The thing is that I’m not feeling a single thing different in any way and I don’t even what should I be expecting.

Well, expectation setting should have been a conversation with your doctor. But what I would recommend is to go over the diagnostic criteria and make a list of the ADHD symptoms that you struggle with the most. And then keep an eye out in the days to weeks ahead and figure out if and how those behaviors are different with the medication. Depending on the effects, you might work with your provider to tweak dosage, or to see whether other compounds work better in your specific case.

When it’s a good fit, you won’t really feel any different in the moment, you’ll just notice after the fact that certain things were a lot easier, or you didn’t struggle in the ways you usually do.

And please remember that medication is one piece of the puzzle, not a silver bullet. You still have to make good choices and build good habits, but medication should help you get out of your own way when trying to do those things.

How were your first moments/days/weeks with medication?

In my experience, since it’s a prodrug, lisdexamfetamine is the least physically noticeable of the stimulants. I could not tell when it was kicking in or wearing off, compared to dextroamphetamine where it was only obvious when it was kicking in, and methylphenidate (MPH) where it was obvious on both sides. For me, task switching is a big challenge, and the “invisible wall” in front of “just doing” necessary things that aren’t fun, is a lot easier to get past when I’m medicated. While lisdex and dextro gave me the executive function to do things without chaos, they also made it harder to break away from interesting things, which was counterproductive. I also found myself forgetting to eat to an unhealthy degree. I ended up settling on MPH because it gives me mental clarity without those downsides, and when it’s obvious that the medication has worn off, it’s much easier for me to avoid staying up late.

Another huge benefit for me personally is that I was self-medicating with extremely heavy caffeine use (300-400mg per day to be able to function, every day for years) and had physical anxiety symptoms (that I didn’t recognize were because of the caffeine) that came along with that. After I was medicated I quit caffeine cold turkey. Now, instead of taking like four hours to fully wake up after my morning energy shot, I feel awake and alert at a normal level within like 45 minutes of taking my meds, I stay alert all day, and I physically feel so much better. For example, driving is way less stressful now, both because I feel more attentive to my surroundings and because I do not have that baseline anxiety that driving would ratchet up even more. (It was really fun to go out to breakfast with my family and realize I had a good reason to drink decaf!)

In general it is much more difficult to notice the absence of obstacles compared to noticing the presence of new ones. An eye-opening experience for me was about a month into being medicated, when I forgot to take it in the morning for the first time, and I got to experience the symptoms that had been missing coming back in full force that day. Brain fog and feeling like I couldn’t think straight all day. Getting up and trying to do like four things at once and barely getting one of them done because I was going back and forth too much. Deciding I need to go run an errand and not being able to actually get up and do it until like 4 hours later. I’ve been unmedicated once or twice for a therapy session by now and my therapist has said it’s VERY OBVIOUS due to how scatterbrained I am, lol.