In the book Driven To Distraction by Edward M. Hallowell, John J. Ratey Amantadine is mentioned as a promising but overlooked medication for ADD/ADHD treatment.

Anyone have any experiences they care to share about this medication??

thanks george

I've been on Amantadine since last spring but haven't noticed any benefits at all. (My psychiatris had prescribed it for what she termed "Executive-Dysfunction Disorder" after diagnosing me with both Tourette's Syndrome and ADD). I mentioned this to my psychiatrist who then prescribed a combination of Amantadine and Clonazapam (the latter for my anxiety). I had to cut back the dose (1mg per day) of the Clonazapam because the drowsiness it was causing was becoming unbearable. When I mentioned that Amantadine didn't seem to have any effect on me, she insisted I stay on it anyway, since I will be possibly starting a new job next week and she wants to see if my "Executive-Dysfunction" still shows itself in a challenging job environment as opposed to the less-stressful "everyday-at-home" type of environment. If it does, then we'll know for sure the Amantadine isn't working.

Another thing worth mentioning about Amantadine is that it has to build up in your system over a period of at least several months before you can tell if it's working or not.

Yeah, I read the bit in Hallowell's latest Distraction book too. I'm already taking Dexedrine, but it would be great to find something even better, or that would help the dex. so I sent my p-doc a copy of the passage in the book.

Now for those of you who never heard of the stuff, (me neither), it's a peculiar animal. It's prescibed as an anti-flu vaccine and supposedly will help weaken the punch of an existing case of flu. Oh, and it's brand name in the US is Symmetrel. link removed by moderator, please read forum guidelines.Currently it's used mainly to help Parkinson's patients stop shaking, and MS victims suffering from fatigue. It is a dopamine agonist that has been tried on ADD patients, but no longer because it proved to be a flop.

But Dr. H. says a couple of doctors at Harvard have been quietly re-testing it,in much lower doses, on ADD kids, and the results have been fantastic, according to the book. So why haven't they told the world about it. Well, it seems that these doctors are so busy transforming the lives of literally hundreds of kids with this treatment that they haven't gotten around to publishing the results.

Hmmmmm. But dr. H thinks this may well turn out to be the magic bullet for treating ADDS. So I've been taking half a teaspoon a day of the syrup for a week now. That's 25mg a day. The capsules are 100 or 200mg strenghth, I forget. Hence, the syrup. These Harvard docs start at 25 daily and increase it 25mg more each week until they get a response.

After one week, I feel fine, and will increase to a full teaspoon starting tonight. No side effects. Nothing definite to report. I'm skeptical, but as I told my doc, what's the harm? ( I never did get a flu shot.)

The stuff's not cheap, even though I got the generic. Most pharmacies don't have it on the shelf, just the capsules. So we shall see. I'll keep you posted. Content edited by moderator please see forum guidelines regarding etiquette in the Forums.

We'll see what happens next week. Stay tuned.

K.

What Hallowell and Ratey say about amantadine in their new (2005) book Delivered from Distraction (an update of Driven to Distraction) is incredibly tantalizing; I just wish they said more. They actually go so far to say that "[a]mantadine may be the best of all medications for ADD." (P. 18 in the book's FAQ-ish first chapter, "The Skinny on ADD.")

"Q: What alternative medications are there to stimulants?

"A: Amantadine may be the best of all medications for ADD [emphasis mine], but it is not widely used because when it was first tried the doses were too high and patients reported side effects. A doctor on the faculty of Harvard Medical School, William Singer, has pioneered its use at lower doses with excellent results. Not a controlled substance, not a stimulant, and virtually devoid of side effects, amantadine deserves much wider use."

Then, in their chapter on choosing a medication, they devote another couple of pages to amantadine (pp. 251-253) that make it sound like just the bee's knees. (With the caveat that they're basing what they say on the clinical results achieved in 400 or so kids by one M.D., William Singer; and that no one's yet done the large-scale, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled studies that ought to be done.) Hallowell does write that Singer "has an outstanding reputation in the Boston area" and that he, Hallowell, "completely trust[s] [Singer']s anecdotal report."

So, I personally am slavering to know more. I think I'm going to put a call/e-mail in to Hallowell or Singer tomorrow and see if I can get some more info.

Meanwhile, Delivered from Distraction is definitely worth buying, imho, but if you want to read just the section on amantadine for free, you can go to Amazon and look the book up there. Since its listing has that new "Search Inside This Book" feature, you can, well, search inside the book. Use the keyword "amantadine," and the search results will include the pages about it that I've quoted.

Verrry interesting.

I read the information you posted about this drug and the thing that does not make sense to me is why the drug companies don't go after this knowing how profitable this would be for them? And the doctors don't have time? This doesn't make sense either. My h is a doctor and they MAKE time for something like this. That part just doesn't ring true.

I hope its true though. Just putting my thoughts out there.