Hi, I was so surprised when I read your post. It sounds like me. I have been diagnosed with ADD since I was a freshman in high school and have always had troubles with certain noises and sounds. I'm now a graduate student in college. I have always been on strattera and it did wonders for me. It wasn't until I had to start taking allergy shots and could no longer take strattera did I realize how much it helped me. After I was taken off of it i started to notice my inability to handle noises increased significantly. Pots and dish hitting each other, people chewing food or gum loudly, clicking of fingernails and other sounds made me so anxious and upset and sometimes even felt like they hurt to hear them. I started lashing out at people making the noises, either making them stop or just becoming so angry with them. My doctor and I are starting to try adderall, I have a feeling it could really help me but we are still working on the dose. If you don't mind sharing, what dose is working for you? I'm only at 10mg xr and don't think it is enough.

As for the medicine with noise I have found that with medicine my problems with noise decrease because it helped me to focus on what was really important and I was better able to block it out. With my experience stress has made my aversion to certain noise more difficult to deal with. Maybe try to emphasize how much adderall has helped you and make the point that you have always been on adderall and it wasn't until the new change to college that you started having so issues. Yes, your adderall was changed but you have been use to taking it, i'm assuming. Maybe try to look at the root cause of the outburst and why they seem to be more frequent. If it is the stress from school and noise then those can be addressed instead of Adderall. I know when people have their mind set about ADHD meds it can be hard to change that, so i would definitely be careful about how you word it. If it was me I might say something like "I really like benefits to my grades that adderall is helping me with and helps me manage that area of college but I still get stressed out with the lady in my class constantly clicking her pen." that ways they will focus more on the stress than the meds. If they are really dead set on it being the stimulant maybe be open to offering to reduce or change your dose a little and see if that helps. From personal experience I have noticed too much of my meds can make things worse for me, and getting just the right does took some tries but really helped.. Just keep emphasizing that you notice adderall has a tremendous postive effect on your grades and you want to maintain that.

I hope this helps and sorry it is so long.

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I really appreciate you taking the time to write that, and you definitely see where I'm coming from. I started out on 20mg Adderall XR and it wasn't getting me through my 9 hour school days so we increased it to 30mg. I normally take either the 20mg capsule in the morning, followed by the two 5mg capsules in the afternoon, or the other way around. I'm not sure which order is more helpful yet. But I actually tried Strattera in the past and it really did nothing for me. Granted, since sophomore year of high school i've been on stimulants, so going on a non-stimulant was most likely unhelpful for that reason. I was always on focalin IR in the past, loved it but risk of dependence with short acting stimulants is so high and the IR versions wear off very quickly. I think the Adderall XR is good at working subtly throughout the day.

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