Adult brain mechanics permantantly altered from childhood ADHD medication?

[greenbleu11]

I've been thinking and researching for years for real data on this question. I was diagnosed at age 5 or 6 with ADHD and treated with Ritalin and therapy until I was 10. I didn't want to take it anymore because I was getting embarrassed of it. Whether I was explained to or not about the pharmacology of the medication I never thought about it, and because, I guess, it's standard practice to only tell the parent the medical details when treating a kid I never understood the disorder or how it was. I never analyzed any changes in my emotion or behavior during this time because of my age. I was just a kid like everyone else except i had to take a pill. I never had the comprehension or education of what psychoactives were, did, and could permanently effect until they taught us in 5th grade to prevent future abuse, by which time i had ceased using any ADHD medication. I was weaned off and didn't think about it for the next 12 years.

I know now that the reduction in motivation and physical energy, the more reserved I became, and the 75-100lbs overweight i became over the next 4 years were an immediate effect of stopping the drug. Although I wasn't outgoing I became more social, and one day I suddenly got physically sick and threw up because thinking about the common after school plans of hanging out somewhere with my friends. I panicked and vomited everyday for a couple months. I was diagnosed with social anxiety and since then everything I do past or future is analyzed with regards to others opinions of me.

A year after high school I started getting these exhausting headaches when I started reading anything over a paragraph long. They'd fry my head for hours afterwords. When I started school I couldn't pay attention to anything but history or get myself to write papers because my head would start to hurt. I dropped out and tried a year later and same **** happened. I couldn't even find anything interesting to do on me free time half the time. So when I was 22 I thought, with more knowledge on the subject, I might actually have ADD. Either it's a recurrence or have always had the ADD brain but my younger self could physically and mentally adapt to things like school and working.

Now I've been wondering if maybe if I hadn't been medicated with Ritalin or any other stimulant at that young age I wouldn't have these issues ADD issues.

Could it have caused my developing brain to grow through those 4 or 5 crucial brain forming years with a need for that drug to work normally, or effect it enough that depending on how i treated my health in the future would determine how much worse it got? Maybe when I physically fully became an adult I i could lost the "self-sustaining adolescent repair system" that held me together enough my teenage years?

Anyone have ideas and/or ideas on this? I know there are a ton of little things that could have attributed too but in retrospect this theory is the best solution to the issue. Thanks

[Plognark]

I didn't get diagnosed or start taking ADHD meds until I was 33 years old.

I've had the same social anxieties, weight gain, and brain burnout you describe. My anxiety isn't as severe, but I can relate.

Based on what I know of the meds, it's unlikely that they contributed much to your condition. They're fast acting and easily metabolized.

What you describe sounds like just good old fashioned ADHD and a serious anxiety disorder. Going off of the meds probably contributed more to fostering the anxiety than if you had continued them, if anything.

[Lunacie]

I'm in no shape today to hunt up the information on this, but I understand

that researchers are looking into the possibility that giving these meds to

children can actually help their brains to grow more normally.


You're right about doctors, many of them assume that the child cannot

fully understand either the disorder or the effects of the meds.

But there's no excuse for parents not to discuss this with the child -

at his or her level of understanding.


I am helping my daughter raise her two daughters as we are both divorced.

One has ADHD and one has Autism plus unknown issues.

We include them both in discussions and ask for feedback on whether

the meds are helping or causing side effects.

I'm sorry your parents didn't try to do that for you.


Children (and adults) who have their ADHD properly treated, including

medications, are less likely to suffer from anxiety and depression . . .

and less likely to self-medicate with drugs and alcohol or extreme behavior.

[Drewbacca]

I don't have time to pull references but I say this with certainty:
There are no long-term studies of stimulants, taken at normally prescribed levels, that show any sort of damage as a consequence of their use. There are studies that show neurological damage and increased dopamine deficiencies when illegal stimulants are taken at abusive levels (MDMA/cocaine/etc.).

Unless you have a history of drug abuse, the odds of medicine inflicted damage is statistically very unlikely.

[roseblood]

Originally Posted by Drewbacca

I don't have time to pull references but I say this with certainty:
There are no long-term studies of stimulants, taken at normally prescribed levels, that show any sort of damage as a consequence of their use. There are studies that show neurological damage and increased dopamine deficiencies when illegal stimulants are taken at abusive levels (MDMA/cocaine/etc.

I have also looked into it and not found any, either. The only other exception is in laboratory animals who don't have an animal equivalent of ADHD. They can be given prescription dosages (proportional to their weight) and show signs of long-term neurological change associated with drug tolerance, but that should only serve as a warning to people who are taking prescription dosages to help them stay awake and study/work all night instead of to treat an abnormal attention system, and to people who have a different reason for struggling to concentrate but are taking ADHD medications because they compensate for it.