Naturally, when I started, I was obsessing about number of laps, distance, time, and this incessant need to always to better 'or else'. I changed my mindset about the swimming to merely concentrate on counting my laps and NOT LOSING COUNT (Wow, that took months...) and watching my breathing. In that sense, it's similar to meditation. I've learned to focus my mind better in the water and that then extends to the rest of my day out of the water.

Long story short, I'm doing much better, but yes, it's constant maintenance. If I don't swim at least a good 1500-2500yds in 32-50 minutes, respectively, a good two to three times a week, my memory starts suffering again, I get more confused, I get anxious, I start forgetting words, and the vicious cycles come back, etc.

I'm not sure what your equivalent would be as swim training is for me, but know that I understand what you're going through and I would encourage you to look for that activity that is rewarding to your brain and therefore helps you calm down. This obviously has immediate benefits from an anxiety perspective, but it also improves cognition, executive function, etc. which wards off anxiety episodes better and better over time.

I encourage you to exercise in something you enjoy that gets your breathing and heartrate going for a good 23 minutes every day, minimum. The more strenuous the exercise, the better you'll tolerate it over time and the better you will feel and perform overall (not just in the exercise, but in all facets of life).

In closing, my family just let me know they're getting me a cold plunge IcePod for father's day. I can't wait to try it, as deliberate cold exposure therapy is supposed to be AMAZING overall, but especially for ADHD symptoms. Yes, thank you!

Keep fighting the good fight, and make sure to look to sleep, nutrition, supplements/vitamins, and especially leveraging all that to change BEHAVIOURAL patterns over time to build better habits. Sure, Rx plays a role in all that as well, but only just. Make sure you look beyond medications to feel better. Once you start discovering these levers, things start to genuinely get better. Yes, it's hard work, but it's totally worth it.