I have suffered from depression, anhedonia, and anxiety for most of my life. I’ve been on various SSRIs along with Wellbutrin for several years. While these medications sort of worked, they didn’t do much to improve the quality of my life. They were more successful at blunting everything.

Around six months ago, I began seeing a new prescriber who suggested lowering my SSRI does in conjunction with adding a stimulant. Holy cow. The addition of the stimulant has been unbelievably helpful. My anxiety is lower than it’s been since I was a child, I’ve been actually looking forward to working and my mood has been more consistent overall. I’ve now lowered my SSRI to the lowest therapeutic dose, and this is the most mentally healthy I’ve felt in…ever.

After trying a few different stimulants to see which worked best for me, we settled on Vyvanse, as it lasted the longest, seems to be the most “gentle” to me, and doesn’t cause me to have a horrible crash at the end of the day…just a small one. Unfortunately, while having a small crash towards the end of the day seemed like an insignificant price to pay in order to feel like colossally less depressed, it’s becoming quite inconvenient to feel wiped out at 6 or 7pm.

While I know some people take a stimulant “booster,” I just don’t love the idea of taking another stimulant during the day. My prescriber suggested that we add a low dose of Modafinil a couple hours after I take the stimulant, in order to hopefully lessen the crash, and extend my waking hours. I’ve taken the Modafinil for two days now, and it has virtually erased the crash! While I’ve felt like I have a bit more energy, I haven’t felt jittery or like I’m bouncing off the walls, as I feared.

I’m curious if this is a common combination of medications. I haven’t found many instances of people using this combo from searching online (not that that means anything necessarily). Has anyone used this combo? Thoughts?