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Comment by scns | Hacker News Reader

Bupropion would be one. Helps with quitting smoking, which around 50% of ADDers do, too.

I posted elsewhere in the thread about my late diagnosis. When I was much younger than when I was diagnosed, I was on Bupropion for smoking cessation and it had a pretty significant positive effect for me with respect to my ADHD symptoms (which I didn’t recognize as ADHD at the time). Definitely worth exploring; it doesn’t work for everyone but it can be quite effective if it does work for you.

I would second your suggestion to investigate bupropion. More than a decade ago I was suffering from severe depression. Psychiatrists with meds were an easy-to-access front line treatment, but I was very concerned about SSRI side effects, particularly erectile side effects. It didn't take much persuading to have the psychiatrist prescribe bupropion instead of an SSRI. I too felt it helped with my then undiagnosed ADHD a lot.

As a note, bupropion did make me feel a little funny. It wasn't bad, weird, or intolerable, but yes I did have a faint perceptual awareness that I was in a medicated state.

For the first couple of weeks the first time I took it, Bupropion:

- made me feel pretty energetic. Not buzzed, but maybe counteracted low-grade depression. I was on it because I wanted to quit smoking, because I was hoping quitting smoking would make me feel better/happier

- slightly affected my vision/perception. Colours seemed more vibrant. Everything just felt perceptually… brighter.

- made me really horny, but not in a compulsive way. It wasn’t distracting and didn’t cause any problems, but I definitely had more drive. When it was go time, it was Go Time :)

What's up with the bullet points? This almost reads like a ChatGPT/AI comment, which is especially weird for a personal recollection. Are people writing like frickin robots now?

Lol that’s how I’ve written for 25 years. I’m flattered that LLMs are copying me.

Don’t be an ass. People used lists before LLMs.

They’re just lucky I didn’t have a big run-on sentence, like I used to before taking a serious look at how ADHD affected my writing and thought processes, including significant use of parentheticals (because every thought comes with a couple of extra thoughts, for free!)

If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.

The more time I have, the more of those extra thoughts I can decide aren't really important.

> every thought comes with a couple of extra thoughts, for free!

Bonus points if you branch deep enough to lose the original thought.

I have to say, buproprion had severe, life-threatening side effects for me. I'm not in a typically high-risk group for psychotic symptoms, but it caused me to become quite agitated and delusional.

It feels strange to type that now, and I know these side effects are quite rare, but I can't help but warn people when I see it mentioned. It was genuinely the most terrifying experience of my life.

It happened about 6 weeks into treatment, quite acutely. I wasn't even aware it was happening.

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