When adhd gets quieter, autism gets louder…
For the past few weeks I’ve been trying to understand what dexamfetamine actually does to me. Not whether it ‘works’ or ‘doesn’t work’, but how it changes the way I experience the world.
At first I wasn’t sure what I was noticing. I kept saying that the medication made me feel ‘more autistic,’ which sounds strange because medication obviously can’t make someone more autistic. But that was the closest description I had.
The longer I observed myself, the more I realized something different might be happening.
Without medication, my ADHD creates a lot of internal noise. My thoughts jump around, emotions blend together, and there is almost a constant stream of activity inside my head. Ironically, all of that internal chaos also distracts me from what’s happening around me. I still become overwhelmed by external sensory input, but I often don’t notice it until I’ve already crossed my limits.
With dexamfetamine, my thoughts become quieter and much more organized. I can think in a straight line instead of ten directions at once. On paper, that’s exactly what the medication is supposed to do.
But when the internal noise settles down, something else becomes much more noticeable.
The outside world gets louder…
I notice more sounds. More visual details. More movement. More conversations happening around me. It’s almost as if the ADHD was masking part of my autistic sensory processing, and once the ADHD quiets down, that sensory sensitivity becomes impossible to ignore.
At first I wondered whether that meant the medication wasn’t right for me.
Now I’m starting to think about it differently.
Maybe the medication isn’t creating more sensory overload. Maybe it’s simply allowing me to recognize it sooner.
That’s an uncomfortable realization, because it doesn’t necessarily make me feel better. In fact, I often feel physically uncomfortable. I notice tension in my body. Sometimes coffee gives me a very similar feeling; more aware of my surroundings, more physically alert, but also more sensitive to everything happening around me.
Still, there may be another side to this.
Without medication I often keep going long after I’ve become overwhelmed. I don’t notice my own limits until I completely crash. With medication, I sometimes recognize those limits much earlier. It isn’t pleasant, but it may actually give me the opportunity to stop before my nervous system reaches the point of no return.
So perhaps the question isn’t simply: ‘Does dexamfetamine help me?’
Maybe the better question is: ‘What exactly is it helping me notice?’
I don’t have the answer yet.
I’m still experimenting together with my treatment team, tracking my cycle, my energy, my sensory experiences and how my body responds. I’m learning that living with both autism and ADHD isn’t about treating two completely separate conditions. They constantly influence each other, and sometimes helping one reveals the other more clearly.
For now, that’s enough of an answer.
Not certainty. Just curiosity.