Has anyone made the switch from Adderall to Stratera for a child? My 7 year old son is having horrible anxiety, and I have read that Stratera helps with both anxiety and ADHD. However, my doctor says that once people have used Adderall, Stratera is not enough. Would love any feedback on this matter.
We went from Ritalin to Concerta to Stratterra and it did not work for us. However, we did not play around much with the dose of Straterra just went to Aderrall. As you expereinced after a while we had too much anxiety and ended up switching to a tricyclic antidepressant (Nortiptyline). These meds were what was used for ADHD prior to stimulants. It worked well, but trying to keep my daughter at optimum dose was a challenge as she was falling asleep. We went back to Ritlain this year with Zoloft for anxiety only to experience all our side effects again. We are now back to the tricylcic antidpressants, this time Desipramine (supposedly wont make her sleepy) along with Tenex for impulsivity and tics(which she developed back on the Ritalin, again). Our objective is to have 24 hour coverage for her ADHD and her anxiety. We're not up to dose yet still building, so not sure, her organizational and focusskills fell through the floor the second I stopped the Ritalin, but school is managing and almost over and her anxiety issues and loss of appetite are going away. I dont; know that you'll know if the Straterra is right for you until you give it a try. Lots of people love it. Keep the Desipramine in mind if it doesnt, so far we seem to be heading down the right path. I am crossing my fingers anway. Keep us updated I am alwayy interested in how the non stimulant med path is working with everyone as we cannot do stimulants anymore.We've never tried Adderall, but Strattera caused my daughter to become Extremely sensitive (meltdowns over the slightest little thing) and really Confrontational with Teenager like Backtalk (she was only 5 1/2 when she started on this).
Hrm, I'll weigh in.
I take a combination of adderall and strattera (much recommended btw). Strattera does tend to be somewhat less effective than stimulant medication, but there is also a tendency to give strattera less of an opportunity to be effective. With stimulants, you don't need to wait for it to build up in your system; it hits, and you get your benefit. Also, it's a powerful class of drugs, and "dose tweaking" is more often downtweaking than uptweaking. So even the wrong dose will give you noticable benefits (or at least, noticable side-effects, which people often interpret as the medication working) Strattera requires you to play around a bit more. It can take several days to kick in, and it can take several weeks to hit a dosage that's really helping. When the effects of a medication are happening slowly over the course of weeks, it is more difficult to compare it to baseline. When effects are peaking within hours, it's a lot easier.
Strattera does have a tendency to induce a more emotional state in a lot of people; at least in the short-term. I've found that any time I increase strattera dosage, I become a bit over-sensitive (which is far more diplomatic than the people in my life would put it, I'm sure). But if I wait it out a week, I level out, and I am better for it.
I suppose I'm trying to introduce two different thoughts. The first is that you shouldn't get stuck in the binary of stimulant versus non-stimulant therapy: it's okay to combine the two. Many people do MUCH better with two medications than with one. The second is that strattera truly requires patience. And even though everyone is told that; very few people really give it the patience required. It's hard to when you see your child reverting back to old ways, and when you witness yourself doing the same. But once you hit your target dose, you'd be amazed. Though I will say that even though I attempt to be quite conscious of the effects of strattera, I find that they are still quite subtle. I generally don't realize how much of an impact the strattera is having until I've stopped it for some reason: in which case it becomes clear to me how much good it IS doing!
I hope that's helpful in some way.
KDLMaj, the same applies to our path of treatment with the tricyclic antidpressants. It tkaes several weeks to get the dose right. It also can be combined with a stimulant (although we wont be doing that). Very true, we are building my daughters dose right now and she is VERY up and down with all kinds of symptoms, but I know she'll be ok.