ADHD meds are known to make it hard to switch off and fall asleep so I asked for a prescription of a melatonin tablet when I was diagnosed to counter that if it happened to me. The trouble was that last night, at the end of the first day on the Elvanse, we had dinner with some friends and arrived back and went straight to bed.
Last night, I couldn’t sleep.
The sleeping tablet, Circadin, is supposed to be taken an hour before bed. I definitely lay awake for more than an hour after taking it and then woke up repeatedly in the night remembering vivid dreams. (The most vivid was a black spider with an orange beard running around my sofa. I hate spiders. It made me wonder if I was being subconsciously warned that some such beast was lurking amongst the pillows ready to run over my face). I’m told the sleep issues should settle down after a few days. I hope so. Some people can function on little sleep. I am not one of them.
This evening I am exhausted. However, that exhaustion combined with the Elvanse 30mg tablet I took again this morning, means I have been pleasantly wired and exhausted at the same time. It’s an odd feeling.
Our middle son (10) was diagnosed with ADHD and ASC when he turned 6. He has never really got on with ADHD meds and when he has taken them, he’s always needed sleeping tablets. As a parent, however much I read about the benefits of the medication and how safe it is, I never feel good about medicating him and the side effects it brings. For our boy, low appetite and sleep issues have been the main problems and he just doesn’t like taking the ADHD meds because he says they make him feel ‘weird’. I’ve never been able to get him to explain what that means. Probably my main motivation for choosing to try medication following my own diagnosis was to gain a better understanding of what he is experiencing. I have not felt weird. I’ve felt better. However, I do not have ASC like my son, and I wonder if ADHD meds are really net positive for him at all.
Our boy has combined hyperactive-impulsive and inattentive subtypes of ADHD. He is kind, gentle, funny, quiet and intelligent but he is also distracted, hard to reach, slow to process information, always moving some part of his body, anxious and difficult to engage in anything but the few narrow interests he hyper-focuses on. He doesn’t find it very easy to fall asleep - he never has - he often tells us his mind is racing and goes through phases of coming down after he’s been put to bed multiple times with various excuses for why he’s up. The sleeping tablets do help and he switched from Circadin to Syncrodin a few months ago. We were told this latter version of a melatonin sleep aid focussed on falling asleep in the first place rather than falling and then staying asleep (like Circadin). This switch does seem to have been better for him. For one thing, he can take it just before lights out rather than us needing to remember to give it to him an hour in advance. I think I would prefer that too. I am sure I will frequently forget to take the Circadin an hour before my usual bedtime.
Day 2 of the Elvanse for me has been less profound than Day 1. I think I did feel calmer again but the feeling was more subtle – or I am getting used to it. I have not been very productive today or yesterday. A friend with a diagnosis of ADHD – a friend who is a parent at my middle son’s school (go figure – a school full of neurodiverse children is also a school full of (mostly undiagnosed) neurodiverse parents!) – described the meds as making her feel like she was ‘in a floaty world where everything was beautiful and lovely’. She was glad that this ‘floatiness’ wore off after a few days or she joked (or perhaps only half-joked!) that she might have just sat in fields every day looking at the clouds!
I’m very happy to look at clouds… but they need to be in my dreams - deep sleep dreams that I don’t really need to remember in the morning. Clouds would be preferable to bearded spiders. I just need to sleep.
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