Posting here cuz this rant that is coming together in my head is too long for the megathread and these events interact too much with my ADHD lol.
I have been off of the site for a bit just cuz I've been feeling so awful :(
Sooo I have some kind of unmanaged ADHD thing that's been wrecking my life for the last few years (it's a long story). The way I mildly kinda cope with it is huge doses of caffeine that sometimes give me the ability to get things I've been putting off (everything) done. But it also destroys my sleep and stresses me out so much I actually think it's starting to kill me lol. I have this issue with my eyes where I get random blind spots that develop and last for like a few minutes to an hour and no doctors have been able to tell me what it is. Stress makes it worse which makes me even more stressed and anxious about it :(
It's hell but somehow I'm still alive even though I feel like I'm nearing death every day. Also developing hypertension lmao. Recently, I actually got my ADHD certified as actually real and existing (diagnosed) but this shit they gave me (atomoxetine) cuz I made the mistake of telling them I've used recreational drugs before just makes me feel more depressed, wrecks my sleep even more, and makes me even more stressed-out lol. Idk I'm looking forward to trying all manner of blood pressure drugs and whatever else they can dig out of the pharmacopoeial backlog that makes me feel worse when I probably just need healthier stimulants to make me more able to deal with living in hellworld. I suppose I could ask but that probably won't go well considering the nurse practitioner who gave me this stuff was dismissive and mean toward me without me even asking for drugs lol. I have met like... maybe 2 nice mental health ""professionals"" in my life? (and I've seen many and not one seriously considered my concerns about ADHD until I met the first good one lol)
Anyway, this brings us to the real topic of this rant: I finally got a shitty, cheap, used MSM8916-based (Qualcomm system-on-chip (derogatory)) Moto G4 Play off of the the Internet after being without a working phone for like the last two weeks. The reason I got this phone in particular is because I deluded myself again into thinking postmarketOS was worth another try and this phone seemed to have decent support. It came yesterday and yesterday I was feeling particularly bad :(
I slept even worse than usual so I thought I would forego the usual caffeinemaxxing, drug myself with this kinda bad-feeling research chem GABAergic I have to calm down, setup this new phone quickly, and go back to bed. Yeah, and then I ended up staying up for the next 18 hrs trying to make this fucking awful phone work with my fucking awful... phone service provider (I'm gonna say PSP from now on) or whatever they're called. The initial setup was easy and fine but the phone had no service in either Android or postmarketOS. I had forgotten my PSP has some kind of rage-inducing IMEI allowlist system where if you're not using a specifically approved phone they won't allow your phone to register with their network regardless of if and has the capabilities they expect from an 4G LTE-speaking phone and it would have worked fine. I tried talking to customer service and they basically said "nah, we're not letting you use your phone, wanna buy another one? If not, get out of my face you disgusting removed modded phone user. I was gonna say you belong in prison for owning that but Linux phone users like you should go to a death camp. We're working on that :)". I had forgotten that this happened last time I got a phone like this and the only way I got around this was by changing the IMEI to an old iPhone. OoooOOOoh, IMEI changing, the forbidden topic of the XDA forums, yeah it's illegal in some places, which is fine because lying about your phone to your PSP is cool and good. Unfortunately, changing the IMEI of this phone was not as easy as with a Pinephone Pro (just one unsanctioned AT command! <3 <3 <3).
So I started on this journey of great trial and discovery: changing the IMEI of the embedded MSM8916 modem. At first, I thought this would be easy... but I underestimated the frustration-power of an undocumented-for-working-class-people SoC meant only to deliver slop into the eyes of a waiting, captive user. I could go into great detail here about what I tried, so many, many things that simultaneously blur into a morass of (ancient (relative to how fast the phone market moves), arcane malware-infested tools and forbidden incantations) and it being so frustrating that I remember it all. Different modem firmware, different Android systems, wiping modem configurations in different orders, different uhhhh "Qualcomm HS-USB Windows diagnostic drivers", (soooo many different tools, first-party (leaked Qualcomm tools) and otherwise), editing the IMEI in backups from Qualcomm tools and trying to write them back, grepping the modem configuration in flash for the IMEI, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc. I got so close sometimes but the attempt would always fail for some absolutely inexplicable, indecipherable reason.
For those not aware, this is just what phones are like. It all barely fucking works, any """"""consumer"""""" equipment may fall apart at any moment and be impossible to repair, it has a trillion mechanisms to prevent users from modifying their slop-feeder, data-collecting device yet is riddled with security problems for those with the time, energy, and money to find them (the state lmao), chips or whatever are undocumented except to those who can prove to Qualcomm or whoever that they're a servant of some capitalist who needs documentation in the service of their lord, infrastructure barely interoperates despite the great efforts of phone cartels to standardize because their members can't help themselves from introducing things like vendor-specific extensions or practices like carrier locking or IMEI whitelisting in the endless pursuit of higher profits
Unlimited destruction upon phones, computers are fucked now we need a Butlerian Jihad NOW!
We need to return to PDAs 
Fuck it, I guess I just live without a phone now I sure hope no one needs to call me lmao
Am I really hitting post on this lol
Atomoxetine is pretty rough with regards to side effects, going by anecdotal reports. They tend to start strong and generally they ease off until you increase your dose but for many people it's untenable. For others atomoxetine is a bit of a miracle drug and some people swear by it.
Guanfacine is the other main non-stimulant medication for ADHD, aside from bupropion, and it's reasonably well tolerated although it's not hugely effective for a lot of people. I've heard anecdotal reports that in adults a very high dose (think 6mg-8mg) can hit the mark.
Clonidine also deserves an honourable mention here although it works on the level of behavioural and emotional inhibition rather than on motivation and reward pathways, so if executive dysfunction or lack of motivation is something you're struggling with then clonidine probably isn't going to help, with a disclaimer that if you're using a lot of mental effort to consciously engage in behavioural inhibition or you're doing the same with emotional lability then clonidine might be able to help manage this so it can improve executive dysfunction in a secondary way. Works a treat for my insomnia and PTSD-related stuff like trauma nightmares, and also it's really effective at managing rejection sensitive dysphoria in my experience. (Guanfacine should also work well in this respect but I can't speak to it because I've only ever taken guanfacine with clonidine and there's a lot of overlap in how they work and so it was too difficult for me to determine if guanfacine was also having this effect.)
All of the above are not stimulants in the classic sense and none have the potential for addiction or abuse.
For stimulants that are closer to the classic ones that have no potential for addiction there is modafinil, which has a risk of abuse but mostly for occupational purposes (lol) but not for recreational purposes, and which is worthwhile considering if they aren't open to prescribing you with methylphenidate or amphetamines and there is also one that is a bit of a hidden gem as far as I'm concerned, although it has a pretty narrow evidence base, and that's amantadine - this has no addiction or abuse potential
Yeahh, I've been on atomoxetine for a month now and I really haven't seen any change except for anxiety and sleeping worse and maybe somehow it worsening my mood (it has a black-box warning for increased suicidality in children and adolescents, I'm not either of those yet...
). I skipped my dose yesterday and I don't really wanna keep taking it but doctors hate when you have autonomy over your own health sooooo 
Need to find the energy/motivation/focus/whatever to call them and make another appointment, what a shame the issue I'm seeking help about makes that more difficult lmao
I'm fine and down to try other stuff than stimulants I just really don't have a lot of time to get my life together quickly (running out of money and out of goodwill from family I'm living with, etc) so it would be cool if we could try the first-line, effective immediately usually, stuff first before going down the whole line of different medications (I've been through that with antidepressants and it really wasn't fun). Idk, I know you can't rush this kind of thing but... idk. I've been raw-dogging reality for my whole life and it hasn't really been working out for me lol. Like personally, I have no concern about me abusing medication they give me it's just... when doctors find out you do/have done drugs they never look at or treat you the same way again, in a really bad way :(
Thanks for writing all you wrote, it's really interesting. Maybe I'll ask about guanfacine next time I see a doctor. From what you wrote, it doesn't sound like clonidine is for me. I actually used to be kind of a drug/research chem nerd. You might find this interesting: I've taken analogs/derivatives of both modafinil and amantadine lmao. In particular, I took a fluorinated analog of modafinil (can't remember which one sorry) and found it to be basically inactive for me, unfortunately. For amantadine, I'm not sure if you've heard of this but I've taken the Soviet amantadine analog called bromantane. They gave it to cosmonauts and soldiers lol. I can see why they did, it was an effective mild stimulant (maybe on the same order of a cup of coffee) that really did make it a bit easier to get through the day when I was working retail full-time a few years ago.
I feel you.
My psychiatrist mentioned their frustration with late diagnosed ADHD and how patients get treated with regards to substance use disorder because he said that if you make it to adulthood without being treated for ADHD then you're basically going to end up with some sort of addiction. He was being a bit glib but I don't disagree entirely.
Unsolicited advice ahead so take it or leave it:
I wouldn't pin all of my hopes on guanfacine but it's a good augmentative med or one which is useful for when people cannot tolerate stimulant meds for whatever reason. It's going to be most useful for focus and clarity of thought, less so for motivation and similar. Usually it's prescribed in combination with other meds to boost their overall effect.
Given that you're under time pressure, if you get on it try to go up on the dose fairly rapidly become either you're going to get serious side effects from the get-go if it doesn't agree with you or you should be able to taper up fairly quickly without major side effects.
It's a shame that the modafinil analogue didn't hit the mark for you. It might still be worth trying to get your hands on some modafinil or armodafinil just to see if they happen to work for you where the analogue did not - you seem pretty capable and these are fairly sought after drugs so it shouldn't be impossible to source through other channels.
If bromantane helped then that or amantadine might be worth pursuing.
The patent on Vyvanse has just expired and production for the generics has been mostly spooled up by this point so you might have a chance at getting your hands on that with the right kind of manoeuvring because it's the least likely of the classic stimulants to be abused.
I guess if I was in your shoes I'd probably exaggerate the side effects of the atomoxetine and make a case for why you can't continue with it and then depending on your relationship with your prescribing doctor explain your need to get your life together and show eagerness to try out guanfacine and/or amantadine. If you mention that you've been doing some research and that Dr Russell Barkley talked about guanfacine in a lecture then you're probably going to get the doctor on side. As for amantadine I can provide you with studies that indicate it being about as effective as methylphenidate in adolescents if you want but you're probably more capable of me than finding this stuff tbh.
Last of all, one of the things that late diagnosed adults with ADHD go through is their brains adapting to everything being a struggle and so you get accustomed to life being a particular way. When you start on stimulants it's really common to require an adjustment period where you have to realign your understanding of things and how you relate to yourself/the world/the amount of resources you have available to you - sorta like when people find the right antidepressant there's a lag between the fairly rapid improvements that the drug brings and you adjusting to not feeling anhedonic 24/7. You might find that something like amantadine gives you that missing piece but you still need to do the cognitive work of acclimatising to your new normal. Sometimes the changes from meds can be subtle but having enough energy at the end of the day to make yourself a decent dinner or to be organised for the day ahead can have a cumulative effect on your lifestyle that amounts to fairly sizeable improvements over time.
I am running out of posting-energy for a longer reply but I just wanted to say I really appreciate your advice, thank you
All good, there's no expectation that you have to match my word count lol.
I just hope that some of it is useful to you.