Tenex only? | ADHD Information
We're starting off on a low dose (1st one tonite) 1/4th of a mg in the am and 1/4th in the pm. His teacher said he had a really bad day, so much that she wants to have a conference with me next week. Apparently he was pretty disruptive and the asst principal had to be called to have a chat with him. He's off for 4 days now so I'm hoping that when he goes back next week the meds will have kicked in somewhat and he'll be a little calmer.I forgot to say that you start low (as you are doing) and increase slowly to an effective dose. This can reduce or avoid side effects. THe doses I mentioned were for reference, as it can be hard to know what is a "normal" dose.tenex probably will not do anything for his attention. May help with the chewing.
My youngest was on guanfacine (tenex) alone for a while. She seemed to do fine and her grades only dropped slightly. With time, she started having anxiety from not getting quite enough med benefit with guanfacine alone and we added back the stimulant. So what I am saying, is that she got some benefit from guanfacine alone, but in her case it was not enough. We also go with guanfacine alone on summer break for weight gain. She takes 2mg am and 2mg pm with the posibility of a 1/2mg boost on afternoons she is expected to have a challenging social schedule.
Another thing to note, its that Shire's long acting form of guanfacine was approved for ADHD (but they are not marketing it until vyvanse is fully launched). This med was best at 2-4mg/day in clinical trial.
Basically it is worth a try. If it is not quite good enough alone, a low stim dose can be helpful in combination with the guanfacine.
Yes, my son is having success with guanfacine alone. It's only been 7 weeks or so. I'm beginning to suspect that my son's main symptom is actually hyperactivity/impulsiveness, rather than attention. I don't see how else this could be explained. He may very well be predominant type hyperactive rather than the combo type ADHD. It's like his hyperactivity affected his ability to focus. He stopped making faces/noices, wandering around the classroom. He's finishing his work. He stopped arguing at home. I think perhaps the "chatter" in his head has decreased. He's very pleasant and considerate now. I stopped getting notes from the teacher. He's not as mentally quick as he was on Strattera, but I'm not looking for perfection. I'm looking for balance.The range is 1 mg to 4 mg, so you are ramping up. You should see a decrease in the disruptive behavior.We had our ds on 15 mg Adderall up until xmas break. We took the holiday off to see if we noticed any differences in behavior/attention/etc. While we feel that he has attention problems we feel that we're missing "something" with him and have asked the psychiatrist repeatedly about it and we're basically dismissed. So we tried going back on the meds on New Years and he was a zombie. Looking back now maybe I should have tried to wean him back on and that was my mistake. 
We went to a new psychologist this week and they suggested placing him on Tenex (1/4 mg 2x daily) as the connors scale we did while he was on the meds didn't seem like he was on meds at all. And she thought that maybe he has a couple more issues than the ADHD too - whew! Has anyone had success with Tenex only? I know that it will help with his activeness (he's been chewing up his shirts lately??) but don't know that it will help with attention.