Should I take more or less adderall, or switch ADD meds. what's your opinion?

[steven*654321]

I have been on adderall XR for about a year now.I was on adderall XR 20 mg and it seems to help me get up in the morning, do homework, concentrate for long periods of time, and maintain a job. This is what I love about adderall XR but About 8 months into treatment I started getting sore joints, my doctor said it was from overuse playing the drums but my gut told me it was the adderall. In the past I took Daytrana patches 10 mg for ADD and I got sore joints but much milder(this Daytrana does cause sore joints, the FDA says so).I remember stopping the Daytrana and the sore joints went away. I called the pharmisist and he said that adderall does NOT cause sore joints. A month ago I stopped playing the drums and increased my adderall XR to kinda experiment. The increase of adderall XR was mostly because the ADD symptoms were still present. I also have increased my water intake(from the recommendation from someone on this site for the sore joints that I have), started glucosamine/chondroitin, vitamin D, multi vitamin,fish oil, and 3 ibuprofen a day.I did this to see if this would help but I have noticed NO improvement from these supplements,water and ibuprofen. The ibuprofen is the only thing that really helps the pain, but it comes back every morning.I took time off from playing my drums and increased my dose to 30mg of Adderall XR around a month ago. I have noticed that both my knees started to hurt more which made no since because I stopped playing my drums! I have played the drums for 12 years and I have never had to take time off of playing the drums from overuse and sore joints ever!!! I also have noticed that My apartment is a mess and I have less will power to clean it up, I also have noticed that I don't have as much will power to go practice playing my drums, the messy apartment and lack of playing the drums also occurred with the increase of adderall. The soreness is most intense in my Knees in the morning before I get up especially when laying on my side with my knees stacked on top of each other, I have to put a blanket in between my knees to cushion them just because they hurt so much. I take my adderall XR 3 hours before I get up in the morning because it helps me wake up and go back to bed, when I do it seems to increase my pain about a half hour into laying back down to finish sleeping.

When college ends in 10 days for winter break I am considering cutting back to 10 mg of adderall XR to see what happens, then I won't have to worry about the withdrawal affecting my performance in school.

In closing, there are many benefits to Adderall XR, I just want to get your input into these other issues listed above.

Here is a summary of my questions from my situation listed above:
1. What do you think caused my sore joints?
2.What is a good medication that I might try switching to for ADD that might help me in my situation that might still help me the way adderall XR did but will not have any chance of giving me sore joints.
4. Should I see a ADD specialist? Keep in mind I am low income at the moment.
5.Please read through the summary above and answer any other questions I may have forgot to ask.

Thank you very much for taking the time to read and respond to this.

-Steven

[steven*654321]

I cut back on my Adderall XR from 30mg to 20 mg and the sore joints died down a lot. next month I am going to go down to 10mg and see what happens.

[playcrackthesky]

It's difficult to say what is causing your pain, but it could be a condition like fibromyalgia, or residual pain from an old injury, or any number of things. Have you injured your knees before? Do you have chronic pain anywhere else in your body? You say Adderall has a lot of benefits for you (though apparently more effective at a 20mg than 30mg dose), and I would try to rule out any other potential causes of the pain before switching meds.

[ggb2010]

If your knees still hurt when you stop the drums and lower the adderall dose, I'd think you need to talk to a doctor. As strange as it is we all can develop things like arthritus, rheumatoid arthritis, Fibromyalgia, Osteoarthritis, the "wear and tear" arthritis, etc.

PER WEB MD
Here's something else that might help...5-HTP...

5-HTP is used for sleep disorders, depression, anxiety, migraine and tension-type headaches, fibromyalgia, binge eating associated with obesity, premenstrual syndrome (PMS), premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD), attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and along with prescription drugs to treat seizure disorder and Parkinson's disease.

How does it work?
5-HTP works in the brain and central nervous system by increasing the production of the chemical serotonin. Serotonin can affect sleep, appetite, temperature, sexual behavior, and pain sensation. Since 5-HTP increases the synthesis of serotonin, it is used for several diseases where serotonin is believed to play an important role including depression, insomnia, obesity, and many other conditions.

[Illiterati]

I have had fibro for year now, and my joints ache more when the barometric pressure changes. So I couldn't tell you if the Adderall is making anything hurt.

I do know that the benefits are far outweighing anything bad, as far as something like joints aching would be concerned, however.

[robraddi]

Steve dude. Every word you said is exactly me as of today. I need help. Did your knees ever stop hurting ? Did you change meds? I contacted my doctor and the pain in my knees got so bad that I m off adderall completely now and I feel like crap. What did you end up doing?

[Tylerlee17]

No telling what could be actually causing your pain for sure but I know that my Adderall causes my muscles to tense up more than when I don't take it, sometimes it leads to an subtle pain that will last for hours. Usually Tylenol/Ibprof/Aleve will fix it, I've also noticed exercising for 20-30 min gets rid of it (believe it or not). If I don't do one of those 2 things though yeah the pain ends up leading to a pretty bad headache by night time, but it doesn't happen to me every day.