I’m on day 13 of Strattera, and I wanted to see if anyone else had a similar experience to mine.
Pros:
- My ability to focus is still better than without it, but it’s not as good as the first few days when paying attention was fascinating. I have to make a conscious effort to engage at first, but once I do, I stay focused and can even stay stuck in what I’m doing.
- I have relatively little social anxiety. I’m not worried about upsetting anyone. This is very weird to me.
- I take my time with things. It’s like I’m calm and can focus without concern.
- I fall asleep relatively easily compared to before. I don’t need to take melatonin or anything. I just lay down and fall asleep. Super weird because before I would have to distract my brain by reading until I fell asleep while doing so. Prior to Strattera, if I laid down with nothing to distract me from my thoughts, I wouldn’t fall asleep.
- I’m much less depressed than before. It’s like I’m ok. I’m not great, but I’m not in despair.
Cons:
- My sexual functioning has tanked. I can’t even get a full erection, though my libido is still 100%. It’s frustrating and hampers my desire to meet women. I only sleep about 6 hours. When I wake up, it takes me at least an hour to get going.
- There’s a peak time period per day when my attention is good, and that’s somewhere between 1p & 6p. Before that, I’m too groggy. After that, I’m too tired from intensely focusing.
- I’m a bit more physically lazy. It’s like, I’d rather watch a video or read than fold my laundry.
- Urinating is more difficult to get started. I go to sleep every night feeling like I have to urinate, but when I go to the bathroom, nothing comes out.
- Despite the ability to focus, I feel stupid and slow. It takes me a while to process data.
- I’m much more forgetful. I used to be able to hold several streams of consciousness at the same time. This used to help me do a task and hold a thought in reserve until I was done. Now, that thought disappears into the void. For example, yesterday, I remembered like 5 times that I had to transfer the towels from the washer to the dryer. I never did it because I would forget 2 seconds later. Previously, I would have remembered. I think that this paired with the forgetfulness, I look pretty stupid when talking to people. It takes me a moment to react to what they said, and I forget to say parts of what I wanted to say. I probably look pretty dumb and slow.
Neutral:
- Dreams are incredibly vivid. Last night, I even started dreaming while still awake. It was very odd. At first, I thought I was hallucinating, then I realized that it was a dream kicking in while I was getting sleepy.
- Aside from laying down to go to bed, I cannot just sit and let my mind wander. I need to actively be engaged in something. This is most evident when I’m driving and waiting at a red light. I immediately pull out my phone to engage in something.
I’m trying to get a conversation about this going so I can decide if I want to stay on this medication or not. I’m in between, as you can see that there are some good pros, but there are also some remarkable cons. I also know I’m only at the end of my second week, and this med can take up to a month to hit full force, so I’m going to ride it out until I see my psych in just over a week.
Talk to your doctor about all of this. They should have more information and should be able to help you.
Wikipedia lists many of your side effects. Urinary retention is a rare side effect, and erectile dysfunction as a common side effect. Sleepiness, weird dreams, insomnia, and fatigue are also listed.
With that out of the way, I’ve never taken anything other than the stimulant medications, so take my experience with a grain of salt.
I know that if I don’t get enough sleep, and then I take my meds, I’ll get really sleepy. I’m still able to focus, but the quality of my work is worse. It’s possible you need more sleep. 6 hours isn’t enough for most people, including me. Now if I could just take my own advice…
If I was in your shoes, I would definitely try a different medication. What’s the point in being able to focus if you feel too slow to do anything with that focus? My only side effects of my stimulant medications are some irritability after they wear off, dry mouth, increased heart rate, and occasional insomnia that’s easily fixed with melatonin. They help me focus, and they don’t have any impact, positive or negative, on my cognitive abilities.
What’s your dose? I had some issues with a higher dose (40mg) and settled on 25mg as enough to mitigate my symptoms without causing insurmountable issues.
I had your start dose and kept with the for, I think, 3 months (I was about 80kg when I was on it and also took 7.5mg Adderall 2X per day).
I felt around half of the same effects as you overall. Like it could split the difference between an antidepressant and ADHD medication. I was generally just a little more at ease, better at planning my actions, down to the wording of my conversations. I think it helped me reduce my use of melatonin like you.
But my deal breaker was feeling so sedated for the second half of the day. Nothing else got in my way like coming home (from a desk job, of all occupations) and immediately passing out on the couch. I don’t know what your biggest detriment is with those side effects but personally, I’ve stopped meds for fewer negative effects than that.
That said, I’m not saying to stop taking it right now or stick it out longer than you can handle. Your doctor should know which effects are transient, I don’t. What I am saying is that all of your opinions, both positive and negative, are worth talking about with your doctor. Ideally they’ll use your feedback to track transient side effects or change the dose. Psych drugs are trial and error and it’s really aggravating when you get exactly the positives you need out of one medication and then some side effect just hits you like a brick out of nowhere or when little things just pile on over time.
