ADHD medication for adults: pros, cons and alternatives

“So one of the first things that happens after you're diagnosed with ADHD is you have to decide, am I going to try medication or not? And oh, the eight years since I was diagnosed, nine years since I was diagnosed, I didn't use medication until last year. Most of the time, I thought I was doing fine.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing and it's not the decision I would make now, but at the time it seemed like the right thing. So looking back, I can see that I really struggled a lot with procrastination. I struggled a lot with focus and attention.

My emotional regulation was not terrific and a lot of the things that became exaggerated for me personally during perimenopause and menopause would have been addressed if I had chosen to try medication earlier. I didn't. We are where we are and so it's something that I thought would be really useful for us to explore, especially if you are recently diagnosed and you're thinking, do I need it?

I've coped this far, right? and in the UK not only is it ADHD Awareness Month, we are also facing one of the most serious medication shortages I've ever seen. Not just for ADHD medication and not just for one type of ADHD medication, but across the board and including things like HRT and diabetes medicine, everyone is telling me I can't find my medication, it's just not available.

So it seems useful to include, along with our discussion about medication, what else you might want to look at. And again, we are going to come back to this in much more detail. What I would really love to know is if you are affected by the ADHD medication shortage, what are you going to do?

What have you been doing? Because the last thing I heard was that this could carry on until the new year, so January 2024, for certain types of medication. And the one that many people find most tolerable is out of patent in the United States, but in the UK it's still controlled by the original manufacturer.

From ADHD: Powerful Possibilities from New Diagnosis & Beyond: Navigating ADHD Medication in Adulthood - Pros, Cons, and Alternatives, 27 Oct 2023

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/navigating-adhd-medication-in-adulthood-pros-cons-and/id1713560365?i=1000632635313

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