ADD/ADHD

[cattygurl]

I'm wondering if anyone has been diagnosed with ADD/ADHD, and if you've received any treatment for it.

I'm afraid of taking medication (esp. the likes of Ritalin, Adderall, esp which are basically amphetamines).

[The Ram]

Catty are you being diagnosed with ADD?

[LeaJade]

Sorry this is long as hell
--

They said I had a slight case of ADD - so, yes - I WAS technically diagnosed with it by a doctor - and they gave me adderall! I dont know, I GUESS i have trouble focusing, but what I really lack is motivation.

Also, I think that if everyone was tested they'd be diagnosed with it - fuck.

Anyway, the adderall didn't help - and I took myself off it after two weeks. I know it's a stimulant, but it put me right to sleep - so all I did while I was on it was take naps.
-
My sister on the other hand who was also diagnosed with it - with an even smaller case than I, was on adderall for like - almost a year - and then took herself off it. The next time she went to the doctor she goes, "I don't have ADD." - and they go "Ok."
fucked up.
-
A friend of mine named Ian lied his ass off to the doctor so he could get adderall. He takes it everyday. Before he took it he had no trouble focusing. When he's on it he also has no trouble getting down to work, if he wants. Though, when he forgets to take his 20mg--- there's complete lack of focus, he's hyper, and he's crabby as shit because he's missing his pill.
-

[LeaJade]

oh, if you're afraid of taking amphetamines, there's this new drugs called strattera<sp? and it's not a stimulant... so you can look into that if you want.

[ellencho]

If you truly have ADD/ADHD then the amphetamines will not make you all wired and crack-heady. It'll actually calm you down but might make you feel sort of dulled. In Lea's case, she probably truly had ADD which is why the drugs probably put her to sleep. And it's also possible the dosage might have been wrong.

[AngryEthiopian]

A friend of mine named Ian lied his ass off to the doctor so he could get adderall. He takes it everyday. Before he took it he had no trouble focusing. When he's on it he also has no trouble getting down to work, if he wants. Though, when he forgets to take his 20mg--- there's complete lack of focus, he's hyper, and he's crabby as shit because he's missing his pill.
-
He's dependent now, his body no longer produces the hormones it used to produce naturally because he's been taking the stimulant. That's a dangerous thing, it's why ecstacy is so dangerous as well.

[generaltojo]

A friend of mine named Ian lied his ass off to the doctor so he could get adderall. He takes it everyday. Before he took it he had no trouble focusing. When he's on it he also has no trouble getting down to work, if he wants. Though, when he forgets to take his 20mg--- there's complete lack of focus, he's hyper, and he's crabby as shit because he's missing his pill.
-
He's dependent now, his body no longer produces the hormones it used to produce naturally because he's been taking the stimulant. That's a dangerous thing, it's why ecstacy is so dangerous as well.

That's not exactly correct... ADD drugs affect neurotransmitters more than hormones - dopamine production more than anything else. Dopamine is central to reinforcing natural behaviour - eating, sleeping, excersising, having sex - and artificial substances like ritalin, amphetamines, coke, etc. cut into that "reward loop," and it atrophies. You're unable to naturally produce dopamine, so you're unable to take pleasure from natural activies, so you crash and crave the drugs more.

Ecstasy primarily affects serotonin production, which has nothing to do with the dopamine-based reward loop, so it's doesn't have any relation to stuff like Ritalin or coke. It's not chemically addictive, but it can be psychologically addictive - more of a mental state thing than anything chemical.

[AngryEthiopian]

A friend of mine named Ian lied his ass off to the doctor so he could get adderall. He takes it everyday. Before he took it he had no trouble focusing. When he's on it he also has no trouble getting down to work, if he wants. Though, when he forgets to take his 20mg--- there's complete lack of focus, he's hyper, and he's crabby as shit because he's missing his pill.
-
He's dependent now, his body no longer produces the hormones it used to produce naturally because he's been taking the stimulant. That's a dangerous thing, it's why ecstacy is so dangerous as well.

That's not exactly correct... ADD drugs affect neurotransmitters more than hormones - dopamine production more than anything else. Dopamine is central to reinforcing natural behaviour - eating, sleeping, excersising, having sex - and artificial substances like ritalin, amphetamines, coke, etc. cut into that "reward loop," and it atrophies. You're unable to naturally produce dopamine, so you're unable to take pleasure from natural activies, so you crash and crave the drugs more.

Ecstasy primarily affects serotonin production, which has nothing to do with the dopamine-based reward loop, so it's doesn't have any relation to stuff like Ritalin or coke. It's not chemically addictive, but it can be psychologically addictive - more of a mental state thing than anything chemical.
Ah, i believe you're right. I somehow related all those chemicals and neurotransmitters to hormones. So yea, what you said. Point is, when you take these things and your body is working probably already, these drugs can break the natural balance.

[generaltojo]

You're right in saying that ecstasy is not exactly safe. It may not be chemically addictive, but the re have been studies showing that it's neurotoxic. Some ecstasy also allows production of small amounts of dopamine, which gets trapped in serotonin receptors on reuptake (e.g. jamming the wrong key repeatedly into the wrong lock.)

[cattygurl]

I'VE BEEN TALKING TO SOME FRIENDS WITH ADD, AND WE ARE FRIGHTNINGLY SIMILAR.

Most women/girls with ADD are not hyper and prone to depression. That definitely fits me. I still don't care to take Ritalin, Adderall, etc.

A friend of mine is on provigil... she gave me a sample and it was amazing. I could focus. I CAN FOCUS! I really struggle with concentration. The only thing that saved me in high school/college was my exceptional talent for quick assimilation and regurgitation, 'cause my concentration has always been in the shitter.

So, if anyone has any ADD/ADHD experiences they would like to share, I'd love to hear it. You can pm me if you don't wanna post it on the forum. I promise I will respect your privacy if you pm me.

[angi]

You're right in saying that ecstasy is not exactly safe. It may not be chemically addictive, but the re have been studies showing that it's neurotoxic. Some ecstasy also allows production of small amounts of dopamine, which gets trapped in serotonin receptors on reuptake (e.g. jamming the wrong key repeatedly into the wrong lock.)

They don't call them eTards for nothin'

[AngryEthiopian]

You're right in saying that ecstasy is not exactly safe. It may not be chemically addictive, but the re have been studies showing that it's neurotoxic. Some ecstasy also allows production of small amounts of dopamine, which gets trapped in serotonin receptors on reuptake (e.g. jamming the wrong key repeatedly into the wrong lock.)

They don't call them eTards for nothin'
I know a girl (not really know, but she lives near me and I know her friend aka "he said, she said") who had a bad spell using e repeatedly... Her jaw is all fucked up and she can no longer control it, she drools all the time and has to carry a towel :(

[generaltojo]

You're right in saying that ecstasy is not exactly safe. It may not be chemically addictive, but the re have been studies showing that it's neurotoxic. Some ecstasy also allows production of small amounts of dopamine, which gets trapped in serotonin receptors on reuptake (e.g. jamming the wrong key repeatedly into the wrong lock.)

They don't call them eTards for nothin'
I know a girl (not really know, but she lives near me and I know her friend aka "he said, she said") who had a bad spell using e repeatedly... Her jaw is all fucked up and she can no longer control it, she drools all the time and has to carry a towel :(

That is amazingly fucked up.

[cattygurl]

add to the fact that most of the E on the street isn't MDMA, so most of the time, people don't know what the hell they're taking...

[The Ram]

What does that say about people or society when so many of us are
on medications for mental problems...NOT that I am dissing on those
who truly need it...At the same time I wonder if it is due to our
modern lifestyles which take us out of our natural tendancies and thus
bring out these syndromes. :roll:

[B the student]

my own personal perspective on medicating mental illness is that many doctors are quick to prescribe medications as a "quick fix" answer to issues they don't really understand. I'm not familiar with ADD/ADHD myself (altho i really do sometimes think i have it b/c my concentration has a tendency to totally suck.), but when it came to dealing with my depression a lot of the docs pretty much tried to stuff me with meds and see how i reacted to them instead of really trying to understand what i was dealing with. I finally told my ma that i really didn't need that shit and told the psychatrist i wanted out and of course he was like "you'll be doing more damage in the long run." But i've been doing just fine thank you very much.

HOWEVER, i'm not saying nobody needs these meds. My ma needs 'em, at least that's what she tells me and i've seen her without them and she's a mess. I'm guessing my depression was a lot different than what she's dealing with. But i still feel a lot of docs use meds to "cover their bases" if you know what i mean.

[LeaJade]

B the Student, that's exactly what happened with me too. For depression they put me on medication, and then switched the doses around - and I never really noticed a difference - except for in the first couple months or so. However, I'm pretty sure that I took part in the placebo affect~! YES. After awhile I took myself off them, and my mom continued to comment on how - I was doing a lot better. Later I confessed to my doctor that I hadn't really been on them for all that long. I swear those things didn't work for me.

My sister however takes Prozac. 40 mg worth. A med much stronger than what I was taking - and I guess she frickn LOVES it. Apparently it helps a lot with being stable, though sometimes she complains about not really feeling extremes of anything.

[Taliesin Stormheller]

I'm autistic and I had to go through immigration, racism shit, permanent hearing and hand movement problems from cutting and banging my head on the wall, and shit from my parents who are seriously insane bastards. Pretty bad, huh? I don't take any of the white man's poison. There's a reason why Americans are getting crazier and crazier and it's pills to blame. I think that that's also the reason why Americans are so fat. You don't see as many nuts/ as much crime in China and I think that that's because folks in China *talk about the problem* instead of taking fucking prozac or ritalin. I knew a lady who became a crack addict because her childhood intake of ritalin made her take to coke like a duck to water. Studies have also shown that Prozac makes people violent. I don't think that those pills even work on people of color in the same way as they do on whites. Asians probably don't even get white people depression and ADD and such, just like blacks don't get the same kind of skin cancer as whites and whites don't get the same kind of sickle cell anemia as blacks. Choose Asian Medicine, Ayurveda etc before taking ritalin and shit like that.

[Dialectic]

While I appreciate TS's sincerity and passion, there's so much inaccurate stuff in that post I'm not even sure where to start.

A brief point: the thrust of her post reifies (makes real in her mind/ through her assertion) the notion of rigidly biological notions of "race" as well as pharmacological association with "race," both of which are scientifically unsound. Black people do not all respond the same way to medicines, nor do Asians, Whites, etc. As a matter of fact, a mother and daughter can be of different pharmacological types, which alone destroys the notion of the mass application of "race-based" medicines.

[generaltojo]

Indeed.

You don't see as many nuts/ as much crime in China and I think that that's because folks in China *talk about the problem* instead of taking fucking prozac or ritalin.

That's completely incorrect. If anything, the Chinese culture *discourages* openly talking about things like mental illness. It's actually one of the biggest problems in the Chinese newcomer community - things like culture clash, change in customs and climate, isolation due to language, etc. - have caused a notable increase in mental illness, but there isn't any traditional means like "talking it out" to resolve such things. Fortunately, the community is slowly developing such facilities (at least up here in TO), but it still remains one of the problems the Asian North American community faces.


I knew a lady who became a crack addict because her childhood intake of ritalin made her take to coke like a duck to water. Studies have also shown that Prozac makes people violent.

These statements are probably true. Chemically, ritalin affects dopamine production, as does crack cocaine. As an SSRI, Prozac affects serotonin production. Taking that shit without proper therapy and controls could result in violent behaviour and even suicide - but that sort of thing completely varies across individual physiology / psychology / experiences and personal contexts.


I don't think that those pills even work on people of color in the same way as they do on whites. Asians probably don't even get white people depression and ADD and such, just like blacks don't get the same kind of skin cancer as whites and whites don't get the same kind of sickle cell anemia as blacks. Choose Asian Medicine, Ayurveda etc before taking ritalin and shit like that.

Completely untrue. It's more fair to say that pills work differently on every single individual - as mentioned, it completely varies across individual physiology / psychology / experiences and personal contexts. Because they affect the same neurochemical systems, there are patterns that can be mapped, but they haven't, properly - drug companies just want to push the stuff on the populace for instant profit, studies are expensive and take a long, long time and a lot of money to conduct. People essentially guinea pigs here, and the only protection they have is a compentent biological psychologist monitoring your progress and applying therapy at the same time. (And these are rarer than you think.)


I don't take any of the white man's poison. There's a reason why Americans are getting crazier and crazier and it's pills to blame. I think that that's also the reason why Americans are so fat.

This is... ah, forget it.

[ric]

Well coming from someone who works in Big Pharma

STOP BUYING THESE DRUGS. THESE DRUG COs WANT YOU TO BE A DRUG ADDICT. ALSO ALL THESE DRUGS( ADD) have issues with making ppl have depression/suicide persona

[Infectious]

Our drug knowledge, as most of our knowledge in medicine, esp re: psychiatry, is very primitive. ie dangerous.

Speed and its derivatives have the opposite effect on ADD-diagnosed people than non-ADD-diagnosed people.

I think it's overdiagnosed, but at the same time if we didn't diagnose them, we'd be calling them stupid instead.

[KeJia Sista]

I was chatting online with a young brother who told me he was diagnosed with ADD/ADHD and found it hard concentrating. He was also depressed over a breadup with a g/f of 4 years (he was only 19) I asked him how he was on video games; he loved them; he could play vid games for hours at a time. I said, "ah ... so you can focus..."

Ke Jia


"An important argument against the thesis that ADHD and ADD are actual conditions is that the epidemic appears to be confined to North America. The use of Ritalin and similar prescriptions is overwhelmingly concentrated in the United States and Canada. In fact, these two countries account for 96 percent of their use throughout the world, and children in the U.S. have been estimated to be from 10 to 50 times more likely to be labeled as having ADD than their counterparts in Britain or France. (7) In American public schools, about 10 percent of all children in grades K-12 carries an ADHD diagnosis. Europe, by contrast, has a fraction of one percent so labeled. Could the United States and Canada really be so unique in the recent drastic upsurge of this malady?

Many in the health field are calling for more research in this area. For instance, Thomas Moore, senior fellow in health policy at George Washington University Medical Center, who feels that brain damage from Ritalin is more common than has been admitted, often questions the rationale of giving Ritalin to children, stating that the chemical imbalance theory has not been established by any scientific evidence. And while the public is given information by the National Institutes of Mental Health that ADHD is neurobiological in nature, NIMH psychiatrist Peter Jensen stated in 1996, "The National Institutes of Mental Health does not have an official position on whether ADHD is a neurobiological disorder." In other words, this agency is talking out of both sides of its mouth-not that this is an uncommon phenomenon in Washington.

Psychologist Diane McGuiness summed up the situation in 1991 by saying, "We have invented a disease, given it medical sanction, and now must disown it. The major question is, how do we go about destroying the monster we've created? It is not easy to do this and still save face." Psychologist Daniel Elkind, in his 1981 classic The Hurried Child, discussed the increasing "industrialization" of our schools, with their regimented schedules, even at the elementary level, and their focus on turning out quality-controlled products, i.e., students. (8) Today, with administrators under the gun to have their students perform well on standardized tests, and with more troubled children in the schools, the atmosphere has not gotten any more relaxed. The inescapable fact is that schools have an interest in keeping order, in keeping children quiet and calm so they can get on with the business of teaching and learning. And psychiatric medicines do help keep schoolchildren under control. So, in the words of developmental pediatrician Dr. Joseph Keeley, "We sometimes use medications to make kids fit into schools rather than schools to fit the kids." (9)

Of course there are better ways to make schools work, such as appropriate therapy for troubled youngsters, custom-tailored education plans, and small classes. But these approaches are more difficult-and more expensive. Thus, the school district may have a vested interest in medication as a quick, less costly, fix, although this may not be what's best for a particular child. Says Dr. David Stein, "The drugs blunt their behavior. They don't act out in class, and they sit there quietlyÖ.The difficulty is that children learn nothing from a drug." (10)

Schools justify the need for medications by saying that children on Ritalin learn better because the drug allows them to focus, but that claim has never been proven. According to Stein, so-called ADD children can learn when they want to; it's just that schools expect too much of students and do not
engage them. "This country has started teaching second- and third-grade material in kindergarten, and children begin to get burnt out by the time they're in the second grade. They wind up hating schoolwork. And that's the key. These children can play very complex video games, and they can read the instructions, because they enjoy doing it." (11)"

Ke Jia

[Altaira]

Although I haven't been diagnosed I do check positive on prescreenings, and I have the daydreamy, not hyperactive, kind even though I can be restless.

Many women as children are overlooked for diagnoses and treatment because the inattention is harder to spot than the more blatantly apparent hyperactivity.

Some of the symptoms that I have include: tendency to daydream, easily bored, trouble focusing, need for stimulation (prone to argumentativeness), irritability, creativity, highly imaginative, and others.

I'm not on anything and only want to be as a very last resort. My plan is to find herbal and therapeutic alternatives to the medication used for ADD.

[toml]

Just a thought here, but how does TV, the Internet, and Video games affect our sense of time?

Whenever I ask my friends to give me a time esimate on something I've noticed that one friend always gives time estimates in half-hour intervals (e.g. it'll be done in 30 minutes, or it'll be done in an hour), while another friend gives estimates in smaller chunks (5 minutes, 10, etc.), and finally another tells me, "it'll be done when I finish it."

Am I onto something here?

:lol:

[ellencho]

I know peeps who've gone on to get their masters and doctorate degrees because they were all hopped up on coke and crystal. It gave them the stamina to go on and on and on.
I can tell when girls at work are on it too and I hate it because they're always so moody. Non stop talking and acting out. I'd like to get their fluid samples and have them busted!
That's pretty expensive. Two to four years of continuos amphetamine usage? They must be full blown addicts by now.

[Altaira]

Just a thought here, but how does TV, the Internet, and Video games affect our sense of time?

Whenever I ask my friends to give me a time esimate on something I've noticed that one friend always gives time estimates in half-hour intervals (e.g. it'll be done in 30 minutes, or it'll be done in an hour), while another friend gives estimates in smaller chunks (5 minutes, 10, etc.), and finally another tells me, "it'll be done when I finish it."

Am I onto something here?

:lol:

I didn't know that it did. What I did know was that folks with ADD can be habitually tardy for appointments because the condition is marked by a need for adrenaline or excitement which the stress of arriving late provides. Not that they do it deliberately though.

Some potentially helpful "natural" hints:

~ Eliminate simple sugars including fruit juices, foods with colors and preservatives.
~ Whole foods
~ Complex carbohydrates: beans, whole grain products.

~ Exercise

~ Magnesium supplement

~ valerian (all the following are herbs)
~ Chinese zizyphus
~ chamomile tea
~ lemon balm
~ catnip
~ hawthorn berry
~ gotu kola flavored with cinnamon, anise, and a touch of cloves. Usually prepared as a glycerite extract (approx. 1:3-1:5 concentration). 20 drops 2-3 daily. Alternate with Hawthorn berry syrup, 1 tsp 2 x daily.