As I transition toward getting my masters in Social Work, I decided it was important to share my experience with using psychiatric drugs to deal with my diagnosis. My journey wasn’t long from the time I was diagnosed to the time I ended up in a 12-step program, but an immense amount happened in that time. Hindsight is 20/20, so I wanted to look back closely on what happened to me a few years ago to offer some insight to others in the field or with similar diagnoses.
I was falsely diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 19, and I want to examine what happened to cause this. There were a number of causes, and after being diagnosed and prescribed Adderall, there were a number of detrimental effects. This story is about the causes that led to the most adverse diagnosis of my life.
ADHD, Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, is a common term these days. It is used in commercials, casual jokes, schools and in mental health settings on a daily basis. Hearing this term in popular culture has almost normalized it. Frequently being around those diagnosed with ADHD, hearing about celebrities that were diagnosed, and participating in jokes using the acronym all served to desensitize me to the diagnosis. This socially acceptable view of ADHD led me to eventually decide that it would be okay to be diagnosed.
Every year in elementary school, I had to participate in the concentration tests and questions, and I always hoped that I would qualify to be diagnosed. At home, I suggested to my parents that I might have ADHD. I would then hear, “Everyone has ADHD to some degree, you are not being put on medication!” From this reaction of my parents, I rebelled from the idea that I didn’t need medication. I felt that the students who were prescribed this “concentration medicine” had an advantage, a certain solution that wasn’t available to me.
My best friend in middle school and high school was diagnosed with ADHD. Her mother happened to be a psychiatrist, so she had the “hook up,” I thought. She was also diagnosed with a few other labels, and given the appropriate prescriptions. It became a normal conversation at lunch that she couldn’t eat because of her medicine. This news excited me at the time because she would give me her food. I had conversations about Adderall with my friend a few times, and one time in particular stood out to me. She said, “I can’t do anything without these pills! They help me get out of bed.” At the time, I didn’t quite understand why she needed these “concentration pills” to get out of bed. I was puzzled because I thought she needed them for school, not to gain the energy to get out of bed.
It also became desirable, at some point, that those given stimulant prescriptions would lose a substantial amount of weight. I knew a few friends who bought these stimulants specifically in order to lose weight. They quickly became the popular new lazy-girl miracle weight loss drug! In my naive mind, I thought this drug could solve all my problems.
I tried Adderall for the first time while taking my SAT. I had seen a few popular films and shows that included these pills working miracles for unprepared students. A friend that was prescribed heard me talking about how I had not been studying, so she offered a few of her Adderall pills to solve my problem. I was appreciative and accepted them without any thought of the consequences. During the SAT, I was ultra-excited to take the test. I remember that on breaks I would tell my peers about how enthused I was to go back in there and continue taking the test. They all looked at me like I was on drugs (which I was).
In high school, I didn’t excel in my classes because my priorities were out of whack. In college, my priorities shifted completely and I finally understood the value of school. My freshman year in college consisted of classes, studying and partying. I made Dean’s list, but still felt I didn’t quite have enough time for my extracurricular activities. I had taken Adderall one or two times my freshman year.
While I excelled in college without any prescription to Adderall, I convinced myself that I needed it. I talked my mom into letting me see a Presbyterian counselor, so that I could determine if I really had ADHD. Researching exactly what I needed to say in order to be diagnosed, I came in prepared. There was no talk therapy involved, just a quick list of questions, and then the result: “You have ADD, not the hyperactive type. It is still listed under the ADHD umbrella. Let’s get you started on a non-stimulant prescription.”
This simple, one-time visit to an unfamiliar counselor resulted in my diagnosis of ADHD. That same visit started my avalanche of drug abuse. I was 19 years old when I was falsely diagnosed with ADHD, and it forever changed my life.
After being diagnosed, I was immediately prescribed the non-stimulant Strattera. Knowing the feeling Adderall gave me earlier in my life, I was determined to be prescribed that drug. Roughly in about the second week of taking Strattera, on the day that the dose went from around 15mg to 40mg, I totaled my car. Stopped at a red light, I felt that my mind was in a daze but also ultra-focused at the same time. All I remember is looking down but seeing the light change out of my peripherals and pressing the gas. The person in front of me had a delay in going and I totaled my car smashing into the back of them. After realizing what I had just done, I about had a panic attack I was crying so hard – and I am not the type to cry.
This horrendous and almost instantaneous ‘car crash’ would be a precursor of times to come due to the psychiatric drugs I was prescribed. Resentful at what Strattera had caused in my life and now more driven than ever, I used what happened to guilt the psychiatrist into letting me try the stimulant drug Adderall. It took almost no effort at all, and I think at this point with my official diagnosis of ADHD, I really felt that I needed the drug to succeed in life. I was able to talk with my peers about which symptoms to tell the psychiatrist in order for her to up my doses. In my opinion it was far too easy to walk in at 19 and not only be diagnosed with ADHD for the first time but also to, within weeks, land a month’s supply of Adderall 25mg XR.
Someone at my age and weight should have never been given that many, or that high of a dosage. My body didn’t know how to handle it. I lost 20-30 pounds, and trust me I was small enough already. With the huge supply that I now possessed, and the demands of the college students around me, I started to sell them. Taking one 25mg XR a day was more than enough to make me feel wired. I felt so hyped up that I would open them up and only take half if I didn’t feel like shaking that day.
My psychiatrist only wanted to meet every month for the first few months to make sure they were “working” properly. She decided to drug test me once to make sure I was taking them as prescribed. Since I was taking the extreme amount she had given me, along with other drugs, the test came back acceptable and nothing was said.
As the days went on, I realized I couldn’t get out of bed without popping this pill. It became my best friend, a source of income and my new energy source. About six to eight months went by and I started getting a heaping amount of anxiety and depression. I also could barely sleep. To combat the side effects that my “miracle drug” was causing, I started smoking a lot of marijuana. I would also take the occasional prescription Xanax or painkiller from a friend. These would help ease the increasing side effects that Adderall had on my body and mind.
Slowly, I started to notice changes in my personality. I started to use people for the drugs they could provide to combat the side effects of the drug that I thought I needed; after all, a doctor had diagnosed me! Adderall made me irritable and snappy. In social situations that I used to be relaxed in, I started analyzing every move I made and every word I said.
It got so bad that I would have to set my alarm 30 minutes earlier to pop the Adderall then lay in bed until it kicked in. If I ran out of it, and god forbid I had to wait through the weekend, I barely lifted a finger. I had moments of clarity where I thought maybe if I took away my upper (Adderall), I wouldn’t need all these downers (alcohol, drugs). This was quickly swept under the rug by my mindset that I needed it to do well in school, forgetting I had done well my freshman year without it. I was prescribed in the summer of my freshman year in college – the situation slowly got worse until I hit a bottom so low that it forced me to get sober at the end of my junior year in college.
Getting sober involved me completely ripping the band-aid off. I didn’t speak to my psychiatrist about it because I didn’t speak with her about anything. I had headaches on and off afterward. It was difficult transitioning back to relying on myself for everyday activities.
My experience with Adderall starts and ends in a matter of just a few years, but it took such grasp of my life. The psychiatrist didn’t warn me of dangers and didn’t really check up on how it was affecting me. I was essentially diagnosed, prescribed a drug, and then left alone with it until it nearly destroyed me. I would urge others to exercise caution and circumspection in trusting mental health diagnosis and taking psychiatric drugs as a way to truly improve or heal yourself.
Since getting off the drugs I have gotten my emotions back. I don’t always feel good, but at least I have feelings now. I don’t have to worry about setting two alarms to take a pill to get me up in the morning. Not having to rely on a pill for daily functioning is impeccable. I can actually eat food now and enjoy it – what a revelation! I have gained 10 healthy pounds and am now at 125 and happier than ever about my body image. When I was on Adderall and everything else I used to balance myself out, my spirituality was nonexistent – or, towards the end, completely convoluted. I can now feel good about my decisions and lean on my higher power/higher self rather than make psychiatric drugs my higher power.
I wasn’t living life while covering all my problems with prescription and nonprescription drugs, and now I have a chance to make real choices that I can feel in my gut are right for me. I can listen to my body’s needs rather than forcing my body to listen to my ego desires. I have become a stronger person, learning how to deal with my emotions again rather than forcing them to not exist. Meditation has been of extreme help with my “concentration problems” – I don’t see them affecting my life in the least now. I can do anything I want to do now that I don’t have what I thought was my crutch holding me back.
[Editor’s note: the author has chosen to publish under an abbreviated version of her name while in the process of applying to grad school.]
Good story Renee. It’s great that you were able to get off the drugs relatively quickly – although a few years must have seemed like a long time while you were on them. But compared to many people who take these drugs for decades you did well. Also, you did well to reject the validity of the ADHD label – congratulations! ADHD is one of the biggest scams going, a fraudulent non-illness that is all about profit and the “treatments” for which fail to improve the lives of people long-term. Problems of attention and focus are not reducible to a brain disease nor curable via upper pills, as cogent analyses by authors like Philip Hickey, Robert Berezin, and Patrick Landman have discussed on this site; maybe you’d like to check them out:
http://www.madinamerica.com/2015/07/adhd-a-destructive-and-disempowering-label-not-an-illness/
http://www.madinamerica.com/2015/03/no-no-thing-adhd/
http://www.madinamerica.com/2016/01/delay-of-diagnosis-the-placebo-effect-of-behavioral-diagnosis/
When I was in high school we just called it “speed.” And you didn’t get it from a shrink. 🙂
One question: What would you consider a “legitimate” ADHD “diagnosis”?
I had moments of clarity where I thought maybe if I took away my upper (Adderall), I wouldn’t need all these downers (alcohol, drugs)….
Yep
But the Adderal would get rid of the hangovers too.
As the days went on, I realized I couldn’t get out of bed without popping this pill.
Yep
Same thing, take it or in my case chew it up and go back to bed till it kicked in.
and then left alone with it until it nearly destroyed me…
Yep
I got started in my 20s, it wrecked everything I had going. I didn’t even ask for it or really even know what ADHD was about. My story started with me wanting a sleeping pill that actually worked because I am just a total night owl and could never get to sleep early so I went to a walk in doctor who then started prescribing me 1mg of xanax but he got a new job at the hospital so he referred me to the local psychiatrist to get my 1mg of xanax for sleeping.
The psychiatrist took away the Xanax and started me on 3 or 4mg of Clonopin cause it was “less addictive” but that crap didn’t help with sleep as much. So I would add a few beers to it. I was already using alcohol to sleep but had wanted a pill alternative.
A few months later I was going to what was going to be my last visit IF I didn’t get the Xanax that actually did put me to sleep. I knew nothing about addiction and hadn’t figured out 1mg to sleep but 3mg to party, didn’t do it like that. I thought of them as just old lady anxiety pills that worked for sleep not party pills.
So on what was going to be my last visit ( I knew nothing about Clonopin withdrawal or the hell that awaited me at quitting time) well this doctor suggests that I have attention deficit hyper activity disorder. What ? What exactly is that ?
The description kind of fit and he asked me “have you ever tried cocaine” WTF did I ever try cocaine ???
I did several times and maybe I damaged my brain and that’s why I don’t sleep and all that I am thinking to myself. Yes I did try cocaine was my answer.
Doctors first question “what did you do?” ( what did I do after taking the cocaine)
We chilled out and watched Discovery channel. (Discovery was better back then lol )
You chilled out ??? Yes I felt high from it and we chilled out and watched discovery. Thats how my diagnosis was made. Cocaine had “chilled me out”.
[ thats right doc , if you are reading MIA its me, “thanks” for 8 years of hell ]
So I get the prescription filled start reading the insert: Stimulant medication for ADHD narcolepsy …. Oh WTF I am thinking, I just want a pill to goto bed early, WTF is this ‘stimulant for kids’ ????
I take the effing ADHD pill and goto work and it was like that movie “Limitless”, I was asleep all my life but NOW I AM AWAKE , I was blind now I can see, lets get started ! This medication they give the children really does a number on me, wow this is something else.
Yes me and my buddies screwed with cocaine when we were young and nothing bad happened. No addiction, didn’t ruin my life , take it or leave it wouldn’t go out of my way to find it. Just boys being bad sometimes if bad came our way, maybe a few times a year.
Adderal / dexadrine for ADHD OMG a wrecking ball , Soon I needed more alcohol, I needed more anxiety pills and I get put on Remeron some nasty SSRI off label sleep crap that twists me up more then the bipolar pills came my way as I am told they might help me sleep and with anxiety…. I hardly remember the order of the pill pile up.
It was the Adderal / Dexadrine that kept this ride through hell running cause I could keep running.
Anyway I did the whole drug and alcohol rehab thing and I noticed that the majority of the young people coming in for opiate addiction were started on the ADHD drugs as kids. Its any easy thing to notice if you just start asking. There is a absolute pattern of cause and effect but no way any drug company is going to fund a study. Seems no one has looked at this but all anyone has to do is start asking young addicts their psych history. I didn’t do the opiate thing but it was Adderal to wake up alcohol and or psych pills for the crash every day for years.
As I write this I think maybe it would be alright to get one Adderal Rx to have a few pills and get stuff done . Ya right, they messed me up before what would be different this time ? Why would it be different this time ? I can’t come up with an honest good answer to those questions. I haven’t taken any in several years.
Long hellish story but ya ADHD drugs took me out, they were a key ingredient in my destruction by psychiatry.
And “Vyvance” holy …. just like the Adderal but the crash goes on and on and on and won’t go away. “Effective” for up to 14 hours…
OMG they give THAT to small children ???? WTF x 1000 !!
Thats what is super scary, this stuff that trashed me out as an adult is being given to little kids cause the teachers want students high on drugs so they are quite, complaint and ‘focused’. Would seem unbelievable but its true.
I wrote a short sketch about ABCD – woops, I mean ADHD. It is part of a play called Mental. In this bit John pretends to be a teacher and Mark and Suzannah pretend to be naughy pupils. He is teaching them about ADHD.
John: ADHD, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.
He barks it out like a teacher shouting out orders.
Mark and Suzannah start sticking tongues out at each other and acting like naughty children, throwing things at each other, getting up and looking at John like he is the teacher.
John: Attention Deficit.
Mark speaks an aside to Suzannah.
Mark: Thinks he knows it all.
Suzannah: Oi, Sir, is you gay?
John: Now, now, Suzannah, get on with your work
Mark giggles, gets up and pushes Suzannah in a bullying way, John looks at Mark.
John: Oi you, stop talking to your mate and pay attention boy. Attention Deficit – not paying attention. Well that’s not a disorder.
Mark gets up and sneaks behind John, Suzannah stands up and follows him.
John: Hyperactivity.
Mark stands on a chair and makes like a monkey.
John: Right, you, Mark, sit down, over there. And you, Suzannah, sit down, over there. And get on with your work.
John: (To audience) Hyperactivity: Not sitting still, running around. Well that’s not a disorder. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, ADHD, its pants. ADHD, yes, ADHD it’s pants. What does ADHD mean? It’s the doctors medicalizing a particular distress. What kind of distress? Well in this case naughty boys.
Suzannah: And a few girls.
They start acting like naughty kids in school. Throwing things, getting up from the table and looking at John like he is the teacher.
Mark: But mainly boys.
John: And what do Dr’s do with naughty boys?
Suzannah scowls at John.
John: And girls. Give them drugs. In this case Ritalin.
Mark and Suzannah speak in a speedy way.
Mark: I’ve got ADHD me.
Suzannah: I’ve got ABCD me.
Mark: I’ve got HIJK me.
Suzannah: I’ve got ICUP me.
The giggle, John gives them a dirty look.
John: Is there something you two would like to share with the rest of the class?
They calm down, lean over table and get on with work.
John: Ritalin has almost the same effect as cocaine. Or speed. But for some reason it slows kids down, probably because it’s poisoned their brains.
Mark: He raises his hand. Sir, the headmaster won’t let me in school unless I’ve taken my Ritalin.
John: Yes, well the less said about that sadistic idiot the better.
Mark: I’m telling on you Sir. I’ll tell the headmaster you called him a sadistic idiot.
John: Get on with your work Mark.
Suzannah: My mum likes me to have Ritalin. When she runs out of money she takes my Ritalin off me and sells it to her mates down the pub.
John: Now I think that is the better option. Drug free children, adults taking responsibility for their drug taking, stimulates the local economy; it’s all good! Imagine if what happens in school happened at work. You have your annual review, your appraisal, whatever. Just you and your manager in a little cubicle, and she says:
Suzannah and Mark sit at table opposite each other. Suzannah as manager, Mark as employee.
Suzannah: Now Mark, I’m afraid you’ve not been hitting your targets.
Mark: Ah, sorry.
Suzannah: I’ve been noticing that you’ve been finding it hard to concentrate. We’ve paid for you to have extra tuition on your computer and it hasn’t helped; you keep making spelling mistakes, which, as I am sure you are aware, is not acceptable in this line of work.
Mark: Sorry.
Suzannah: Also, Sally, the manager in sales says you’ve been wandering in there and talking to John and Sarah. Sally’s put in a complaint about you distracting them from their work.
Mark: Oh.
Suzannah: I’m going to recommend a referral to the occupational health team for a psychological assessment.
John: Next thing you know they won’t let you back into work unless you’re on class B drugs.
Mark pretends to pick up a phone.
Mark: Hello, is that Unison? My line manager is refusing to let me into the office unless I take Ritalin. I agree. It’s an abuse of my human rights. What can I do?
John: There’d be an outcry!
Suzannah: Unless you’re a kid of course, when a doctor can give you a dodgy diagnosis and force you to take class B drugs, possibly for the rest of your life.
John: Mind you, some people like that!
Suzannah: My daughter doesn’t pay attention and plays up when she’s bored or angry.
Mark: I wonder if lot of kids diagnosed with ADHD are like that?
John: Hey, lets not look at that, just in case someone starts to wonder why the kids are so bored and angry at the world.
Renee, What a loser your bad news counsellor was and is. We see the same thing around here all the time with our church and community mental health program padding each others’ collection plates, if they can help it. I sympathize with your long slog. Obviously, the purpose of doctors here are to recruit folks into working on their whole reputation and caseload, rules and definitions of disorders not excepted. They want you to validate them emotionally, physically, financially, and then burn the bridges with your other supportive folks who aren’t total conformists to their closed chambers sales routines and lock-up ward malfeasance ploys. You finally get away and can be sure to find them right back in your face in their other snookery manifestations…just waiting to wear you down and test you some more.
Renee
I’m happy that you escaped and it’s great to see your story in black and white. You could have had your life stolen away from you.
Your account will help lots of other people.
Glad you survived, Renee. It is terrible how readily accessible, and socially acceptable, it is to take stimulants these days. I have two children just a bit younger than you, and I worry about them. They, too, have been forewarned, hope they heed my warnings.
I will agree it is amazing just how destructive the psych drugs and labels can be, especially when one is misdiagnosed, and thus how much such medical malpractice damages one’s life. I personally was gas lighted by a pastor and doctors who wanted to cover up medical evidence of the abuse of my child, and a “bad fix” on a broken bone.
It’s really a shame the religions, mainstream medical and mental health communities are “padding each others’ collection plates.” And shocking none of them learned from WWII that making up “mental illnesses,” then torturing and murdering millions based on such medical fictions, is unacceptable human behavior. Today’s DSM believers have killed more people with their drugs in the past several decades, than the Nazi psychiatrists killed Jews. Let’s hope today’s psychiatric holocaust ends soon.
Renee:
Your story will be used to reinforce and legitimize the current paradigm of mental health diagnosis and treatment, not weaken it. Psychiatrists reading your story will classify you as representing a small minority of manipulative, patients with addictive tendencies who must be weeded out to protect the interests of the majority of ‘authentic’ long suffering patients who are worthy of help.
Your story brings up interesting points about the intersection of the addiction industry and the psychiatric industry. 12-step programs are at a crossroads TODAY. What will addiction specialists do? Will they cozy up to psychiatrists as they have done in the past continuing their tired chant of “your addiction was a form of self medicating an undiagnosed mental health disorder (nothing to do with trauma) but don’t worry because we will take you off street drugs and put you on superior, doctor prescribed drugs”?
12-step and rehab centers are experiencing a surge of people who are became opioid dependent from their doctors, some of whom turned to street heroine when doctor shopping failed. Will the prescribing doctors be held accountable? Will the pain centers and the big Pharma marketing specialists be held accountable for the opioid epidemic? That remains to be seen. There are still some honest epidemiologists working for the government who are capable of connecting the dots. I hope they blow the whistle on this pain killer scandal.
There is also ample data suggesting that the excessive diagnosis of ADHD and the subsequent over prescribing of ADHD stimulants (which any high school chemistry student knows is simply clean meth) may be a gateway to crack and cocaine use. This may or may not crack open (no pun intended) a small chink in psychiatry’s seemingly impenetrable armor.
I urge the national leadership of the 12-step program to widen it’s criteria of addiction to include ALL psychiatric drugs if any person wishing to come off a psychiatric drug has difficulty doing so, then they should be welcome to attend 12 step programs, and be admitted into a rehab facility regardless if the pusher/supplier was wearing a white coat and had a medical degree. I urge the 12-step leadership to call for new research in this area.
Currently, many rehab center have an in-staff psychiatrist and addicts are getting new psychiatric labels and psychiatric drug prescriptions concurrent to their addiction treatment. This is a disturbing trend, as these labels and prescriptions are not usually given as short term solutions; the labels tend to stick, stigmatize addicts even further, have the potential to cover up trauma, promote learned helplessness and lack of accountability (in direct conflict with 12-step teachings). So I urge anyone who has benefited from a 12-step program or who is employed in the addiction industry to fight this trend.
My adult daughter is being forcibly medicated with several anti psychotics including Thorazine and Haldol (simulataneously). Her cognition is dwindling; once a very intelligent bi-lingual student who received a merit scholarship at a private prep school, she can now barely read and write when the meds are at their highest level in her bloodstream, and she sleeps sixteen hours a day. She has become ‘depersonalized’ and talks about herself in third person and has very little desire or ambition to pursue the many things that once gave her great pleasure such as dance, music, and literature. When she is non compliant and stops taking the medication cold turkey, she undergoes acute withdrawal and her ‘relapse’ is used as proof of her lack of insight caused by her disease and proof of her needing to be rehospitalized and reinstitutionalized and the entire cycle starts over again, leading to ever and ever higher doses of polypharmacy. Acute withdrawal and dopamine supersensitivity is considered to be non-existent simply because there are no funds to research it and no rehab centers to help people safely taper off anti-psychotics.
I think your story needs to be told and I admire your courage and your personal accountability.
Yes, people should have the right to take psychiatric medications for legitimate reasons and their stories are important too. But stories that bring psychiatry’s weaknesses and deliberate abuses to light are more important because people RARELY have difficulty obtaining psychiatric prescriptions. It is far more likely that they will have difficulty GETTING OFF psychiatric prescriptions. The stories of people who have been legitimately helped by psychiatry should not be used to cover up and de-legitamize the stories of those who want to get off psychiatric drugs but can’t because they do not have the resources to assist them in their communities.
Those of us with adult children in the psychiatric system who are at risk of continued harm need all the allies we can get to shift the current paradigm of mental health treatment from a drug and death dealing industry to a positive, empowering and life supporting, recovery oriented system. As you progress through your profession and see clients, please please don’t forget about the lost souls who have the titles of ‘severe persistent mental illness’ imposed upon them as a rational for forced drugging. Those people too, have rights and deserve to be heard.
madmom,
This is what drugs.com has to say about combining your daughter’s two antipsychotics:
“Major
“haloperidol chlorpromazine
“Applies to: Haldol (haloperidol), Thorazine (chlorpromazine)
MONITOR CLOSELY: Haloperidol can cause dose-related prolongation of the QT interval. Theoretically, coadministration with other agents that can prolong the QT interval may result in additive effects and increased risk of ventricular arrhythmias including torsade de pointes and sudden death. Haloperidol treatment alone has been associated with a number of reported cases of torsade de pointes and sudden death. The majority of cases involved intravenous administration or use of higher than recommended dosages. In general, the risk of an individual agent or a combination of agents causing ventricular arrhythmia in association with QT prolongation is largely unpredictable but may be increased by certain underlying risk factors such as congenital long QT syndrome, cardiac disease, and electrolyte disturbances (e.g., hypokalemia, hypomagnesemia). The extent of drug-induced QT prolongation is dependent on the particular drug(s) involved and dosage(s) of the drug(s). In addition, certain agents with anticholinergic properties (e.g., sedating antihistamines; antispasmodics; neuroleptics; phenothiazines; skeletal muscle relaxants; tricyclic antidepressants) may have additive parasympatholytic and central nervous system-depressant effects when used in combination with haloperidol. Excessive parasympatholytic effects may include paralytic ileus, hyperthermia, mydriasis, blurred vision, tachycardia, urinary retention, psychosis, and seizures.”
The antipsychotics should not be combined, because this does in fact, create the symptoms of “schizophrenia,” like psychosis.
And absolutely, I agree, drug withdrawal induced super sensitivity manic psychosis does exist. But one can heal, if they get off the drugs. Best wishes in helping your daughter.
I don’t know if you read my comments but I went to 12 step treatment and even worked at the center for a wile afterwards.
I also attended many AA meetings.
One thing people talk about in treatment centers is drugs.
I started asking the young clients if they were drugged in school for ADHD and a majority of them answer yes. I asked 100s of them.
Anyone can do this and get the same results, I asked enough young addicts to say that with confidence.
The ADHD pills get you strung out and jittery cause insomnia anxiety so the natural thing to do is to seek downers. Alcohol and pain medication or anxiety pills if you get those.
The ADHD pills get your moods and energy cycles all messed up so users seek other stuff trying to balance.
“They” know what they are doing to our youth, those people over at Shire pharmaceuticals are no different from the fictionional characters in that series “breaking bad” in the business of making and selling amphetamines.
And check it out,
With patent extension up for grabs, Shire agrees to test Vyvanse in preschoolers.
To hear Shire ($SHPG) tell it, there aren’t many adequate and well-controlled drug studies in preschool-aged children with ADHD. But never fear, the company says: It’s agreed to a written request by the FDA to investigate its ADHD drug Vyvanse in children aged 4 to 5, with a potential 6-month exclusivity boost for the drug on the line.
Read more http://www.fiercepharma.com/story/patent-extension-grabs-shire-agrees-test-vyvanse-preschoolers/2014-06-12
I urge the national leadership of the 12-step program to widen it’s criteria of addiction to include ALL psychiatric drugs if any person wishing to come off a psychiatric drug has difficulty doing so, then they should be welcome to attend 12 step programs, and be admitted into a rehab facility regardless if the pusher/supplier was wearing a white coat and had a medical degree.
There is no actual leadership but treatment centers would absolutely LOVE to.
Its not the treatment industry criteria its the DSM definition.
Also the question is how do you get health insurance industry to pay for this treatment ?
We need to pay attention to what these doctors are doing.
Wow, my story almost mimics yours. My doctor had me on 160 mg of normal release adderall a day for 15 years!! And I would often abuse that up to 240 mg a day. And I was only 130 lbs at the time! I ended up in a 12 steps program too and have been clean for over a year and a half. Only recently have I been able to get out of bed or volunteer or walk my dog with less of a struggle after having adderall as a crutch for so many years (or more like adderall controlled my legs, whole mind and body and really wasn’t just a crutch). Anyway, thanks for sharing your story and congrats on getting clean!! I want to go back to graduate school, but I am so scared I will fail out without adderall. The fact that you’re getting your degree free of medication is inspiring and giving me some confidence that maybe I could succeed in school again.
Your story is inspiring, but a lot of the tolerance issues, such as the anxiety and such, can easily be solved by taking memantine. Doctors can be idiots. The kind that just do their job and go home. You know, the cookie cutter docs.