Is your adhd better with completely quitting alcohol?

[u/annamonapia]

I’m 40 days alcohol free. I feel a ton ton ton better. My adhd is better. I am still starting vyvanse today to try to help myself through the daily adhd struggles. Anyone having similar time? Thoughts ? Any tips on vyvanse ? Any thoughts on alcohol free?

[u/Pixie-elf]

I rarely drink because I don't like how it makes me feel, and there's a 50/50 chance the next day I'm gonna feel icky.

I found out it's because alcohol screws up your dopamine and the levels of it. As in, one drink fucks the chemicals up in your brain for a week.

A whole ass WEEK. So when folks are drinking regularly, it means that their neurotransmitters are a good bit scrambled and it takes a good bit of time even after you quit for all of that to get back to baseline.

A good way to think of it, is it takes the brain a while to fully recover from that level of fuckery, so give yourself plenty of grace, and remember that as you abstain your brain is going to work better, and better. The Vyvanse will definitely help with the cravings and the Vyvanse will help you recover quicker.

You're doing great at 40 days, I'm proud of you!! You have this!! Remember, addiction is a disease NOT a moral failing. Any time you get down on yourself for self medicating, remember that. We use whatever we can to get through the day, and now you're in a place where you don't need it any more.

With Vyvanse make sure that you eat a good protein heavy meal. If you have a hard time with that, which, I myself do, make either a peanut butter + banana smoothie or something similar, make sure you have snacks around, so that you can eat throughout the day in case it kills your hunger.

Don't drink OJ in the morning (vitamin C screws with how it's metabolized ). Vyvanse takes 1-2 hours to kick in for me so I sometimes set an earlier alarm from when I need to get up so that when I do, it'll have kicked in.

[u/abg33 → u/Pixie-elf]

This is so interesting. I used to drink nightly, and then just stopped cold turkey (the day after the 2016 election, actually) for several years. Nowadays, I'll have maybe 3 or 4 drinks a year, but I kind of dread it because I know with even one drink I'm going to feel ABSOLUTELY AWFUL for at least 2 days. I was looking into whether I had some sort of allergy (which makes no sense since I used to drink for years, but I guess I just felt like shit then all the time because I was drinking too much). Maybe it's also because I'm in my 40s now and everything seems harder on the body. Or maybe I have an actual baseline of what it feels like not to be hung over all the time, so relatively speaking, the next-day pain is greater?

But it's crazy how I used to look forward to those glasses of wine at the end of the day SO MUCH--it took up so much space in my mind--to now have zero thoughts about it or zero desire to drink in part because I don't want to feel like shit the next day... I don't really know what I'm saying except it's just so remarkable how stark the contrast is from now to then.