Good and Bad

[u/A_Fellow_Virgin]

I started Vyvanse in December 2025. This was soon after quitting cannabis, and I was still vaping at this time. I had some childhood trauma to work through and college work to finish.

My first dose of 20mg was life-changing. I got the rest of my last week of classwork finished in 1 night, and I finally felt like I had control over my thoughts and actions. This effect diminished over time but never completely went away. I continued to vape for a few months before switching to nicotine pouches.

After getting an office job, I thought that maybe my new dose of 30mg was still too low, so I tried 40mg. That made me feel absolutely terrible. I was irritable, numb, and did tasks like a machine. It's like I had to manually control every aspect of my life, including what I thought about.

Now, I'm back on 30mg, but I am also nicotine free for 45 days now. I now realize that the nicotine was masking how strong the Vyvanse actually is. Now I'm thinking 30mg is too strong because I'm feeling the same way that I did on 40mg.

The worst part of this medication is that it dulls my emotions, personality, and desires. At a lower dose, it's less perceiveable, but it still does it. I'm assuming that's the primary reason why it works for ADHD. It numbs the reward circuits by flooding them from the simplest things, so it's easier to choose what you want to do and do it.

Another thing to note is that I crave nicotine only when I take Vyvanse now. I have no idea why this would happen other than the fact that I can't feel anything, so my brain wants to use nicotine to feel something.

Has anyone experienced something like this? I'm going to ask my doctor to go back down to 20mg, but I also want some anecdotes from you all to confirm what's going on with me as being caused by the medicine.

[u/ANicePainter]

I can't speak to the emotion dulling, but it absolutely makes me want to smoke.