Hello,

just a few questions.

besides orange juice, what else will weaken your adderall dose? Every kind of citrus drink? Does this include anything w/ citric acid, which is in many of the clear fruit spritzers I like to drink. Is it all/every kind of acids? Is it okay to eat fruit? How soon after you have eaten or drank one of these things should you wait to take your meds? Is there a difference in the way these substances act w/ IR vs. XR?

Wasn't paying attention the other day and bought a large box of clementine tangerines and a half gal of oj. They look SO good! meanwhile, I'm afraid to drink anything except water and milk. Don't want to waste my meds- they are expensive and a pain in the a## to get refills.

I know we arn't medical experts here but I figured someone may know about this through personal experience or maybe your doc. gave you a list of things not to eat/drink- mine doesn't know much about this... etc.


Thanks so much!! Joh

I learned at this years ADDA conference that it should not be taken with Grape Fruit or Grape Fruit Juice. They actually stopped serving Grape Fruit Juice at breakfat during the conference. They kept the OJ though.

I love grapefruit juice, but every time the news mentioned the long list of meds. that don't go with it, I just stopped drinking it. It was too difficult to remember the list.

Grapefruit juice contains substances that inhibit certain enzymes in your liver. To the best of my knowledge, Adderall is not affected by these enzymes, but many other pharmaceutical and recreational drugs are. To be on the safe side, I'd personally advise against drinking grapefruit juice if you consume any drug, whether over the counter, prescription, or recreational.

As for orange juice, the issue is acidity. Amphetamines absorb better in basic environments, and absorb less well in acidic environments. Now, there is some debate over whether or not drinking acidic drinks like sodas and orange juice, or eating something basic like antacids will actually affect the pH levels in your intestines, especially since your stomach in and of itself is pretty damned acidic, far more so than orange juice.

However, if you are concerned about anything that might interfere with your dose, the issue is anything that is acidic. There wouldn't be any serious adverse health effects, of course, just that it might lower the effectiveness of your dose, so if you want to go ahead and experiment, the worst that could happen is that you might find that your adderall is not as effective.

On that same thought, you should avoid taking antacids like Tums, Maalox, Rolaids etc. Because amphetamines absorb better in basic environments, these can increase the effects. I do know from personal experience that this is so, as the crappy quality of campus food last year was more than enough to break down my reluctance to use antacids. While it is unlikely that the effects would be dangerous, anything that can increase the effectiveness of a stimulant drug is probably risky. Incidentally, I found that a lot of the peripheral effects, like body temp, heart rate, sweatyness and jitteryness, etc, were increased by taking the antacids, but that the actual "focusing" effects were not noticably enhanced.