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Group plan (employer, one of the big insurers): Vyvanse covered at 80% — but only after a documented generic trial, which the pharmacist had to submit. Nobody mentioned this; first month was full price for nothing. Ask your pharmacy to run a pre-check on your coverage BEFORE the first refill — takes them five minutes and would have saved me $130.

Tried both classes over two years. Stayed on the non-stimulant, and the deciding factor surprised me: evenings. Stimulants gave me better peak focus but I paid for it at 6pm every day. Atomoxetine's 'worse but constant' beat 'better but rationed' for my actual life, which involves other humans after work.

Track WHEN it slips, not just that it slips. My 'mid-afternoon fade' turned out to be a 5.5-hour mark you could set a clock by — that's not a bigger-dose conversation, that's a longer-formulation conversation. Completely different ask. The timing detail changed my prescription.

Diagnosed 36, cried in a grocery store parking lot over a completed to-do list. The grief is documented, it's real, and in my experience it comes in waves for a few months — big at first, then ambushes you occasionally (old report cards are a landmine, heads up). What helped: writing angry letters to nobody, and one session with a therapist who got late-diagnosis specifically.

Mine did NOT fully lift and we ended up switching classes — and that was fine, second med had no flatness at all. Mentioning the other branch so you know it existing isn't a catastrophe, it's just information. Three weeks is the right checkpoint.

The actionable red flags my prescriber gave me, verbatim-ish: chest pain, fainting or near-fainting, palpitations that interrupt what you're doing, breathlessness disproportionate to effort — those are call-now items regardless of any number. A stable elevated resting rate with none of those: bring it up at the next regular visit. Symptoms outrank data points.

Four antidepressants, eight years, same museum of side effects — and yes, at my eventual assessment the psychiatrist said the med history itself was informative. Repeated non-response doesn't diagnose anything, but it's apparently a legitimate 'reassess the frame' flag. You're not reverse-engineering a diagnosis from TikTok; you're reporting a treatment pattern plus new information. That's just… history-taking.

Week 6 Strattera here, needed to read this today. The 'is this placebo for $80' phase is REAL and nobody on the stimulant side of the forum gets it. Bookmarking your week-8 description as motivation to hold on.

Pinning a neutral map of the three routes this thread discusses, for anyone landing here from search: (1) Public via referral — $0, needs a referring clinician, waits vary hugely by region (community reports here: 6 weeks to 11+ months). (2) Private psychoeducational assessment — typically $1,800-$3,000 with a registered psychologist; thorough documentation useful for accommodations, but prescribing still requires a physician/NP afterward. (3) OHIP-billed virtual care (OP's route — this includes services like ours) — physician-led assessment and, where clinically appropriate, treatment initiation, usually on a weeks timeline. Whichever route: the paper-trail and childhood-records prep OP describes strengthens all three. We're an option in category 3, so factor that into how you read this summary. Costs/waits above are community-reported and vary.

My prescriber's rough framework, shared as a patient not a professional: rate of loss mattered more than total (fast early loss that keeps accelerating = flag), and she cared about whether I was skipping meals vs eating smaller ones. 8lbs/2months landed in her 'watch, don't panic' zone with scheduled meals + monthly weigh-ins. Below a certain BMI it becomes an active problem regardless of rate.