Insomnia, Jitters, and Other Side Effects

Hello, world, I feel absolutely terrible right now because I've only gotten 4 hours of sleep for the past two nights!  Yippee!

Actually I don't feel very "yippee" at all right now.  In reality I feel super irritable.  This is mainly from the lack of sleep, I think.

So basically what happened is that the doctor prescribed me something else for focus because I was experiencing pretty severe side effects from the first medication.  The second medication (what I'm on right now) apparently isn't working so well, either.

At first when I took it it was like a SUPER MIRACLE DRUG.  Suddenly I could easily do things that are typically difficult or impossible, such as:
1. Understand complicated books without having to backtrack constantly and reread previous paragraphs!
2. Remember people's names on the first introduction, AND correlate those names with faces!
3. Be ready to go to work BEFORE it was actually time to go!
4. STOP ZONING OUT!
5. Effortlessly pay attention when people are talking to me for more than 10 seconds!
6. After pausing to do something, I could actually remember the reason I had walked into the room in the first place!
7. Remember detailed instructions!

It's hard to describe the exact feeling I got, but I guess simply put I felt more aware of what was happening?  It was kind of like...I SUDDENLY WOKE UP AND BECAME A SUPERHERO!!!!!!!  Yeah, I'm going to call it a SPIDERMAN MOMENT!  You know how Spiderman passes out from a spider bite, and when he wakes up he can shoot webs out of his hands?  It was totally like that!  Metaphorically speaking, of course.

Unfortunately, it didn't really last that long (the medicine, I mean).  It's supposed to last about 12 hours, but it really only lasted about 5-6 for me.  That is, the good effects did.  After that I was hit by a ton of lousy side effects, which mainly consisted of me feeling like I had too much caffeine and not being able to sleep.

Day 1: Developed SUPERHUMAN ABILITIES that lasted for 5-6 hours, during which period I could do things I never thought possible!   Effects wore off, leaving me feeling a bit jittery but nothing serious.  Comparable to having a small cup of black tea (please note that my body reacts very strongly to caffeine.  I typically abstain from it for that reason).  Feeling increased by bedtime, so despite being dead tired was unable to fall asleep until after 3AM.  That was with taking 2 aspirin (aspirin work like a very mild sleep med for me).

Day 2: Barely slept at all because I kept waking up.  Got around 4-5 hours of sleep.  Took medicine earlier (9AM) because I thought that might have been why it kept me up.  Again, developed superpowers for about 5 hours and sorted through 5+ years worth of paper in record time :)  Jitters later on in the day were considerably worse than Day 1.  Despite taking the medicine 2 1/2 hours earlier than before and taking aspirin before bedtime, couldn't fall asleep until around 3:30AM!

Day 3 (today): Got 4 hours of sleep or less.  Felt like crap upon waking.  Not only that, but I still was feeling jittery, despite the fact I had taken the medicine almost 24 freaking hours earlier!  Finally dragged myself out of bed to eat and take medicine at 9AM.  Yeah, you'd think at this point I'd stop taking the medicine and call the doctor to complain, but I googled the medicine and found that insomnia wasn't uncommon.  Not only that, but I wasn't sure if the doctor would take me seriously if I complained after only 2 days.  Figured if it didn't get better today, I would call the doc tomorrow.  So I take the medicine, wait for it to kick in, and...it didn't.  That's right, nothing good happened at all.  The only thing it did was make me feel more jittery (is that even possible?)  At work I got headaches and super dizzy, but I'm not sure if that was from the medicine or from sleep deprivation.  My heart also started beating off rhythm a bit.  I'm assuming that part was definitely from the medicine.


So in a nutshell, I feel like crap right now.  I would even go so far as to say, between feeling like this and having to work while feeling like this, today has got to have been one of the worst days of my life.  I feel like I'm running purely on espresso right now.  God, it's like junior year all over again, when I lived off of caffeine, skipped meals regularly, typically got about 6 hours or less of sleep a night, and would go for countless days without taking showers.  *Pause*  Okay, granted, it's not that bad.  But it's certainly close.  It feels like all the medicine I took for the past three days has stacked up.  Blah...