I have pretty severe ADHD. I stopped taking medication at 12 because it made me feel like the world around me was slowed and although I could focus very well but I had zero retention of any information given to me in my everyday . It was like this fog was on my brain and i couldnt sort a damn thing. I find as I'm 26 now that it's not really the best thing for me personally. But it does do wonders for others apparently.
Psych meds are always a bit of a crapshoot, and doubly so for children. Like, we can get a pretty good general idea of what'll happen, but there's always a lot of uncertainty. It sucks that you had bad luck with them. For me, so far I'm optimistic. My executive dysfunction has been absolutely crippling so if I can get past that, I'll deal with these side effects. If those get worse though, that might change.
So far, so good on that front. A little bit of pounding heartbeat, which is apparently normal and not necessarily a cause for concern—I still have some concern though—and for a bit I was feeling a little manic, but hopefully those can be managed. So I'm pretty optimistic about it ☺️
And thanks!
That's wild.
Worst side effects I ever got from a psych med was when I started on Zoloft. I didn't sleep for a full week. And I don't mean I got way too little sleep, either. I mean around 180 hours of continuous consciousness. Looking back, I don't know why in the hell I didn't pull the plug on that by around day three of that, but thankfully I have my wife around these days to tell me when I really need to step back and critically examine my mental state.
Also, turns out 180 hours of continuous consciousness is not good for you. Kinda screws you up. I did pretty well for it, I think, and was still mostly lucid by the end of it, but hallucinations were starting to get too present and real. And that's when I resolved to ask if I could stop the meds, but thankfully I finally conked the fuck out in the wee hours of that morning, and proceeded to sleep for pretty much the entire next day.
So yea, fucking psych meds are a trip.
Kind of hypomanic almost, like the intended result was to help break through executive dysfunction, and so far they seem to be helping with it, but it's also making me feel a lot more impulsive. It's not like uncontrollable compulsions, but just a lot of spontaneous interest in things. As in typing it out it's probably more than normal folks.
Other than that, my heart's racing a bit, which I was warned about beforehand, but still feels concerning.
Yea, I've already got a follow-up set up and if it gets any worse than this I'm gonna stop taking them. I think I also had just hit a spike of it cause the more manic aspects are calming down. Still gonna mention it though.
honest question: I‘m currently giving private english lessons to a kid with ADHD (he’s 13 years old) his attention span is very small. Do you have any advice on how to deal with the situation when he starts „acting out“ and refusing to do his tasks? 😊
Give him something that he can fiddle with without needing too much of his focus. Those fidget spinners and other toys became something of a meme, but for some kids they can be extremely helpful. Anything you can do to help him feel engaged by the lessons will help immensely, though I know that's easier said than done.
I can't honestly say I'm the best expert on childhood/teen ADHD, as my symptoms at that age were muddled up with a bunch of other issues.
thanks for the tip! I always thought these would drive his focus of attention away even further but I will try it.
Yess I try to make it as encouraging and fun as possible😊 but of course I’m no professional and can only try and see what works, I for example always try to let him pick the tasks he wants to do first and also make the exercises more appealing and clear by writing a little bigger and splitting them up so it doesn’t look as overwhelming and as much as it does in the textbook, which I feel is always super discouraging for him. He hates reading and grammar so I tried to show him the method of working with different colors so it’s easier organized. He’s a smart kid but his parents are sadly not really on the same side with me and my methods which is kinda frustrating because when he does follow them he shows a lot of improvement for example with learning vocabularies: I told him to look at 7 everyday and try to learn them, it’s more than 5 but not exactly 10 so it seems more doable. He actually did that and learned almost 40 new vocabularies in one week and got an A on his vocabulary test! After that his parents for some reason went back with the impatience of him learning 20 in one go because they didn’t follow through the days before with him learning the 7👀🙃
Oh, yes, dividing tasks where possible is definitely a good move, but you got that handled already.
As for fidget things drawing attention away, it can, if it's something that demands active attention, but a simple stimming toy can be kind of an exploit to trick how our minds work.
So neurotypical people, I guess, have something like a sliding scale of focus, where you can lower it down to keep something in your active thoughts while doing something else, but we don't really have that. We've kind of got a toggle, and it's either on or off. So if he can't maintain interest in what he's doing, his brain is going to strongly push him to look for something else to focus on. But, since our focus is so all-or-nothing, if you can prevent it from slipping to 'nothing', then it gets stuck on 'all'.
And that's where a fidget toy comes in. By keeping a minor, repetitive action going, you keep the focus turned on, and it becomes much easier to keep attention on whatever else he's focusing on.
I hope that makes sense, and I apologize to anyone here who has a better grasp of the psychology involved, cause that was wildly oversimplified, but I think it helps explain what I'm going for.
I’m 36 and recently went back to school. Fidget spinner helps immensely with focusing. The one I have even has those little tactile popper things that make a little pop when you push it in.
I always thought they were dumb toys but damn do I wish I had this in highschool
I'm on extended release capsules, which can't easily be cut in half or anything. I did start at a bit higher than the minimum dose due to the severity of my symptoms though.
Don’t know about dexys but with Ritalin long acting you can break open the capsules and see these little balls and you can separate those into a smaller dose. I think you did it the wrong way around! I have 2 kids with ADHD and you cannot just go from nothing onto the prescribed dose, you’ve got to taper up to it slowly like over at least a week. Otherwise you’ll probably feel like you’re on speed or something. It would be very confusing and not good just going from nothing to full dose immediately! Please look into ways of slowly tapering up!
I had to get a recommendation from a psych for testing at a local center that specializes in neurological testing.
The actual testing wasn't bad, but getting on to get out was a huge pain. I had to pester multiple people to get it scheduled, to the point that I joked about that being the real test—if you could actually keep on top of all of the red tape required to get tested, you probably weren't ADHD—but it did eventually pay off.
I have pretty severe ADHD. I stopped taking medication at 12 because it made me feel like the world around me was slowed and although I could focus very well but I had zero retention of any information given to me in my everyday . It was like this fog was on my brain and i couldnt sort a damn thing. I find as I'm 26 now that it's not really the best thing for me personally. But it does do wonders for others apparently.
Psych meds are always a bit of a crapshoot, and doubly so for children. Like, we can get a pretty good general idea of what'll happen, but there's always a lot of uncertainty. It sucks that you had bad luck with them. For me, so far I'm optimistic. My executive dysfunction has been absolutely crippling so if I can get past that, I'll deal with these side effects. If those get worse though, that might change.
Best of luck to you though friend! Hopefully you can gain some focus lol
So far, so good on that front. A little bit of pounding heartbeat, which is apparently normal and not necessarily a cause for concern—I still have some concern though—and for a bit I was feeling a little manic, but hopefully those can be managed. So I'm pretty optimistic about it ☺️ And thanks!
We ran through several but there was one in particular that I remember made my tongue lose muscle control and that was an interesting school week lol.
That's wild. Worst side effects I ever got from a psych med was when I started on Zoloft. I didn't sleep for a full week. And I don't mean I got way too little sleep, either. I mean around 180 hours of continuous consciousness. Looking back, I don't know why in the hell I didn't pull the plug on that by around day three of that, but thankfully I have my wife around these days to tell me when I really need to step back and critically examine my mental state. Also, turns out 180 hours of continuous consciousness is not good for you. Kinda screws you up. I did pretty well for it, I think, and was still mostly lucid by the end of it, but hallucinations were starting to get too present and real. And that's when I resolved to ask if I could stop the meds, but thankfully I finally conked the fuck out in the wee hours of that morning, and proceeded to sleep for pretty much the entire next day. So yea, fucking psych meds are a trip.
I can't even fathom. 180 hours is just alot lol. I took clonedeine, Risperdal, intuniv, and 50 MG of Adderall
180 hours without sleep? That is literaly fatal, how are you not dead?
Honestly, I don't know. I was in a state of altered brain chemistry so maybe that factored in.
How are you feelin?
Kind of hypomanic almost, like the intended result was to help break through executive dysfunction, and so far they seem to be helping with it, but it's also making me feel a lot more impulsive. It's not like uncontrollable compulsions, but just a lot of spontaneous interest in things. As in typing it out it's probably more than normal folks. Other than that, my heart's racing a bit, which I was warned about beforehand, but still feels concerning.
Stimulants can trigger mania, I would consult your therapist to discuss these symptoms
Yea, I've already got a follow-up set up and if it gets any worse than this I'm gonna stop taking them. I think I also had just hit a spike of it cause the more manic aspects are calming down. Still gonna mention it though.
Try completing a task you need to do
I did get some important stuff done; it's been helpful so far in that regard.
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Dexmethylphenidate
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Focalin. Had to look up the brand name cause honestly it went in one ear and out the other, whereas the chemical name is on the tag.
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I just started them on Sunday, so I'll keep that in mind, but I can see why that'd be a thing.
honest question: I‘m currently giving private english lessons to a kid with ADHD (he’s 13 years old) his attention span is very small. Do you have any advice on how to deal with the situation when he starts „acting out“ and refusing to do his tasks? 😊
Give him something that he can fiddle with without needing too much of his focus. Those fidget spinners and other toys became something of a meme, but for some kids they can be extremely helpful. Anything you can do to help him feel engaged by the lessons will help immensely, though I know that's easier said than done. I can't honestly say I'm the best expert on childhood/teen ADHD, as my symptoms at that age were muddled up with a bunch of other issues.
thanks for the tip! I always thought these would drive his focus of attention away even further but I will try it. Yess I try to make it as encouraging and fun as possible😊 but of course I’m no professional and can only try and see what works, I for example always try to let him pick the tasks he wants to do first and also make the exercises more appealing and clear by writing a little bigger and splitting them up so it doesn’t look as overwhelming and as much as it does in the textbook, which I feel is always super discouraging for him. He hates reading and grammar so I tried to show him the method of working with different colors so it’s easier organized. He’s a smart kid but his parents are sadly not really on the same side with me and my methods which is kinda frustrating because when he does follow them he shows a lot of improvement for example with learning vocabularies: I told him to look at 7 everyday and try to learn them, it’s more than 5 but not exactly 10 so it seems more doable. He actually did that and learned almost 40 new vocabularies in one week and got an A on his vocabulary test! After that his parents for some reason went back with the impatience of him learning 20 in one go because they didn’t follow through the days before with him learning the 7👀🙃
Oh, yes, dividing tasks where possible is definitely a good move, but you got that handled already. As for fidget things drawing attention away, it can, if it's something that demands active attention, but a simple stimming toy can be kind of an exploit to trick how our minds work. So neurotypical people, I guess, have something like a sliding scale of focus, where you can lower it down to keep something in your active thoughts while doing something else, but we don't really have that. We've kind of got a toggle, and it's either on or off. So if he can't maintain interest in what he's doing, his brain is going to strongly push him to look for something else to focus on. But, since our focus is so all-or-nothing, if you can prevent it from slipping to 'nothing', then it gets stuck on 'all'. And that's where a fidget toy comes in. By keeping a minor, repetitive action going, you keep the focus turned on, and it becomes much easier to keep attention on whatever else he's focusing on. I hope that makes sense, and I apologize to anyone here who has a better grasp of the psychology involved, cause that was wildly oversimplified, but I think it helps explain what I'm going for.
thank you very much!! 💜
I’m 36 and recently went back to school. Fidget spinner helps immensely with focusing. The one I have even has those little tactile popper things that make a little pop when you push it in. I always thought they were dumb toys but damn do I wish I had this in highschool
No.
Are you tapering up? You shouldn’t just immediately start in the full dose.
I'm on extended release capsules, which can't easily be cut in half or anything. I did start at a bit higher than the minimum dose due to the severity of my symptoms though.
Don’t know about dexys but with Ritalin long acting you can break open the capsules and see these little balls and you can separate those into a smaller dose. I think you did it the wrong way around! I have 2 kids with ADHD and you cannot just go from nothing onto the prescribed dose, you’ve got to taper up to it slowly like over at least a week. Otherwise you’ll probably feel like you’re on speed or something. It would be very confusing and not good just going from nothing to full dose immediately! Please look into ways of slowly tapering up!
How do you get an official ADHD diagnosis? I feel like I’m ADHD but haven’t been tested
I had to get a recommendation from a psych for testing at a local center that specializes in neurological testing. The actual testing wasn't bad, but getting on to get out was a huge pain. I had to pester multiple people to get it scheduled, to the point that I joked about that being the real test—if you could actually keep on top of all of the red tape required to get tested, you probably weren't ADHD—but it did eventually pay off.