<p>Should i be worried that i am going to die because of my taking adderall?</p>
<p>No!! Don't worry, it is safe to use if your doctor prescribed it for you. The FDA has approved it here in the States. However, in Canada it was taken off the market because someone with a heart problem took it and died. (Adderall increases heart rate.) Actually there is some dispute as to whether that's a legitimate reason to have taken it off the market, because most people taking Adderall do not have unusual or severe heart problems. I'm guessing you don't, so you are fine taking Adderall.</p>
<p>Edit: Canada did in fact put Adderall back on the market.</p>
<p>Years ago my son was taking Adderall. We had to take him off it it due to it making him do things that were so off the wall. He would hang outside his second story window (neighbor would come and get us), grab the wheel of the car as we were driving, would try and open the car door as we were driving, etc.. Since we took him off, we had no more behaviors like that. He is now on Concerta as well as Zyprexa and doing very well.</p>
<p>bad news bears</p>
<p>adderall can have bad side effects but that's no reason to take it off the market. you have to be taking very high and unhealthy doses of adderall (or have a predisposition) to have heart failure. bad side effects need to be monitered. it's good that B0bbers kid got taken off of adderall, that his doctor recognized that it was clearly not a good medicine for him. But for other people it's very helpful. </p>
<p>Also, it's important to note that ADHD isn't the only thing that Aderall is used for. It's also used for sleep disorders like narcolepsy. Most people don't know that.</p>
<p>I have been taking Adderall xr and havent had problems
the thing I like about the stimulant drugs is that they are in and out of your system- unlike tricyclics/SSRIs/SNRIs- however- depending on body chemistry, finding a workable dose can be problematic.
I never was able to take an effective dose of a tricyclic for instance because of the side effects.</p>
<p>Many things that are sold in the US for years, perhaps never would be approved if they were new today.
Think about cigarettes, wine ( some beer now is double the alcohol content of other beers- I found out after I drank it!), coffee, even aspirin, all have side effects and some things like cigarettes don't have any redeeming value.</p>
<p>Very good point about things like cigarettes. </p>
<p>It's of course a tragedy when anyone suffers massive side effects or even death from a drug. But I think it is important to put it in perspective. Especially with life saving drugs -- perhaps one person died, but almost always an enormous amount more were saved. This is of course a very morbid and unpersonal view, and I don't know exactly how I feel about thinking about it like that, but it's intersting to consider. </p>
<p>The fact that adderall goes in and out of your system is not necessarily a good thing. It's also chemically addictive, which I think is the biggest reason it's so controversial. First, if you miss a dose, you can have short term problems that wouldn't occur with the same severity as a drug that stays in your system (e.g. people with narcolepsy that take it to stay awake simply won't be able to stay awake if they miss a dose. A person with depression that misses their dose of zoloft etc. won't really feel the effects because it's still in their system). Not staying in your system might lead you to think that you can stop it with greater ease than a drug that stays in your system. But that's not the case, because your body will go through withdrawl (granted this can also happen on SSRIs and Tricyclics). Also, and I think most importantly, is that the drug can lose it's efficacy. Just like someone taking any addictive drug, eventually, x dose will not be as effective as it used to be and you have to go up. Then you're fine for a while, and then you plateau and go up again. Perhaps this only happens on higher doses like for narcolepsy (narcoleptics take a considerable amount more than those with ADHD), or people with paticularly addictive metabolisms, but nonetheless, it happens. </p>
<p>That said, I'm an absolute ritalin-head, and I fully support the use of these drugs until something better is discovered / manufactured. Sure, it has a lot of problems, but it's a lot better than not treating the symptoms of whatever condition you have. And until there is a magic bullet that treats the cause instead of muting the symptoms, we should use the weapons we have.</p>
<p>Just get off adderall and narcotics all together as soon as possible. I felt a lot better once I stopped taking adderall. I think drugs can really help some people- they helped my sister control her behvaior problems. However, after my sister started acting better, they took her OFF THE DRUG. She didn't revert back to her old behavior. There are too many people who have to remain on drugs long after it has worn out it's usefulness. After a certain point the adderall was only making me depressed, not helping me concentrate, but they kept me on it. Not a good idea.</p>
<p>^^^</p>
<p>That's pretty naive. For most people, ADD doesn't just go away. There isn't a lifespan of the condition. </p>
<p>Furthermore, people take adderall for reasons other than ADD and will always take them. I take ritalin for narcolepsy, which aint going away anytime soon. And by anytime soon, i mean ever.</p>
<p>I never said add went away. I said my sister's behavior problems went away. My add never went away, but the mood swings, fast heartbeat, and all around unnatural nervousness went away when the adderall did.</p>
<p>I've learned to live with my condition without narcotics, and so have many people. If it's possible for someone to live without drugs they shouldn't be on any.</p>
<p>some people may have those side effects on adderall linzoy but she may also have been misdiagnosed in the first place- there are other conditions which present the same symptoms as ADD
She may do better with Strattera or another non stimulant medication the dose of Adderall may have been wrong- additionally if the liver is already stressed from environmental or other toxins , or if there is underlying heart or blood pressure problems it would be contraindicated.</p>
<p>I think some medications are given to people who aren't very healthy in the first place and the medication exacerbates those issues.</p>
<p>For instance my 13 year old lab has arthritis but after reading many, many articles about NSAIDs and deaths occuring that seemed to be linked to the treatment, I was very concerned, particulary as Labs had a higher occurrence of fatalities.
However, there are few treatments available just as with ADD and so I felt that to try it to see if it helped was worth the risk.
She has been on it for about 6 months without any apparent ill effects, her liver enzymes are good, and it is obvious it is helping her.</p>
<p>If amphetamine salts don't help you, or the side effects outweigh the benefits than don't take it, but I am glad that there is something that does help, because I have tried too many things over my entire lifetime which did not help enough to make a difference</p>
<p>Maybe it was confusing from the way I wrote it, but me and my sister have different problems.</p>
<p>I'm the one diagnosed with add who was put on adderall. My sister was agressive and she was put on a totally different drug. When she was put on the drug she stopped being agressive, and when she was taken off of the drug she started being less happy, but she was never agressive again. She's more or less normal now.</p>
<p>At first, adderall helped me a lot. I felt smarter. Then it started to make me depressed along with the other usual "side" effects, but I stayed on the drug long after it started hurting me. I wish I was taken off of it sooner.</p>
<p>I know that in many cases the benefits of drugs can outweigh the dangers, but I see a lot of people on drugs for stupid reasons. There was someone in my class who was put on ritalin because she hit another person with a basketball once in 7th grade. That kind of stuff happens all the time in sports, it doesn't make her a maniac. But when she was 18, she was still on ritalin. She had noticeable mood swings, like I used to have when I was on adderall. It's pretty sad.</p>
<p>i think it would be interesting to do a study, and see which is the exception and which is the rule. I'm inclined to say that overprescribing is the exception, but I don't have any real scientific evidence, only anecdotal stuff and my own experience, to back that up.</p>
<p>I just feel like, it would be a poverty to see suffering people go untreated because of a fear of overprerscribing, more so than people recieving a drug when they don't need it.</p>
<p>there are always going to be people who are on too many medications, who do things that are unwise, who take poor care of themselves physically and mentally.
But how much as a society do we want to interfere with others choices?
apparently not enough to ban cigarrettes
which costs Americans $167 BILLION * annually<a href="and%20thats%20just%20in%20consumption">/i</a>
<a href="http://www.fool.com/personal-finance/insurance/2007/08/15/what-smoking-cost-me.aspx%5B/url%5D">http://www.fool.com/personal-finance/insurance/2007/08/15/what-smoking-cost-me.aspx</a></p>
<p>Oh please. I'm talking about children, not adults. Children don't handle drugs very well, that's why they aren't allowed to smoke. And yet it's legal to put a child on speed against their will. Speed is illegal, and adderall is literally the same as speed. There are a lot of bad teachers in the world, and some people will say a kid has add just because they don't want to admit they're a boring teacher. I'm not one of those people, I really have add. But there have been a few teachers who claim I have an "attitude problem" just because I dislike their class. If I had an attitude problem I would dislike every class, not just some of them. And if a kid really had ADD they will have trouble paying attention to most things, they won't just be bad at math or something.</p>
<p>Sorry, I thought this was a college related board- and the students were adults</p>
<p>No. I'm 19 years old, and when I was on adderall I was 15. I only became a legal adult a year ago. And everyone else that I talked about in my posts was a child. Most of the people diagnosed with ADD and put on drugs are children.</p>
<p>Did you know that cigarettes help people with ADD concentrate? It's illegal for children to smoke cigarettes because it will kill them later on in life. Adderall is a newer drug so nobody knows how many people it's going to kill late in life yet.</p>
<p>Adderall is not the same as speed...it's just not, you're overreacting. </p>
<p>You're right though, most people who take adderall are children. But I would argue that few are done so against their will, most parents would take the child off if they didn't want to be on it anymore.</p>
<p>Yes, it is. Adderall is made of amphetamines. That's the same thing speed is made out of, and it has the same effect. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphetamines%5B/url%5D">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphetamines</a></p>
<p>I would agree that schools in general are not set up for active alert learners, and that it can be very difficult to accurately diagnose a young child, if the conditions are exacerbated by the environment.</p>
<p>But for example- I knew from shortly after birth that something was going on with my daughter. She refused to wear clothes many times- I couldn't put cloth diapers on her at all. ( I couldn't hold her to nurse her....) she would wear the same clothes every day ( she slept in the nude after potty training), but if she noticed that I had washed her clothes while she slept, she would run outside and rub soil on them. ( she has sensory integration disorder, something not uncommon with those with ADD)
I luckily found a school of about 20- with classes of 8 that she attended from K-2 grade. But even for that- getting ready for school every day was an ordeal. It took hours.
Many rituals involved and if one of them was hurried, we had to stop and start all over again.
I was fortunate enough to find a dr who prescribed a medication for her when she was almost 6. THis cut the ritual down from hours, to 20 minutes.</p>
<p>ADD doesn't always "go away" once a child is an adult.
If "speed" ( as prescribed) enables an adult to function in society, then why would we want to ban it?</p>
<p>If you have ADD it isn't addictive- if it was- sufferers wouldn't forget to take their medication or get a prescription refill.</p>
<p>Look guys, I never said ADD goes away for anybody. I only said that many people can learn to function as normal human beings with drugs, but they often don't try.</p>
<p>Also, I never said that speed should be banned. Please don't put words in my mouth. I just think it's dangerous to drug every child who acts unusual.</p>
<p>Adderall isn't addictive to people who have add? That's not true. Please find a study that shows that. Just because some people aren't addicted, it doesn't mean everyone with add is impervious. I think anyone can potentially get addicted to narcotics.</p>