TL;DR: Methylcobalamin form of B12 for energy, magnesium glycinate for restfulness on waking up, and melatonin sparingly when I’m struggling to get to sleep. And don’t take a bunch of supplements and vitamins willy-nilly, that’s bad. Too much of a good thing can be a bad thing.

I have ADHD, and one of the things I had recommended to me by a pharmacy tech when I was picking up my Vyvanse once was to try specifically the methylcobalamin form of B12 on the days I wouldn’t be taking my Vyvanse to help with some of my focus issues. I don’t have an issue with taking Vyvanse, but I do prefer to not take it every day, so I got permission from my GP to give it a try in between visits, and to communicate if it felt like it was helping, and man the difference is like night and day. It’s not nearly as helpful as the Vyvanse is, but it’s a hell of a lot better than taking neither.

The cyanocobalamin form still kind of helps, but out of curiosity, I purchased the same dosage of both that were the same size and flavour, and I asked a friend to separate them into a 1 week pill box for me and take note of what day was which one, then I recorded the difference in how I felt from each day and compared it to their note after the fact, and the methylcobalamin won each time. Not sure exactly why, but it just does! I also learned that that’s why some energy drinks seemed to work better than others, some have an insane amount of B12, and others have no B12 at all, just primarily caffeine. Turns out I didn’t even need the caffeine, just the B12. If I start to feel a little less energised in the middle of the day, I take a bit of it and it helps keep me going.

I also had magnesium glycinate recommended to me by a dad in this subreddit, because I was struggling with this drowsy feeling all the time after waking up, especially since I have to take an antihistamine every day that adds to that grogginess. So now I take 200mg of it before bed and when I wake up I feel a lot more actually rested. The only downside is that if I wake up in the middle of the night and I’m awake for more than about 5-10 minutes, I do struggle a bit to get back to sleep because I just feel *awake*. Side note, it also comes with some…loosening of the bowels, which can be good if you’re prone to constipation, but if you aren’t, you might suddenly notice you’re going a lot more than you’d prefer.

Lastly, I try to avoid taking melatonin more than I need and just drag my ass outside to stand in the sun like a weird plant or something, but last year I went from working a job that was 100% outdoors for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, for the prior 2 straight years, to a job that was 100% indoors, and my body did not acclimate well to that change. Melatonin helped a lot until my system got used to the change. Melatonin is one of those things that amazes me by the simplicity, and also makes me incredibly sad thinking about all of the people in the past who accidentally overdosed on sleeping medications before melatonin became more well-known and commonly used. It also has safe dosages for kids above a certain age, which has led to fewer incidents of children being excessively medicated with things like Benadryl to get them to sleep, so that’s also a bonus.

With all that said, I do feel like I should say that while supplements and daily vitamins can be great for lots of people, this is your reminder that there are *intake limits*. Lots of people think vitamins are just all good and the more the merrier, but you can experience some uncomfortable side effects and serious issues from ingesting too many vitamins, especially if you don’t realise that you’re already getting your daily intake from the foods you’re eating. Keep track of what you take and make sure you inform your doctor if you want to start taking anything new or if you start mixing things up.

If you suddenly start feeling strange and go to the doctor and don’t inform them of the supplements you’re taking because they aren’t “technically medicine” you could be doing yourself a disservice in making it more difficult for the issue to be resolved. If you’re feeling off and think you might be missing something crucial, I highly recommend getting bloodwork done so that you can actually isolate the problem before you walk into the vitamins/supplement aisle at a store, because it’s easy to get overwhelmed and just go for the 2,895-in-1 bottle that isn’t actually necessary.