It can take time to find the right dose.
I even started with 5 mg only, and it felt great. Crashed after just 3 - 4 hours, and within the first week figured that 12 mg is right for now.
The individual differences can be enormous.
This guide to understand dosage finding is pretty good, but doctor's orders first: https://www.adxs.org/en/page/232/dosing-of-medication-for-adhd
I think it's not that crazy: It also increases dopamine and noradrenaline in other parts of the brain, too, so in higher doses, it would be a "great" recreational drug, similar to speed. The brain quickly adjusts to the relatively small dose, so it doesn't feel like a recreational drug any more (unless a lot more is taken), and only the prefrontal cortex still "benefits" from the increased levels of dopamine and noradrenaline, as intended.
So, the initial high is not the intended effect, just a pleasant side effect, and always fades. Otherwise, we could all happily live on recreational drugs all day.
The numbing effect on the emotions, on the other hand, could be the INTENDED effect, just way too strong. Need to take much less, for some people even as low as 5 mg.
So you might have gotten the intended effect and the side effect mixed up: You don't want the initial 2 week high, you do want the numbing, but much less of it.
That is my VERY limited layman understanding, certainly at least partially wrong. Maybe it's also hilariously wrong, who knows.
It's compatible with benzos, so for rare occurrences, like a few times per year, that's an option.
In my particular case, a magnesium deficit had been missed for a very long time.
In relationships, that's a problem. Over the years, that really developed into ... something. When I have a crush and daydream, I imagine how she comes onto me, and I'm like: Sorry, not interested.
Sometimes that actually happens, and it does feel great.
Even when I daydream about meeting a cute girl with a nice personality, I imagine how she likes me, so I can reject her.
The oddest thing is that I still had a couple of healthy, nice relationships, some over many years. She was always more into me than vice versa, though. And I was overall single longer than I was in relationships.
So maybe the counterpart personality exists, and that's why it works: Longing to always having to prove herself to someone who isn't even that attractive, just for getting a fraction of it back.
Great list! I use a plain txt file that I started about 25 years ago for notes, now 28,000 lines. It used to contain even all passwords, until password managers became a good option.
"Being bad at stuff" is also so selective. The other kids are not expected to be two years ahead in math, but I am expected to be able to sit perfectly still for 4 hours and pay attention in an oxygen depleted room. Everybody has to have this nearly exact same skillset.
It's not what society needs, not even what the industry needs in the workforce, but that is most convenient for the teachers.
Indeed, I programmed in vim only, until IDEs just got too good. Still using it for everything else to this day. I've been thinking to get Neovim, but it doesn't seem essential when I stick with IDEs for programming.
I tried Eclipse way back around 2004, but found the advantages not sufficient to make do with a crappy editor. Years after that, IntelliJ IDEA just got too good to miss out on, though. It also had the feature that is essential for me to understand anything: To search for an action rather than click through & stare at endless menus.
I get 0 done without lists. People laugh about my lists, because every tiny detail has to be on it. So let's say I'm in the situation you described, and it's 10:30 am. What I'd tell myself is: There isn't even a list, so let's make a list, and if it's the last thing I'll do before lunch.
The list is quite often as detailed as:
Then, even in my worst state, I can tell myself: You can check off just the next item. That's not overwhelming, that's not too much.
Stainless steel for me, too. For most dishes, sticking isn't much of an issue, and where it's a bit harder, such as sunny side up eggs, I rather have that little challenge than to deal with cast iron. Or non-stick, which scratch and poison the entire family if I ever pet it with the wrong side of the sponge.
Btw, it actually was kind of complex:
When I'm in my own messy kitchen, I can't find a starting point. I feel like I'd have to be this big octopus creature that stands in the middle and does a thing with each tentacle simultaneously: Threw this into the garbage, put that into its place, start a heap of things that need to go into different rooms, clean neglected things such as the area behind the sink, clean the floor and main surfaces (but there is too much stuff on it even if I had the 10 tentacles), do dishes, put clean dishes away, throw out expired food from every shelf and the fridge, complex sequences such as bagging the garbage -> put new garbage bag in ...
The only thing that really works for me is when I make it a 25 minute hyper-focussed challenge: Set a timer and make the maximum progress that is theoretically possible in that time. No getting water, no toilet breaks, no looking at the phone. Beats 3 hours of getting a glass of water, toilet breaks, getting hungry, realising I should work out and shower first and finding more reasons to jump up any day - surprisingly. Got to always treat it as if it were a competition.
Could also be that in times of remission, we take on more challenges: Start dating again, get pregnant, challenging new job to pay for it all. Or challenging career change, get a degree, get training.
And that would not be newsworthy at all.