My son is struggling with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, he's only 14. Me and his father saw changes in his behaviour, such as impulsivity and sensitivity to anything we told him, inattentiveness and inability to focus on primary things such as taking the garbage out. We first thought it is teenage behaviour problem, then the school principle called in, saying he is totally out of the class requirements. We then hit to a phychologist, few test were taken, then they have come with this terrible diagnosis. The doctor says he should be ok fast, he's young and it is not the worst stage. He has been taking 15 mg of adderall rx for 4 months. Then we stopped taking it, just to see if my son's doing better, and it was a nightmare, he was sleepy all the time, totally absent from the world. I'm so afraid for my son, is he becoming a drug addict? Will he be able to get off the medications? We had to get back taking it so that he's back to normal. It is the end of the 5th month taking it, he is fine, much better. I'm just afraid he'll gonna have to take it forever. What shall we do next? Can anyone advise?
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Withdrawal reactions
- Thread starter weewoo
- Start date
Welocome to our forum weewoo! The good news is that your doctor is trying to get your child off the medicine. Your doctor wants to see if the boy can handle without the drug, to see if the organism has already built the "immunity" necessary to fight the illness by itself. Also, at some point in his life, yout bo will have to stop taking adderall RX if he doesn't want to become addictive to it and be dependent on it his entire life. I'm sorry for the tough words, but you'll have to go through it to get the needed results. The good part is that teens have a better reaction to medications, they organisms fight better and get better shorter in time comparing to adults. ADHD is a permanent condition, your son has to learn how to control the smptoms without medications. It is possible to do, there are therapists, also called coaches, that can help him build a system to assist him in having a normal life. Ask your doctor about it.
Getting back to the wthdrawal reactions, they may differ: fatigue, headaches, irritability, depressiona and unusula behaviour. That's a normal thing, don't get scared! Cope with it. Normally, the doctor would reduce the dosage. You're saying he's taking 15 mg, now, that his not yet ready to get off the medicine, the doctor might want to give him 10 mg only. By slowly reducing the medicine dosage, the withdrawal reactions are milder.
Talk to you doctor about it, that's gonna be best decision at the moment. Take it step by step, be patient.
Hope that helped, be healthy!
Bedeencion1980
New member
Such a sad story. I really sympathize you with what you have to go thru, I know it's hard, my son is also diagnosed with ADHD. The doctor gave him Ritalin, it worked fine some time ago, now it doesn't. I think that's because he has gotten older. His behavior is changed and I'm worried, he's too violent for his age. I also don't want him to be on drugs all his life, but I cannot see what he's doing and how he acts. Kaya, unfortunately, I don't think that your idea will work out fine for us, about reducing the dosage, but thank you both for your posts. I feel like there is some support and it does make me feel better.
Hey people, I'm so happy that I found this site because it is always better to hear from someone else who also has the same problems that you have. It is something really hard to deal with especially when your friends just don't understand what you are talking about, when all your friends have very well behaved children. I just feel alone in this situation. My son is 6 years old and we've done a test for bipolar and thanks God that he does not have it, however he is diagnosed with other disorders, such as adhd and odd, oppositional defiant disorder. These two disorders make it really hard to deal with him and his behavior. Now my son is truly uncontrollable, he doesn't want to learn, doesn't want to retain anything he was told. He is tormenting other kids really bad and that's why he has no friends now. I'm really sorry for him so we've tried some medications even though we knew the risk we have to take. However it was our last hope and it the end it improved his school life, starting to learn and it's not sent out almost every day from the classes. I hope that I'm going to get thru it. Weewoo, in my opinion you should keep going with the medications if they are the only thing that helps him. I'm not encouraging any kind of medication for behavioral needs but sometimes it seems that it's the only way to give a better life for him. Slowly slowly you can reduce the dosage and in time he will become mature and maybe in that we he won't need medications. But hey, as a mother I think that you will do everything just to make your son feel better, if the medication is all he needs then I think you don't have another option.
Help someone please! Our son is having big issues and I feel so bad as a parent when I'm so useless.. He is 6 years old and few months ago he was diagnosed with ADHD and the doctor recommended that we should put him on a medication called concerta and that we should give him unusual huge dose for his age. I don't like this, as any other parent I thought about this very much but in the end we understood that we don't have any other option. So, at first when we gave him this med. he was doing fine, but in time we notice that his system is kind of refusing accepting this med, or I don't know but now it is starting all over again. He is very defiant and there are days when everything seems fine but the next day seems that he was never fine. We're having hard time because of this... School doesn't want to keep him anymore because all the professors and even the director of the school all they are tired of his behavior. He doesn't understand, he is only 6 years old and this seems to make it all even worse. I really think that if he would be older we won't have so much troubles with him, or am I wrong? Also doctors don’t seems to care about our problem. I am scared that our child is becoming lost in the doctors and we are useless.. This kills me. Please someone give me any ideas! The original poster, did you found out something that can help your child? Something really helpful? I would be really grateful!
Hello there. I know your pain and I do sympathize you. I know a lot of people that are against medication for their children and I know very well that on this forum are also a lot of them. so was I until I’ve seen the real effects of a medication given to a child with ODD and ADHD – my son. There was a time when I was getting at least 5 calls from my son while he was at school and he always told me that he’s refusing in doing a lot of things. He doesn’t want to study, he doesn’t want to see that teacher, he doesn’t want a lot of thing. He said that he would leave the classroom because he is not interested in his study so he won’t do anything. It wasn’t matter what we were trying to do, to say and so on. He constantly refused to do things that kids in his age usually do. when I understood that we’re in a really bad situation and when I understood that we need some professional help we started to seek for a therapist. When we finally saw him he told us what we can do without meds and what are the chances of an improvement with medications. We’ve tried the method without any medications but trust me, it is very hard with a child with ODD and ADHD. Besides the fact that he doesn’t want to do anything, the ODD is only making things even worse than before. After we tried for several months (including homeschooling and other methods) without any success we could not resist any more so we have done what everybody was telling us not to do: we got him on medications.
This is very hard, an extremely hard decision because everyone is suggesting you not to give him any medications and we know that it would be better fixing this problem without any of them, but when the situation got so bad we didn’t had another choice. We took our decision a little more than a year ago. Since then we have tried two different medications and it seems that we finally found one of them that is helping my son. With time we understood that some of the ODD is triggered by his impulsivity but with the help of his medications we learned how to keep it under control. At least we are thinking so because we have some proof. His grades dramatically improved: he is having only A and B and his scores are excellent. His behavior is changed to better, he wants to study and he seem to be calmer. I would ask everybody out there not to look down on me because I’m saying this but if you don’t try anything then the only person who is suffering from this is your own child. I believe that we should try everything what we can and see if it works because if we do nothing then he’s won’t get any better. I wish you good luck and I hope that no child would ever suffer from ODD or ADHD.