f13.net

I've been on Effexor for a week now, and I have to say I wish I'd gotten on anti-anxiety/depression/rage medication years ago. If any of you have been putting it off and relying on prayer/stoicism/being an Internet dick to get by, go get this stuff.

Is that a new one? Ain't heard of it. What fun side effects does it come with?

Many of us have wished that for years.  :awesome_for_real:

Just kidding. We need more first against the wall posts some days.

From Facts & Comparisons


If I remember correctly, Venlafaxine was given FDA approval for anxiety in 2000 and for depression long before that.  It's not a new class of drug, it's really a drug that has been successful in finding alternate uses for itself.  Its action is as a serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor (SNRI). It works by restoring the balance of certain natural substances in the brain(serotonin and norepinephrine), which helps to improve certain mood problems.  This is similar to tricyclic antidepressants (which are older drugs) and somewhat like the more common SSRI's. 

Hope that helps.

I suppose this new, drugged, and balanced Angry Bob.

But I liked the old one too.

Abnormal dreams is a side effect? Interesting....how do you define abnormal in a dream?

ETA: So should we petition to have a mod change Bob's name? Something like balanced.bob?

I was forced to take antidepressants once (when it was just a real case of common teenage angst). Turned me into a bed ridden Spock. No thank you.

I was taking it for a short time and I had VERY vivid dream.  They weren't always night terrors but they were always disturbing.  Such as having everyone in my family over to dinner and not having any food for some stupid reason and their faces getting bright red and angrier by the second.  All sorts of dreams... when I could sleep at all.  I had several serious side effects from it.  Eventually, I got something else but weened myself off it because my doctor kept wanting me to give it another chance.  I've had anxiety issues since I was in my teens.  Anyway, now I have kittens and don't need it anymore.  I still take something to help sleep, though.

PS  I don't have any anger issues at all, btw.  In fact, quite the opposite.  I almost never get angry... just annoyed.

I would say a non-homicidial bob would count as bizarre behavior.

So far the only things I've noticed are a lack of fear or anxiety when they would be appropriate, and an extremely delayed orgasm. Seriously, it takes about an hour of working at it now. Not sure I'd really call either of those "bad" per se, though my wife might disagree in either, or both cases.

There's no such thing as internet douchebaggery.  Everyone on the internet is nice and I love them.

Is this medicine or marriage?

If you want weird dreams, take chantix.  A coworker tried taking it to kill his smoking habit and had to stop because of the dreams it gave him.  He wouldn't even talk about them he said they were so 'abnormal'.  All you have to do to get it is tell your doctor you want to quit smoking and you've heard good things about it.

Man, fuck you.

Yeah, it may seem like you can live with it now, but just wait. It will be a giant PITA eventually. I was on Celexa for almost 2 years and finally complained to my doc. He started by supplementing with Wellbutrin (which helped a bit), and eventually just tossed the Celexa altogether. Just Wellbutrin now, and I am back to my 1-15 minute ways. Not having to wait a week between sexual episodes (in order to get myself so worked up I could actually finish) is very nice.

In a completely unrelated note, anyone with some good free pr0n site recommendations can PM me   :awesome_for_real:

This thread is heading in a dangerous direction.

Just wait- we will be telling prostate exam horror stories in a year or two.

I took Effexor for a month.  I hated it.  It made me antsy and I couldn't sit still.  That and I still hated life.  Every thing they have tried to give me (Lexapro, Effexor, etc) doesn't seem to work so hot, so I just stopped taking it all and will go back to being an angry douchebag who hates everything and everyone.

Not to get all preachy, but umm... If you've got a real chemical imbalance, I don't think just straight up hatin' on shit is one of the symptoms. That just is what it is.

Hope you find some peace (if you're being serious). The world isn't that bad.

No, really.

With a name like Eff3x0r, I thought angry.bob got a video card upgrade. Who comes up with these drug names? I mean, other than the pharmaceutical company.

Anyways, glad its working for you bob. Hope that doesn't mean you won't be ready for mass excecution of Congress day, however. We're counting on you! Haemish bought a cheerleader outfit and everything. :mob:

Angry.bob is like a sweet tart.

Must change his name to Placid.Bob immediately.

Also, I have a friend who was on Effexor a few years ago and did experience some pretty trippy dreams.  It may have stemmed from one of several medications, though.  They gave him the full cocktail of antidepressants at once.

Placid.bob. Perhaps even flaccid.bob.

They can't legally print it this way, but "The slow, yet assured, deterioration of every bodily system and organ guaranteeing a vastly shortened, yet happier life." But hey, if it helps, what the fuck.

My Aunt was basically the same as this guy, and she got some pills and now she's normal.  I don't even mind being around her anymore.  I'm sure your friends/family are doing cartwheels.

How many kittens do you take per day?  Any preference on breed?
(http://www.clisham.com-a.googlepages.com/bonsai_kitten.jpg)

Damn it!  I have a whole list of health care idiots I was hoping the AngryBob Army would take care of...now I'll just have to deal with said idiots or drive farther till I start school up again.

But good luck with the therapy, I wish more could be done to help with mental health issues.  Being a night shift worker and having to flip and recover and not wanting to sleep makes me allready have enough vivid dreams, I damn sure wouldn't want any more graphic shit in my head than what is allready there.

Normally I am wary of the US trend to use drugs to medicate every real and perceived illness. But if that particular drug really helps your particular case, good luck to you.

I mean, there can't be really over 17 million chronically depressed people in the US, can there?

I would venture a guess to say that 17m is lowballing the estimates.

Speaking of vivid dreams. I had some weird dreams that someone was messing with me this morning. First it felt like someone slapped my face. I woke up and looked around. No one there. Then it felt like someone poked me really hard in the back sort of like when your bed mate is going "move over". Again, woke up, looked around, no one there.

Either a) my bedroom is haunted by the ghost of the scizophrenic woman who died here allowing me to get the house for cheap or b) I just had two really weird dreams.

After my mother died, (it was a bajillion years ago so don't go gooey on my) I used to dream that she put her hand on my arm or my cheek and when I woke up it would still feel warm.  It was not disturbing, it was comforting.  I was on Imipramine.

TMI dude! I have to look you in the face occasionally...

Just have to say that any of these anti depressant things will work less well as time goes by, eventually you'll have to go off it and on something else.

The withdrawal can be severe and last for years, so don't take this shit unless you really can't face life without it. 

I was on Klonopin for 4 years to deal with my panic attacks.  Took me over a year to totally get off of it, now I deal with the panic attacks.  I'll never take any of this devil garbage again, I don't care how much my life sucks.  The withdrawal was hell.

http://www.topix.com/forum/drug/effexor/TCDBCBLD99KUQ56BF for example

I take my previous statement back.  People on the internet, are ass holes.

I liked angry.bob. Does this mean no more Great Day of the Rope talk?

I've always had very vivid and fucked up dreams, since I was a small child. I used to keep a log of them. I'm sure a psychologist would have a field day with that. Some rather obvious recurring themes, including one involving sexy but dangerous women as if inspired by Catwoman from the old Batman TV series, if Catwoman actually killed a lot of people onscreen instead of just vamping it up.

Considering that most of my dreams are nightmares the last thing I would ever want to do is go on anything that would make that worse. Since my father died I've had dreams where he is alive about once every 3 weeks, and to me there isn't much worse than dreaming that an old pet or family member is alive and then waking up and realizing nope, still dead.

Awesome.  My wife was on Effexor before her current Zoloft script.  Maybe drugs suck but there are plenty of times when taking them sucks far less than not taking them, and not just for the person taking them.

I'm almost tempted to take some just to see what kind of dreams I'd get. My dreams are already vivid and amazing. My fiancee says they're nightmares, but what does she know? I always win in the end. Like the one where we were running from a zombie horde and they cut us off from our car at a gas station. I shot a pump with my shotgun and blew the horde apart, but I also caught my leg on fire. Then we stole another car and got away. Who cares if your leg is on fire in a dream, that's the cool thing about dreams, you're invulnerable!

There was the one time we were running from a zombie horde (a regular theme) and she was driving up a hill. I had told her she needed more momentum to get the car (it was some mid-70s gas hog boat) up the hill. But she didn't, and the zombie horde almost ripped us apart that time. I woke up and told her if we are ever running from a zombie horde, I'll do the driving goddammit.

I love dreams, they're exciting.

Actual laughing from my face.  Good one.

Whatever you do DON'T STOP TAKING IT SUDDENLY.

I couldn't take it for a few days, and I felt as high as a fucking kite.

That's funny, when my wife stops taking it suddenly, she turns into a Reverse Vampire Wereboar.

That sounds nasty.

She turns into a blood spewing hairy pig around the full moon?  Sounds like a pretty normal woman too me...

My wife's been on it for almost a year, due mostly to light depression and onsettin anxiety. She's on the minimum dose, but six months in tried to com off it. That lasted three days. It definitely has helped (as did some life stabiliy, finally). Unless there's some biological longterm issues, she can be on it forever as far as I'm concerned. This only started after the non medicinalethods weren't working well (tougher stillwith two ore-schoolers).

17m clinically depressed Americans sounds plausible to me. Money isn't happiness solely because there's apprently neverenough of if in a culture constantly driving you to get more. But I also wonder if they changed how they measured it. Similar thing happened with obesity. Different issue, yes, but the amount of folks considered obese skyrocketed when the changed the measure of it.

In any case, I truly feel for those who are on anti-depressants, particularly for anxiety attacks. Those are freakin' scary.

Are you posting from your fucking cell phone? space bar ftw.

My guess is that shiny new iPhone.

I thought I was the only one.

Though I'm not usually running, I'm usually sealed in.

I think you could do a whole psychological experiment just based on whether people try to seal themselves up or make a run for it in the zombie scenario.

But the zombie dreams have become so common that I now realize there are going to be zombies before any actually show up, so I start preparing early.  Honestly they're not even scary anymore, just stressful.  Zombies give you a lot to deal with.

Are we serious here? I, for one, have never, ever had a zombie dream. Somehow, I feel left out, but also a little freaked out.  :drill:

No no, note the Reverse portion also applies to the moon phases.

The best is when you have a really awesome dream, wake up and go back to sleep to try and continue it, but instead you're greeted with a different awesome dream. Those are the good mornings.

Totally different note: My dad left when I was 5 and from 12 to about 21 I had a re-occurring dream of him disappearing into a room filled with water while some crazy bitch came flying in through a door to take me away. Scared the shit out of me every time. Glad it hasn't showed up in awhile.

I am dead serious (  :awesome_for_real: ) about the zombie dreams.

My brother in law has had continual zombie dreams since he was a little kid.....  Kind of weird, I wonder how many people in the world get this?  I've had a few zombie dreams myself, but nothing like the reoccurring dreams that people describe here, as well as what my brother in law has.

In the few dreams I had, I barricaded myself in.  Not really a good strategy if you want some peace of mind in the dream.  It seemed like every time I walked into a room, I would discover yet another god damn window I hadn't barricaded, and would have to fight to board it up while I freaked out about zombies seeing me in the window.

At least if you make a break for it, you can spend the dream blasting your way through town.  Boarding up consist of you sitting around being deathly afraid of windows.

Aw man, never had a zombie dream and now I feel like I'm missing out. My stressful dreams usually consist of not having some peice of work ready for the deadline which is suddenly today and then maybe managing to somehow fall out a window in a panic, which wakes me up unpleasantly.

Add me to the list of the Zombie Dream Team. Haven't had one in a while, but its the typical movie scenario of you running away from zombies the entire dream. The worst part of it for me is that this type of dream seems to last a lot longer than the average dream time. I wake up from them thoroughly exhausted, as if I had indeed been running from a zombie horde all night.

Another bad dream type for me is the serial killer one. He's typically someone who's very smart, charismatic, and noone but me believes he's actually a serial killer. The worst part of it is that he's got a voice over in my head through out the dream, where he's taunting me by telling me who his next victim will be.

Oh, and none of this requires medication. I come by my fucked up dreams the natural way.

I used to have recurring dreams of Tyrannosaurus Rex, complete with slow-motion running-away action.

LOL and here I thought I was the only one who got a lot of zombie dreams. I don't know why but I dream of zombie invasions a lot. They are not scary in the least its more like a dream version of dead rising. I had someone try to convince me that they were nightmares but um nightmares are supposed to be scary and well zombies do not scare me.

I am not sure I would want any more vivid dreams than I already have cause that would be very very very vivid. Still most of the times I am having vivid dreams I realize that I am dreaming so it usually is more odd or silly than anything scary.

I've had it with these mutherfucking snakes in my mutherfucking dreams!

No zombies but maybe because I think zombies are silly and not scary like snakes

Y'know.. I used to wonder about my dreams and why I could never recall them.  Now I'm glad I never remember them, as it apparently puts you on meds.  :awesome_for_real:

If you write them down right when you wake up you'll get better at remembering them.

See, I don't even recall having them when I wake up. I wake up, turn off the alarm hug the wife and get into the shower, almost never recalling a moment of dreamland.  I've had 2 dreams I've remembered in the last 15 years, and that's because they were recurring.

One is the 'flight dream' and I don't do much beyond zipping around going, "oh right THAT's how you turn/ hover/ etc."   Once I figure it out again I'm done with the dream.

The other is the 'maze of stairwells, hallways and doors' dream.  Everything's beige, steel and concrete and every door leads to a hallway or a stairway I see in some 60's Batman "villain" angle.  That lasts until I find the rooftop access and then it's over.

The only other dreams I recall prior to that was when I was 10-12.  One involved GI Joe & Mermaids.   :uhrr: The other Satan and an eternal field of baked beans.

See, nothing nearly as interesting as zombies and snakes and other such wild crap.

This morning I had a dream that this really big fat guy clocked me in the eye. It wasn't too swollen though, so I got up and hit him back. Unfortunately, he just laughed at me. Then I went to my guidance counselor and told her that it was fucked up that some kid just walloped me. She just told me to suck it up.

Do with that what you will.  :ye_gods:

I don't really dream. Not lately anyway. At least not to my knowledge.

I think that's a different problem entirely.

You just don't remember... or you're actually not going into that specific level of sleep. But you'd have lost your mind at this point if that were actually the case.

I'm not entirely sure that I have not lost my mind.  :uhrr:

But seriously, I remember dreams I have had in the past, but I cannot recall any recently. And most of the ones I have had are lame as hell. Like, embarrassingly lame, and much too embarrassing to put out on public boards.

I got some vicodin after my last root canal. Didn't do much for the pain, so I drank a couple glasses of cognac and went to bed. Had my first and so far only color dream.


It was disturbing, and unnatural. Dreams should be in good old black and white symbolism.

<edit> spelling HARD

I had a recurring zombie dream several years back. Zombie in the "Serpent and the Rainbow" sense, not the Romero sense. Big ugly, rotting grey guy with dreads. Me running for my life through some kind of run down, Haitian shack neighborhood.

I used to have these nightmares when I was a kid, where I was trapped in a mall (I think?)... All kinds of unsettling colors everywhere.. Real rusty and dark, and it would end with two, uhh, football teams surrounding me on each end of an isle (at least that's the best that I could describe what they were), charging at me, and me waking right before I was crushed. They might have been zombies.

What the....

Are other people like you? Only black and white?!

I suspect he's a dog.

Well, thanks guys.  Just had a zombie dream last night.

I've only had zombie dreams while working for Best Buy.

They were the customers. It never, ever shocked me even a tiny bit.

Nietzschean supermen dream in color.

Well, I had my first and hopefully last Assassin's Creed dream.  I was Altair, I think in Damascus but you could tell you were in that machine thingy. Instead of killing people I kept finding my way to various fine food (like AJs) supermarkets and buying cheese.  Then I'd have to make my get away.. to go get more cheese.  I guess the guards didn't like me acquiring cheese. 

I don't think I'll be figuring this one out.   But it was kinda fun. 

Wow, I dont know weather to be scared or envious.

Sorry to re-rail the thread, but I have a question about being prescribed stuff like this. Did anyone who is on these kinds of medication just go to their family doctor? I've been one of those "I don't need to be medicated" people for awhile now and I think it's time to see if something bigger could be up.

My GP is the one who prescribes anti-anxiety and mood fuckery drugs to me.  I've had three different GPs in the last five years because we moved so often and they all got me on this stuff.  I'm the one, against the latest doc's opinion, who decided I don't want to take them any more. 

Go me.

Originally I didn't get it. Than I re-read it. Yea, shit, that looks horrible. From iPod Touch. Still getting the swing of it.

Anxiety attacks are very poorly names. Anxiety isn't the cause it's the effect. If you suddenly can't walk and your heart rate shoots up to 200 beats a minute you'll probably feel anxiety too.

Good for you, I mean that.

General practice MD.  She has made it her quest to help "cure" me, which I am not sure is possible.  She has also recommended several different specialists as well (yet ANOTHER specialist to go see).  My insurance just got done denying the latest concoction she wants to try, so I've about given up on caring about my supposed "mental well being" since I am functional enough to get up in the morning and go to work without any problems.

Um.  Not to knock you, but it depends.  My father in law decided the same thing.  He was found swinging by his neck 3 days later.

Just because a doc shoves pills at you, doesn't mean you shouldn't be on 'em.

I mean that.

Its really hard to say. From comments in this thread it almost seems that anti-anxiety pills are given out like candy, even for things like natural mood swings even healthy persons have once in a while.

Of course, that comes from a position that US doctors are generally more interested in covering their asses than caring for their patients (based on BBC and Austrian radio commentaries from foreign correspondents that where overwhelmed by the sheer amount of things done on spec just that nobody can sue you because you didn't do that particular test - both were about childbirth).

Its a matter of trusting your doctor. Which is easier for a lifelong family doctor than some random doc you wander into once in a while. But both I would trust more than the internet  :evil:

My question wasn't geared towards finding out if I had anxiety.

My answer wasn't geared towards you either, more towards the disbelief that so many people have to take mood altering pills in the US.

That really isn't the problem. The problem is a combination of factors.

Firstly, its a matter of health insurance. Virtually all US health insurance will not cover anything above 4 or 5 shrink visits. Any shrink out there will tell you that 90% of people showing up at the shrink's office have problems that can't possibly be treated in 4 days.

Secondly, the entire thrust of mental health care has followed a cognitive-behavioral approach rather than a psychodynamic approach. Its closely related to health insurance and economic concerns on the part of the medical establishment; cognitive-behavioral treatments claim that they are 'empirically' oriented, as in, the production of visible results. Psychodynamic, which follows a more traditional line of psychotherapy in its role of determining original cause and emotional resolution, simply cannot produce 'results' in the short time frame that interests those involved in making psychotherapy viable to the general populace.

Thirdly, and as a result of the above two factors, psychological problems have now been reduced to a pharmaceutical approach. The General Practice MD that handed Selby psychoactive medication is certainly not qualified to understand the psychology behind Selby's issues, but the 'short solution' has become so popular amongst insurers and 'health mill' care agencies that actual knowledge of psychology isn't particularly pertinent if a shotgun approach via happy pills gets the patient out of the office and back to work as soon as possible.

Don't get me wrong, in some fairly rare situations, medication is adviseable, as is the case with Ironwood's father-in-law. I know of another case of a philandering man who upon getting on a prescription, stopped wanting to hire prostitutes on every business trip he was on. There -are- cases where pharmaceutical intervention will immediately relieve a person's behavioral trends and restore them to a manageable state. But that by no means suggests that the actual problem has been addressed. The actual problem with any given individual is no longer of particular interest to American health care providers.

So its the quick and easy solution which happens to be the cheaper one as well? I can buy that even more than my original assumption.

I understand what you mean but I'm not depressed.  I was a bit years ago after my mother died suddenly, and that's where the string of those sorts of meds started.  I used to have pretty bad panic attacks but I've not had a bad one in years. My stress levels seem to be even better since we got kittens.  For some reason people would prefer to think I need medicine rather than accept the fact that I'm just unusual.  NOT SPECIAL!  Unusual.

It's really more the Max Power way (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Simpsons#Homer_to_the_Max_.5B10.13.5D) than anything else, at least from the Doctor's / Insurance's perspective.

And long may you continue to feel better.  I wasn't, however, being specific, but general with my advice.

:)

You have to be pretty careful when starting many of these drugs because ironically one of the (not always encountered) side effects at the beginning is a sharp increase in suicidal feelings.  All sorts of stuff can happen when you go off them too.

Another bit of general advice, my wife switched primary-care physicians recently.  We traded an old, old man for a young fellow and he has some more progressive ideas about how to fix my wife's problems.  Specifically, he sent her to a sleep clinic before he approached the brain pill situation.  We didn't just pick some guy at random, either, but took the suggestion of a hypochondriac we know.  Turns out he's a great general practitioner.  I'm going to see him about my heart issues, will know more then.

Disclaimer:  I'm a happy guy.  Never been depressed over something I couldn't fix myself or wasn't a result of something I did.  And to a very large degree, very old school that you rub some dirt on it, you cowboy up, and move on.  

I feel that pills are the easy way out, and too often, people look for quick fixes as well as doctors being overly pill happy as a result of influence from pharmacutical companies.  As Miasma pointed out, some of the side effects of some of these drugs are worse than the symptoms they are supposed to be 'curing'.  Americans are particularly at fault for having false expectations of their life, and too often look for the easy way out.  Doctors have turned into enabling pez dispenser machines, and every where you turn, there's advertisements pushing these drugs on people as a cure for what ails them.  

Fat?  Take a pill! (Or get gastic bypass to stop you from eating 3 Big Macs in a sitting)
Can't get it up?  Take a pill!  Go like a porn star all night long!
Depressed?  Take a pill!  Happiness in a bottle!

When you start messing with body chemisty, bad things happen.  If your job is stressing you out, get a different one, or chose a different career path.  Unhappy with your life?  Change it.  Fix it.  Take it upon yourself to do it.  People need to take an honest assessment of their life and figure out WHERE the problem(s) is/are, and take charge of their own life.

Eating right and exercise can cure alot of problems, but for many people it's deemed too hard.  We've become a microwaved, instant gratification, drive through society where we want it all and we want it NOW!! and have basically gotten lazy.  It's gotten particularly bad with our youth. 

(When I say 'you', I'm speaking generally here, not you in particular Ironwood).

It's not even a matter of an easy way out.  When I'm on the brain pills, I don't always feel like myself.  It bothers me.  It's not like I'm terribly unhappy or anything.  I'm not overly violent, I have hardly ever shouted at strangers except in grocery stores, Righ and I NEVER argue and I've mostly never killed anything on purpose.  In the US, this is pretty good!  My GP also tried to get me to go to a sleep clinic.  Evidently there is a very good one close to us but I wouldn't go.  I have a lot of irrational pet peeves and that became one of them the minute she suggested it.

Anyone in this day and age who doesn't recognise clinical depression as a genuine illness with proper medical treatments is a moron of the highest order.  Further, it's not about 'happy or sad'.  It's certainly not something you can 'buck yourself out of' anymore than you could the fucking plague.

Some are strong and manage to ride through the illness and recover.  Like any illness, some succumb and die.

Trying to rationalise it any more than that when you haven't been through it is, to repeat, moronic.  It's even worse when you're seeing someone else go through it.  Go sit with a cancer patient you knew who was an active chap, or that PhD who now has Alzhiemers.  You'll know what I'm talking about.

Further, like any illness, it discriminates not a jot about where or who it strikes.  The happiest guy, the quietest guy, the nicest guy can suddenly turn depressed, withdrawn and suicidal.  It's an illness.

If you want to talk about your pill popping society, please do.  But it's a seperate argument.


Note, when I'm talking like this it is almost certainly in the general sense, but I want to adress this specific :


This quote here has fuck all to do with Clinical Depression.  Honestly.  It's not something you fix by yourself, nor is it something that's brought about by things around you.

Be very aware, Snake, that I am in no way getting at you, nor the view you put forward.  This issue is too important to me for that.

I understand that it's a particularly personal topic for you.  And trust me, I'm fully aware that I can sit here in my glass house and say 'Get over it' when it's not exactly that easy because I don't have the vantage point you do.  I should have stated in my earlier post that yes, there are probably some cases whereby chemical interuption is probably justified.  But I DO believe it should be a last resort.

Anyway, some people are just unhappy, miserable fucks that no amount of therapy or pills will cure, or it will take a complete lifestyle overhaul many people aren't willing to make for <whatever reason>.  But I will stand firm in my belief that most peoples ills are self induced, and subsequently can be self cured.  Sure that opinion may change if (God forbid) that something as tragic as your father in law happens to someone I love or care about, but for now - that's the way I feel.

I used to think exactly like you, Snake. Then my brain started screwing with me for no discernible reason. I started having sudden and severe panic attacks, especially while driving. I lived with it for a couple of years, completely miserable. If my friends wanted to go somewhere, I would not attend if I had to drive any significant (3+ miles) distance- they either picked me up or I sat at home. I literally could not drive on the freeway without endangering myself and others- all this happening to someone who used to drive for a living! I finally got sick and fucking tired of being miserable and asked my doctor about it, since I wasn't able to find a way out of it on my own.

I still don't understand where it came from. Apparently there is precedent in my family for similar issues, so it is likely at least partially hereditary. I do know that I am far happier now that I have my independence and freedom back. I still occasionally get slight twinges of panic/fear, but they are very muted. I don't feel like the medication has affected me in any negative way (other than the specific side affect I mentioned earlier in the thread that was solved by trying an alternate med). Would I rather not have to take it? Absolutely. However, the alternative to taking it is going back to being miserable. No thanks.

I'm absolutely no fan of the copious amounts of psychoactive drugs people in the US are being prescribed. It's too much, and often, it's being used on kids WAY TOO FUCKING EARLY.

However, if you've never had a panic attack, you literally cannot understand the unbreakable fucking vice grip that shits put on your every ability to function as a normal human being. I've only had 2 or 3 what I consider minor motherfuckers. And they were true motherfuckers, I will tell you. Throat closes up, heart's pumping for no reason and absolutely nothing anyone does or says, nor anything you tell yourself will help one fucking iota. My wife gets them a billion times worse than I ever had and I can't understand how she deals with them without medication (mainly because most of the medicines that would be prescribed will cause other problems that are untenable). But she does, and is a stronger person than she'll ever admit for doing it.

If I suffered from those goddamn things daily, I'd be a pill popping bitch before too long. They are just that bad.

If this problem occurs more often in the US, I blame products derived from corn.





I wear many foil hats.

The panic attacks are why I get prescribed all that shit... Lexapro, Effexor, Clonazapam, too many to count... and I STILL get them.  Taking a mood fucking pill every day doesn't seem to work for me at all and makes me feel mentally weird.  They also make you gain a ton of weight.  I certainly don't need any help with that!   I still haven't been able to figure out how to sleep without a pill every night but I'm working on it.  I will be happy when the only drugs I take are for fun!  (http://www.weedforums.com/images/smilies/splif.gif)

Awesome, best of luck. My wife has been taking Melatonin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melatonin) supplements instead of the sleeping pills she was taking before and it's been helping.

As for panic attacks, I was one of those people that can't really relate.  My wife is, apparently, deathly afraid of needles.  She had to get an IV last week because of some stomach flu she had, and I have NEVER EVER seen anyone become that afraid at anything in my life.  That being said, logical reasoning does sometimes work (it worked for us at the time).

I'm deathly afraid of needles as well, but the Nurse made fun of me for it after she saw my tattoo and I felt better about the whole thing.

When I worked the night shift back in the day, working for Amazon in Seattle, I too took Melatonin as a supplement, since between living in Seattle and working the night shift, I was getting zero, zilch, nada sunlight at all, for over 3 years. It did help me sleep, but it always made me feel itchy somehow. Its a very odd little drug.

This is the start of my problem. I took a sleeping pill last night (natural one without the addiction inducing crap) and I woke up 3-4 times. Each time was due to horrible nightmares, but I can't find a single thing about this drug causing nightmares. I'm kind of afraid to find out what the hell is going on.

I actually attribute it to a lousy genetically-modified and overmedicated diet (the animals, they're on all kinds of pills TOO) and an overabundance of plastics.

Did you get the hat made out of the lovely gold last month from the foil of the month club?

(http://www.ericisgreat.com/tinfoilhats/dapperside.jpg)
NiXel

(http://www.ericisgreat.com/tinfoilhats/phesfront.jpg)
Merusk

(http://anniescostumes.com/epa5401.jpg)
SirBruce

(http://www.ericisgreat.com/tinfoilhats/chaplinfront.jpg)
Yoru

(http://www.ericisgreat.com/tinfoilhats/kosher.jpg)
Schildy

There's one for everybody!

Edit:  Had to fix Merusk.

psycho  :uhrr:

To a small extent I agree with SnakeCharmer, at least the need for people to be more active about changing their situation.  Those things can certainly help, but they may not be enough.

I won't ever chide someone for taking pills.  I lost several years to depression where I tried to "buck up" and "power through it".  It didn't work so well.  I might as well have been in a drug induced haze for that period.  I've also known bi-polars who simply could not function without their medication.  I saw what happened when they thought they could. :sad:

Signe wins my afternoon.

Thank you.

I did, right after my dissertation: "Margarine: Hydrogenated Oil or Debilitating Serum".  I'm scheduled to bash the meat industry next month.


I disagree.

I don't want it misconstrued that I'm unsympathetic on this topic.  I'm about as likely to laugh mockingly at someone that suffers from depression (or anxiety or anything else) as I would a cancer patient; which is to say, not so much.  The only brush I've had with it is my wife's mild postpartm after our baby boy was born.  And that was tough, moreso for her I suppose. 

I don't know.  Just didn't want to come across as an unsympathetic ass to such an intensely personal thing.

Anyway, it's just occurred to me that I really really really really hate my forum handle these days.

QFT.

Anxiety attacks are not feeling sad, they are your body undergoing physical revolt. As I said above, anxiety is largely the effect, not the cause.

I had one *once* and that was plenty for me. I was walking along and felt a little funny so I sat down, then I realized I couldn't really stand back up. Heart rate shoots up, tunnel vision sets in, feel like I am going to die but at the same time too embarrassed to be like "um...help me!" (Common occurrence apparently)

I get a cab to the hospital, they put me in a bed, it's warm and I'm wearing all my clothes but I am extremely cold to the point of involuntary full-body spasms. (Or maybe the brain just interprets the spasms as being cold?) Eventually it goes away on it's own, never happens again, but for about a year afterwards I could feel it coming on from time to time and I had trouble *walking* for months. Like I would stop at a red light then get a strange floaty feeling in my legs and have to pace back and forth for fear I'd fall over.

I am not a particularly stressed-out person, not am I a nervous nelly or particularly sad. I eat pretty well and am in good shape. It's not like my life sucks and I'm stuck in some 'woe is me' routine, more like "holy shit suddenly I can't walk!"

If that happened to me often I would be on pills in a second.

Edit: That said, I read SnakeCharmer's post as just a generic comment on our over-medicated society, no problems with it.

I will agree that it seems to me that you Americans overdose children way too early.  Pills should not be a substitute for babysitting or parenting.


*Christ, that first sentence is horrible, but I'll let it stand for the humour value that this thread now desperately needs.

As horrible as that sentence may sound, it's entirely too true. Too many kids are on Ritalin and other shit that they may not even need, just because of a bit of hyperactivity or attention span issues.

Thats a really vile practice, coming from somebody that was hyperactive as a child as well and outgrew that on his own.

Most of the kids aren't even all that hyper. It's usually a combination of lack of ability by teachers to discipline (their hands are tied on almost anything but, "now billy, stop that") a misunderstanding of boys (who tend to be more fidgety anyway - several studies about this recently as I recall) and a lack of will to do anything actually involving interacting with their kids on the parent's part.

The best part is that boys just are hyperactive.  I, for one, remember how it was to be young (not that I'm old, by gum and dagnabit).  That said, I'm convinced I have ADHD myself and will be watching for it in my son.  I won't medicate him unless it's impeding his lifestyle, though.

You need to watch more closely than that -- sufficiently bright children (anyone classified as gifted/talented, etc) can mask the symptoms of ADHD (at least the focus part) until early adulthood. They don't NEED to be able to focus that long, simply because being smart means they can work around it. A regular kid might need to focus an hour or so to understand some math concept being presented, but your bright (yet ADHD) child only needs about two minutes and then he can do whatever else.

The problem with that is that as you get older, your ability to do that shrinks -- and it's easier to learn how to focus when you're ten or eleven than when you're 25 and adjusting to Ritalin.

Of course, I'm a bit biased. My son started Ritalin about a month ago. Before that, he was on clonidine for hyperactivity. He was diagnosed that pretty much upon sight by the doctor, at age five. He asked if she'd given him speed or crack -- he was joking -- but the kid was totally unmanageable. It's not just energy, it's fits of rage (frustration response), massive insomnia and a host of other symptoms. My son -- even on his meds -- is VERY energetic (except, of course, when it's time to get up for school in the morning!). Off his meds, however, even at 11 years old with a decade of having learned to force himself to settle down -- he's like one of those jittery little toys.

His grades are stellar. His behavior was good (his primary problem was talking in class). We moved him to ritalin (and off clonidine) and the difference in his life has been dramatic. His frustration levels have dropped, he's been sleeping better at night, and he's about 5 times happier. We waited as long as we could to move him (it's sometimes a bitch of a process refining the dose and the meds, but we got lucky with the first dose -- it helps that my wife is heavily ADHD, and the psychiatrist could use that as a baseline), and I'm regretting waiting so long.

I honestly didn't know that his frustration levels were uncommon in children his age -- I thought kids were like that (he's the only one I have!). He had a lot of anger and unhappiness that was, at it's root, based in his inability to break down multi-step tasks ("Clean your room" is one -- if the room's messy, where do you start?. Do this, and this, and then this was another....), his inability to stop obsessing over certain concepts (past embarassments, moments on TV -- generally scary ones, the concept of death, etc) and all that were rooted in the same thing.

If you're worried your son is ADHD, your best bet -- other than simply having him evaluated two or three times by a shrink during his elementary school years -- is to simply talk to his teachers. Not all teachers are good, and some DO want to consider flaws in their classroom control as flaws in their students -- but your kid won't just have the one teacher. And one thing teachers DO have is experience with lots and lots of kids. They have a better idea of what's "normal" for kids in terms of frustration levels, attention span, abilities to focus, and energy levels. If they tell you there might be a problem, have him evaluated -- if you don't trust that teacher, have him formally evaluated by the school. School diags  lack some of the biases poor teachers might have.

Ritalin and it's brethen aren't a wonder drug. But like I said -- I regret waiting so long to have him evaluated, even though we were pretty damn certain. He really has been much happier. And he's still a rambunctious and energetic kid. It's a different kind of energetic -- it's the energy of being young and a kid, where before it was like the energy you see right before something unstable goes "Boom".

Most of the problems with Ritalin prescription are 1) teacher bitches that kid is a fuckup, 2) kid gets in trouble a lot, 3) school principal sends kid to counselor, 4) counselor's first thought is RITALIN, 5) parents believe the counselor is something more than a fucking idiot with a pscyh degree and takes kid to doctor, 6) kid gets ritalin. It sounds like your kid had a lot of hurdles to go through to get to the Ritalin, which is not the kind of case I'm talking about.

Kid should be seen by a diag first, then a psychiatrist. However, I admit psychatrists are generally willing to take teacher's behavioral notes at face value (in general, it's better to do that than see the kid an hour a week for six months and bankrupt the parents. Some cases, not so much) and simply prescribe. Mostly because if they DON'T have ADHD, the ritalin will just exacerbate the behavior. So when they come back a month later, and the mom/dad/teacher is "he's fucking worse" the shrink says "He doesn't need ritalin then".

Actually diagnosing it is a bitch -- only reliable tests I've heard of require an fMRA. But since the medication won't help if you don't have ADHD (you'll basically get VERY hyper and VERY focused. When your kid won't sleep for 20+ hours after he takes the meds, and obsesses over one thing after another during that time without break, you notice) it's cheaper, easier, and more effective to simply test by dosing.

Our school district is pretty good about it. We have highly effective and well trained diags and the teachers are not only trained, but their department heads and coworkers work closely enough with the diags to know when to take a certain teacher's bitching with a grain of salt.

The real problem is, frankly, parents of kids who SHOULD be on mediciation for one thing or another (ADHD, one of the many variants of emotionally disturbed) and whose parents don't give it to them. Or take them off of it each weekend, and then their kid is half-asleep every monday because their meds make them sleepy the first day back on it. Or just randomly hand it out.

There's one nightmare little child I'm aware of who is VERY hyper. To the point where all of his teachers (three of them), the school diag, the principle, and the assistant principle scheduled a meeting with the mom to basically say "This isn't normal. He's unteachable, he's distracting to the other students, and we're not allowed to nail him down and gag him. You really should have him looked at for this -- children are supposed to be energetic, but this is insane". Turns out he WAS diagnosed. He DID have medicine. Why didn't he take it? Allow me to quote the Mom: "Oh, it's so much work! You have to chase him down, and he doesn't want to take it, and I have to fight him for 10 minutes until I finally just give up and try to hide it in a pudding cup, but he notices too much so I just stopped trying".

My wife had to bite her tongue to refrain from stating: "Have you tried coating it with peanut butter and sticking it to the roof of his mouth? It works with my dog."

I pity the kid. The few times he's BEEN on his medications he's actually learned something. But his parent's are willing to go through the hassle of medicating him. I was still having to play the fun game of "Son, one way or another the nurse IS going to get blood out of you. Either you accept this and get it over with, or we'll hold you down and you'll spend the next week grounded" when it comes to shots and needles (less these days), but part of being a parent IS making sure kids do some things they don't want to. These piss-poor excuses for parents are denying their kid an education, not teaching him ANY of the things he's going to need to learn for when he's an adult.

And then they criticize the teachers. "Why can't you control him? Why is he such a problem". The parents can't make him take his goddamn meds, but somehow his teachers -- in between the 30 other kids they're watching -- can somehow make his ass sit down and work without disrupting everyone else?

I suffered from a bit of insomnia as a kid (obsessive fear of not existing), had anger issues, was smart, tended to go over past embarassments constantly, was smart, impatient, pedantic, and somewhat OCD, etc etc..

I'm sure if I went to a psychiatrist and played things up they would prescribe something to me now, and if I was taken as a kid they probably would have prescribed something then (if I lived in the US, anyway). But it would have been the wrong thing for me and I'm glad my parents spent more time trying to work me out themselves than hand it off to someone else.

I obviously don't have as serious issues as your kid Morat, or as some other children/people, but the tendancy to medicate when someone deviates from the norm is very worrying and not very conducive (in my entirely layman's view) to genuine growth in those who's issues are not, as Yegolev put it, significantly 'impeding their lifestyle'. (Lifestyle being unable to function, not being unable to function as the kind of child parents might want their kids to be.) I know a few people who are/were on medication that didn't help them in the short term, or did but ended up being worse in the long term, too. So such things should always be looked to as a last resort for significant problems.

Whenever my boss at work pulls up a project plan I stare at it for 30 seconds then say "you're boring me, are we done yet?"

What can I take for that? :awesome_for_real:

There is money in saying that everyone is abnormal and there's a pill to fix it. My favorite is that women who don't orgasm now suffer from sexual dysfunction, rather than a shitty partner who doesn't know what the clit is.

That one has the added bonus of misogyny!

So we're going back to the good old fashioned method of women paying the medical fraternity to get their jollies?

Seriously, a manual massage to induce a hysterical paroxysm was the technical term for actual treatment offered by doctors.

Put me in the Zombie dreams in the style of Dead Rising.  I've had a few in the past couple of years but they pretty much always involve me kicking ass.

I'm often aware that I'm dreaming in my dreams so I can often influence how they come out, though once I realize I'm dreaming the dream usually ends shortly after that and I wake up.  I'm not saying I influence my dreams in sane ways, it's usually some fucked up dream idea that makes no sense once I wake up.  Also, I absolutely dream in color.

I've never had a zomebie dream. HOWEVER, once when I was a kid, home from school very sick, I had an odd one.

It involved the KKK rolling a house-sized giant spiked ball after me. And they were winning the race.

I was not amused.

Morat, thanks for the info.  I should probably see someone myself, but I'm managing; I'm not as bad as your boy.  My son only just turned four and so far seems perfectly fine.  Will know more later once he's in a proper school.

Geez, people sure seem to watch their kids very close.  You'd think they were kittens or something.

I'm pretty fond of the little guy.

I had a dream tonight where I was a Zombie. Well, sorta. My girlfriend (not my RL one, thankfully) fed me some mood altering pills with every meal and drink to keep me calm and agreeable. All that was missing was an appetite for fresh brains.

I blame this thread!

My brother was diagnosed borderline retarded by the school's counselor. You know what it was? He was a shy kid. He didn't answer most of the questions because he was shy. I'm not kidding, the counselor was convinced he had a preschool reading age then Mum insists on his teacher does the asking and BOOM he's at average for his age. I wouldn't trust a counselor as far as I could throw them.

When I said high, I didn't mean mellow high, I mean what I think what being high on meth would be like.  :grin:

Also, school councilors can suck my balls. In my experience (I have quite a bit, I saw like 4), they just don't give a shit. I had panic attacks all the fucking time in high school (I had extreme social anxiety), and the one there just didn't care. She probably figured the reason I didn't show up all the time was because I was just another delinquent, and she shouldn't waste her time.

She didn't recommend that I go to a real councilor, and she didn't tell me about all the free programs the school was required by the state to run. But she gave all the help in the world to the football players and the rich kids and the cheerleaders. THEN THEY NAMED A WING OF THE SCHOOL AFTER HER! GAAAAAAAAH! :drill:

For those of you who think that Ritalin is habitually overprescribed, sometimes it really does help. When I was on it as a kid (before Adderall was developed), it helped immensely. Then again, I'm a classic case for textbook ADHD. I have every symptom in the book. However, I was a special case -- when my parents would ask me why I would act out in school, I would repeatedly answer (at age 6-7), "I don't know, I can't help myself." Also, with so many ADHD medications out there now (and even one that is stimulant free!), I don't buy that doctors are doing it on the scale that they were in the late nineties and the early millenia. Before you flog me repeatedly for this statement, I do agree that it did happen. However, there is too much knowledge to be had via the internet and backlash from doctor over dosing that I just don't believe it happens anymore.

Make of that what you will.

I used to take Ritalin as an amphetamine substitute. Worked pretty well for me.  :uhrr:

[edit] Whether or not it effects ADHD patients differently or not still somehow doesn't change my opinion on it. Something that got me that high couldn't possibly be good for kids.

Bi-polar could be a seperate thread, hell it could be its own forum. Coming from someone who's had extensive experience with multiple people  with varying degrees of severity, I'll fully back Lantyssa on the assertion that BiPolar people need their meds, and even then it may not be enough sometimes.

I have ADD. I choose to not take my medication because I do not like how the medication makes me feel. I tackle mine by writing a fuckton of lists.  I'm also going through a bout of mild to moderate depression at the moment. I've dealt with this before, and while I have not needed to resort to meds, I would not deny their efficacy.

Sometimes we are too quick to rely on meds for things that have fixable causes as a society. However, there are times when those meds are the only thing saving some people from  real hell.

I also cope with my adhd via lists. It's tough at times, but I don't like to be medicated. Oddly enough, marijuana helps me relax and focus. It's one reason I haven't made better progress on guitar for the last several years, I stopped smoking pot altogether. It sucks. The hyperactive part + my creative imagination is great for improv, but awful for sticking to the song I'm trying to learn. I've finally started to focus a bit better over the last couple months, because I have a couple tracks I'm supposed to play with some cats at the jam and I have to learn them. It sucks because I'll be jamming like mad and then the mind blanks or hands me another song and I can't remember what song we were just playing.

So the lists help overall, but for moment to moment, it's always been a struggle. The movie memento resonates with me, the stuff he talks about staying focused and having discipline. Good advice for life overall, but when you can't concentrate more than a minute, it's essential stuff.

Hyperactivity is getting to be humorous the older I get. When I was a kid it wasn't really even noticeable. In my twenties, I seemed active. Now that I'm almost forty, it's funny. I always run up or down stairs, jump as much as possible, climb stuff, vault things constantly. They call me monkey boy. I have a mental picture of me breaking my hip when I'm 80 and doing the Duke boys slide over the car hood.

I don't have the hyperactive portion to any noticible extent. but I'll agree about momento. Life for me is all about  maintaining as much discipline as possible, but on a bad day that control can fly right out the window. Usually that's followed by me doing about fifteen things at the same time to a partial stage of completion before passing out from exhaustion.

Positive Psychology: The Science of Happiness (http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=4115033&page=1)

Don't trust anyone wanting to diagnose him ADHD that young. Hyper, yes -- there are certain baselines they can compare against and that's at least doable, especially for really high-end cases. And while the two often go hand in hand, there's really not a point to even medicating the attention side until he's able to read.

One of the cool parts of having a kid is watching their mind develop. It's just damn neat to see them work things out -- even when they're "Bad" things (like learning they can lie).

If you're functioning as an adult, there's probably not a reason to medicate yourself -- you've adapted, more or less. It might help, might not -- it's one of those individual things.

When it comes to medicating kids -- or adults -- I try not to judge other people's choices. My wife tries not to judge, which is hard because part of her job as a teacher is to pinpoint children that MIGHT have anyone of a million mental problems. ADHD is probably the most common, but any form of emotional disturbance (burgeoning kleptomaniacs, bipolar kids, etc) and trying to get that kid assessed. And there's really no one else who can do it -- most parents don't have enough experience with kids to know what "normalish" is, and I don't see routine psychological evaluations ever becoming part of society (and fuck, shrinks have their own biases and agendas). So it's left to teachers to basically use their experience and say "There's something wrong with that kid -- either his home life, his parenting, or in his head. We should check that out". And yeah, they're going to have their biases (what teacher doesn't prefer the smart, well-behaved, self-motivated kids? Which is basically a tiny fraction of kids!).

Sky: I totally understand you about the lists. My mother-in-law is just as bad as my wife and son, but she'd NEVER admit it. She's handled it all her life by, basically, becoming truly obsessive about a handful of things. How clean the house is (she has given herself anxiety attacks worrying about how clean MY house is. We don't let her visit. It's better for everyone's mental health. We just visit her instead), what other people think is a huge one -- one of the common manifestations of ADHD is the lack of a social filter. You tend to miss common social cues and thus have to basically watching yourself like a hawk.

I honestly haven't experienced it myself, of course, but from the descriptions I've heard, I've imagined it like being a certain stage of tipsy. You know the point where you've drunk JUST enough to know that you're not really thinking totally straight, so you're constantly thinking EVERYTHING through to make sure you don't do something stupid? Normally I just have a few more beers, but I get the impression my mother-in-law lives her life much that way.

Stray: Ritalin is basically speed. That's why it's a controlled substance. (Heavily controlled, I might add. It's a major PITA to refill my wife's). If you don't have ADHD, it's....speed. You get jazzed up, energetic, focus on a million things and basically burn through shit. If you DO have ADHD, it works differently -- it calms you down, puts your brain back under your control. Why do you think I said the most common test for ADHD was to simply medicate and see what happens? It's cheaper than an MRI. :)

If it makes you feel better, you now know you probably don't have any form of ADHD. :)

I wonder how many diagnoses there would be if people just ate healthy and got some fucking exercise once in awhile. When I'm feeling a blah or dumpy or whatever I find just getting off my ass for a little while really helps, even if the "getting up" part takes the most motivation.

The brain is great at manufacturing its own drugs (most of the time), but people are generally too lazy and impatient to let it happen.

My ADHD isn't caused by a bad diet or lack of excercise.  I've had it my whole life, I just didn't realize it until last year.  Growing up, my diet was mostly food we grew ourselves and I was outside plenty.  Later in life I worked in a warehouse.  If I was just lazy then I probably would have noticed.  ADHD can definitely look like laziness to others.  Forcing myself to be organized is like sawing off one of my own toes.  I fucking hate it and I'm terrible at it, which is why my wife has to pay the bills.

I do managed to keep organized at work, at least well enough to keep from getting into trouble (having root ability helps a ton, nyuk, nyuk).

I have to go, I forgot about the pizza I put in the oven and it turned into a hockey puck.

mild cases of a lot of mental or neurological conditions might be affected by diet and exercise, but the positive benefits of those activities no more ward off significant illnesses of a mental/psychological nature any more than they cure cancer.

Somone who's suffering Clinical depression or Bipolar disorder isn't going to feel significantly better after a couple  of months of a well balanced diet and proper exercise without their meds.

I'd venture to say that if we had more people eating right and working out, the total numbers would go up, because there would be less of an indication to think that the reason you're dealing with crushing sadness or mania is due to you eating those cheese doodles and peperoni pizzas while watching  House. But I freely admit I could be wrong on that.

I didn't have my ADD diagnosed until a year and a half ago.  The knowledge itself was as much a relief as anything. I thought everybody's mind worked like that and I just sucked at life.

Now, I can tell when I'm going off the rails, and can get myself under control. It would be easier with meds, but  the creativity that comes from my condition gives me too much happiness to dull myself down by taking those meds.

So far, so great. So far the only side effect is still the delayed orgasm, and as predicted it's a giant pain in the ass.

And in my case I really feel it was past diet, excercise, and positive thinking. I was into the silent, seething rage territory - and that was almost all there was left in me.

*edited out the rest of the stuff because I don't think any of you would have ever looked at me the same afterwards.

:ye_gods:

So many different ways to respond to that.  :drill:

This is so very true for times when people have mild to moderate symptoms. And you are right, the hardest part is getting up.

With as much respect as I can muster to this, and not directed at anyone here, just outloud.  It's also a bit of a ramble:

With regards to kids, I wonder how much of their 'problems' is lack of parental supervision and teaching kids discipline and focus?  If you toss your kid into the corner and don't work with them, and they're left up to their own devices, I can't imagine much good can happen.  And mostly, I honestly believe, is parents not taking an active enough roll in their children's lives due to whatever reason - whether it's working too much, both parents working too much, etc.  There's just too much going on around children.  Parents toss TVs and consoles in their kids bedrooms just so they won't have to deal with them.  Parents feel the need to have their children constantly entertained on car trips with built in DVD players in their cars.  How much of it is parents just not wanting to having to deal with them?

Yeah, it's tough after a long workday to come home and cook dinner and clean house and interact in a positive way with your kids AND find time for each other AND find time for downtime.  But Goddamn, it's your children.  Make the time.  Make the effort.  It's not about you anymore.  The minute that baby boy or girl is born, your life becomes secondary.  Hell, it's not even in third place.  As a man, your focus should be on your wife and child/children.   Everyone and everything else?  Not even close.  Life is hard.  So what?  Quit crying about it, cowboy up, and accept your responsibilites as a significant other/husband/wife/father.  Life isn't MTV.  Or All My Children.  Or a 22 minute sitcom.

The kids never learn to just sit quietly for any stretch of time, or how to effectively deal with boredom, or even how to entertain themselves.  TVs and such have taken over coloring books and Dr Seuss.  They're taught to express themselves RIGHT THERE AND RIGHT THEN!! because holding it in is bad and noone should tell them they can't do something.  It gets taken to extremes.  There's a time and place for an outburst or display of anger, and they aren't learning how to process and compartmentalize that.

I realize the days of stay at home moms are over for the majority of people for a myriad of reasons.  The mother wants a career.  They think they can't afford it.  Which likely they couldn't without making some major lifestyle changes.  My son is amazing.  He's healthy, happy, smart, and just an absolutely beautiful, handsome little boy.  I firmly believe that the reason he is such an amazing creature is because we're lucky enough that my wife CAN stay at home and WANTS to stay at home.  He's supremely well adjusted, I can take him anywhere and not worry about a temper tamtrum.  Hell, I started taking him to Hooters when he was 4 months old (a great deal of fun, I might add).  He's socialized, as we are lucky that many of my wifes friends all seemed to get pregnant within 3-6 months of each other, and they all get playdates 3-4 times a week.  Which all the fathers believe was a conspiracy :P.  Anyway, to compare him to my best friends kid who is 1 month older, there is none. He's always sick, he's finicky, and pretty much an unholy terror.  They both work, and the kid is in daycare.  They've got severe cases of Keeping Up With The Jones, and it should probably be noted that they are both two high strung high maintanence individuals.  My wife and I are about as laid back as you can get. 

Which leads me to...

Children at an early age emulate their parents.  People are just angry.  Violent.  They exhibit extreme amounts of passive aggressive qualities.  Hell, look at F13.  Look at ANY forum.  Look how quickly some people can get spun like a top and go from 0 to full throttle nerd fury rage hulk smash in no time flat?  You don't think kids pick up on that?  Just your mood without saying anything?  Heh, the minute they are born, they're just cooing pooping drooling sponges.  They can't help but pick up on their parents mannerisms and moods(swings) and emulate it because that is what they accept as norm.

And parents really need to take a hard look at themselves, and quit making excuses for their own (fixable) shortcomings as parents. 

If you aren't one hundred thousand percent ready to be a parent and everything it entails, don't have a kid.

Ah well.  Chances are if you read that wall of text, you aren't ADD or ADHD or whatever.

Har. Skiptotheendftw, good punchline for the attention-challenged.  :awesome_for_real:

I hear that a lot. Generally from parents whose kids don't have problems -- or who don't consider their kids to BE problems even if, for instance, they are.

ADHD kids aren't that way because they're bored. Or over stimulated. Or because they weren't raised by a loving, stay-at-home parent. They're that way for the same reason clinically depressed people are -- because their neurochemistry is off.

You take ritalin, and it's like taking speed. It IS taking speed. Your brain and body react in a very specific manner. It's like that for every normal person who takes ritalin. Give it to my son, or a child with ADHD, and they have a completely different reaction. Somehow I don't think "child rearing" is on the list of things that changes biochemical reactions.

It's really easy to blame parents, in abstract. Because we all know bad parents. And we all know bad parents who blame their bad parenting on something else -- bad teachers, ADHD, whatever. It's a cop out, though. It's sitting up on your high horse and saying "My kid's fine. You're just a shitty parent", even if you don't mean it that way. Even if sometimes it's true. It's still a copout, and an insulting one no matter how carefully you phrase it.

Let's face it -- there's really no way to phrase "I wonder how much is the parents, because here's how I raise my kid and he's great" in abstract without, in effect, saying you know better than all those abstract parents about how to raise a child.

And for the record: The great "overmedicating" of children in the US is about as real a story as the incredible dangers of shark attacks. Try here (http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/37/21/20)
Second study is mentioned as well.

Another mention here (http://record.wustl.edu/news/page/normal/7513.html):
Which does make sense, if you think about it. As I've said several times -- treating a child for ADHD when he or she doesn't have it will make his or her behavior worse. It's really hard to "overmedicate" children, at least for ADHD.

And I've yet to hear anecdotal warnings about overmedicating children for any other form of mental disorder.

So no, it's really not the parents. Or rather, if the parent says "It's not his fault, he has ADHD" and then says "But we don't medicate him for it" then it IS the parent's fault. Either they're lying, or they're not taking any steps (whether medication, therapy, behavioral training, whatever) to deal with it.

TLDR

I actually would love to see a comparison study done between Europe and US with regards to ADD/ADHD. 

The only thing I found with some numbers in a hurry:

http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2007/11/children-adhd-and-ritalin.html

Don't have a clue how reliable the author is. What he writes sounds awfully close to what I already suspected, though.

For one thing, Europeans (and Asians, for that matter) continue to eat as much fish as they want while pregnant and have markedly lower rates of childhood behavior disorders than Americans. Again, I think that diet is a factor, and fuck the FDA.

Since we were talking about ADHD so much, doctors did a CT scan of my brain and noted that the part that generally denotes ADHD (something about something in the front -- this was a long while ago) was smaller than most other people's. Anyone else experience this?

I don't think any sensible person disputes that diet and parenting (and economic situation, and culture, and etc etc) are huge influences on children (and adults) but it's also true that people can still have problems despite all these other things being handled well.

It makes me feel like shit! Haven't messed with that stuff in years.

Any thread where Ironwood uses a :) and Sky sounds just like me is a winner in my book.  :grin:

I'm a list maker too, known for it at work, as well for the fast talking hyperactivity. I probably would have been on Ritalin as a kid though, and may have eventually "outgrown" whatever it was I couldn't control. But ya know? I wouldn't really change anything. I didn't really actively work through it per se. Rather, I found the right kind of people to be social with (we're all unique in a way) and backed into the right kind of career for it. It helped that while my folks didn't quite know how to manage me, they were very supportive of what I wanted to do (once I got to college and they couldn't control how much I drew pictures and how often I used computer... best thing ever was my first real job, calling them and telling them that's what I do for a living now! ;) ).

Pills get a bad rap in America, but they are useful in the right situations. Blame does fall on the establishment, but it is still about the individual practitioners more so than some grand triad conspiracy between the FDA, drug companies and insurance companies. If meds work for you, than goddamn, take the meds. 

I did like SnakeCharmer's cowboy-up comment though  :grin: I was like that, in my 20s, on my own when I could be as narcissistic as I wanted. Now in my late 30s, a few polevaults from a broken hip, two kids (one with chronic intestinal issues and a wife taking Effexor, yea, there's a lifestyle difference.

I was diagnosed as being ADD as a kid and was on both ritalin and dizipramine(sp?) and I have a similar story as Darniq, in that it made me talk fast, lack the ability to concentrate, and hyper-attention. As I've grown, the effects have become more mild; Practice has made me talk at more normal speed (even though I'm still thinking very fast) and caffeine and other non-prescription stimulants help me concentrate when I really need it. I still have the hyper-attention, but have learned triggers to break myself out of it.

For those of you who don't know what hyper-attention is, let me explain. When I'm engrossed in an activity, like reading, playing a video game, coding, or anything that requires focused attention, I literally tune everything else in the world out. Unless you call my name, or there's a loud, jarring sound like a phone ringing, or physical contact, I won't hear you or pay attention to anything in the 'outside world'. It's like wearing headphones all the time and living in a world that skips forward at irregular intervals.

It's normal to have something similar to this, people daydream or go into light trances all day long, but for me it's taken to an unreasonable extreme. It's both a blessing and a curse. I have an advantage in that I can stay focused for hours on end, making me good at things like coding and troubleshooting which require long periods of focused attention. This is offset by the the fact that I can easily miss meals because I'm simply not paying attention and didn't notice myself getting hungry. I'll slip into this mode unintentionally and by time I come out, hours have passed. I miss appointments all the time.

I used to pull out of my parking lot every morning while listening to an audiobook in the morning and the next time I notice the outside world, I'm at work with no memory of the intervening time. In fact, this is how I stayed sane when I had a daily 3 hour commute. I wasn't in the car, I was in the book's world.

I didn't struggle with public school only because classes were a joke. When I went to college my grades took a nosedive because I had never learned to study and the classes were actually difficult. To this day, I have great trouble studying - I pretty much can't do it. As a friend of mine put it, lots of comprehension, no retention. I remember methods but completely forget details like names and dates. I tend to remember specifics if I do them, so all is not lost with instruction manuals and the like.

EEK!  I think EVERYBODY has ADD!  Everyone here, anyway.  Maybe you should form a support group secret society.  You could get handshakes.

Your avatar is gross and also mean and spiteful to two certain someones who are quitting and you know it!. You should change it!

I think it's inspiring for people who want to quit.  When I quit, I remember quite a few people here telling me to go smoke because I was cranky and somewhat insane.  Anyway... like I said... I think it's inspiring.  Who want's to look like my avatard?  VDL and Sauced KNOW I wub 'em to bits.

So there.

Oh yea? Your avatar spoils the ending of a game some still haven't finished :-)

(just kidding)

Interesting description of your daily routine. Mine is similar, and I've been able to use it to similar advantage for a time. I hit a wall at my company though, where if I continued doing that I'd be an "individual contributor" forever with only cost-of-living raises and bonuses thereafter. In going the management track though, I've had to make a bunch of adjustments.

Luckily people just know I talk fast :-) But other things have had to change. Management is more about knowing what's going on than knowing the specific micro details about how things are getting done. Whatever amount of ADD I do have has helped in other ways. It even has its own labels! "Solutions oriented", "Focused", "Proactive".  :grin:

And Signe, I agree. Which, of course, is also part of SC's point I guess :wink:

It's funny more people don't pay attention to diet. What do they think their bodies are built and maintained with?

Sugar and spice and everything nice?  Snips and snails and puppy dog tails?  Fairy dust? 

Actually, my nephew used to say there were tiny mice in his body making his muscles and everything else work.  I sort of like his theory.  Anyway, the only way we'll ever know what people are made of is if we open them up and take a look.  AND NOBODY WANTS THAT!

There's a little old man that lives in my brains and fetches things when I ask for them. Well, he starts to fetch them when I ask, no promise on when he delivers them, though. If he feels like it. And he uses a filing system, dern them computers! I've held to this belief since I was a teenager.

That one's good, too.

This book (http://www.amazon.com/Stupid-Self-Help-Attention-Deficit-Disorder/dp/0684815311) helped me immensely in understanding how my brain works.  I don't have hyperactivity (in fact, I'm incredibly slow and methodical), but I have most of the other symptoms.

When I was a kid, we just called it "being a nerd".   :headscratch:

Yeah, me too.

Hello, my name is Yegolev.

Hello Yegolev!

I'm on the Lexapro now.  At least my heart is fine.

ONE OF US.  ONE OF US.

Coincidentally, I just had another zombie dream.

 :awesome_for_real: at your picture, Llava. :D

Stupid lexapro.  Made me all angsty and cranky.  Same with wellbutrin and all of the other drugs.  My psychiatrist that I had to talk to recently said "obviously you aren't depressed, so anti-depression medication isn't going to do anything for you."  Stellar.

Thanks, I was highly amused when I found it.

In addition to the lexapro, which at worst isn't hurting me so far, I also have some klonopin... but I'm going to try to stay away from that stuff.  The lexapro isn't exactly keeping the mental noise down (they are NOT voices!), but it does seem to blunt the major symptoms of the stress-response.  Basically, I still worry about shit but it doesn't cause my chest to tighten and my throat to close, also my digestion isn't stopping for hours on end.

I know what's wrong with you.
(http://techdigest.tv/colonoscope.jpg)

Kinky.

I recommend heavy pain killers. The dull roar can be further reduced to a pleasing purr.