Does size matter?

[gavinrad]

maybe ill try adderall. I think i'm just desperate for an easy fix to my problems.

[Designz]

I think some people have genetic disposition for imbalances in neurotransmitters, so they get depressed more easily. The pills help with this. It's not easy to change your lifestyle when you're just constantly feeling down

[James]

Originally Posted by gavinrad

maybe ill try adderall. I think i'm just desperate for an easy fix to my problems.

Yeah take some of that, some Ritalin and shit, and hit up a strip club with a carton of cigs. That's at least 5 hours or solid, wholesome entertainment I tell you what. Not sure about drinking on it, but you shouldn't need/want to.

[Sithro]

The meds I'm on now used to make me see shit sometimes, but it hasn't lately.

Once I saw my dog's ball floating in the air. Also saw black shapes floating around, and a black and yellow spider with like 30 legs on my wall. Lol

[Sithro]

maybe ill try adderall. I think i'm just desperate for an easy fix to my problems.

These medications don't make your problems go away. It just makes them a bit easier to deal with.

[Mario Speedwagon]

Originally Posted by Sithro

The meds I'm on now used to make me see shit sometimes, but it hasn't lately.

See any of these?

[guanna]

I have adult ADHD. I am a 29 year old husband and father of three. I am on disability for a heart problem that has been fixed three surgeries later. I’m just waiting the allotted amount of time after my last operation to go by with no heart issues so I may be released from disability. Social Security Disability pays me a total of $550.00 per month. My wife works a full time job, she really holds it down.

Here was a typical day for me. I would wake up to my oldest daughter shaking me at about 7:00 AM on a week day, I would then tell her to get her brother and sister, ages 7 and 5 respectively, ready for school and to feed them. My oldest daughter is only 9 years old. I would then nod back off to sleep and have them wake me to show me what they were wearing before school. Next I would yell from my bed on the couch (wife works graveyards so I generally would just sleep on the couch watching TV) for them to have a good day at school and I would send them out to go wait for the bus.
I would then wait for my wife to get home from work and have her cook me breakfast. I would then sit at the computer and play WoW or EQ2 nonstop until probably 3:00 PM or so, I would get up and eat probably 3 or 4 cup of noodles one after another. I weighed 317 pounds at this time. Then I’d tell the wife what to make for dinner. Back to my game of choice, 4:00 was raid start time; it was also the time the kids got off the bus. My favorite phrase was, “Shut the fuck up, I’m raiding.” In response to any of my children saying anything at all to me, I would say, “Damn it, what the fuck, can’t you see I’m busy?” I’m not even joking. Bedtime for the kids would come and go and I didn’t even realize they were in bed asleep already. I would go eat more cup o noodles, then jerk off to internet porn and log back in. I’d get to sleep around 3:00 or 4:00 AM.

I was a completely worthless human being. Eventually my wife convinced me to see a head doctor. She had been asking me for some time now, finally I consented. I spoke with a doctor one time for about two hours; I was completely honest for the first time in my life I believe that day. I was diagnosed with Adult ADHD and prescribed Methylphenidate. From what I understand, that is the same drug as Ritalin, but it is for adults. I wasted another month of my life with that medication. It literally locked up my brain. I called the doctor to explain this and she told me to wait it out for a month and see what would happen as I adapted to the medication. One month later there were no changes, so I decided to change doctors.

I went in to see y new doctor and again, was completely honest. He gave me the same diagnosis but added something called Dysthymic Disorder. Dysthymic Disorder is characterized by chronic depression, but with less severity than a major depression. The essential symptom for Dysthymic disorder is an almost daily depressed mood for at least two years, but without the necessary criteria for a major depression. Low energy, sleep or appetite disturbances and low self-esteem are usually part of the clinical picture as well. The new doctor prescribed me Adderall.

The dosage was one Adderall XR 10mg (the XR is a time release) and one 10mg Adderall instant release in the morning followed by one 10mg Adderall instant release tablet in the afternoon. Starting day one, I realized I was much more soft-spoken. I immediately realized it was getting hot and our cooler was broken, so off I went to the hardware store and fixed the cooler. As days turned into weeks, I cleaned house and played my online games less and less. I began taking showers daily instead of every third day or so. It is Summer time, so I haven’t had to worry about getting the kids ready for school myself yet, but my yelling at them had become almost nonexistent. By the end of the month I had lost twenty pounds and enrolled myself into college.

Two weeks later, we changed my dosage to a single 20mg Adderall XR in the morning and that’s it. Here I am now I weigh 294 and steadily dropping every day. I eat three meals a day, but I don’t gorge on food as I used to Also, because I’m not really hungry, I find it easy to eat healthy foods as opposed to Double Quarter Pounder Super Sized Value meals from McDonalds twice daily. Today I took my youngest to the doctor’s office for a visit. I had never done that before, that was a job for my wife I thought. I asked the doctor about my weight loss while I was there. He said because of how heavy I was and my eating habits, I can afford to lose the weight rapidly and he was pleased with my progress thus far.

With the wife and kids, it’s night and day. I no longer play any online games at all. I spend so much time with them and am currently trying to teach my oldest how to play guitar. I don’t know how to myself, but she doesn’t know that. I do play two player games with my son, and have even been spotted playing Barbies with my youngest daughter. I think about my wife before I think about myself…..usually. I also have received perfect scores for the two classes I am taking thus far. I’m sure they are basic classes, but I feel awesome about those scores.

In the end, if this is to be my new life and it is completely due to Adderall, I don’t care if I have health problems down the road. I would rather wake up and live for my family and for myself everyday and have a shorter life than to live a long life of worthlessness. Also, I have seen Amphetamines compared directly to Methamphetamines. Although they are similar in many ways, they are also vastly different. I’m willing to take my chances that pharmaceutical grade amphetamines will harm me less in the long run than methamphetamines made in some biker’s bathroom with acetone and kerosene. Are amphetamines safe? Of course they aren’t. I do not feel, however, that they need to be lumped in with methamphetamines.

Sorry for being so long winded, but since this is where this thread is now and this directly pertains to a very remarkable change in my life, I decided to share. Keep in mind, please, that I do not take the Adderall recreationally at all. I take only as directed.

[Wurstsalat]

I am happy for you guanna that your life changed in such a good way.

What i just cant understand is why people who have absolutely no problems take stuff like that only to be better in college etc.

[Throag]

Originally Posted by Wurstsalat

I am happy for you guanna that your life changed in such a good way.

What i just cant understand is why people who have absolutely no problems take stuff like that only to be better in college etc.

Yes, that's what I don't understand either. Saying the easiest way to go through school is taking some drugs is beyond me. Some people have troubles with school, but I don't think the problem is them. The problem is that "normal" school is not adapted to those people.

Another thing that bugs me is that it seems that US is the only place where doctors prescribe those pills like they were candys (correct me if I'm wrong, I really don't know if there is any other country in the world with that kind of habit). Like Sean said, it's great that those work wonders with some people but I can't help but think that they are given far too lightly. I live in France and afaik, nobody is being given pills for ADD and I don't see depressed suicidal attention deficient people everywhere.

[Sean]

Originally Posted by Throag

I live in France and afaik, nobody is being given pills for ADD and I don't see depressed suicidal attention deficient people everywhere.

Perhaps the French are happier with their current state than we are in the states.

Our culture is stagnating and degrading into a gigantic pile of shit. The quality of life in the US is rapidly declining compared to the other Western countries. The Nordic countries and Ireland in particular make us look like a joke.

Our political system is being destroyed from the inside out by our fucked up two-party system that has twisted things so much that we can't get out from under them.

And then we have a bunch of fucking degenerates like Nancy Grace.

Is it any wonder that the US is hopped up on happy pills?

[Zarcath]

Originally Posted by Lyenae

you people are fucking retards for taking brain pills.

honestly you prob just need to change your diet, your life(style), or get slapped around if you think you have mental issues.

WALL OF TEXT IF YOU HAVE ADHD YOU MAY NOT GET THROUGH IT ALL LOL

I hope you mean people that are drug abusing the pills, because ADD and ADHD are deficiencies with their neuro emitters. It's not something you can fix by eating certain foods or doing exercise. You MIGHT be thinking of Hyperactivity, which can be effected by food. AD/HD is not the same as Hyperactivity.

When I was a kid, probably 5-6 or so, my parents took me in to get tested for ADD and the doctor said I wasn't and said I wasn't even hyperactive, it was just "boys will be boys". Except this was like in 1988 and they used a computerized test MASKED AS A GAME to test me. So of course I aced it. My mom found his diagnoses and gave it to me a few years back and if that cockfag were still alive i'd have sued him for his incompetance.

So fast forward to when I'm 16 and flunking out of highschool. Constantly being told I should get my act together and compared to all the other kids that are doing well (bear in mind this is a lifetime of beratement). Mixed in with High School drama caused my self-esteem to plummit. Got into a huge mind fight with my Dean, who kept accusing me of doing shit on purpose. I had taken an online test to check for Bipolar disorder and I scored pretty high, so I was like "fuck you dean, I'm going to get a disability waver and you can shove it up your ass".

So I went and got retested and they were like "NOPE, You're not bipolar!" and I was like "what the fuck?" and then they say "Hey you know you have a lot of classic signs for ADHD" but my parents were all "yeah but we already tested him as a kid". So I got retested and turns out, yeah, I have a bad case of ADHD (and something else that came out to mild chronic depression). I think they did perscribe me ritalin but I only took it for a few weeks before I had some side effects.

I didn't see a head doctor until my early 20s to get checked for a learning disability too (where I came out retarded in math but great at english, so individually my math score i'm learning challenged but my english balances it out, so the state says i'm fine). They gave me something else that was newishly being tested, i'm not sure what it was but i'm pretty sure it wasn't aderell. Took that again for a few weeks but didn't like how I was turning out, made me more depressed so I stopped taking them.

So yeah, living for 16 years with ADHD and being told "why don't you act normal" and constantly thinking to myself "wtf is wrong with me" really fucked me up. I've only started getting my shit together the last few years but I'm pushing 25 now and getting shit together after so long is an uphill battle.

[Everlast]

Oh man Zarcath and Guanna, I know exactly how you feel. My brother is extremely smart and every report card day was like watching the Harlem Globetrotters play "that other team". Every time report cards would come around, I was at such a loss of words as to why I couldn't get things that my brother and my peers easily grasped.

Eventually my little brother went to school. He has a much more severe case of ADHD, and before he was given medications he got all F's and was in the stupid people classes (this was in like third grade..so you can't chalk it up to not trying). My aunt who is a teacher suggested we get my little brother tested for ADHD, and sure enough they decided to get him on some medications. He had instant results, he went from all F's in his stupid classes to all A's. Then he moved up to the next grade and the "smarter" classes and again got all A's. Since he was treated for his ADHD he has never achieved less than honor rolls (all A's and B's for those unfamiliar of this term.) He is not about to start 8th grade.

After my brothers great success they took me to get tested for ADD (I am not hyperactive, I am a very calm and mellow person 24/7). I failed the test like a Ford engine fails a car. Ironically enough, that was the last test I failed.

It makes me feel pretty good to have people tell stories similar to mine, it gives me confidence in the existences of this disorder...regardless of Tom Cruises' thoughts. I no longer act rashly and ask myself 'WTF mate?" later on, and it feels great.

[Everlast]

btw, most derailed thread ever.

[mittens]

Size matters.

[Zarcath]

Originally Posted by Everlast

After my brothers great success they took me to get tested for ADD (I am not hyperactive, I am a very calm and mellow person 24/7). I failed the test like a Ford engine fails a car. Ironically enough, that was the last test I failed.

When did you get tested and what types of tests did they perform on you?

Check some of the ADHD websites and see how many symptoms you have, if you come out with more then half you might want to consider getting retested. I pretty much have 4/5ths of classic ADHD symptons. If you had your orignal test done before...i'd say if it was before 2000 you might want to consider retesting. ADHD is relatively new field, maybe the last 15 years they've been making large gains in the methodology. Though I think in the last 5 years, instead of seeking better answers they've just opted to throw more advanced medications (hurray modern medicine). I haven't really kept up with ADHD studies in the last couple of years, most of my knowledge comes from a book on ADHD by Thom Hartmann, published back in 1993. Talks all about it and this was groundbreaking back then.