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cjksutherland posted:I'm curious, with no disrespect intended, where you draw the line between someone that's just unmotivated and inattentive and someone that has ADHD. Surely not everyone that's a lazy slacker has ADHD, so what makes one different from the other? As far as diagnostic criteria go it's a matter of the severity of symptoms. People with ADHD also often have dyslexia or hearing issues too, but ignoring stuff like this, it's severity. What's the difference between feeling sad and being clinically depressed, between OCD and and a clean freak, etc? In all of these cases, it's mostly a difference of severity.
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# ¿ Oct 10, 2009 16:04 |
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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 09:53 |
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Qu Appelle posted:I would love to see a cite on this, especially when it comes to hearing. I'm not questioning you, I just want to read more about it. Because I know my hearing and audio processing is 'off', and it's not just due to metal shows. It would explain a lot. quote:Auditory processing disorder versus attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder - A dysfunction complex or different entities? Interestingly, I also noticed this study when scrolling through the search results. quote:
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# ¿ Oct 11, 2009 23:39 |
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Does anyone happen to know the neural basis for the auditory processing problems with people with ADHD?
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# ¿ Mar 25, 2010 19:33 |
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maXilla posted:Hey thread! I've been diagnosed with ADHD and have been prescribed multiple medications from 4th to 9th grade. I stopped and haven't had anything since. Is this bad? Is this why I'm unemployed? I hated how the pills made me act. Lots of people are able to discontinue medication when they get older
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# ¿ May 9, 2010 17:31 |
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Qu Appelle posted:So now, when the Dex wears off, I can no longer adequately move my left arm . What do you mean, you can no longer adequately move it? There is only one thing I can think of that would link these three things, and that's Parkinson's Disease. You can treat some of the symptoms with amphetamines, it's associated with low Vitamin D levels, and a primary symptom is certain difficulty moving limbs (examples: rigidity, tremors, lack of ability for precise movements) and it usually starts in just one limb. But this all may be a coincidence, or a strange temporary thing, or who knows, it's probably nothing (I'm no doctor). edit: Actually in your earlier posts you say you have hereditary spastic paraparesis so that's probably it, I have no idea what that is though (apparently it can be many things, and affects lower limbs primarily and sometimes also upper limbs). taylor fucked around with this message at 17:11 on May 10, 2011 |
# ¿ May 10, 2011 16:28 |
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opie posted:Two things. Historical factoid: George Still did the first real study on children with ADHD (aka "moral idiots" at the time) in about 1902, and this is one of the things he noticed. These children seem to do okay in one environment, and worse at another. When they change schools, they start off doing really quite well, and then the behavior problems come back. The intelligence thing is maybe just because of the contrast between when the child is really focusing versus when they are not, since instead of running the range between doing great and terribly (usually around average though), they either perform great or terribly without much in between. quote:Also, part of ADHD is about performance variance across a diverse variety of tasks within different "spheres" (home/work/school/general social). People who are generally less intelligent are probably less likely to have as much variance imposed from ADHD impairment to be noticed for a possible diagnosis. While I wouldn't say it's a diagnostic criterion itself, it makes things more pronounced and noticeable.
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# ¿ May 11, 2011 23:38 |
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Lots of people have come into this thread saying they have had similar experiences as others and it's of some interest more generally, although it has (like every megathread) turned into a discussion mostly of a few regulars. Many people earlier on came in asking whether they might have it, and this often comes from reading the posts of others in the thread and normal Ask/Tell stuff about the disorder. Look at Involuntary Sparkle's post for instancequote:So I've lurked just a tiny bit in this thread but I'm going to start following it more closely now. There is a reason why 90% of threads in TGD have under 8 posts. And there's a reason why there are no megathreads about anything except all psychiatric medications in general and the stickied med school threads. Hiding it in a forum like the goon doctor will make it so posts like this one never happens again (as they did for a good portion of the thread, with people asking about the disorder and symptoms and such), except in the off chance that someone has a weird rash and they just so happen to see the topic when they are going to post about it. If this thread is not appropriate for Ask/Tell, then it might as well be locked and people can post in The Crackhead Clubhouse Adderall thread instead when they want to talk about specific medications, although most of the posts are about people crushing ritalin and snorting it to get high, and how it compares to cocaine etc, and it's not a very good forum for medical issues.
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# ¿ May 13, 2011 03:09 |
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Kylra posted:Ritalin/methylphenidate has been used far longer than the amphetamines (of which Adderall was the first) so you're technically incorrect. I found a few sources that say Adderall (amphetamine) was only FDA approved in 2001 vs Ritalin in 1955. Maybe that's so, but the FDA's history here is beside the point. The American Medical Association approved amphetamine salts tablets (Benzedrine/Adderall) for treating minimal brain dysfunction (aka ADHD) in 1937 (by prescription only). This is two decades before methylphenidate (Ritalin) would be used for treating ADHD, even before it was first synthesized. edit: Not that amphetamines weren't banned for awhile and only re-approved (this time via the FDA) long after ritalin was. This of course explains why some doctors are all weird about it -- they got their degree before 2001 or so and probably aren't keeping up. taylor fucked around with this message at 15:50 on May 14, 2011 |
# ¿ May 14, 2011 15:46 |
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fagalicious posted:I've tried both. On an empty stomach it doesn't seem to work long at all, on a full stomach it works but still not long. I read something about grinding it up and mixing it with peanut butter to keep it in the stomach longer somewhere on google, but I don't know if that would work well either. For insurance purposes, there is often a "Special Authorization" request form you can fill out to have a non-covered piece of medication covered. These are used to get extremely expensive medications covered, or non-standard treatments that aren't normally covered, covered. Call your insurance company (or go to their website) and learn what can be done in this case. Usually this involves filling out a form where you explain why this specific medication (the patch) is necessary, and what other treatments have failed, and list anything exceptional about your case (i.e., the gastric bypass).
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# ¿ May 25, 2011 20:18 |
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Eamonn posted:My Dr. gave me a 'sample' prescription of Concerta, consisting of 5x18mg, 5x27mg, 5x36 and 5x54mg (I think) I'm nearly done the prescription, and I think the 36mg is the key dose, once a day. I tried a 54mg today for the first time and it made me very nervous and sweaty all day, as well as making me nearly vomit at the gym. Here's the catch with trying Adderall: It has a "honeymoon" period. For the first week or so, it will work extremely well, and you will be very impressed and it will be great, and then it will stop working extremely well. In my opinion, if Concerta is inadequate for you after awhile because of certain side effects you don't like, then try Adderall. And if you do try Adderall, give it 3 weeks before you can assess it.
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# ¿ May 26, 2011 11:54 |
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Kuri posted:I just so happen to work in civil rights for...someone in the US. Still, the requests for accommodations often must justify each particular one. For example when writing the Graduate Record Examination (GRE), you must have a professional explain and justify why each accommodation is necessary given a corresponding impairment. If you have ADHD but have no concentration impairment because successfully medicated, you do not need extra time to mitigate a disruption in concentration, because once medicated there is no disruption in concentration to accommodate or mitigate in the first place.
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# ¿ Jun 1, 2011 22:29 |
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blueblaze posted:This is such a joke. It's only the fourth day on this dosage and I've returned to my regular self. They should write on the bottle that some initial effects wear off quickly. There's a temporary amazing boost to your mood and drive to get things done, and then when it goes away you will have to put some effort into doing things again. Even the weight loss effect is temporary. But some effects are more or less permanent: you can stay on task longer once you've begun it, etc.
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# ¿ Jun 5, 2011 17:22 |
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Bleusman posted:I've been taking 10mg Adderall XR for a year now, but I decided that I wanted to take the summer off of the drug - just a general feeling that it's not a sustainable medication and I have to have built some other ways to deal with the lack of focus. I was worried, too, that it was blunting me emotionally. Unfortunately, even with the low dose, I'm being kicked in the chest with endless fatigue, a really deep depression, and the total dissolution of all of my social skills. I've been off for over a week, so I would assume the withdrawal effects would go away but I guess that's not the case. I'm seeing my doctor later this week, but I'm worried he's going to peg me for an addict and refuse to write another prescription. (He'd expressed concern for a while that I was taking the medicine on the weekends.) I wonder if some of the effects could have come from an underlying depression that the Adderall was covering up to some extent - I'd had a couple of depressive episodes before discontinuing the meds, but nothing like this. Not sure what to make of the other issues you have, but they may be a combination of withdrawal, and a relatively normal reaction to the detrimental effects from withdrawal. Like, fatigue plus worse mood makes poor social skills, which makes worse mood, less drive to do anything, less productivity in general, which leads to worse mood, and so on, and this might be the biggest problem for you right now. If you are a student who is not currently employed and in job-seeking mode (though, with the fatigue, behind on this), or something similar, I would just start back up again, then quit when I'm going to be doing something all day anyways.
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# ¿ Jun 8, 2011 01:00 |
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blueblaze posted:Edit - all right, I am exaggerating a little. Upon taking the pill I do tend to find that I'm more likely to get off my butt and do chores around the house, but I'm not feeling any more inclined to work on my long-term goals. In fact, it completely deadens my desire for almost everything other than organizing and cleaning my apartment. And this was the one big thing that I wanted to fix, as others in the thread have mentioned how they abandoned certain hobbies they used to have while taking meds. It's easy to recognize all of this. The drugs are working as usual, and you are now procrastinating. Ask anyone: do you clean your room when you have a big project to work on? The answer will always be yes. Motivation to work on long term goals at any given time is something you have to do yourself. No drugs out there will change that. In fact, you can only get mania like this two ways: bipolar disorder, and as an initial response to amphetamines or cocaine or ritalin. Mania is nice at first, sure, but it's best to think of the honeymoon period as a mild form of a debilitating disorder: if you had that effect long term, you would not in fact be better off, since you'd be switching projects often, starting too many, spending too much money, and so on like other manic people, etc. Just because you didn't have it long enough to have the negative effects emerge, doesn't mean it's even desirable in the long run (if it were even possible to get). I think a lot of people try drugs like Adderall, get the honeymoon effect, don't really understand it, and then spend a long time chasing it. It's really unfortunate. If you want to work on long term projects, start doing them. If you've wanted to read a book, then do it. Not at home, but by going to a park or a library or school. Once there, with the drugs, you'll be able to read all day. That is how all of the drugs work, but you do have to do a tiny bit of work yourself to accomplish them.
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# ¿ Jun 13, 2011 15:57 |
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signalnoise posted:It is true with anything that will bond with calcium (many, many medications), but it only really matters if you take the medication within an hour or two of the calcium. Yet making your stomach a less acidic environment via calcium (e.g. tums) will increase absorption of amphetamines, in addition to binding to them. I always found that if I had dairy with breakfast them the medication was effective, but I think that this is due to calcium plus a large meal rather than calcium per se.
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# ¿ Oct 24, 2011 17:59 |
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signalnoise posted:If you are having to take calcium as an antacid on a daily basis, that is different and should probably be dealt with with an acid reducer rather than an antacid. The major ones are Nexium, Prilosec, and Prevacid, two of which you can get over the counter (but you shouldn't cause they are loving expensive that way). If you are poor like myself, bring it up with your primary care physician and you can get a prescription for Zantac which is very cheap via prescription. Just to clarify, I don't take tums all the time or anything. I was just pointing out that absorption depends on the pH of your stomach, so that the more acidic it is, the less likely the salts are to leave the stomach. This is also true for peeing it out: if your urine is more acidic, the salts will be there in higher concentration. wikipedia page on adderall posted:Urinary and stomach pH levels can have a strong effect on DL-amphetamine excretion and absorption.[25] An acidic stomach and GI pH will decrease the absorption of Adderall,[10] and acidic urine levels will decrease the reabsorption of the drug through the renal system.[26] Co-administration of acidic substances (e.g., citric acid) causes decreased renal reabsorption of DL-amphetamine; whereas, alkaline agents (e.g., antacids) may cause a marked increase in renal tubular reabsorption. The increased reabsorption can increase the retention of amphetamines, with potential to result in dangerously high serum levels.[26] This is why I said that if calcium does bind to amphetamine salts, there are two factors: binding preventing absorption and lower pH increasing absorption. (I also meant to say large meals with calcium seemed less effective -- like cereal or protein shakes, not that it was effective. Missing words suck. Not sure if this is actually true though.) taylor fucked around with this message at 14:58 on Oct 28, 2011 |
# ¿ Oct 28, 2011 14:56 |
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Are you allowed to buy schedules prescription drugs from other countries, or is that always illegal? Because only the USA has shot itself in the foot the weird laws + incompetence thing. There is no shortage whatsoever in Canada.
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# ¿ Nov 18, 2011 15:49 |
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strange posted:Does anyone else get a gross taste in their mouth when taking their meds, specifically methylphenidate/Ritalin/Concerta? Or am I just gross? See a dentist about this. Your mouth is probably dry or drier than it should be and this can cause problems. I got gingivitis because I had dry mouth and subsequently drank lots of water and used (non-alcoholic) mouthwash a few times a day as my initial reaction. Well, I had reddish gums for three or four days until replaced the water+mouthwash with gum with Xylitol in it. This was after I had an usually dry mouth during the mornings/afternoon for a couple months due to a change in stimulant medication, but I assumed that normal care + drinking lots of water for hydration would be okay, and now have to see a periodontist. I probably don't have anything serious with respect to infections, but apparently this resulted in a little bit of (always irreversible) gum recession on a tooth that had some already from braces. Any of bad breath or gross or metallic taste in mouth even after brushing your teeth/tongue is a sign that you might be developing gum disease or have an infection of some sort. I didn't have any issues with breath, but whatever it is that's causing it for you, it's probably something you want to get checked out just in case.
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# ¿ Nov 27, 2011 22:01 |
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Dick Smegma posted:I'm about to have a month break from college. I have been on adderall IR for about a year and its going pretty well. Should I talk to my doctor about trying something else such as Ritalin or Dexedrine? I'm wondering because what if there is "something better" then adderall? Im not sure how to bring it up. Does anyone have any experience with this? Adderall gives you the most effects for the least amount of amphetamines in your system. However, ritalin has a slightly different mechanism of action (e.g.,it merely blocks reuptake of dopamine, and does not cause vesicles holding on to the dopamine in your neurons to release this dopamine into the body of the neuron). In the case of dexedrine, there are less PNS effects, and you do not get the synergistic effects of levoamphetamine. It is hard to say without any detailed description of the mechanism of action and your specific reactions to the drug. Are you suffering from excess sweatiness, dry mouthm etc? L-amphetamine has more of an effect on you peripheral nervous system (body) than your central nevous system (brain/brainstem) than dexedrine does, so dexedrine might be a good alternative if you have distressing physiological side effects to Adderall like excessive sweatiness. Anyways, if it works, keep with it. There is no objectively best thing in general for everyone no matter who they are, or anything necessarily better than Adderall in all possible contexts or even most of the time.
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# ¿ Nov 30, 2011 08:51 |
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Dolemite posted:1When I last talked to my doctor, he said he'll write a prescription for Concerta if I cannot fill the Adderall one. For those of you on Concerta, does it work immediately like Adderall? I remember hearing of certain medications for ADHD that require you taking it for a good month before it starts to work! 2 - My guess is that IR has a faster turnover rate than XR, since pharmacies probably only carry 100 or some number of pills at a time and people go through several IR pills a day. 3 - Should be fine, since there is no huge difference. If you think about how it enters and leaves your system, then its easy to see the difference though. With IR, you have, say, 10mg and this peaks within an hour giving you a blood concentration of , say, "5". Then it starts being eliminated from your system, and later you have another one, so there is another rapid peak of concentration 6, and so on. With IR, you have higher peaks of the drug in your body, but also lower lows in between dosage. Extended release in contrast does not reach the same levels in your blood, but the concentration is more consistent throughout the day (so it might rise to a peak of 4, but stay near this level for a long time). You can find the graphs of how it is released in your blood by googling it. The extra high peaks are extra helpful at getting started on things like homework, so that's why it is better in a way.
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# ¿ Dec 5, 2011 17:29 |
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Dolemite posted:
You do feel it for sure, it is just that this feeling doesn't also come with a few days of ultra productivity where you clear your long to-do list you've racked up over the last few months. When you start Concerta, it will be much more like when you've been on Adderall for a couple months. In contrast, if you just start Adderall, it will be as if you had a double dosage for the first few days, in terms of its effectiveness.
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# ¿ Dec 7, 2011 05:14 |
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GenericOverusedName posted:The caffeine thing reminds me, do I have to worry about alcohol with most ADD meds? I'm not starting them till next week, but the bupropion I've been on knocks me the gently caress out when I have just a single glass of wine which really sucks.
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# ¿ Dec 18, 2011 12:08 |
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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 09:53 |
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blueblaze posted:(1) Came up with some questions just now. If ADD is basically a dysfunction of executive functioning then can these abilities be improved through training or exercises? 2 - Generally the line is drawn when it produces significant distress and significantly interferes with functioning at home, work or school. And, in addition, this has to be caused by a difficulty in maintaining focus or some similar attention issue, rather than some other illness or cause. 3 - They generally have similar effects, despite what is sometimes claimed. There is no single common characteristic in the brain other than a difficulty concentrating that is found among people who take stimulants for ADHD. It is not even close to true that unless you really have ADHD, Adderall will not help you focus. Maybe people without ADHD have lower dosages where it's most effective.
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# ¿ Dec 24, 2011 19:25 |