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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 5 of 5. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by Sur5orType on January 10, 2003, at 16:19:41
I am the father of an 8 year old child who helped to get Strattera approved. He has been part of the open label study for almost two years.
He takes 25m in the am and 25 again at night.
Before that, he took adderol, which I COULD NOT STAND. I hated the way it made him seem like a zombie.
His reaction to this new drug is enough to make me real encouraged for both Jim, Christina and Nicole.
His improvement over the last couple of years has been great.
He has been concentrating and has been a lot less hyper, though, like a normal 8 year old, he still is a fidgeter.
A word to the wise for you, (this is kind of cool, being able to speak from experience for all of you) Make sure you take your dose when you are supposed to. It is not a long-lasting effect from what I can tell. If he did not get his dose in the afternoon, he tends to wind up pretty fast.
I know what you mean about the dry throat and the appetite. He was a real two-fisted eater (like me, his father) when he started. He was even a little chunky and now has a normal, if not a spare appetite.
I try to get him to eat before or at the same time as his evening dose, and it has never been a severe disinterest in food, just that he ate less.
He complains occasionaly about a dry throat, but never about a funny taste in his mouth. An 8 year old might not see it that way.
I wish all of you a lot of luck. I think it has done wonders for my son.
I can not say how happy I was to see him off of adderol. I still remember VIVIDLY the first few months on Strattera (we called it Tomoxetine) and how happy I was to have him improve so far, and fast.
I heard some comments about people that "prefer" adderol. Well, this is one person that did not prefer to see his son take adderol. I don't want to see him hyper, but making a zombie out of him was not the answer. I could not stand the tics. Someone asked that question, and I can tell you, it doesn't seem to give him tics, or anything like that.
So, you can have your adderol. I am glad my son got the opportunity to use something with side effects that would still allow him to function.
Again, good luck all.
Posted by BekkaH on January 10, 2003, at 19:31:01
In reply to Strattera - Day 500, posted by Sur5orType on January 10, 2003, at 16:19:41
Hi Survivor-type! I like your screen name. Thanks for helping us out. If you can think of anything else we should know about this new med, please let us know. Of course, adults may respond quite differently than children, but there are probably enough similarities that your experiences will be very helpful to us.
Posted by Sur5orType on January 11, 2003, at 11:00:22
In reply to Re: Strattera - Day 500-sur5ortype, posted by BekkaH on January 10, 2003, at 19:31:01
> Hi Survivor-type! I like your screen name. Thanks for helping us out. If you can think of anything else we should know about this new med, please let us know. Of course, adults may respond quite differently than children, but there are probably enough similarities that your experiences will be very helpful to us.
Thank you Bekka.
I am sorry to disagree after such a nice compliment, but I don't want to see us jump to a conclusion. I know that there are markedly different side-effects for adults and children with stimulants, but there are more side-effects, PERIOD. A list as long as my arm.
There are truly so few (noticeable ones) with strattera, I think there is some hope towards making the opposite conclusion.
I am also making a jump to conclusions, I know. I am just so glad for the alternatives to the stimulant course.
There are of course, as I eluded to, adults who will prefer stimulants. One in a post above spoke about the beneficial effect of being able to pull an all nighter. It worries me that it would skew the findings. It is, in my humble opinion, definately a question of dependency.
With or without this drug, my son is one HIGH-ENERGY child. But, if I say "hey, stop for a second and listen to me," he will stop now. He may not stand there and listen as long as I would like, but it's baby-steps, y'know? At least he is stopping now.
Maybe I need to say "stop for a minute."
With the stimulants, he was just slow. It didn't seem to make him think any harder, just to go slower. It is hard to explain, it just made him a little more considerate, which is exacly what an eight year old needs.
An adult might prefer the energy of the stimulant. That has a chance of skewing this debate, but time will tell, no?
Posted by Noa on January 11, 2003, at 15:44:19
In reply to Re: Strattera - Day 500-sur5ortype, posted by Sur5orType on January 11, 2003, at 11:00:22
It might be preference for some, but really it is a matter of how individual our brains are--what works for some, doesn't work for others, especially for people who have hard-to-treat problems, of which there are many on this board.
I, too, am thrilled to see a non-stim med that could benefit kids with ADHD.
For me, I take adderall xr as part of a cocktail of meds for depression. It helps me feel calm and focused, and augments my antidepressants. I do wonder whether strattera would be helpful for me, but it isn't clear to me yet whether it offers anything for my issues. I'm reading the updates in the meantime. Also, I already take one med that has norepinephrine action (effexor) so that is also a factor.
But thank you for the reports on how well it's working for your son. I think to have something non-stim, especially for such a young child, is fantastic.
Posted by BekkaH on January 12, 2003, at 22:31:02
In reply to Re: Strattera - Day 500-sur5ortype, posted by Sur5orType on January 11, 2003, at 11:00:22
> There are of course, as I eluded to, adults who will prefer stimulants. One in a post above spoke about the beneficial effect of being able to pull an all nighter. It worries me that it would skew the findings. It is, in my humble opinion, definately a question of dependency.> An adult might prefer the energy of the stimulant. That has a chance of skewing this debate, but time will tell, no?
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Hi Sur5ortype: Hmm. . .Well, as far as all-nighters are concerned, I have to say that most, but not all, of the all-nighters I've pulled have been due to just plain poor planning on my part. Yes, sometimes scheduling problems can force one to pull an all-nighter, as can other things going on in one's life, but FOR ME, it has usually been my own inability to gauge how much time I really need to get a project done. There's something else that I've discovered about staying up all night: The QUALITY of the time late at night FEELS very different from the same QUANTITY of time during the day. I came across a poem by T.S. Eliot, "Dry Salvages" from FOUR QUARTETS, that describes the middle-of-the-night perfectly. Eliot speaks of the hours "between midnight and dawn . . . when time stops and time is never ending." When I work at night, I TEND TO THINK I HAVE MORE TIME THAN I ACTUALLY DO because it FEELS as if "time stops and time is never ending." Even without any medications, I do have a circadian phase shift, but no matter how I rationalize my need to pull all-nighters, when I'm really honest with myself, I think I produce much better work during the day -- if I've had a good night's sleep the night before!And, yes, I agree with you -- it's good to know that there is a non-stimulant alternative. I hope pharmacologists continue to work in that direction.
This is the end of the thread.
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