Do You Have an ADD/ADHD Medication Disaster Story?
As a Psychiatrist who specialized in ADD/ADHD, I hear lots of information about ADD and ADHD Medication.
I regularly hear great things - i.e. how the medicine has transformed someone’s life…
And I hear about problem situations… When a medicine had a side effect, or maybe wasn’t even needed.
That is one of the reasons that I have my newsletter, and post to this blog - to teach you the right information that you need, hopefully when you need it.
Because I have received so many questions about medicines for ADD/ADHD (like Ritalin, Ritalin LA, Concerta, Metadate CD, Biphentin, Daytrana, Adderall, Adderall XR, Dexedrine, Vyvanse, etc.), I have decided to teach you more about medicines for ADD and ADHD. I will be posting on this blog, or on my newsletter (just enter your name and address on the top right to be sure not to miss this) how you can take advantage of this opportunity to learn more about ADD/ADHD medication in the coming weeks.
Recently, I was amazed by how people were willing to share their experiences with whether Vyvanse works on this blog. Since Vyvanse is not available in Canada (where I work), I asked for your input as to whether this medicine works well. I was amazed at the response! I want to thank each of you who took the time to share your feedback. Discussions have even started between readers of this blog. I am thrilled that this blog has helped to create a community for you.
Now that I am putting together the materials for a course on ADD/ADHD Medication - I wanted to ask you about your experiences with ADD and ADHD medication.
On this post - I want to ask you about any ADD or ADHD medication disaster stories.
Why do I want to know about the disasters?
Well, I hope that I can learn from the ‘disasters’ that may have happened, and hopefully so can my readers. Also, as I go to prepare the material for the ADHD medication home study course - I want to make sure to address all of the situations, not just the successful ones.
So, if you have an ADD or ADHD medication disaster story, please type it into the comment box below.
(just know that it will take a little bit of time until it shows up on the blog - as all comments are ‘moderated’, meaning approved - to prevent spam posts). I would really appreciate you sharing your experiences with me - and also the thousands of other people who read this blog from all over the world.
Thank you for your help.
Dr. Kenny
p.s. If you have an ADD ADHD Medication Success Story, you can enter it here:ADD ADHD Medication Success Stories (or you can just read about other people’s in the comments)
=================================================
Written by Dr. Kenny Handelman - The ADHD Doctor
To find get a FREE special report on ADD/ADHD Medication, visit: Medication Mastery
==================================================
Email this post to a friend:
August 27th, 2007 at 10:41 am
Hi Dr. Kenny,
My son, 9 year old, on medication more than two years. Most of the time medication( Adderol XR) works well. The only my concern that it requires increasing the dosage once in a year. Although I’ve learnt from you that there is no addiction for this medication for people who have ADHD, the increasing the dosage once in a while seems to me as an addiction to medication. I have some questions:
-does the dosage depend on growth factor;
-how much the dosage can be increased;
-what to do if we’ll meet the problem that the dosage cann’t be increased any longer because dose/weight dependens?
My son feels much better on medication. He sees the difference in his behavior and he knows exactly the day when he forget to take his peel.
My best regards to you and your family,
Nataliya, USA
August 27th, 2007 at 4:07 pm
Hi
My 8 year old son tried the 18 mg Concerta pill but got terrible side effects. Tics and uncontrollable body movements.
Of course this happened on the weekend when all doctor’s offices were closed but we found one clinic (a children’s clinic) and the doctor there told me that this is a normal side effect and it could take up to 2 weeks for the tics to stop!
I took him off the meds right away and switched to Ritalin which worked much better.
August 27th, 2007 at 4:36 pm
HI. We had a disaster with Adderal. Actually, the Adderal worked well on my son’s ADD. It was just not good for his personality. His grades were finally good but he lost all joy. I never saw him smile or enjoying anything. He spent more time alone in his room. We had been having good results with Ritalin, but the Doctor recommended a change because the Adderall would last longer.
When we approached my son about going back to Ritalin he became very upset and didn’t want to stop the Adderal (he had just turned 18). His response kind of made me think of addiction (?) We finally put “our” foot down and made him switch back to Ritalin. Gradually, he started to smile again.
I know that ADderal works well for many, just not for us.
August 27th, 2007 at 5:21 pm
My 6 year old daughter was on Concerta (extended release) for less than 2 weeks. Her doctor took her off the medication per my request because it made her increasingly aggressive. She began screaming at inappropriate times (no apparent cause) and hitting or kicking when she did not get her way. This was not her usual response before the medication. We started Focalin XR shortly afterward and loved it!
September 29th, 2007 at 1:34 am
My 10 yr old son, who was taking focalin until today, was notably different in his behavior. However, he has recently been diagnosed with a heart arrhythmia that is being caused by the medication. After having 2 EKG’s, an echocardiogram, 2 sets of x-rays, and wearing a heart monitor twice, the electrophysioligist determined that more than likely it was the focalin causing the arrhythmia. He did not say that my son would have to stop taking the meds right now, but would monitor him with the administration of metoprolol (a beta blocker). I have taken it upon myself to remove these medications from my son’s daily life in an effort to improve his longevity of life. As I am told, all of these types of stimulants have been removed, completely, from Canadian shelves. I will not administer this type of death certificate on my son. We will seek, alternative, holistic means and the faith in the Good Lord. I hope that everyone heads the warning and understands the undisclosed, sudden death, caused by use of these stimulants.
October 13th, 2007 at 11:58 pm
Hi Dr. Kenny
In response to medication disasters…..
Hope this is helpful for others !!
Our son was diagnosed at 4yrs.old and was spiraling out of control because of his adhd, so we reluctantly tried Biphentin! Within the first week we were seeing absolute miracles! After a few months we were seeking to try a 12 hr. med as the biphentin seemed to wear off between 6-8 hours despite an adjustment in dosing etc. It felt like such a tease to us all as we were having these wonderful days with him and then these horrible evenings (usually beginning at supper time)…we tried aderall and very quickly were enjoying the 12 hrs of bliss…it was immediately obvious to us though that our happy little boy was now extremely quiet and withdrawn, very emotional and crying all the time over nothing….after giving it time we finally had his dose slightly adjusted only to experience weeks of insomnia where he was awake for hours in the middle of the night, until one night in the wee hours it occurred to me that my sweet little boy was having horrible hallucinations….he was on a trip that Im sure was equivalent to lsd…..he was screaming, people were chasing him, has saw bunny rabbits running all over our house, he was slapping me because there were spiders on me, he saw rainbows and beautiful lights….”look at the lights mommy, don’t you see them??” I was so scared, I wanted to just cry!!!……we felt so guilty for doing that to him, it was our idea, we wanted the 12 hrs.!!! a long story short, that was 6 months ago and our son still remembers that night, we refer to it as the really bad dream he was having….we have since been back on our wonderful BIPHENTIN and will sing its praises to any one who cares!
We still only average about 8 hrs. out of him but we will never be greedy again…we’ve decided that the methylphenidate family seems to be the better choice for our child, what works for some won’t for others…..and maybe someday when he’s older we’ll try again, but I don’t see us touching adderall for years to come!
November 22nd, 2007 at 2:48 pm
My son was diagnosed with ADD/ADHD and also suffers mildly from Tourettes and OCD. We have tried a number of medications over the years for ADHD including Concerta, Adderall, then Straterra. Concerta and Staterra did not quite give the results that we were looking for. However, Adderall had an terrible effect on him. At first we didnt’ notice any chance but decided to wait it out. Eventually, he seemed a little depressed, lazy but the most frightening thing was his ability to speak. (Normally, my son is very articulate and expressive with his words.) He would try to say something, and forget what he was going to say just as the words were about to come out of his mouth. We didn’t let this last more than a few days when I called the doctor and asked if we could discontinue the medication without any withdrawl effect. He assured us we could stop the medication which we did that minute.
January 26th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
I think this fits into the ‘disaster’ category.
Doctor had been shuffling my dose of immediate-release Methylphenidate around for a few weeks as my ADHD (I’m 23 by the way and was diagnosed age 9) had begun causing some serious problems with work, first he cut it right back to 2×5Mg tablets a day, which did absolutely nothing for me apart from make me extremely frustrated, increased to 2×10Mg tabs a day, which had limited effect and still no real benefit. A few weeks ago upped to 4×10Mg tabs a day - at this point in time I had been suspended from my day-job, but still worked at nightclubs in the evenings as a bouncer, and was taking the majority of the daily dose in one go before work at night.
Slow progress for a few weeks on the same 4×10Mg a day.
Doc decided that I was ’stabilised’ on this dose and switched me onto Concerta-XL 36Mg.
After two days of taking concerta, i became aggressive, anti-social, and depressed. After a week of little to no sleep, constant anger/aggression, and withdrawal from social contact, i was awake all night, going for pointless journeys in my car, ending up getting pulled over by the police and landing in trouble (cops dont respond too well to aggressive behaviour).
After i had been released from police custody (with a formal warning), i sunk into a deep depression and became suicidal.
I acquired approx 1000 tablets of various types over the course of a few days and pooled them together with some old prescription analgesics (opiate painkillers) and decided that I would overdose.
Having decided that there was enough to ‘do the job’ and little risk of regaining conciousness with a permanently damaged liver and maybe brain damage. After all, if i was going to live, i didnt want to be worse off.
Luckily for me, a friend had noticed marked changes in my behaviours and intervened. Making me unpack every single pill/tablet and put down the garbage disposal. Also making me return to the Dr and ‘confess’ about everything.
Doc promtly withdrew Concerta-XL and re-prescribed immediate-release Methylphenidate, but only at the same 4×10Mg dose as weeks ago.
Still suspended from work. Still struggling on.
January 31st, 2008 at 4:54 pm
I’m 42 years old. In 2005, I was put on 400mg of Lamictal for being easily angered. The Lamictal made me feel more calm and peaceful.
My doctor then put me on Concerta for my A.D.D.
I became more and more easily irritated despite being on the Lamictal.
In June 2005, I assaulted my wife after an argument and was charged and convicted of 4th degree assault.
I was put on anti-psychotic medication for several weeks after stopping the Concerta.
I no longer have that calm and peaceful feeling despite being on 400mg of Lamictal.
I would say, if someone has a temporal lobe disorder, taking Concerta is not worth the risk. It has adversely affected my life in numerous ways.
February 26th, 2008 at 12:41 am
My 6 year old daughter was recently dx with inattentive ADD. The pediatrician started her on 30 mg (smallest dosage) of Vyvanse. We gave it to her on a Thursday morning before school. I picked her up from school at 3:00. I was completely shocked by the changes in her. She had a very flat affect however she was talking non-stop. However, the most disturbing side effect was a very obvious facial tic. This involved a chewing like motion and a repetitive tongue thrust pattern. The poor child has horrible chapping under her bottom lip from the constant tongue thrust /licking. At 3:30, she “crashed” and became a zombie on the couch. At 5:00, she began to perk up and her personality returned. The facial tic disappeared by 9:00pm. At mid-night, she was still awake. At 2:30am, she was asleep however she was awake again (and up for the rest of the day) by 4:00am. I forgot to mention the pain in her stomache. She complained of her belly hurting awful. Well, we are going to give 10mg Focalin a try tomorrow despite many family members and friends poo-pooing on our decision to put her on meds.
May 5th, 2008 at 8:24 pm
My 6 year old was on Ritalin, progressed to Concerta and when I didn’t see much improvement, the Dr put her on VyVanse. She recently started seeing spiders everywhere. On Sat she woke up screaming about spiders, I couldn’t calm her down completely and she spent a great deal of time complaining about spiders. When she came home school today, she had a letter from her teacher that she had beeen complaining about spiders on her desk all day.
I’m taking her off the meds but at a loss as to what to do next. She definitely needs meds but not at the expense of her sanity.
May 5th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
Hi Lisa,
Although it’s very rare - the adhd medications can cause hallucinations (i.e. seeing things that aren’t there).
Best to call your doctor and review the situation asap.
Dr. Kenny
May 6th, 2008 at 9:16 pm
My daughter was recenly diagnosed with ADHD a few weeks ago. We started her on Biphentin (new to Canada) 10 mg. The first week was hell where she has little to no patience with anyone including the teachers, daycare and herself. She gets angry and agreesive easily and yells at people which is so not like her. She is usally a loving little charmer who has problems paying attention and is very hyperactive. I called the Dr yesterday and he changed the dosage to 15 mg which we started this morning. He said that if the dosage is too low (as she can have between 20 and 40 mg for her weight range) that this could be a reason for the angry and agreesive behaviour which is not the norm.
Her appitite has not changed nor has her sleeping patterns so far. I just want my happy little girl back.
Does anyone have any experience with this new med?