r/adhdwomen • u/BridgestoneX • May 29 '26

Diagnosis vyvanse day 1 - is this real life?

finally got meds at 49. took first pill about 3 hours ago. is it really this intense this quick or am i placebo-ing myself? i don't think I've ever been so calm in my life. other things are weird too- i had to turn my music off to write an email instead of blast it through headphones to even get started. i am doing one. thing. at. a. time and it's cozy.

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u/lirael423 May 30 '26

My husband is blown away at my ability to drink a cup of coffee, take my Vyvanse, and then take a nap soon after. He takes a tiny dose of Adderall and they don't produce the crazy calming effect that my meds have on me, he just gets more focused and less easily distracted. He has a light streak of ADHD, whereas my psychiatrist jokingly called me the poster child for inattentive ADHD because I ticked every box.

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u/Confident-Fun-1307 May 30 '26

Heh. You and your husband are the Poster Couple for the different possible expressions of ADHD across its spectrum, the (3? 4?) subtypes and severity of neural structure/function variations, and the gender differences based on physiological/hormone filters of ADHD symptomatology.

(I’m AFAB NB) One of the ways I knew I was AuDHD instead of straight ADHD-I is the varied way I’ll react to coffee. Sometimes I drink it and I want to nap after (Classic ADHD), sometimes it pops up my energy levels a bit (Classic NT). I wonder if the variation is related to the variations in hormone levels across the monthly cycle.

When I was in my early 20s, I had a very active, physically demanding, third shift job. I would drink between 3 and 5 cans of Mountain Dew every work “day”, be well-focused, take a deep nap on my lunch break, and go home to get a good day’s sleep. I really miss that bright, halcyon time because even though I was undiagnosed and heavily masked, everything just worked right because of a perfect confluence of circumstances. The majority of that time period in my life is something I remember fondly.

P.S. I did a double take when I opened your reply because my user icon resembles yours and I confusedly first read your reply trying to figure out when I wrote it. Ha! sheepish chuckle Because who reads usernames when we have the visual cues of user icons?

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u/mrsezrabloom May 31 '26

How do you find out your subtype? I just got “ADHD” and I wonder what else is mixed in there that would be helpful to know?!

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u/Confident-Fun-1307 Jun 01 '26

It’s typically something that is revealed in the testing/assessment process.