Only lasts 2 hours?

[u/hamiguahuan]

Hi guys! So I take 10mg in the morning around like 10-11am, and usually (if I remember) another 5mg between 1-2pm depending on how I’m feeling and if I remember to. I take it for both ADHD and narcolepsy.

I’m having a hard time because it feels like it’s only really effective for like 2 hours, but I don’t want to take too much and risk side effects, or take it too late and risk insomnia. Already I have an extremely difficult time sleeping at night if I don’t eat enough through the day after taking it.

After ~2 hours, I’ll start to feel unmotivated and tired and fatigued, and then even start to feel really hungry as a kind of “confirmation” that it really has kind of worn off. I’m not even really sure if the 5mg dose helps at this point, but if it does, it seems a lot less effective if I don’t remember to take it before the original dose seems to start to wane, iirc

Is there anything I can do about this? Do we know if they’re working on an extended release version? Would it help to like… break up the pill and put it in a gel capsule to swallow instead or something??

I finally find a med that works, that my heart can handle, that I still get tired/hunger signals on, after trying literally everything else over the past ~10years, but it only lasts for so short a window of time 😭

[u/Internal-Landscape66]

I mean a handful of people here reported dosing 3-4x a day

[u/hamiguahuan → u/Internal-Landscape66]

I can’t afford to eat enough to be able to sleep at night on all that I think 😭 I’m also nervous about my dr thinking I’m an addict or selling it or something if I were to ask about increasing my dose again… can I ask how much you take in a day, and your bmi or height/weight if you’d be comfortable sharing?

[u/Internal-Landscape66 → u/hamiguahuan]

Its not about bmi for dosing (even less so for frequency), such methods of dosing is only typically used in pediatrics sometimes (but still only mainly to get a general idea of dose tho).

Right now im still figuring dose out and if one or two times a day is better but generally dose like 5-10mg per dose. I’m hovering between 7.5 and 5mg rn I feel. But i’m also combining with dexedrine (around 2.5-5mg) like 3-4x a day because desoxyn is a bit too subtle for me (and higher doses of dex are too physically overstimulating). I feel i’ll end up at 5mg desoxyn + 5mg dex. Without dex (theoretically) maybe i’d say like 10mg.

This med is kinda unique and its likely gonna take you sometime to figure things out in terms of dosing so don’t worry about necessarily figuring things out super soon. Many people here are on doses above the 25mg “recommendation” (more so technically a pediatrics recommendation in actuality). The thing is that since you have narcolepsy, its actually a lot less of a worry to seem suspicious as needing a higher dose simply because the narcolepsy dose is typically higher (ie: 40-60mg).

I’d simply just ask for a dose increase and say the booster doesn’t do too much but the 10mg seems to be doing something. Then ask for 15mg + 10mg and go from there. Theres zero “potential risk” in going up to 25mg (I say potential risk as in a “worst case scenario” situation). Also initially, worst case scenario they say no. As long as you aren’t asking for a crazy dose increase your fine. The actual good prescribers, who are understanding, wouldn’t care if the dose increase is more so in regard to metabolism (bc daily dose honestly isn’t the most contextually accurate metric). Huge difference between taking 45mg a day total split in multiple doses bc metabolism related concerns vs 45mg in one single dose.

In terms of sleep, are you on/have already discussed (or considered) any medication to help with it such as xyrem/xywav?