@Marla@chaos.social Sure!

The figuring out of the right dosage wasn't easy, it took a lot of trial and error - especially because it is difficult to distinguish "a bit too much" and "a bit too little", they both feel very similar.

I eventually ended up on the trick with tea; if I deliberately take a somewhat lower dose, and then once it starts taking effect, I drink a cup of black tea, one of two things will happen: either I get *more* jittery (in which case my dose was already a bit too high) or I get *less* jittery (in which case my dose was a bit too low and is now right).

This still required experimentation for a couple of weeks to get it right, incrementally narrowing down the ideal dose. Even then I sometimes needed to take a slightly larger or smaller crumb (the pills rarely broke evenly) depending on how I was feeling that specific day, if I wanted to feel perfectly calm.

Something I did early on, and that helped to learn to identify the "taking effect" moment, was to sit down on the couch immediately after taking the morning dose, and putting on an easy-to-watch show; at some point during the episode, it would feel like something softly 'snapped' in my head, followed by a sort of gentle tickling feeling and a change in mood (more emotionally responsive!) and mental state, and that'd be my cue that it started taking effect. The show wouldn't be very mentally engaging so there was nothing to distract me from identifying this.

Another signal for me that the medication was at *right* dose, was that my thoughts would become a lot more linear; normally my brain tries to explore all the possible angles and interpretations of a topic all at once in parallel, but when at the right dose, I would become very calm and structured in how I approached things instead. You may not see this one though, it seems to be pretty unusual even among ADHD-havers (and in my case, it was a reason to sometimes deliberately not take medication, and let my brain 'run free').

(None of this probably works with delayed-release medication; my doctor specifically advised starting with the normal one first because it's easier to adjust.)

The "far too much" symptoms, well, I suppose they were basically what people typically describe as "the effect of stimulants [on neurotypical folks]". Feeling like a coiled-up spring, getting hot, unable to sit still, *needing* to move and jump around, and almost no mental focus because my brain is constantly telling me "hey! get up! move!". It felt physical much more than mental.

This was very different from the "slightly off" symptoms, which were more a sense of being overwhelmed by stimuli, everything coming at me at once, needing to do so many things but having time for none of them, and so on.

I hope that helps to clarify things - feel free to ask more specific questions if you have any, these are just the points that immediately come to mind :)