Not sure if just trying more methods will help you, but here are some that happen to consistently work for me:

• Always work with a list.
• When everything seems overwhelming and I can’t get myself to start, just pick ONE item from the list.
• If there is no list, just making the list will do. It may be empty. Done for now, enough, no need to start on it yet.
• Granular items.
  • Instead of “pack suitcase”, break it down like “get suitcase out”.
  • Split the task of “read X” and “understand X”. That stops obstructive thoughts like “I wouldn’t understand it anyway, and then I’d need to as … but can’t right now because …”.
• The only new breakthrough from this year: When even doing one item from the list feels like too much, only simulate doing them in your head: https://lemmy.ml/post/36147982
• I have a section of “structural improvements”. Those are things that, once done, improve my life, forever. E. g. getting this diagnosis. Getting a dishwasher. Getting a maid. Unlike, for example, clean the kitchen, which is temporary.
• implementation intention: Might feel overwhelming to “stop browsing right now”, but set a timer to stop in 5 minutes. Or “when the timer finishes, I’ll do the simulations on list items”.

Real habit building still does not work for me, though, even with a specialist therapist. That’d be the real deal.

Yes, still do it, and it still works! The pressure from having to do something when I don’t feel like it is gone. Just the simulation is mandatory, and if none of the things appeal to me during the simulation, I’m off the hook, guilt-free.

Still enough gets done that way.

Opioids, and Kratom, as it’s similar, work great against a variety of mental problems for a short time. I believe some opioids and tianeptine, which is not that different, are even prescribed against depression occasionally. The “sweet spot” is not the big high, but an ever so mildly euphoric state, as from “softer” opioid painkillers.

Regarding painkiller opioids at moderate medical doses, I found the time for which it works to be about 6 months. Then, you’d really have to up the dose significantly or stop immediately.

Even if you do stop then, it’s the “small hell” of withdrawal already, it can take weeks and months to be your former self with all the same problems again, and having to take it medically will be an issue for years to come.

The system really needs to get it together, diagnose and treat people. Self medication doesn’t work out that well.

It can get excessive in my case. So my trick is this: I made a file “nobody-cares.txt” and just paste the comment in there instead of submitting it. For someone with ADHD, that feels almost as good as submitting it, because I COULD do that later!

I was quite proud of that method, but my therapist said that this still attributes value to the comment and thus the social media activity. So the next step would be to cancel, even after typing a long comment.

Used to have a girlfriend with a cat who trotted along at my side as I was doing stuff around the apartment complex. Garden, picking up / delivering packages for neighbours, laundry, just taking a walk. She was an indoor cat, but it just meant that she wasn’t outside unsupervised in her case. Bonus sadness that with the breakup, the cat was gone as well. These errands were a lot more fun with her, and people were a lot more friendly.

I tried many forms of caffeine as well, and this was the best. You’d think black tea evenly distributed or small cups of coffee would have the same effect, but no. Don’t ask me why, guarana works best for a smooth effect without peaks and downs.

You can’t make anything nice like coffee with it, so imo, best to just swallow the powder in capsules.

The extra harm from the extra months when they COULD help you is so bad and unnecessary - I hate it! When suspected, I was happy to get an appointment for my kid in 4 - 5 months (very good!). That was just a talk asking me who I am and what I want. Following psychologist appointments for the tests, which I could only even start scheduling after that talk. Then, I needed a doc appointment to read the test results to me, 6 week waiting time. After that, I was allowed to make the appointment with the same doc to prescribe the meds. Nothing really to decide or talk about, there is one recommended way to go (low dose methylphenidate), insurance would not cover anything else anyway when that has never even been tried. Optionally occupational therapy as alternative / in addition.

In the end, it took a year.

Sorry, this is about your situation. Where do you live? Maybe something else is much easier to get, like Modafinil, which can even be highly effective. In case you can get that one, watch out for its extreme incompatibility with SO many other meds, though. Probably got to stop taking it and wait a day / days before starting on your real meds. Not a good one to self-medicate; there’s a reason it’s prescription only.

You could also get bloodwork and a heart check already so they can’t “stall” further using that as an excuse.

It’s like this little devil on my shoulders, repeating the same lies over and over again, and odd enough, it works quite often:

• I can’t possibly do the whole cleaning before sleep.
• Sure, I could take the garbage out or clean only the sink, but that’s so little that it won’t help anyway. Better do nothing.
• It’s just these two important things on the weekend; I don’t need a list for that. (Narrator: It’s never only two things.)

Many have been there: How much damage in life is happening between suspecting it’s ADHD and receiving treatment.

What I found most effective is Modafinil, if you happen to live in a place where it’s considered a lower schedule prescription drug and is easily accessible. It’s less safe, so follow doctor’s orders and instructions carefully. Use 1/8th of a pill to check tolerance on day 1.

If you have not built tolerance to caffeine, that is effective for a couple of months as well. Consider guaraná or black tea if you need a lasting effect for many hours.

Another option is if you ever got a prescription of an anti-depressant that works off-label for ADHD as well and have some left over. Many of them take a month to work, but sometimes, the ADHD effect is immediate.

Of course, when you get your real prescription, check if you need to stop the temporary one first! In case of some anti depressants, that can be several days.

Effect can vary a lot. I did a tolerance test with 5 mg, and even that was mind blowing. Effect was short, but my executive dysfunction was completely fixed. I cleaned, worked out, did calls and wrote letters I had been putting off for weeks. It felt like a fantastic dopamine shower.

Then, for a long time, I went with 10 - 15 mg. Slowly working up to 50 over 6 months.

The “mind blowing” effect is really fading hard one year later, though. I’m pretty sure that it’s not really what the doctors want. They want regulation of dopamine and noradrenaline in the prefrontal cortex, which is a benefit that does not diminish over time. What gives the amazing feeling is excess dopamine in other regions of the brain, like a recreational drug, and that fades.

Surveys too! I feel like if I tried to answer it literally, it’d be interpreted as something I don’t mean at all.

Had lists for 25 years, and they did help to a good degree, but still: Same.

But about 2 weeks ago, I think I really cracked the case! In those situations when it is “too much” to do an item from the list, I ALLOW myself to not do an item from the list, guilt-free, but I HAVE TO “simulate” the items briefly in my head.

More than 50 % of the time, that’ll lead to the realisation that I’m totally up for doing one of those. Still not everything done, but jumped from maybe 3 out of 10 to 6 out of 10 for a typical weekend. And if I don’t feel like it, I can enjoy my shows and other shenanigans guilt-free.

Wrote more about it here: https://lemmy.ml/post/36147982

Does it work? Do you actually do the things on the list?

For me, it works best to have the list on the day before. Otherwise, MAKING the list is what I procrastinate on.

Thanks, same. I tried so many methods, most do NOT work for me, but the ones that do make all the difference. This one will certainly also not work for everybody.

Main strategies right now:

• engineered staple foods always available in stock (Jimmy Joy, Soylent, Huel, “This is food”, …). So always the option to have a somewhat healthy meal with 0 effort.
• big freezer & hot air fryer. Good compromise of taste & health: salmon with vegetables in cream sauce. Less healthy: Fries (still best-health fries), fish sticks, vegan burger
• healthy-enough snacks. Currently binging on high protein, low sugar cookies. Obviously not that healthy, but otherwise I’d binge the really bad stuff when I lose control
• healthy snack plate with carrots, apple slices etc.: Just set it up at the desk and see what happens. Thinking about actually eating it is too much mental effort, and it happens automatically anyway.

Well where are you? Or is worldwide travel an option?

I managed to wire myself with a trigger to answer my inner dialogue of “I can’t …” with “Well what CAN you do?”

In case of the escalating snacking, I realised that I can’t just switch them out with something healthy. But I CAN make a plate of raw carrots, apple slices, cucumbers etc. and set it up at my desk. Surprisingly, that was already one big leap forward. Even my sloth mind - especially my sloth mind - would rather chew on a carrot right now than get a chocolate bar from the kitchen. Beat it with its own weapons.

Absolutely, people are very different. In my particular case, I used to get anxiety, and it got worse with caffeine. Got benzos for years as an when-needed fallback. ADHD had not been diagnosed yet. Turned out that much of it was a magnesium deficit, and magnesium replaced benzos completely. I also tried modafinil before I was officially diagnosed, and it worked pretty great. But that is just my very specific case.

The only general takeaway is to keep searching for what’s up and what works for you, and that is probably very different in your case.

She should try my chicken-method, then: Take half a minimum dose, e. g. 5g lisdexamfetamine, if it works go to something like 10 or 15.

Does she get bad side effects from coffee? If yes, stims really might not be for her.

It helps me with the exact same things, and the hard crash used to be similar for me. But the doc found that Vyvanse caused it only indirectly: I was working hard (even on things like cleaning), didn’t feel the need for pauses and rest, didn’t eat and drink enough. After doing these things by schedule rather than how I felt, it was completely fixed.

Your situation sounds like a different quality, probably with different causes.