My son was also diagnosed at the beginning of this year he was started on Adderall xr 10mg, but was also changed to 15mg because the medicine did not cover all day. After the change he was also the same way as your daughter. He laid around all day and was irritable. He stayed in a bad mood, and was never happy. I took him back to the doctor and he said that adderall had a tendency to do that. He was took off adderall alltogether.
My daughter is 14 years old. She was just diagnosed with ADD in the beginning of the summer. She started on Adderall xr 10 mg and there was a huge difference in her mood and attention, etc. We are seeing a therapist and we have med. checks with the psychiatrist. At our last visit her decided to up her dosage to 20 mg because it wasn't covering a full day. I just gave her the new dosage this morning and she is in a daze and a terrible mood, very irritable, argumentative and yelling. Is this normal? Has anyone experienced this before? I need some advice ThanksThe same thing happened to me when i was on adderall along with a bunchAlthough my only experience has been with an amphetamine precursor (ephedrine) stacked with caffeine, I go through 3 stages as follows :
1) Increased focus / confidence / willingness to perform many more activities
2) Irritability after about 1.5-2 hours after taking ephedrine/caffeine
3) Comedown / minor fatigue and new found love for my pillow approximately 4-
5 hours after ingestion of ephedrine/caffeine
Amphetamines play around with your dopamine levels so it's expected, you just have to consider the pros vs cons.
P.S One more consideration to take in to account, is whether or not your dosing protocal is interfering with their sleep. If it's taken past 4pm chances are even if your son/daughter go to sleep their REM sleep will be disrupted, and I have heard over and over again about how with bad sleep that even these medications won't work as effective as when you had a full night's quality sleep. Whenever I use my stimulant combination I always make sure that I do not take any after 4 pm if my intention is to go to sleep at 9-10 pm ( half-life of ephedrine/caffeine is approximately 4 hours). Also If you are taking adderal-XR you have to take into account that the half life is 8 hours so if you're going to sleep at 9-10 your last dose would probably be at 12 noon. Personally I would want a compound like this active only during the most important time period in the day where I would reap it's benefit's such as school/work. I do not recommend being stimmed up all day. My 2 cents.
Deltaforce38937.7793287037I would say that you need to give it a week or so to see if the side effects go away. a lot of time a dose increase does the same thing as when you first started- higher side effects that usually go away with time. Unprecidently, a sudden dose of amphetamine can cause a great feeling of self confidence or a feeling of euphoria. Especially in a non-tolerant, very new person such as your daughter.[QUOTE=alexamom]Thank you to everyone who has responded to my posting. Alexa is back on the 10 mg dose of Adderall xr. She was doing fine during the summer because we would not give her this dose until about 10:00 am when she woke up. Now she is going to school and getting the dose at 6:30 am. I have noticed the medicine is wearing off by the time she gets home from school and has a hard time with school work. I am probably going to try the 10mg dose twice a day.[/QUOTE]
I'd recommend trying to have the second dose being adderall IR (instant release) which lasts only 4 hours as having another adderall XR 10 mg dose will last alot longer and most likely disrupt your child's sleep, whether directly (less hours aka insomnia) or degraded sleep quality. Just like it's not recommended to have coffee after 4 if you intend to sleep at a normal hour, adderall XR does not give you that control especially if it's taken in the afternoon like adderall IR does.
Wait a minute...something's not making sense to me here.... the effective period for xr, according to phizer, its maker, is 10-12 hours and is not strength dependent. So why are these docs recommending stronger dosage instead of taking two doses a day, not one? That's what I'm prescribed... one xr in the morning and one 6 hours later when the first tapers off.
[QUOTE=alexamom]At our last visit her decided to up her dosage to 20 mg because it wasn't covering a full day. I just gave her the new dosage this morning and she is in a daze and a terrible mood, very irritable, argumentative and yelling. Is this normal? Has anyone experienced this before? I need some advice Thanks[/QUOTE]It really depends on the person and their digestive system. For me , 1 20 mg adderall XR lasts me about 6-7 hours, then I revert my normal self and experience fatigue. It lasts longer for other people, however this is something you should monitor and discuss it with your MD.
In regards to John D 's suggestion of 2 doses instead of upping one dose, I could not agree with you more. Upping the dose will simply accomplish downregulation of your receptors and require you to take more and you will end up in the same predicament as you are now only with a harsher crash. Instead of upping the dose splitting the dose is a much wiser course of action. If 10 mg was having no effect on you on its on while it's in effect, thats something different, but in regards to it wearing off too early the 2 dose protocal is much wiser to both maintain the drug's efficacy and keep higher dose side effects away.
It's like telling a person who is crashing 4 hours after a coffee to double the dose instead of just having another coffee with the same caffeine content 4 hours after the first dose. If you double up you are only going to build a tolerance very quickly.
The only concern is that the 2nd dose (if you so choose to pursue that venue) should not be taken too late as you do not want to disrupt sleep. I know some people prescribed the XR early, and a adderall IR (4 hour instant release) to cover the time after XR's action expires.
Deltaforce38960.1413310185Thank you to everyone who has responded to my posting. Alexa is back on the 10 mg dose of Adderall xr. She was doing fine during the summer because we would not give her this dose until about 10:00 am when she woke up. Now she is going to school and getting the dose at 6:30 am. I have noticed the medicine is wearing off by the time she gets home from school and has a hard time with school work. I am probably going to try the 10mg dose twice a day.Hi there everyone , great message board here .