guanfacine | ADHD Information

My son has developed tics since we increased his Dexedrine. He constantly clears his throat - not when he is sleeping though. Anyway, we have stopped the Dexedrine and started him on Guanfacine - up to 2 mg. per day. He is still taking Trileptal for possible Bi-Polar.

Anyone had any success taking guanfacine in place of a stimulant?

quite a few people do, the Guanfacine doesnt seem to help with focus, so I think it depends on your need. For us that are mainly inattentive, it's not an option. Others have great success with it for hyperactivity and impulsiveness.My son takes guanfacine and Strattera and I have not seen tics.  You may or may not know that tic can come in go with ot with out stims.  They do seem to be worse with the stims.  When my son was taking concerta we would see tics, shoulder shrugging and clearing throat some days it was gone and then weeks later it wold be back for a few days.
The side effect with guanfacine is night waking.  He goes down at 9:15 and about 10:15 he gets up and comes looking for me.  He is not awake...  I put him back to bed and he goes/continues sleeping.  A few times his older brothers have found him wandering looking for me and they take him to his room.  When I get there to check on him he is sleeping peacefully.  I stopped his evening dose and this waking in the night stopped.  Now he takes 3/4 in the morning and 3/4 after school and it is great!!!  The strattera seems to give him the focus and the guanfacine takes care of the hyperness.  Remember to give the strattera 6 full weeks after the full loading is done. 

My youngest does better with guanfacine alone than with no medication, but does much better with the stim as well. The stim is primarily needed for attention.

Here is some helpful info:

http://www.peacehealth.org/kbase/topic/detail/drug/hw164961/ detail.htm

http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/158/7/1067

I think it depends on whether your child is hyper and over stimulated or having a problem with focus.  or... is his focus problem due to over stimulation?  Another good thing about guanfacine is that the weight issues from stims are lessened.

If it wasn't for the guanfacine, my son wouldn't be as successful with just his concerta alone.

Once when we were increasing his concerta, we didn't increase the guanfacine. The teacher said that even with the dose increase she didn't see a positive change. However, when we increased the guanfacine, all was good!

He is only on 1 mg daily and it really does the trick. He plays football and instead of increasing the stimulants, we are going to add another 1mg of guanf. before practice, just for his overstimulation and to help the landing from any rebound!

Best wishes!!