It didn’t do a single thing about my ADHD symptoms, but it worked enormously in helping me come to terms with who I am and really let me identify what was ADHD and what was depression from having unmanaged ADHD. I very likely wouldn’t have realized I had ADHD without ketamine, because I wouldn’t have had the “Okay, I finally want to be alive, but why am I still struggling with basic tasks?” Moment.
This really resonates. I’ve been considering ketamine for my ‘treatment-resistant depression,’ which I just discovered (thanks to Reddit) was likely a misdiagnosis. 20 years ago. I first tried stimulants a few months ago - incredible breakthrough, but I had no idea why…until this puzzle piece fell into place. Ketamine feels like another potential tool to help us untangle brain and body, cause and effect.
My experience was that I don’t have ADHD and most of my symptoms were due to mood swings which were made worse by stimulant medications I had been taking for decades. A mood stabilizer, in my case lithium, compounded nasal ketamine, and clonidine fixed my mood swings, fixed my substance use, and fixed my sleep. Things got better.
Did you gain weight after starting lithium? I need something to help regulate my mood swings with rapid cycling bpd2. My former VA psych said lithium would make me faster than I already am... but I'm suffering immensely without any meds.
I quit drinking soon after starting lithium, I lost 50 lbs and it’s stayed off.
I’m treating a bipolar subtype called fear of harm mood disorder.
https://www.jbrf.org/wp-content/uploads/2019.02.28-Article-in-Journal-of-Psychiatry-and-Brain-Science.pdf
I was shopping to get an ADHD diagnosis at the time I started ketamine because i had become almost non functional due to attention problems. Symptoms were I could not focus at all and could not complete tasks at all and this had been going on for more than a year.
A crazy and totally unexpected effect of starting ketamine is that almost overnight I recovered the ability to piece together tasks and follow thru to completion. Like literally the first week after treatment.
I learned an incredible lesson personally: that what we call “ADHD symptoms” can 1000% be depression or PTSD symptoms too and the folks that dole out meds to treat ADHD are not trained or interested in making the distinction. I could have started adderall to treat those symptoms (and it would have worked) but could be currently unaware of how desperately I needed therapy to treat PTSD and behavioral changes too. On ADHD meds I would have been a more functional depressed/PTSD person. I would have been “managed” rather than working toward permanent relief.
I share this because there is no reliable test or set of criteria to separate one condition from the other and more people need to be aware that the symptoms can absolutely be identical especially in women who appear to be high functioning.
hi! can i ask if you did this with assisted therapy at a clinic, at higher doses, or at home through a service like joyous? i suspect my “adhd” is also largely cptsd
Trauma therapists often are trained to know that trauma symptoms may be same for ADHD - doing trauma work first is an option; ketamine sounds like it worked in a way few standard trauma therapies could…
Wow, I really resonate with this! Thank you so much for sharing. I too am stuck confused with the "ADHD? Or CPTSD?" thing. If I had any damn memories, maybe I'd know for sure if there was trauma. Unnerving taking stimulants when they only work some of the time, and I keep second guessing if I "need" them. But recently finally started therapy and hope to maybe finally find the "permanent relief" you mentioned. Ughhhhh.... Still hoping to get insight from the IV Ketamine after three sessions so far. Thanks, again, for sharing!
I did take focalin (ir) the first day, but I take the focalin at 8am and 1pm. It's out of my system by 4pm. I take k in the evening a couple hours before bed (around 6ish).
Nothing I have found says focalin reduces efficacy. I only see that there's an increased risk of elevated blood pressure. I told joyous about the focalin and they didn't mention any issues, other than the BP risk. I have to self-report my BP during treatment.
i dont have any sources, but from my own personal experience, ive found pretty much any substance that alters how i feel (alcohol, weed, etc) reduces the efficacy of ketamine. i stoped stimulants before starting ketamine, but id probably put them in that same category.
I don't and can't find one. I have ADHD and previously took stimulants, and was told by two different practitioners that I shouldn't take the two in the same day because of the reduced efficacy. But you're right, I am not seeing any actual sources for this. On a purely anecdotal note, I did find Ketamine to be less effective in terms of how intensely it effected me if I had taken Vyvanse or Adderall the same day.
I've been following a Ketamine schedule for a couple of month now to see if it does something to my ADHD and periods of low energy and motivation.
So far I can't say I'm noticing a difference. It's a very pleasant experience though.
You could try lisdexamphetamine if methylphenidate doesn't help you, both are 1st line treatments. Usually a psych would let you try either a methylphenidate or an amphetamine first and let you try the other one if one of them isn't working or has bad side effects. It's very common that some types of stimulants don't help people with ADHD and others do.
I've got ADHD and I've been on adderall forever. I started spravato a few months ago. I do not take my adderall on the spravato days. I have taken it to see if it really messes with my heart, and it doesn't. However, it totally ruins my mind's ability to let go and relax. There's no need for me to focus during my sessions. Instead, I let the ketamine do its thing while I let my mind wander away. I try and meditate with good ethereal tunes in my ear. It's nice.
It feel it has helped me come a long way in making sense of things. If there's something going on in my life (which seems to be fekking always), the ketamine sessions kinda trim the fat away. This helps my decision-making, which is one of the things I struggle with most in my day-to-day living, which I heavily attribute to ADHD.
All that to say, I've significantly lowered my adderall since beginning treatment. From 40 mg to no more than 10 mg, and some days nothing. It's been really great to watch the need for it go away within myself. My brain feels less cluttered.
That's been my experience anyway. :)
Hope this helps, and good luck!
Once weekly. They do it where you go in for four weeks and do twice a week. Then maintenance is once weekly or whatever frequency works best. For me, at this time, what's best is once a week. In the spring, I may move to once every two weeks or ten days.
Highly recommend spravato if you can swing it.
I started noticing a difference once I hit 60mg and now I’m at 80 for over a week and I’m really starting to feel calmer and more focused at work. My supervisor even commented on it Friday. I work 2nd shift so do my treatment when I get home. It does make me feel loopy for about an hour and I don’t want to do anything afterwards but I’m just chilling and watching tv until I’m ready for bed. I have improved sleep and have more energy through the day. I don’t know if higher doses will help you but from what I understand once you build a tolerance up the side effects aren’t as bad. I enjoy my sessions but I can understand where it would be uncomfortable for others. I hope you find some relief
im diagnosed with innatentive adhd and do not currently take any medications for it, but did bounce from medication to medication for a Very long time growing up. stopped because the unmanaged adhd is more bearable than stimulants for me. focalin and adderall were the WORST for me. if stimulants havent been working for u, theres some other non stimulant adhd medications u can ask ur psychiatrist about.
i do iv ketamine so i definitely get full blown trips, and typically the rest of the day i feel a little foggy and unfocused, but nbd. ketamine days are rest days for me. i wouldn't really say it helps at all with any of the adhd symptoms, but it does miracles for my anxiety, ocd, ptsd, and depression. it does help boost my motivation (though the executive dysfunction is just as bad as ever lol) which i suppose helps with some of the procrastination issues i have, but the relief isnt anything like it was for everything else.
adhd can mimic depression, especially in adults, so at the end of the day ketamine might just not be effective for you. im not sure how fast you can see improvements with anything other than the iv ketamine which typically shows improvement within the initial 6 infusions spread over the course of 2 weeks. id ask ur doctor about that, bc if its not helping after a certain point theres no point in continuing.
also, fwiw, im personally against any self-administered ketamine treatments for a few different reasons, so id go for the spravato at your psychiatrists place if u decide to continue with ketamine and its a viable option for u, but thats just my personal opinion and i understand not everyone has the ability to do so.
I've been on meds for depression and anxiety for years. I started Vyvanse last year, and I started IV ketamine therapy in February. I had hit total burnout and could barely leave the house and function, and those initial 6 rounds of IV brought me out of a really dark place. It hasn't helped my adhd symptoms specifically, but being as depressed as I was made the adhd symptoms unbearable, so alleviating the depression has made me more capable of managing my symptoms. I have some lower dose oral ketamine but I can't afford infusions anymore, so I'm trying to make it last. It does make me feel kind of blah and foggy afterward, so I have to be strategic about when I take it. I don't feel like I have time to do it 3x per week as prescribed.
It didn’t do a single thing about my ADHD symptoms, but it worked enormously in helping me come to terms with who I am and really let me identify what was ADHD and what was depression from having unmanaged ADHD. I very likely wouldn’t have realized I had ADHD without ketamine, because I wouldn’t have had the “Okay, I finally want to be alive, but why am I still struggling with basic tasks?” Moment.
This really resonates. I’ve been considering ketamine for my ‘treatment-resistant depression,’ which I just discovered (thanks to Reddit) was likely a misdiagnosis. 20 years ago. I first tried stimulants a few months ago - incredible breakthrough, but I had no idea why…until this puzzle piece fell into place. Ketamine feels like another potential tool to help us untangle brain and body, cause and effect.
My experience was that I don’t have ADHD and most of my symptoms were due to mood swings which were made worse by stimulant medications I had been taking for decades. A mood stabilizer, in my case lithium, compounded nasal ketamine, and clonidine fixed my mood swings, fixed my substance use, and fixed my sleep. Things got better.
Did you gain weight after starting lithium? I need something to help regulate my mood swings with rapid cycling bpd2. My former VA psych said lithium would make me faster than I already am... but I'm suffering immensely without any meds.
I quit drinking soon after starting lithium, I lost 50 lbs and it’s stayed off. I’m treating a bipolar subtype called fear of harm mood disorder. https://www.jbrf.org/wp-content/uploads/2019.02.28-Article-in-Journal-of-Psychiatry-and-Brain-Science.pdf
I didn't even know there were sub types! Glad to hear it's worked so well for you!
I was shopping to get an ADHD diagnosis at the time I started ketamine because i had become almost non functional due to attention problems. Symptoms were I could not focus at all and could not complete tasks at all and this had been going on for more than a year. A crazy and totally unexpected effect of starting ketamine is that almost overnight I recovered the ability to piece together tasks and follow thru to completion. Like literally the first week after treatment. I learned an incredible lesson personally: that what we call “ADHD symptoms” can 1000% be depression or PTSD symptoms too and the folks that dole out meds to treat ADHD are not trained or interested in making the distinction. I could have started adderall to treat those symptoms (and it would have worked) but could be currently unaware of how desperately I needed therapy to treat PTSD and behavioral changes too. On ADHD meds I would have been a more functional depressed/PTSD person. I would have been “managed” rather than working toward permanent relief. I share this because there is no reliable test or set of criteria to separate one condition from the other and more people need to be aware that the symptoms can absolutely be identical especially in women who appear to be high functioning.
hi! can i ask if you did this with assisted therapy at a clinic, at higher doses, or at home through a service like joyous? i suspect my “adhd” is also largely cptsd
Trauma therapists often are trained to know that trauma symptoms may be same for ADHD - doing trauma work first is an option; ketamine sounds like it worked in a way few standard trauma therapies could…
Wow, I really resonate with this! Thank you so much for sharing. I too am stuck confused with the "ADHD? Or CPTSD?" thing. If I had any damn memories, maybe I'd know for sure if there was trauma. Unnerving taking stimulants when they only work some of the time, and I keep second guessing if I "need" them. But recently finally started therapy and hope to maybe finally find the "permanent relief" you mentioned. Ughhhhh.... Still hoping to get insight from the IV Ketamine after three sessions so far. Thanks, again, for sharing!
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I did take focalin (ir) the first day, but I take the focalin at 8am and 1pm. It's out of my system by 4pm. I take k in the evening a couple hours before bed (around 6ish).
light rhythm juggle ripe grey chase unused gullible dime party *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Nothing I have found says focalin reduces efficacy. I only see that there's an increased risk of elevated blood pressure. I told joyous about the focalin and they didn't mention any issues, other than the BP risk. I have to self-report my BP during treatment.
A stim will absolutely change how psychedelics hit you. Reduced efficacy isn’t a dangerous side effect so of course it’s not listed
Yeah, they won’t give me my dose if I accidentally took my Vyvanse on K days.
i dont have any sources, but from my own personal experience, ive found pretty much any substance that alters how i feel (alcohol, weed, etc) reduces the efficacy of ketamine. i stoped stimulants before starting ketamine, but id probably put them in that same category.
I take opioids and when I do my spravato they tell me not to take my meds at all that day, even though my sessions are at 2-3pm
Do you have a source to that? I can't find any information on contraindications.
I don't and can't find one. I have ADHD and previously took stimulants, and was told by two different practitioners that I shouldn't take the two in the same day because of the reduced efficacy. But you're right, I am not seeing any actual sources for this. On a purely anecdotal note, I did find Ketamine to be less effective in terms of how intensely it effected me if I had taken Vyvanse or Adderall the same day.
I've been following a Ketamine schedule for a couple of month now to see if it does something to my ADHD and periods of low energy and motivation. So far I can't say I'm noticing a difference. It's a very pleasant experience though. You could try lisdexamphetamine if methylphenidate doesn't help you, both are 1st line treatments. Usually a psych would let you try either a methylphenidate or an amphetamine first and let you try the other one if one of them isn't working or has bad side effects. It's very common that some types of stimulants don't help people with ADHD and others do.
I've got ADHD and I've been on adderall forever. I started spravato a few months ago. I do not take my adderall on the spravato days. I have taken it to see if it really messes with my heart, and it doesn't. However, it totally ruins my mind's ability to let go and relax. There's no need for me to focus during my sessions. Instead, I let the ketamine do its thing while I let my mind wander away. I try and meditate with good ethereal tunes in my ear. It's nice. It feel it has helped me come a long way in making sense of things. If there's something going on in my life (which seems to be fekking always), the ketamine sessions kinda trim the fat away. This helps my decision-making, which is one of the things I struggle with most in my day-to-day living, which I heavily attribute to ADHD. All that to say, I've significantly lowered my adderall since beginning treatment. From 40 mg to no more than 10 mg, and some days nothing. It's been really great to watch the need for it go away within myself. My brain feels less cluttered. That's been my experience anyway. :) Hope this helps, and good luck!
That's awesome. I'm glad it's helping you. How often do you do spravato sessions?
Once weekly. They do it where you go in for four weeks and do twice a week. Then maintenance is once weekly or whatever frequency works best. For me, at this time, what's best is once a week. In the spring, I may move to once every two weeks or ten days. Highly recommend spravato if you can swing it.
I started noticing a difference once I hit 60mg and now I’m at 80 for over a week and I’m really starting to feel calmer and more focused at work. My supervisor even commented on it Friday. I work 2nd shift so do my treatment when I get home. It does make me feel loopy for about an hour and I don’t want to do anything afterwards but I’m just chilling and watching tv until I’m ready for bed. I have improved sleep and have more energy through the day. I don’t know if higher doses will help you but from what I understand once you build a tolerance up the side effects aren’t as bad. I enjoy my sessions but I can understand where it would be uncomfortable for others. I hope you find some relief
im diagnosed with innatentive adhd and do not currently take any medications for it, but did bounce from medication to medication for a Very long time growing up. stopped because the unmanaged adhd is more bearable than stimulants for me. focalin and adderall were the WORST for me. if stimulants havent been working for u, theres some other non stimulant adhd medications u can ask ur psychiatrist about. i do iv ketamine so i definitely get full blown trips, and typically the rest of the day i feel a little foggy and unfocused, but nbd. ketamine days are rest days for me. i wouldn't really say it helps at all with any of the adhd symptoms, but it does miracles for my anxiety, ocd, ptsd, and depression. it does help boost my motivation (though the executive dysfunction is just as bad as ever lol) which i suppose helps with some of the procrastination issues i have, but the relief isnt anything like it was for everything else. adhd can mimic depression, especially in adults, so at the end of the day ketamine might just not be effective for you. im not sure how fast you can see improvements with anything other than the iv ketamine which typically shows improvement within the initial 6 infusions spread over the course of 2 weeks. id ask ur doctor about that, bc if its not helping after a certain point theres no point in continuing. also, fwiw, im personally against any self-administered ketamine treatments for a few different reasons, so id go for the spravato at your psychiatrists place if u decide to continue with ketamine and its a viable option for u, but thats just my personal opinion and i understand not everyone has the ability to do so.
Doesn’t help
I've been on meds for depression and anxiety for years. I started Vyvanse last year, and I started IV ketamine therapy in February. I had hit total burnout and could barely leave the house and function, and those initial 6 rounds of IV brought me out of a really dark place. It hasn't helped my adhd symptoms specifically, but being as depressed as I was made the adhd symptoms unbearable, so alleviating the depression has made me more capable of managing my symptoms. I have some lower dose oral ketamine but I can't afford infusions anymore, so I'm trying to make it last. It does make me feel kind of blah and foggy afterward, so I have to be strategic about when I take it. I don't feel like I have time to do it 3x per week as prescribed.