54mg Concerta, disrupted sleep

Wednesday and Thursday were very productive, very focused. Friday a little less so. I am somewhat concerned that the positive effects are going to diminish over time after the dose increase, as they did in the past with Vyvanse, but the negative effects are going to accumulate.

For example, sleep wasn't too bad on Wednesday and Thursday nights. I woke up, but I was able to get back to sleep relatively easily. I didn't feel hot, and I didn't toss and turn. The last couple of nights have been worse. The waking up hot is a particularly bad sign, because it tells me that my body is not shutting itself down for the night. Besides making me mentally tired, this also means that physically, I am not getting that time to repair and rejuvenate.

The worst thing about the sleep problems is that they interfere with my assessment of whether or not the medication is helping. It could be helping quite a bit, but if I am exhausted all the time I might not notice. In fact, I might feel worse.

I know my doctor is going to suggest some sort of sleep remedy. I am already taking melatonin. I do not want to take anything that might be habit-forming, or might have side-effects of its own. I am very concerned about jumping on a medication merry-go-round that leaves me without the ability to determine what is normal and reasonable any more.

I completely understand how the doctors feel about this. I am an engineer by training, a software developer by profession. I solve problems using the tools at my disposal. When I have a system in front of me that is not working, and I can't nail down exactly why, I may introduce speculative fixes and see what happens. If I am told I can't try certain kinds of fixes, I respond that that may prevent me from solving the problem.

I guess I'm OK with that. I'll talk about options with my doctor, but there are some roads I'm just not willing to start down. Multiple potentially (or even certainly) addictive, side-effect-laden medicines is one of those roads.

In any case, I'm going to give the Concerta some time to settle down before I decide it's too much. I have read some information that suggested it might take a couple of weeks for the long-term side-effects to really become clear.