How it feels on day one isn't how it's going to feel on day 7 or 20. It will fade into the background more and the initial euphoria you may feel will dissipate, but as you say you're not after a buzz you're trying to get shit done and stay on task.
I'm glad you mentioned as thats definitley something for me to keep in mind. I will admit the 60mg dose was definitley a bit ambitious as I always am with these kind of things. I would say I bit off more than I could chew but thats a bad analogy as that feeling was very blissful and would be very easily abusable for me if I didn't have other goals I am chasing. My point being that I tend to try to bypass the gradual change in reaction from the start by going bigger, which leads me to get more than I bargain for, not just in substances but everything. I think the approach here is to definitley creep up. My go big or go home behavioural pattern can end up shooting me in the foot sometimes.
See now that is more or less equivalent taking another 60mg of elvanse which is a bit concerning. The highest dose of elvanse they're going to prescribe you is 70mg a day, possibly with a low dose of dex as a booster if you're lucky (not all clinicians will agree to prescribe boosters once you're already on the max dose if elvanse) so you are currently relying on a higher dose of stimulant to be functional than is ever likely to be prescribed, which could be a problem long term.
Ideally (imo) if you are planning in giving elvanse a decent shot then you need to take the methylphenidate out of the equation entirely.
I think you mentioned before about methylphenidate being counteracted after amphetamines which seemed to be the case when I took it after the elvanse. I wouldn't have guessed that equivelancy as 60mg of elvanse feels highly pleasurable to me where as 30mg of XR methylphenidate feels almost inperceptible in many ways as in the recent days I have gone from enjoying the fact that it does a decent job of eleviating my symptoms to just being used to my symptoms being lessened as a baseline and feeling like I have a belly full of pills all the time. What I mean to say is that my differing perceptions in pleasure of the two substances / doses lead me to falsely believe that taking 30mg of methylphenidate would have been much less in equivelancy to elvanse, where as now I know that's not the case. My redosing of methylphenidate was an attempt to level out the feeling of decreased pleasure and increase in symptoms, but after experiencing it I can certainly say the two just don't work that way (for me at least) and I definitley would not do that again, not just because it did not work and just make me more jittery but its also a waste of resources. I just put my body under more than double the stress and do not level out or experience a second decrease of symptoms after the initial elvanse dose. But taking methylphenidate although does relieve symptoms in the morning does make me feel like shit and just jittery and nasty, and would leap at the chance to do away with it and stick strictly with elvanse, but the 30mg caps don't eleviate my symtoms and 60mg is just to euphoric so I'll have to just try 40 for now and see how it goes. To describe what I actually want in terms of what I know now is the eleviation of symptoms I experienced from the 60mg of elvanse minus roughly 80% of the euphoria / mood boost but with that feeling lasting longer. For me as soon as I begin to level and drop I am aware of what is to come, which is why I feel that I would make great use of boosters. Anyway, this is all speculation and much of it likely unrealistic so I will just have to titrate and find out. Regardless of this I think I'm going to lay off the methylphenidate except for monday and tuesday mornings when work is at its peak as a back up as they really don't feel good.
I think I was 9 or 10 the first time I was medicated and I'm in the second half of my thirties now. I have tried for years of my life to function without stimulants and I've had consecutive years where I've been on them with only a few short tolerance breaks. Each way of living has its pros and cons but ultimately I've realised that if I'm going to effectively manage my career and personal life (not to mention illicit/recreational substance use) then I'm probably going to be dependent on stimulants to some extent for the rest of my life.
I cant imagine how that must shape your perspective on life and I'm greatful to have a place where people can share this information so that people like me can benefit from it instead of learning entirely from first hand experience which is a much longer road I am sure. Do you feel like shit on tollerance breaks, or do you just percieve a missing of the pros and a relief from the cons? I am always trying to treat medication as just that, a medication, but the reality is that all of these substances are addictive in terms of the fact that they make you feel pleasure and shape your brain and perspective on life. I think if I hadn't had prior experience with substance use / abuse I would be far less cautious and probably sucked straight into the cycle of pushing it as far as it can go. After experiencing that and coming out the other side with substances that I would say that do not as perfect as elvanse, I would say I know never to blindly trust euphoria as a metric how positive something is for you, and that you always get what you paid for in terms of genuine enjoyment. Computers are great for that because they're really annoyingly difficult to make work, but the feeling of getting a crazy exploit to work fills you with an indescribable ammount of euphoria, and you paid every penny for it fair and square all up front.
Thanks for all the advice, it's much appreciated
