if you take adderall please give some adv | ADHD Information

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it's not for my baby, it's for me!!!!!!

she's fine! i'm the one that acts like a goober!

[QUOTE=cluster]it's not for my baby, it's for me!!!!!!

she's fine! i'm the one that acts like a goober![/QUOTE]

The OP indicated that she's testing the meds out for her 3 year old. I think that's a big, big mistake. The meds can be personality changing, and not necessarily in a good way. Let your kids grow up to be self aware at least before we project our own self-loathing on to them.

floofthegoof38664.3299305556I really wonder how a 3-year old can be diagnosed with ADHD. That sounds like a guess. Kids that young should never me medicated for ADHD under any circumstances. All the meds are very powerful and can have extreme developmental consequences. Is your 3 year old having difficulty with work and school? Probably not.floofthegoof38664.306875

cluster,

it sounds to me like your dosage is too high OR you don't respond well to the Stimulant Meds.

I take Adderal 20 XR which is equivelant to 10 mgs twice a day of the ir.  It helps me get on task and stay on task much better.  I can focus better on what I need to do without getting distracted.

Loss of appetite, irritability and a placid personality are side effects.  Side effects are caused by either too high a dose or it's just not the right med for you.

Rittlin for me was horrible.  Gave me stomach aches with a severe loss in appetite and I felt kind of depressed when it wore off.

If I were you I would lower my dosage of Adderal first.  Even just 5mg. can make a big difference.  It can take months or even years to get the right med. at the right dosage.  I wouldn't give up so soon on the Adderal. 

 

couldn't agree more - - i'm the one who can't figure out what this is supposed to feel like - there is no sense in me taking adderall to focus if i'm going to fall asleep first ya know? i took 10mg this morning instead of 20mg - - took it 10 min ago - we'll see -
wish me luck!ok, maybe that might be part of it then, I think the soda I had this morning had vitaminc in it, it was that new 7-up plus and I know it has vit-c as one of its added vitamins, do you think that is why I felt so tired and weird all day, just sort of not really myself, not wanting to do anything, not really hungry either.  Amyi feel like that too - except i have only been taking adderall for 6 days - 20 mg ir twice a day -
i was just diagnosed last tuesday -
i have not felt good at all. i have had noooooo energy, no appetite, wierd - very irritated easily - no sense of humor and if i have thought something was funny, i didn't have the energy to laugh about it. you say that you felt like this today . other than today, how has the adderall made you feel? am i missing something here? i feel like i am the only one on here that has not had good results with adderall ir. what am i supposed to feel like? help me please. i am going to the dr. tomorrow and he said we would try ritalin. anybody think that will be better or worse? HELP - dyes,,, brother,,, nothing does except citrus ... no vit c or grapefruit..


I would lay off the fruit juices in the am , use them pm with dinner. no fruit in morning.. for pm only.

grapefruit and grapefruit juice and orange juice , citrus will counteract adderall.

otherwise, eat like you normally would.
bugzappers38663.8627430556

hi, I would like anyone who is on adderall or adderall xr please give me your advice, please tell me what foods you find help the meds, or the foods, that mess it up. PLease tell me if you know anythign to help them work better, work worse? PLease if you can tell me why you find any of those findings too please. Also if you know things like certain foods that are not helpful to those with adhd, please tell me about those too, ok. 

But please don't give me some really restrictive diet, because I am way to rebeliious to follow anything like that. ok. BUt certain foods, or dyes, etc that really seem to effect us, I would really like to know about. I have me, my 14 yrold and my 3 yr old with adhd, so I know I need to learn this stuff if not for me but then for my 3yr old cause we do not have him on meds and do want to unknowingly make things worse either.

For myself I haven't yet firgured out what helps and doesn't with my meds, but I know there have been days and I think it was to do with the food I had with my meds. thank you AMy

There is no way to tell that a 3 year old has ADHD. All 3 year olds have ADHD symptoms. Never met one who didn't. What 3 year old is not impulsive? All they have are their impulses!

I get the the feeling that your expectations from the meds are very high. In reality they only help a little, and they all come with *significant* health risks. It not something you want to be weened on from childhood.

In my experience, Adderall will make you irritable when you are in need of rest. If you are well rested, you will often get a strange sense of euphoria. Also, check your blood pressure, mine jumps about 20 points on Adderall, which can have long term consequences.

floofthegoof38664.4741087963I think you can use the medications to look inwards and get a feel of how you function with them. When or if you come off them, you can try to imitate those processes. It doesn't work too well though i tried

The thing is, medication is like glasses. If you have a real hard time seeing, you can learn to squint really well, and function alright. But using the glasses, the world around you is much clearer, and you can function a lot better.

It's not a perfect analogy- you still have to stop procrastination, learn to work, keep focus, maintain concentration, etc. But with the medication doing this stuff is way easier.

Do you see someone that takes antidepressants as a monster or zombie? Maybe you should think about what exactly makes you feel like you are a zombie or monster when you're using the medication. :)

ok, let's see here, you read my post wrong, I have adhd, my 14 yr too and my 3yr, but only me and 14 yr old are taking it.

But let me assure you he has adhd, he was the only one of us that ha such obvious sytems. He is not in school yet, but he is ona waiting list, but it is a good thing it is head start program, because if he were to go to any other school he will probably get kicked out.

No I do not have him on any meds, and am not thinking about putting him on any probably till he goes to school. BUt I know we are going to have lots of issues with him in school. He has no friends right now, he is so the poster child fo adhd. On the tests we did for him, the answers to the questions were all the time, rather , never, rarely, sometimes, a few times, or almost all the time.

He scored the highesty for adhd than we did. You know when I was pregnant, I said as long as this one wasn't like the first, nope he is even worse, that is what I get for saying that, I should of never said anything like that.

No, adhd has affected my life in so many ways I just never knew that the problems I was having were realted to something other than personal failures to do something or remember something or that I just was lazy, stupid or had no self control, because other people seemed to be able to get through life without these issues.

So I need this help, yes I have seen improvement, Right now, I am taking 30mg, I was ok on 20mg but then it seemed like it could of been a bit higher after a while, maybe 30mg was too high to go to, maybe only 25mg. I don't know?

I finished all of laundry in one day, without anyone reminding me or for myself haveing to sit by the laundry all day to get it done for the first time in my life on one of the first few days I was taking the meds. Normally things like that, kill me I have to work so hard to even remember I have started doing the laundry, I will start it then end up doing something else and reemember the next day gosh, sometimes later than that even.

I seen one of you put it can make you irritable, as one of the side effects, is there anything we can do about that? I have 4 kids and I don't want to be yelling at them all day. Sometimes I have noticed this and sometimes not.

One of the things that also seemed to make sense for me was when I was prescibed diet pills to help me lose weight after one of my kids, I have then used those on and off over the years, they are in the same family of adhd meds, I found that they had the effect on my similar to what was suppose to have if you were taking adhd meds for someone with adhd. Yet my friend who was taking them and did not have adhd have different results, but I also did notice they can make you crabby too. I tried to offset that by taking 5-htp supplements to help raise serotonin levels. That did seem to help, I wonder if that would help here with these meds too, does anyone know?

I huess I want the best of both worlds, I want the help to be able to focus and get things done and keep them more organized around my house and yet I don't want to be a zombie ot a monster to everyone around me.  Id this not possible with meds? Is it a false dream and hope to have?

Do you also have symptoms of depression or anxiety with or without meds? Many ADHDers have these or other issues to deal with too (called co-morbidity).

I myself have some OCD trates (which stem from anxiety).  Have also been depressed.  I take Lexapro (an anti-depresent/anxiety med) as well as  Adderal.  Took some years to find the best combo./amount for me, but worth the effort...works wonders for me. 

i didn't know lexapro was for anxiety too! i have been on lexapro for 2 years - worked wonders - my rx ran out, i have no insurance so..... the new dr. i am seeing did not put me back on them - he said come back in a month and see. i guess he wanted to do one med at a time (adderrall) i know i need to go back on them, though! seriously, the lexapro is amazing. i have been on others over the years and i swear by lexapro - and.... you don't have all those side effects like with others -
if i forgot to take my lexapro, (which happened OFTEN, imagine that!!!!!!) i never knew it but with others, like paxil, zoloft and effexor, if i didn't take it, i felt all off kilter like my equilibrium was off. that is the worst feeling - try adhd and being off kilter - - - not a good start to a day you have to work so hard at anyway - the dr. lowered my dosage of adderall today - from 20mg twice a day to 10mg twice a day - i feel TONS BETTER today than yesterday - i absolutely was taking too much - but i didn't know! he asked if i would like to switch to ritalin, but i opted to stay with addy at the lowered dosage - we'll see! the dr. also said something about me drinking cokes with the caffeine - what was he getting at? i wonder if he was saying it would counteract the addy? then he asked me if i drank beer! i do but i haven't since being on the meds. i'm glad i haven't, am i going to have a heart attack or something? he kindof scared me. it wasn't my dr..... it was his pa. any thoughts??????? thanks for the insight! all i know is that since i started taking meds last tuesday - i have felt worse as far as depressed and anxious and weird.... i'm SURE i will get better - - it is probably just everything getting into my system and it needs time to adjust. wish me luck, ya'll cause right now, this ga. girl feels like sh*t!!!!!!

 There is most definetly a way to tell of a three year old has adhd. They did like 4 hours worth of different tests on him. I think you may not have any three year olds. I have 4 kids, each one of them was different from the other and no all 3 yr olds do not look like they have adhd.

I do not have him on meds, do not want to put him on meds right now either, but yes I will put him on meds at some point if or when he needs it. I have over 80+ neices and nephews in our family, I have been around kids all of my life, there are lots of differences in all children.  After having my 3 yr old,  I seriously did not want any more cildren, indefinetly, now that he is older and I have hope on learing new ways to deal withhim, I am thinking to have another one.  I have on a regular basis, taken care of 10, 12 or more kids for a few days even longer, but one 3 yr old put me over the edge, so yes a 3 yr old can have adhd.

I think you should not say a comment like that if you are not living in their shoes. I thought this site was to help and encourage people, comments like that are not helpful!  Are you trying to second guess the doctors then.

 I think that alot of the advice here is so great but advice like that is not,  if that is your opinion you should keep it to yourself. 

I think the comment on not to expext too much from the meds is right they are not the differnce from black to white but they can help.

I myself have been fighting with myself all of my life to do the things that are hard for me, that I need to be doing.  I know I forget alot, so I have had to learn to write lots of lists. I am always trying to learn a new way to keep things organized. HAve a hard time with the bills, so Ihave had almost all of them set up for autopay.  I may be slow at the laundry or something, but I will stay up all night to finish if I have to. I have made it a personal goal, to do what ever it takes and force myself to do what needs to be done to give my kids the things they deserve, even if it means forcing myself to do things.  These things have been hard, yes, but nesscesary.

But the nice thing I notice about the meds fo far, is they make it easier to remeber, or make it not so hard to force myself to get things done, that I don't like doing. But it is not magic, I still have to make the first step. But I find, I do not get a side tracked while on the meds. That helps.

What test's do they give a 3 year old for ADD? I myself was tested for hours for ADD, and it was nothing that any 3 year old could have managed, so the tests would have to be completely different than the ones I had. I'm sorry that it sounds like quackery to me, it's just that I really worry about the way people rush to judgement when an exact definition of ADD and it's subtypes and manifestions are still very much up for debate.

I have tried a few of the ADD drugs, one of which, Cylert, has been discontinued due to liver damage. Ritalin basically erased my personality while I was on it. One young person who posted on here a year ago had no memory of her childhood before age 18, supposedly because her ritalin dose was too high throughout her childhood. These are serious meds, and the medical establishment is learning through trial and error. Is your child going to be a statistic by which we all learn the dangers of ritalin? All I'm saying is, be *very* careful. There are plenty of doctors out there who don't really know what they're doing, and others who are willing to experiment with your health. That I was given Cylert, proves that doctors don't always know what they're giving you.

I'm not quite sure how long it's been but I know that Lexapro was approved as an anti-anxiety med.  Most of the other meds. in this class (Seratonin Re-uptake Inhibitors or SSRI's) are given just for depression.  Lexapro is a newer one and it is durived from Celexa.  I took Celexa for a while but with the Lexapro I have NO side effects! (I take 10 mgs.)

About the caffeine. I drink a cup a day and it dosen't bother me. I think it depends on the amount of Adderal you're on that could possibly cause it, along with caffein, to make you too anxious or jittery. I have a friend that takes Adderall and completely avoids all caffein.  Makes him anxious.  I guess it just depends on the individual.

As far as alcohol.  I do drink beer and wine.  Only one or two on the weekends.  Haven't had any adverse effects from it.

mom+2adhdkids - i read early that you wrote about 5-htp to help with moods... when my adderall wore off I was really irritable and just felt like sh*t basically... i know i have underlying depression but they wanted to give me the adderall first for the adhd to see if that would help.  So i started taking 5-htp to help with my moods and it worked alright but it makes you really really tired.  I got prescribed Lexapro a couple of weeks ago and I feel way better than 5-htp ever made me and I actually have energy and am happy when I get home from an eight hour day.  

 I do agree with you, I myself am almost annal when it comes to things like meds for my kids. I have read every phamplet and book so far that I could find regarding adhd.

The tests they did were at his age level, I was sitting with him the entire time, so I did see what kinds of tests they did. They were tests similar to things you or my other son probably did. I can assure you the tests were not quackery though.  I had to fill out extra tests that of course a child like him could not answer.

Some of the tests were things like specific puzzles, but if you were to compare him to the common systems of adhd, he is I swear the poster child.  He really liked one of the first puzzles she had him do it was a basketball, and he insited to do it over and over, she had to use it as a reward so that he would finish one then do it again, but she nover got beyond two puzzles at a time. When I answered the questions on the test for the parent, I was amazed that someone else knew he was doing these things, I myself did not know that these things could be form any other reason, I thought we were just doing a bad job parenting him cause he was our baby.

But I will tell you he is very smart, so that is not the issue, and he can get anyone to do what he wants. But now that I have learned about the adhd, I have been able to understand why he is doing some of the things he is doing. I have been able to do things to change the way I handle him. I now understand that here are situations that he can not control how he reacts in, my other kids can handle waiting at places for a small amount of time, him, he needs me to have other things to keep him busy, keep his mind occupied.

I know these only because of the books, I did not have to do these things as much with my other kids, I wondered why my husband had better luck with him when he would take him with him places, but now I know him and his friends are constantly on the move from place to place and there usually are seceral of them that hang out together, so all that stimuli, keeps him interested and at bay. Where as with me we do boring day to day things that require patience, so that is why he acts up more with me and tends to do dangerous stuff while with me, his brain gets bored, he does something.

I don't know right now when I would think of meds for him, but my 14 yr old has suffered alot through his school years and I just wish we could of found out earlier. I mean ever since he was in kindergarten, he has almost failed evry grade, he would just barely pass. He usually had to do summer school or something too. But his self esteem was so low, and we did not understand why he was doing the things he was doing, we have had so many fights with him. I feel so bad knowing now that there was other factors at bay and that he was not just being lazy or not caring about his school work. We got him tutoring at sylvan for several months, it cost us more than 00.00 and he did not improve like they said he would, it was so frustrating, for him and for us too.  I am mad at the teachers and professionals that seen him all those years, someone somwhere should have seen something. So that is why I want to learn as much as I can to help them both.

MY 14 yr old is doing so well on his meds, we have started him off on the lowest dose and thankfully we got our ins back for himand so we will be seeing the dr. regularly.  Oh yeah, I suppose, I should mention, I am also working on many other levels for him and our family too, he is seeing  phycologist for himself, so he has someone to talk to help him deal with problems he has with us and to helpmediate problems and give us advice on how to make things go well for us at home. We also have a family counsler coming to our house once a week to help us work out the best ways to deal with and work things out as a family. She has helped his figure out how to pass out chores and responsbilty for evryone in the house, talk about issues that cause us problems etc. And of course he has the dr. for his meds and those kinds of issues. We atarted all those appts before we found out about the adhd, and they were helping alot, but now with the meds, things are really starting to improve. The family counsler is also going to be working with him one on one to help him learn to plan and organize his school work and things like that.

So I agree with you meds are not the answer, but can definetly help. We are on a much bigger process to get him help, so they are such a blessing.  I do have a couple of nephews, one is on meds, but she has not taken the effort to try to fix other issues at home so I do not see as much benefit for her, and she is not even consistent with making sure he alwaus has his meds, but with them he is a much calmer child and has so many less problems at school, without the meds, he is at the office one to two times a week, no friends, alot of work So I know the meds help but she really needs to get on the ball to help him deal with other issues they need help on. My other sister inlaw, she needs the same thing but her son has been kicked out of schools and you name it, so I have encouraged her to go see the dr. for her son, because maybe it is the start for him to settle down a little.  But I do try to encourage them to do other things to to help them besides just meds.

It is ashame that there are parents out there that would just give their kids meds with out truley learning all that they could before. I thin my brain is beginning to get a little fried from all my research, but you know I didn't wait all those months of pregnancy to just let them down now right!

I think your heart was in the right place in warning me, I apologize for taking your first comments a little hard, I can now see where your intentions were, and I suppose there are really people out there who won't think twice about giving a 3 yr old med, so they may need a wake up call sometimes. It is sad to hear about someone like the girl who doesn't remeber alot from childhood because of meds, that's unfortunate. I hope that this site does help a new generation of more educated parents who do their homework for their childrens sake.

rcohen- hi, the 5-htp does make you tired/sleepy, if you want ot get ht benefits of it take it at night before you sleep, it will actually help you sleep better and if you take it regularly it will help for the depression too.  You know the 5-htp is responsible for the serotonin in your brain, it is what your body turns into serotonin, so there is one less step for your body to do with it. It is not a chemical drug either so that helps.

You know you can get the 5-htp from other things in your diet too, bananas have a good amount, of course one of the most famous things turkey, that is why you get so sleepy after thanksgiving, potatoes too,  yeah many of the things in thanksgiving a good supply but does make you sleepy, might be the reason most of us think of this holiday as a good one even if we end in fighting with family becasue of the positive effect the serotonin has in your head for you.  Milk is one too.  You can help your body make more of its own serotonin by eating more of those foods too, but I wouldn't suggest you throw out your other meds, but a little help on the nutritional side never hurt right.  It is interesting how little things like certain foods can help us without really changing much in our lives.

 I am not overly into the new age eating ideas or anything, I just like learing things about simple things like this. I believe there is some value in the things that we may be overlooking that people like our parents or grandparents etc did or did not do. Some of our fast paced lives have come to sabotage us now. But I mean it is cool, if your feeling a little down eating a banana or two can help, how cool is that, rather than taking a pill all the time.  At least most evryone can take a banana, you can even cheat and offer it to a angry spouse or child and you might change their mood. Ha ha. lol.