It’s exhausting because I spend a good portion of the day waiting for my mind to start working, and it’s pretty inefficient. I’m trying to figure out what this is all about, like is it temporary due to burnout, Strattera, or something else.
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I find my brain isn’t fully online for probably about that. This is after taking vyvanse and my iced latte (about 1.5 - 2 oz espresso).
I feel I’m awake but not fully with it. At least that is my perception based on attempting to do the times crossword. :) When I first wake up I feel like an idiot trying to think of the answers and about 2-3 hours in I come back to it and it is much easier. No this isn’t scientific at all lol. And I’ve only just started noticing this in the last week or two.
I am not usually particularly groggy after about 10 minutes.
I should mention that about 30-60 min after taking vyvanse I get a mood lift and feel especially motivated to accomplish things.
Anyway no I don’t feel like it takes that long to reach peak operation.
Off the medicine I’m similarly awake but don’t get the mood lift and cotton-headed and less self-motivated all day instead of clear.
Same. I wake up at 6 - 7 and start work at 8, but am not really with it for anything other than answering simple emails until 9 or 9:30.
Jokes on them, they scheduled a 8 am work session twice a week for the next year. That’s gonna be supremely unproductive
Sleep apnea can also cause fatigue for hours when waking up and it often goes undiagnosed for people living/sleeping alone.
Basically the body refuses to breathe correctly while sleeping, which leads to oxygen deprivation in the brain, causing a huge strain on the heart and cardiovascular systems.
Some side effects are difficulty waking up in the morning, general fatigue or tiredness during the day, gasping for air while sleeping (you wouldn’t notice this yourself), and sometimes especially vivid or weird dreams.
Definitely check with your physician as it can cause early heart failure.
my autism therapist said the same thing. i just gotta have the energy to ask for a sleep study from my medical system. ugh, the system is so draining tho.
In that case get it done, don’t wait on it, usually they will want to run the test overnight, some places require you to sleep in their room. If you do have sleep apnea the machine should improve your quality of rest significantly once you have start sleeping with it.
Dude I got my CPAP machine like two months ago and once you get a mask that fits it changes everything. Like, I was tired, but I wasn’t just tired. I was short with my partner, I was doing bad at work and convinced they were just waiting for an excuse to fire me, I wasn’t enjoying the stuff I was doing or spending time with my friends. Once I got my sleep right everything else came back.
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Yes. Getting up is so exhausting
Do you exercise? What is your diet like?
I know you’ve probably heard all of this before, but once I started running like 1 hour a week (20 minutes at a time was super manageable for me) and paying a bit more attention to what I ate my sleep schedule and morning alertness became way more consistent.
i used to go to the gym, but im having difficulty getting going enough to make it thru the day. like, im barely making it while a lot of typical life things are falling behind, like house maintenance, cleaning, mowing, laundry, etc.
i eat once a day in the afternoon and have a snack just before bed.
Takes me 16 hours of trying to wake up, then I go to bed and try again the next day.
You on that never give up grind (ง •̀_•́)ง
Yep. This is partly why I work US PST/PDT hours despite living three time zones eastward. If I couldn’t get to sleep until 2:00 am my time, I can still get eight hours of sleep and be up an hour before work. And because West Coast folks tend to be less anal about such things (they just care that work is getting done and communication is happening), if necessary I can start an hour or two late on days when there are no morning meetings.
I also only take my first Dexedrine dose unless it’s a very bad day for focusing and I don’t have any morning obligations the following day.
This is neat accommodation! Nice 😃
I’m literally exhausted all the time. I know some of it is my (poor excuse for a) diet. I just never have any energy. I really have to push to do anything.
that’s what im going thru too. it’s so hard.
Since I stopped drinking and doing drugs I don’t have that issue anymore.
that’s great!
in my case, i havent done drugs in over a year nor drank in over a month.
No.
- Make sure you’re well hydrated after getting up
- Make sure you’re always getting out of bed immediately after the alarm goes off
- Make sure your alarm goes off at the same time every day
- Make sure you’re getting up at the first alarm
- Make sure you’re going to sleep at the same time every day
- Make sure you’re showered before sleeping
- Make sure your bed sheets and room are clean before sleeping
- Make sure you’re off your phone for as long as possible before sleeping
- Make sure you’re not drinking coffee too late into the day
- Make sure you’re at least getting a brisk walk worth of exercise during the day
I am exhausted and dysfunctional on anything less than 8 and a half hours of sleep. If I sleep 8 hours a day starting Monday, I have a headache and killer migraine by the weekend.
Way more people are like me than people realize, but society has somehow normalized 8 hours of sleep. That said, good sleeping habits are worth so much and improve your day by immesurable amounts. Once you start taking sleep seriously, there’s no going back.
Edit: Lol@ victim mentality. Up to you if you want better sleep or not
I would love to be able to follow such a tight schedule, but I also need 9 good hours of sleep and can’t keep a regular schedule.
I get most of my energy in the evening (or whenever the evening is based on when I woke up) which is when I can actually get shit done.
I’ve tried many times, but if I go to sleep without being tired then I might not fall asleep at all, so I just switch timezones instead, it’s simpler and I get enough sleep.
It’s kind of sad that something as basic as feeling rested after sleep requires this much regimen.
Are we supposed to spend our whole life as robots? :(
That’s the secret - With good habits and schedules, you’ll know when it’s okay to take a cheat day or 2 :)
These don’t work for everyone. You can take your sleep seriously without doing all of these. Just because you do all these things and are awake right when you wake up doesn’t mean they are why you are awake right away. Some people’s brains simply take longer to wake up.
Good luck keeping on a lot of that with ADHD
It also doesn’t work for everyone even with following it strictly. Just because something works for some, doesn’t mean it works for everyone.
Exactly. I simply don’t wake up right away to my alarm. Never have. I have to have a second alarm because even with tasks to dismiss it I am not awake right away and will often fall back asleep. As for making sure you fall asleep and wake up at the same time, uh if someone is struggling to fall asleep and/or wake up, telling them to just fall asleep or wake up is like telling someone with asthma to just breathe. Not helpful.
Also, just because you do something and something else happens doesn’t mean A caused B. I could say that going for walks is why I don’t have heart issues but that doesn’t make it true.
Make sure you don’t have sleep apnea
Thanks for the concern, but completely fine ^^. Sleep is love, sleep is life.
This sounds like stupid counter culture bragging. Some people require 6 hours. Some people require 10. Listen to your body. Do what it says. No one is better or worse because of how much sleep is required.
- A 6.5 hour sleeper
You’re not alone. I wake at 7am, sit for about an hour for my brain to spool up, shower and get ready, and leave by 9:30am
thank you 😊
Non-24h sleep disorder is a common comorbidity with ADHD. If you are always tired when you wake up this is likely the cause.
Comorbidity? Is that really the right term here? Sounds extreme.
Yup, it refers to conditions that occur together.
Although morbid has quite a negative connotation in everyday use, the common latin root between comorbidity and morbid just means something like sickness.
Technically just having a cold is a morbidity.
Recorded since 1656; from morbid, from Latin morbidus (“diseased”), from morbus (“disease”), from the root of morī (“to die”) or from Proto-Indo-European *mer- (“to rub, pound, wear away”).
Non-24h sleep disorder
omg that is me! I’ve always had trouble staying on a 24 hours sleep schedule. I just keep falling asleep later and later, until I get so tired from sleep too late and waking up early, that I finally crash. this has been my life story.
I do it until I fall asleep at like 3pm and then wake up at midnight and then it takes a few days to get back to a “normal” pattern until slowly the 3pm crash comes back around
yeah, im thinking of doing a reset next week. i’ll stay up all night and go to sleep at a decent time the following night.
Could be both that and burn out and/or depression. Talk to a professional, not the internet, about this.
pls enjoy a recent research paper: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32538895/
Yep. I don’t have it diagnosed because my sleep study didn’t show anything so apparently I don’t have anything 🙄, aka I don’t have sleep apnea so sleep medicine didn’t care, but I almost certainly have non-24h. During covid lockdowns I slept when I was tired and ended up on a 25.5 hour schedule. I actually woke up and was awake. It was great.
It takes all of the spiders a while to leave your head
Facts
So very much yes. I’m not on any meds like strattera or stimulants like Adderall, and I definitely take the entire morning to get going.
Unless there’s an emergency at work that requires adrenaline and attention, I don’t produce much of anything until the afternoon.
You’re not alone!
thank you 😊
I’m quite useless for at least the first one and a half hours after waking up. My strategy is ritualization. In this time I do the same things in the same order every working day: I get up, make breakfast for our cat, take my meds, switch on the coffee machine so it can heat up, shower, shave, brush my teeth, dress, emty the dish washer, make coffee for my self and (if she is already awake) one for my wife. Then pack my lunch, grab my headphones and go to the bus stop. All those things I can do with minimal brain capacity since I have done them the same way thousands of times. And when I arrive at work I’m at least 80% awake.
Maybe inversion of sleep schedule? Apparently, that’s common with ADHD. But, in doubt, seek professional assistance.
the psychiatrist i have access to sucks. she acts like im ruined her day for showing up to my sessions. it’s part of the US veterans system, and i’ve seen other psychiatrists here. they’re shit. im considering dropping the ~$350/session just to aee a private one.
If you’re just burning through money without improving, I’d also suggest to look for alternatives. If you have the option, maybe psychiatrists in other states would be more willing to help you?
nah, it’s government healthcare, so i don’t pay anything. my other option would be to pay ~$350 out of pocket for a private psychiatrist. i might be able to get that down to ~$250 if i could find a psych nurse practitioner, so there’s that option. now that i think about it, i could try searching for a psychiatric med provider that specializes in autism and adhd. they might know what’s up compared to these jaded VA psychs that treat everyone like their hunting for disability benefits.
