[sph]

My come down is only feeling a little more tired. I suspect you are not talking from experience but hearsay.

> Well, a dose doesn’t last forever. It wouldn’t be surprising if it was a net negative.

My near-sightedness returns as soon as I put down my prescription glasses. I've had to wear them every single day to be able to function decently. Imagine that.

[331c8c71]

I almost didn't have a comedown when I started taking Ritalin. Few years later it became a nightmare. I was becoming extremely annoyed every afternoon and was pretty much useless in the evening as a result.

I also started having very annoying anxiety in the morning after taking meds. And all that with a reduced effectiveness of the drug - clear slowdown in the afternoon after lunch which I didn't have in the beginning of treatment (the dosage was more or less constant from the start after initial titration).

Ritalin clearly affects my sleep patterns. On it I never feel rested and wake up with a feeling I haven't slept at all. There was no change, the effect was present from the start. It takes at least three days without meds for it to be gone.

Finally, Ritalin is definitely bad for my creativity. For instance, I have a habit to play piano or guitar as a way to relax since I was a kid. Composing or improvising at least 50% of the time. This invariably stops when I am on meds - it feels like the activity becomes dull and stops being pleasurable.

All in all, I think it is great that the meds exist and work for a large number of people. That being said I can't stand when someone praises stimulants alluding the consequences of taking them are invariably positive and the side-effects are trivial (if they are acknowledged).

Sadly, most internet discussions on ADHD meds (among people who don't deny it) are infected with overly simplistic toxic positivity: "get diagnosed and treated and your life will be fixed while you'll be happy". The first part I agree with but there is no need to trivialize - the life is more nuanced than that.

[anotherman554]

I'm near-sighted but when I wear glasses my brain doesn't attempt to achieve homeostasis by altering the way I see with glasses on in order to make my sight closer to how it was before I wore glasses.

I'm not saying you shouldn't be on drugs or that you'll find the drugs stop working. I'm just saying the effects on the brain are pretty complex and shouldn't be compared to wearing glasses.

[FollowingTheDao]

As someone who’s been institutionalized in a psychiatric hospital four times in a still living with bipolar schizoaffective disorder I can tell you being nearsighted is no comparison to having a mood disorder. If people were not ignorant enough to ignore all the nutritional facts that go around the production of catecholamines there would be no need for medication.

Your doctors are probably doing more harm than good by not treating an underlying metabolic disorder. It’s quite possible you have an underlying B6 deficiency.

Why don’t you go get your B6 levels tested and ping me when you get them back OK?

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16846100/

[danShumway]

I don't know what everyone else's experiences are, but my psychiatrist definitely ordered blood tests for me before prescribing medication, and I was able to look through the results myself as well. I'm happy for you if you managed to fix your own problems by getting your B6 checked, but vitamin deficiency is not the reason I have ADHD.

[mrtranscendence]

This is prime kook right here. You don’t see it every day.

Most psychiatric problems are not due to a nutritional deficiency. My B6 levels aren’t causing my adhd.

[FollowingTheDao]

Kook huh? Nice.

Is that why I’ve been able to get off all of my medications? Because I’m a kook and I don’t know anything about neurobiology? Or anything about immunology? Or genetics?

You say your B6 levels are not causing your ADHD, but have you ever had them tested?

Yeah it’s so "kooky" that they keep finding B6 defieicny over and over in children with ADHD.

https://hrcak.srce.hr/file/303406

And heck, you might try to take it with your meds, it might help: http://sjh.umsha.ac.ir/download.php?mod=a_atch&atch_id=253&a...

And I suppose it is nothing that polymorphisms in a gene that makes dopamine (DDC) is implicated in ADHD and also needs B6 as a cofactor.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4946061/

But I am the kook I guess. No, it’s not crazy at all to take an amphetamine. It’s not crazy to never wonder why they don’t try to find out why you’re not producing enough amphetamines on your own. It's not crazy we give these drugs endlessly yet ADHD keeps rising.

My Schizoaffective Bipolar Disorder is caused by nutrition. Ask me how!

[mrtranscendence]

I've been checked for vitamin deficiencies before, though I don't know if B6 was specifically checked. Regardless, they only found that I was low on vitamin D and so I do take a multivitamin, though I have doubts that it helps in practice. I have also indirectly supplemented vitamin B6 and B12 via frequent energy drink usage (not the healthiest thing I admit!). I notice no difference to mood, physical comfort, or ADHD symptoms on or off vitamin supplementation.

> My Schizoaffective Bipolar Disorder is caused by nutrition.

I suppose anything is possible, but from what I know -- I'm not a psychiatric professional but I've lived with one for 20 years -- it sounds unlikely to be true for most people with similar diagnoses. Believe me, psychiatric hospitals would love to make more beds available by "curing" mental illness with diet.