Effects of Marijuana on ADD medication?

[M1ke]

(Please excuse me if this is in the wrong forum area.)

Hello there,

I'm a 15 year old recently diagnosed with low-level Attention Deficit Disorder. I'm slated to begin medication at the start of the next school year (July 19th). However, I had a few questions before that happens. First, let me give you an overview of my habits:

I smoke marijuana 3-5 times per week (1 to 2 times per day). I've found that it helps me concentrate (as strange as that sounds) and allows me to give a much greater effort when performing tasks that I find to be boring and quickly lose interest in. My question is this: what effects (if any) does marijuana usage have on ADD medication? Keep in mind that I'm no "pothead" (case in point: I haven't smoked for nearly a month because I have been vacationing in Florida and could not bring anything with me). I smoke to relax, and also because I enjoy the high, and use filtration methods, as well as smoke completely organic marijuana, so that I inhale as clean a smoke as possible; the reason I'm saying this is because I'm sure someone will be quick to lay out all the reasons pot is horrible and I shouldn't smoke it.

Excuse my rambling; in any case, what effects does it have, and is there any way to counteract these effects besides quitting marijuana (something I'm certainly not planning on doing anytime soon)?

Thanks so much.

Mike

[Ian]

M1ke welcome aboard. Hope you can join in and push the bounds a bit. As far as I could tell there isn't much verified about the complex compound marijuana except that smoke is bad for you.

I'm not prepared to draw any firm conclusions just now but I'm leaning away from grass being of use to me.

Here are some threads I turned up with the forums search function.

Cheers! ian.

http://www.addforums.com/forums/show...ight=marijuana

http://www.addforums.com/forums/show...ight=marijuana

http://www.addforums.com/forums/show...ight=marijuana

http://www.addforums.com/forums/show...ight=marijuana

http://www.addforums.com/forums/show...ight=marijuana

[robmhill]

obviously this below is a hypothetical work of fiction
as i assume your's was
and all verbs should be assumed to be in the subjuctive
(legal disclaimer)

what are you taking for meds?

me too at the end of the day
does not seem to be effected by the welbutrin or the adderal i take
actually it is nice with the adderal as the up and calm go well together

the only effects i get are the ones i got before taking meds
foggy in the morning et cetera
this is caused by the lowering of vasopressin in your brain it is a hormone
involved in memory, attention, and urine production
i kid you not
it is situational memory
ie from an evolutionary stand point
so we are speaking of early man
you find something good to eat
like a fruit tree
ie there is a time limit, competition from other animals and humans
or you are running away or fighting something dangerous

you want to concentate
you want to remember and
you do not want to have to pee in the middle of all this

so nature in her lazyness uses one hormone to do all this
it is not exactly a memory improver like you are learning a list
but general memory of a type of situation
ie situational memory
but it does help concentration some
if i am blurry in the morning it helps my brain get back faster

it helps a little with concentration
helps the adderal be more effective
does not seem to have any bad side effects
with adderall as its slowing of urine productions is countered by the speeds increase in urine production.

but like all things read
all you can find
think
remember
learn
do not take any chemical for granted

i have experimented with intranasal administration of a neurotransmitter
which helps memory
but if the levels get too high it induces depresion
with i take welbutrin for
the levels gradually crept up and i did not realise i was depressed for a couple of weeks and did not get much done
which in college is a bummer
have to take one class over because of this

i was not vigilent
and this was on a dose of 0.0004 gm/day of the straight neurotransmitter
i have some really accurate scales !!!

so be warned
but then you are asking so you are obviously a smart young man

and remember neuropharmacology can be a fun hobby
and anyone with add treated with meds is basicly taking it up as one

it is a serious hobby
like mountain climbing
the rewards more productive than mountain climbing
but the falls can be tragic.

Also respect the fact that though you are bright and nearly of legal age
you are not so others are held responsible for you
even if they do not know what you are doing
be careful for their sake, if you mess up the guilt alone can ruin their lives


oh one last thing i looked at some of the other posts on maj and it does make the meds work less well
this is true
take it all into consideration
nothing is free there is always a give and take
you get one thing but loose on something else

you will know if you are getting out of life what you want and if it is interfering

when i start taking serious courses next year i will have to smoke much less

[M1ke]

itschaotic: I own a number of smoking devices, but I tend to use my water-pipes because one or two bong hits and I'm good for a couple of hours, they filter out a lot of harmful toxins (though the pot I smoke is about the best you'll find in the US and doesn't really have a lot of the toxins you'd find in schwag and commercial sticks and stems that are grown with pesticides), and they're just plain easy and fun to use. But I am interested slightly in vaporizers...I guess I'm just of the old school of thought when it comes to smoking---I like to feel the smoke in my lungs, not the vapors. Thanks for the links, I'll have to read them when I get a little time.


robmhill: interesting post. While I had a hard time following you because of your rather staggered writing style ( ), I'm considering a lot of what you have to say. You make some good points, and some I disagree with, but thank you for your insight. Maybe we could talk outside of the forum sometime.


I rarely smoke to get totally couchlock stoned. I prefer to be high with the ability to still function (and in my case, I function very, very well when high). With that in mind, it's also not an addiction that's going to lead to any jailtime. I very rarely smoke in public (and by public I mean in public areas away from the view of people there), I don't associate myself with any dealers, and I haven't bought pot for quite a long time and don't plan on doing so as I've always got a ready source of good, organic dank that have no problem giving me a half ounce for free (I've got a small area where I'll be harvesting a few cannabis plants for personal use just so that I'm not tempted to ever buy again).

I kind of went off on a tangent there...my point of all that was that a certain degree of responsibility is involved in everything in life and pot is no different. I know many people who live incredibly comfortable and prosperous lives while smoking several times every day; case in point, my sister's boyfriend is a biologist who smokes pot two to three times per day. I know I'll never turn into a burnout because I've got a lot going for me that I can't afford to ruin; promising writing and culinary arts careers later in life, editing a major national magazine (www dot pbnationmagazine dot com if you were interested), etc. I don't mean to brag, just laying out the reasons why I won't turn into a pot junkie who lives in his mom's basement at 30.


Thanks again for your interest.


Mike

[Tara]

While there really isn't conclusive research that states Marijuana isn't good for ADD or that is interfers with ADD medication most of the ADD experts will say that it isn't good for the ADD brain.

[M1ke]

Well, marijuana in general really isn't GOOD for you persay...I expected that much. I just wanted to know if smoking the amount of pot I do will affect my medication in any harmful ways.

Mike

[Ian]

I've not been able to find any research that has been submitted to peer review. Gregster here has a tremendous amount of insight into pharmacy. He may have posted something a ways back in this thread. Have you checked your settings and used the search function here M1ke?

Please post back if you find credible sources regarding ADD / ADHD and the use of marijuana and the intereactions with meds. As I recall the consensus here while discussing this earlier was that grass is too complex a compound for it to do anything but act erratically from med to med and person to person.

I have heard that grass is comprised of 60 or so active ingredients and this makes it unlikely to act predictably or reliably as an adjunct to any scientific based med scheme.

I've been using it for about a month or so and it's not helping. It will take a while to clean out and reflect on my learnings but one thing that is obvious is my short term memory stalls are much more frequent and profoundly lame! I got caught on the phone the other day not being able to recall my postal code twice in the same conversation.

I love what it does for sex. Period.

I am much less crisp of mind.

I am hung over in the mornings.

I fear it's escapeism.

I'm feeling resilient because of the length and intensity of my work out routines but without them I'd be on shaky ground I think. I feel like I can get clean with some training in the near future. A month maybe? I don't know the details of what's expected as far as the half life.

I have waffled some on this topic.

Cheers! Ian.

[robmhill]

thanks for trying to follow me, i really should rewrite after i write like that to make it easier. It reads fine to me and i forget, that others have trouble with it.
hey i have pdd as well so...

there i put that into norm style, and you can email me or whatever.
i have made lots of mistakes so i know a lot

[DevilHanzo]

I enjoy using marijuana because it helps me better than any of the medications I have ever taken. I have a moderate level autism and bi-polar, and possibly tourette's. When I smoke it, I become a happy person, I feel motivated, I can focus more, and my tics go away. My severe problems with initiating and holding conversations are improved.

The medications I am on are: risperidone, lithium, wellbutrin and adderall. After I started the wellbutrin and adderall, strange things started to happen. I would get this really strange feeling in my head, like my brain is spinning. It comes and goes in waves, and it radiates out to my scalp and down my neck. It is annoying, but it's not horrible. However, when I smoked, these feelings became extremely intense, it's like a crazy pain, yet it does not hurt. It now begins to move throughout my body, and I begin to have these feelings like my body is petrifying as i sit there. So I have to constantly keep moving each body part, including my head and neck for fear of losing control of myself. I have extreme paranoia that I am going to have a seizure or pass out. It makes me mad because the therapeutic effects are dramatically decreased, and I get these extremely uncomfortable feelings instead.

So I have to replace an herb that actually helps me a great deal, with a legal medication that doesn't work nearly as well. Marijuana has been known to help people with autism and tourette's, but since society and the government are so over it, no proper studies can be done.

[Ian]

There is a big pile of anecdotal support for the use of cannabis for treating various medical problems.

If you are in Canada there are legal ways for you to have grass on hand for you condition. I don't know about elsewhere.

Cheers! Ian.

[hummous]

Devil,

I would not use marijuana with stimulant meds for ADHD. Marijuana increases the heart rate and so to ADHD meds. I would be afraid of that if it were me.

KH

[Ian]

That would be scary for me yup. I rev pretty high with THC in my system.
ian

[symbol]

hey there! when i was prescribed my medication i had to agree to not smoke marijuana but of course i didnt really agree in my head...so i had a smoke and guess what...the ADD returned and it was worse than ever so i guessed that maybe the marijuana reversed the ADD medication. I just dont bother smoking it now because it doesnt make me feel good at all and i become stupider and stupider!

[Ian]

smart... really smart.. lol

[Issy]

There are a few things to consider here. First off, there are two "breeds" of Marijuana. Cannabis Sativa, which contains more THC and less of the other cannabinoids (sp?). It produces a more "up" high, very cerebral, very energetic. And Cannabis Indica, which contains more CBN and other cannabinoids and less THC. This is the "stoney" type of high, with the couchlock effect. More of a downer, more relaxing. And then there are hybrids of the two. So depending on the meds you are taking, different strains of pot could, theoretically, effect them differently. For me personally, stimulant meds screw me up. And I mean big time...I don't really know what it is, but they only worsen my symptoms, with or without pot. The only thing i've noticed is with meds such as straterra, since, for me, it vastly slowed the racing of my brain, it would take more of either type of MJ to get me high. You really have to experiment, it varies from person to person.