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ADHD drug treatment and risk of negative events and outcomes

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351–360 of 537 posts

Re: ADHD drug treatment and risk of negative events and outcomes

#351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The DEA put Adderall on its list of the most abused medication, and limits production of it and investigates doctors who prescribe too much of it. This is a response to the problems with the abuse of legal opiates a decade ago- the DEA now takes potential abuse of legal drugs much more seriously and adderall (an amphetamine- it's a cousin of meth) is at a high risk of abuse. Your psychiatrist is trying to deal with t…

I wouldn’t be surprised if this study were funded by some pharmaceutical lobbying shell organization. I was on various forms of prescribed amphetimines for years and developed paranoia. It took me a few years to somewhat recover. My family has PTSD about that period of my life. I can’t think or communicate well anymore. Fuck that industry.

"I experienced negative side effects so the science must be bought and paid for"

Re: ADHD drug treatment and risk of negative events and outcomes

#352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn’t be surprised if this study were funded by some pharmaceutical lobbying shell organization. I was on various forms of prescribed amphetimines for years and developed paranoia. It took me a few years to somewhat recover. My family has PTSD about that period of my life. I can’t think or communicate well anymore. Fuck that industry.

It doesn't matter who funds a study if it's properly designed. You see this kind of dismissal on /r/science all the time and it's always just evidence that they're not qualified to actually read the study.

> You see this kind of dismissal on /r/science all the time and it's always just evidence that they're not qualified to actually read the study. reply

In my experience it's more because the conclusions butt up against the persons personal beliefs or experiences (like OP's)

Re: ADHD drug treatment and risk of negative events and outcomes

#353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i dont think thats true. I have ADHD and get amphetamine as medication. I gave it some friends and it had similiar effect as with me. they where hyper focused and aware. I think its what amphetamine does with every human. Regular humans have more focus and adhd people have suddenly focus but netherless same.

Focus is the same. It's the euphoric high and increased hyperactivity in neurotypicals which is the divergent response.

the euphoric high also happens in those with ADHD but only when they first start taking it. I would assume if you took it recreationally and not consistently you would have the same effect

Re: ADHD drug treatment and risk of negative events and outcomes

#354

My $0.02 as a response to several comments I read in this thread: I was diagnosed with ADHD in my 40s and got Concerta. My belief is that ADHD is not a disease, nor a disability (even though it acts like one very frequently) and in fact there is evidence that ADHD is an important part of our evolution as a species. The problem(s) mostly relies with the modern way of life and what is expected from the society at large…

Isn't one of the criteria for something to be a disability that it makes it harder to function in the world you are in? So it has to do with the mismatch between yourself (including the accommodations in place for you), the world and whatever is considered a reasonable life for a person in that world.

I think can be a disability but not a disease, I think is the idea.

Re: ADHD drug treatment and risk of negative events and outcomes

#355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the DEA now takes potential abuse of legal drugs much more seriously and adderall (an amphetamine- it's a cousin of meth) is at a high risk of abuse. I know that I process Adderall differently having ADHD, but I still struggle to see how it's used recreationally. I took it somewhat consistently for over a year for ADHD treatment until I missed an appointment and couldn't get around to scheduling another before my p…

My doc says the best diagnostic for whether you have ADHD is to prescribe Adderall and see what happens. Those with ADHD react very, VERY differently to the drug than the rest of the population.

[deleted]

Re: ADHD drug treatment and risk of negative events and outcomes

#356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I still struggle to see how it's used recreationally. - Adderall keeps you awake. Some people use that to be awake for very long periods of time. Long drives, marathons, etc. - Adderall can make boring tasks seem engaging, so it can be used, for example, to help a student study. Combining that with no need to sleep that night, can become a bit of an unfair advantage. - Adderall can cause a high, even though I've on…

> Adderall keeps you awake For many (not all) ADHD'ers, amphetamine or caffeine makes them sleepy. > Adderall can make boring tasks seem engaging This is true > so it can be used, for example, to help a student study ... can become a bit of an unfair advantage Unfair? This isn't sports. Nobody is being cheated by a study-enhancing drug. > Adderall can cause a high, even though I've only ever experienced that with pur…

> Adderall can cause a high

> Interesting. FYI ADHD people feel none of that.

Please don't speak for a whole group of people when you don't know what you're talking about. Euphoria is very common when people with ADHD first start taking amphetamines, it just goes away after a week or so.

Re: ADHD drug treatment and risk of negative events and outcomes

#357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agree. People with ADHD are simply incompatible with many facets of mormal life. Take school for example. If someone doesn't fit into the mass education model, they say they have attention deficit. That same person might then go home and hyperfocus on computer programming for 12 hours straight like a machine. It makes no sense. The mass education model where hundreds of people sit on a chair listening to l…

ADHD isn't a personality quirk and also, it is fundamentally a disorder of regulation not attention. The education system (for all its drawbacks and inflexibility) works for most because they're able to regulate the urge to get up and climb random shit when they can't figure out how to start writing the answer to Q1 on the worksheet.. I also think its cope to take a disorder where a specific part of the brain tasked…

I guess its tempting to take like MRI/ECG style studies and draw fundamental conclusions from them about the distinction between "personality" and "disorder" but I think its good to bear in mind at least three things:

1. a lot of these studies suck. Brain imaging is very hard, the interpretation and analysis of the results involves lots of degrees of freedom, the study sizes are typically not as big as you'd like, and most of the results are only really visible in aggregate. I do not give much credence to them, as a scientist. One way to think of this is that if someone separates two groups of people into "ADHD" and "NOT ADHD" and you average their MRIs you might detect a difference in the two groups. But one person's MRI would be almost useless to assign them to one of the two groups. You could certainly try it, but it would not be very effective.

2. Literally every difference in behavior between two people or between a person and themselves at a different time is necessarily reflected in a difference in brain behavior, at least if you buy the materialist paradigm that brain -> mind or at least brain == mind. Thus, you would expect differences in personality to show up in MRI scans as well as differences which rise to the level of "disorder."

3. The brain isn't made up of "specific parts with specific functions." While its certainly true that we can roughly map different areas to different functions, its really not separable in any way that (for example) a human designed machine might be. We cannot remove and replace your "attention center" and it doesn't really mean anything to talk about it without all the rest of your brain. The part/whole relation is bullshit in all contexts (in my opinion as a mereological nihilist) but especially in neuroscience.

I guess its sort of a useful rhetorical frame to point to physical differences between brains as some kind of determination of the distinction between "mere" personality differences and "disorders" but I just don't think it makes sense in a fundamental way.

I'm a person with ADHD and Autism diagnoses and I think they are handy things to use from time to time, I think of them as entirely relational descriptions pertaining to my position with respect to the world, not fundamental ontological categories. On the other hand, I think of essentially everything as relational and I don't really believe in fundamental ontological categories so maybe I'm the fucked up one.

Re: ADHD drug treatment and risk of negative events and outcomes

#358

My $0.02 as a response to several comments I read in this thread: I was diagnosed with ADHD in my 40s and got Concerta. My belief is that ADHD is not a disease, nor a disability (even though it acts like one very frequently) and in fact there is evidence that ADHD is an important part of our evolution as a species. The problem(s) mostly relies with the modern way of life and what is expected from the society at large…

ADHD is obviously a spectrum, (possibly on top of a binary), and more and more cases on the light end are getting diagnosed, which is, I have no reason to doubt, very helpful. I don’t know if the light end is a disability or a disease.

The heavy end of the spectrum, the lying on the floor suffering crippling bladder pain but unable to muster the willpower to walk to the bathroom and piss even though that would immediately fix the problem end of the spectrum, is a disease and a disability. I cannot picture an ancestral environment where this is adaptive.

Re: ADHD drug treatment and risk of negative events and outcomes

#359

It's quite sad that ADHD is as stigmatized as it is: even though it is a very well-characterized condition in psychiatric literature, the most common 'pop-science' take one hears about it is that ADHD is completely overdiagnosed and may not even exist as a condition. Also, I know multiple people, even though well-managed ADHD would not negatively affect their careers, are barred from certain professions (like high-se…

I suppose well-managed drug abuse would not negatively affect their careers either, but I think it's a good thing you can't become a pilot or similar with certain conditions.

Re: ADHD drug treatment and risk of negative events and outcomes

#360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah time blindness is my arch nemesis… but it has led to some pretty serious grit and persistence for difficult things under pressure. You need me to start on an arduous, long, difficult task right this second? No problem. You need me to do something on February 23rd 2027 at 4:30am in Anchorage Alaska? Should be fine as long as I’m still using the same calendaring system then. You need me to chip away at a backgroun…

Fck, you just described me.

Yeah I mean you can’t get much more classic ADHD than that.
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