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Reply to "I took my kid's ADD med."

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It shouldn't make her feel that way though. If she truly has ADD, it should sort of calm her down but allow her to focus. People with ADD don't speed on those drugs like people without it do.[/quote]

This.  The response is entirely different if you do not have adhd.[/quote]

I'm not convinced of that, although it is what all the doctors say.  There is no question that I have had lifelong ADD.  I took Ritalin for a while in grad school, and also tried another stimulant drug (can't remember the name).  I hated the way they made me feel.  I mean, the stuff is effective in the same way that coffee is effective.  Both drugs helped me focus, and there was a time that I thought they were working for me.  I suppose I felt calm in the sense that I felt detached from external stimuli and I could do one thing for hours.  But I felt like it interfered with normal executive functioning, meaning that I lost all sense of time when I was on it and didn't always use the focus in a way that would lead most efficiently to the desired result.  It also made me feel strangely self-conscious and out of sorts socially, which is probably a function of the same out-of-body feeling you describe.  And after several months, the constant peaks and crashes made me feel anxious, depleted, and eventually depressed.  The drug withdrawal was awful.  When I wasn't dosed up, my cognitive function moved so slowly I could feel the synapses in my brain struggling to connect.  I really couldn't get organized/moving to do anything without the meds.   I had never been that way pre-medication, so I stopped taking it.

DD is showing signs of having ADD and I have pretty much decided that I won't medicate her with stimulants, even if that limits her realization of her academic potential.  I would consider treating her with subclinical doses of a more stimulating SSRI, which I had some success with years ago.  The extra serotonin can sometimes help improve focus, independent of its mood-stabilizing activity.  I noticed an immediate improvement with the very dose.  [/quote]

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