[Rexatron]

Your experience is yours. How long have you been on medication? What medication specifically?

I've heard that some new meds are not stimulant. They might be good. But the old Ritalin/Adderall stimulants have quite possibly caused the psychotic symptoms you are talking about. That's what they do.

Are you familiar with street meth? Ritlain/Adderall are pharma grade long duration forms of that. They have made me crazy before. And they don't "Halt Depression" they get you so busy you that you won't reflect on yourself.

Artificial increases in motivation are silly. If you aren't inspired on your own to do something, you probably should be doing something else.

Stimulants are much less than perfect and throwing out a pharma grade street drug with the bath water is fine with me. It's drugs or it's not.

There are ways to handle ADD/ADHD without drugs. Change the environment. Forcing kids to take meth is just wrong.

[tomlin]

> How long have you been on medication? What medication specifically?

I'm on Concerta. It's effectiveness outweighs Ritalin according to most. I've never used Ritalin or RitalinXR nor would I, since much better drugs have evolved, and will continue to evolve.

> Are you familiar with street meth? Ritlain/Adderall are pharma grade long duration forms of that.

I'm not going to try and make a case against your experience, since you could have very well had a negative experience with stimulants. One thing I know for certain, is that Ritalin/Adderall/Concerta are not the same as street meth - by any stretch of the imagination. Just because they are derived from certain drugs doesn't mean their potency, effect or side effects should be the same.

> Artificial increases in motivation are silly. If you aren't inspired on your own to do something, you probably should be doing something else.

For me, I get really sparked up about what I am doing but tend to have trouble executing the details because I'm getting overwhelmed with the overall concept. Does that mean I should walk away from an industry I love? Or are you saying I secretly don't love it?

> There are ways to handle ADD/ADHD without drugs. Change the environment.

ADD/ADHD should be a multifaceted approach and shouldn't lean on any specific treatment. Some may be better suited for behavioural therapy and meditation. Others may find themselves performing fine with medication with some extra fish oil. Regardless, everyone should explore all avenues to get a good understanding of how the condition effects the patient.

> Forcing kids to take meth is just wrong.

Firstly, no one should be forcing their children to take anything. The process should be more of: "Do you feel that you can concentrate better, or have a better sense of being while on this medication?" If the answer is "No", then obviously your child stops the medication. The child actually gets a say in the matter.

Now if you want to talk about forced treatment, examine for a minute, circumcision - wrong on all fronts. There is now no plausible reason for people in the developed world to have this procedure done and yet it is being done around the clock without any permission from the human being its being done to.

[true_religion]

If you're willing to throw out a "pharma grade street drug" then wouldn't you be willing to throw out any pharma-grade drugs that are used directly on the street such as codeine, morphine, Valium, Vicodin, and any other broad spectrum pain reliever.

[Rexatron]

Not pain meds for legit pain.

But as a ex-addict of benzos I would restrict those to epileptic patients...

The data on benzos for mania, depression, and suicide is scary. Long term use has terrible effects.

Most docs don't prescribe the heavy ones for psychiatry anymore. Seizures are a different story.

[Alex3917]

"Most docs don't prescribe the heavy ones for psychiatry anymore. Seizures are a different story."

Benzos have actually made a huge comeback recently, and are quickly catching up to their peak prescription levels in 1975. In 2009, benzos were 3 of the top 20 most-prescribed psychiatric drugs prescribed in the US:

1. Alprazolam (Xanax) 44,029,000

3. Lorazepam (Ativan) 25,868,00

10. Diazepam (Valium) 14,009,000

There were 83 million prescriptions for benzos written in 2007, as compared with 103 million at their peak in 1975. (Granted there are more people today, but still.)

source: http://www.erowid.org/general/newsletter/erowid_newsletter18...

(And also Anatomy of an Epidemic, p. 131)

[Rexatron]

That is scary.

My experience,when I was addicted, was that I couldn't find a doc to prescribe them for me. Was it the dead-faced junkie staring back that prevented it? Probably.

It's sad they are so heavily prescribed again, because I know how it feels to rely on a pill to stop the pain and get out of my own head/anxiety. I'm lucky to have found another way.

[roel_v]

"Are you familiar with street meth? Ritlain/Adderall are pharma grade long duration forms of that."

No they're not, you apparently don't have a clue about the pharmacological aspects of Ritalin.

To all intelligent readers: please ignore the trolls in this thread, there is a small but vocal group of opponents who build careers out of applying to parents' feelings of fear of medications and the guild of having their children on it. Then when parents are confronted with ADHD they go looking for information and the first things they find on the internet are these nutcases - it's like searching for information on the objective potential issues with eating meat and ending up on a PETA site.

[Rexatron]

Dextroamphetamine is a psychostimulant drug which is known to produce increased wakefulness and focus in association with decreased fatigue and decreased appetite. Drugs with similar psychoactive properties can be referred to or described as "amphetamine analogues", "amphetamine-like", or having "amphetaminergic" effects. Enantiomerically pure dextroamphetamine is more potent than racemic amphetamine and has stimulant properties similar to racemic methamphetamine, though it is less potent and has not been shown to cause neurotoxicity, which is associated with methamphetamine use.

Wikipedia.

And I work in IT.

[roel_v]

Right, and Wikipedia exactly proves my point! Ritalin != 'a more potent form of crystal meth'. Yes it's chemically related, and yes it has in the abstract and in people who do not have ADHD similar effects, but no it's not the same. H1N1 and seasonal flu are both influenza strains, except that one kills tens or hundreds of millions over a few years and the other one everyone gets once every few years and shrugs it off with a few days in bed. Does that mean that they're all the same?

[watmough]

In this case the weasel words are "has not been shown to" which of course is not the same as doesn't.