I posted elsewhere in the thread about my late diagnosis. When I was much younger than when I was diagnosed, I was on Bupropion for smoking cessation and it had a pretty significant positive effect for me with respect to my ADHD symptoms (which I didn’t recognize as ADHD at the time). Definitely worth exploring; it doesn’t work for everyone but it can be quite effective if it does work for you.
I would second your suggestion to investigate bupropion. More than a decade ago I was suffering from severe depression. Psychiatrists with meds were an easy-to-access front line treatment, but I was very concerned about SSRI side effects, particularly erectile side effects. It didn't take much persuading to have the psychiatrist prescribe bupropion instead of an SSRI. I too felt it helped with my then undiagnosed ADHD a lot.
As a note, bupropion did make me feel a little funny. It wasn't bad, weird, or intolerable, but yes I did have a faint perceptual awareness that I was in a medicated state.
For the first couple of weeks the first time I took it, Bupropion:
- made me feel pretty energetic. Not buzzed, but maybe counteracted low-grade depression. I was on it because I wanted to quit smoking, because I was hoping quitting smoking would make me feel better/happier
- slightly affected my vision/perception. Colours seemed more vibrant. Everything just felt perceptually… brighter.
- made me really horny, but not in a compulsive way. It wasn’t distracting and didn’t cause any problems, but I definitely had more drive. When it was go time, it was Go Time :)
What's up with the bullet points? This almost reads like a ChatGPT/AI comment, which is especially weird for a personal recollection. Are people writing like frickin robots now?
They’re just lucky I didn’t have a big run-on sentence, like I used to before taking a serious look at how ADHD affected my writing and thought processes, including significant use of parentheticals (because every thought comes with a couple of extra thoughts, for free!)
I have to say, buproprion had severe, life-threatening side effects for me. I'm not in a typically high-risk group for psychotic symptoms, but it caused me to become quite agitated and delusional.
It feels strange to type that now, and I know these side effects are quite rare, but I can't help but warn people when I see it mentioned. It was genuinely the most terrifying experience of my life.
It happened about 6 weeks into treatment, quite acutely. I wasn't even aware it was happening.
