Rum + Beer + Vyvanse = Hangover

Had a pretty major hangover today, without drinking too much last night.

Went out with the guys last night, and figured the Vyvanse would be out of my system by 9PM, after taking it at 8:30AM. I had two rum and cokes at home while my buddy had a couple of beers. At the bar, I had three beers, then stayed up pretty late hanging out with everybody afterwards. Slept on my buddies couch on the other side of town at the end of the night.

I normally wouldn't get a hangover from that amount of alcohol, but had a big one today! I figured, oh it's just a little fatigue, came home to take a nap after lunch and took Vyvanse, figuring that if I took it and woke up about 30min later, I would be ready to get some studying done during the day. I laid down for the nap and slept for about 2hrs instead of 30min. The funny part is that my dreams were less random and more focused. Who woulda' thunk it? Maybe a lot of it is also from the lack of sleep this past week.

So now, I'm getting ready to have some dinner and a movie with the girlfriend tonight. Hopefully there isn't too much Vyvanse in my system to sleep tonight, after having taken it at noon.

Day 4:

Vyvanse (30mg):

Wake time: 9AM

Take pill: 12:00 noon

Onset: 2PM?

Peak: 5PM?

Offset: Hopefully before bed

Effects: worse hangover than usual

Activities: not much of anything, going to dinner and movie soon

Side effects: normal appetite, fatigue, small headache, all could be attributed from alcohol and lack of sleep

Overall: Feeling less fidgety than usual, and pretty focused, now that the hangover is going away

Vyvanse - Day 2-3

Well, as it turns out, I haven't been able to get much sleep, just due to circumstances. Monday night, before taking the first pill, I was nervous and didn't sleep too well.

Tuesday night, I was up late (4AM) talking over some issues my girlfriend was having, but slept like a rock after.

Thursday - last night, possibly due to Vyvanse, I was tossing and turning, all through the night.

Yesterday was pretty good, although instead of testing my focus by reading, as intended, a lot of the day was spent taking to a friend. She said that I "seemed more focused and less off-topic" than usual". That's good...

With all of that said, it's somewhat hard to gauge the effectiveness of the drug at this point.

Sailing last night went pretty well. I felt a little more focused than usual, even with the drug pretty much worn off. Afterwards the girlfriend and I went to dinner with some friends, by that time I could feel the Vyvanse wearing off. It seems that when it's wearing off, there's a sudden fatigue and a bit of nervousness for some reason.

I'm dragging big time today, with barely any sleep last night. I'm meeting up with friends for the usual "Friday Guys Night" tonight, and could probably nap for 4hrs if there was time.

Day 2:

Vyvanse (30mg):

Wake time: 10AM

Take pill: 10:30AM

Onset: 11:10AM

Peak: 2PM

Offset: 5PM

Effects: little bit of dry mouth, normal appetite, awake, calm

Activities: talked to friend, read, CAD, bit of cleaning

Side effects: from about 12 Noon for about a couple of hours, 2-second headaches in different parts of my head, normal appetite

Overall: Felt pretty focused at Border's, slightest bit of difference in physical feeling. Less fidgety, less changing sitting position, steady, relaxed.

Day 3:

Vyvanse (30mg):

Wake time: 8AM

Take pill: 9AM

Onset: 10AM

Peak: 1PM

Offset: 3PM

Effects: dry mouth, normal appetite, focused, tired, calm

Activities: reading at B&N, met with friend for lunch, errands, creating charger for bluetooth

Side effects: only a couple of those 2-second headaches today, very tired, but that's my fault

Overall: I felt pretty focused today, just extremely tired. This drug is definitely not going to make up for lost sleep.

My First Day on Vyvanse / First Post

Hello everybody. First of all, since most of the readers will probably be ADHD, I chose the least distracting and best organized layout for this blog.

Since this is the first post, I will introduce myself:

I'm a guy in my mid-twenties who recently faced the music and decided to treat his ADHD (sounds like some sort of commercial LOL).

College degree: Physics

Activities: A lot

Smoking: ~10/day (now trying to stay on nicoderm and nicorette to quit)

Drinks: ~10 once a weekend

My first diagnosis was at the age of 3. In Headstart, (pre-K) my teachers told my mother I was mentally retarded and would run around the class, and basically do whatever I wanted. After seeing a psychologist, they diagnosed me with ADD. My mother refused to put me on Ritalin, after seeing what it did to other kids at the school.

Long story short, after two years of Headstart, and another two years of kindergarten, everything was not smooth. Although I graduated high school with a 3.9/4.0, college proved to be more difficult. The math problems became longer, and more difficult. The papers grew from a few pages to a few dozen. Something that was easilly managed and often funny became much more problematic. In school, I was constantly on detentions for talking back to teachers, defying teachers, and that type of thing.

Obviously, I studied my ass off with the new challenges in college. With ADHD I would spend hours studying, often barely getting anything done, just staring at the books, looking at every distraction, rarely able to concentrate on the materials.

The classes I did best in were the more interactive classes. Where interaction wasn't allowed, I would often interrupt the teacher with off-topic questions and annoy them to the point of surreptitiously lowering my grades.

OK, this is getting pretty boring, and I keep switching between AIM, Facebook and watching TV. So here's the rundown.

Story of the day:

Today I started Vyvanse, and decided I should take this seriously (as I really don't like taking prescriptions and medicine in general) and try to get the most out of it by documenting it. Only I realized that instead of documenting it privately, it would be help a lot of people if it is public. Each day, I'm going to try to document my progress with ADHD, the drug I'm taking, and any other steps to improve the symptoms.

Day 1:

Vyvanse (30mg):

Wake time: 10AM

Take pill: 10:30AM

Onset: 11:30AM

Peak: 2PM

Offset: 4PM

Effects (in order): lightness, less distracted by birds, cars, people, shower felt great, want to clean/organize, started to feel pretty focused

Activities: organized a little, did small tasks, went to Barnes and Noble read for 4hrs!

Side effects: 2PM headache started, thought it could be a caffiene headache so I ordered a small coffee at 3PM, headache persisted, kept reading until 4:30PM, came home, extremely fidgety from 6PM to 7PM, ate dinner, headache persisted, took 400mg ibuprofin at 8PM, headache gone by 9PM.

Overall: Felt pretty focused when I was reading at B&N, lots of noises, music, people, coffee grinders, noticed little of it, and was distracted less by things that I noticed until about 4PM. No real "buzz" feeling, which I was worried about, physically felt a little like Sudafed (either original pseudoephedrine or phenylephrine).

All in all - Good day, minus the headache.