A crushing blow to internet douchebaggery...

[MrHat]

Signe wins my afternoon.

Thank you.

[Yegolev]

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

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

There's one for everybody!

I disagree.

[SnakeCharmer]

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.

[Margalis]

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.

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.

[Ironwood]

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.

[HaemishM]

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.

[Tebonas]

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

[Merusk]

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.

[Yegolev]

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.

[Morat20]

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".

[HaemishM]

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.

[Morat20]

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?

[lamaros]

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.

[Margalis]

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?

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.

[lamaros]

That one has the added bonus of misogyny!

[NowhereMan]

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.

[Murgos]

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.

[Strazos]

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.

[Yegolev]

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.

[Signe]

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

[Yegolev]

I'm pretty fond of the little guy.

[Tebonas]

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!

[Calantus]

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.

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.

[FatuousTwat]

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.

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

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!

[cmlancas]

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.

[stray]

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

[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.

[sigil]

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.

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.

[Sky]

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.

[sigil]

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.

[Lantyssa]

Positive Psychology: The Science of Happiness

What exactly is happening inside the brains of people experiencing joy and happiness?

"It's a very complicated chemical soup," explained Dr. Richard Davidson, who has made a life's work out of studying "happy brains." His lab at the University of Wisconsin is devoted to understanding how much of our joy level is set at birth, and how much we can control.

[Morat20]

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.

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. :)

[voodoolily]

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.

[Yegolev]

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.

[sigil]

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.

[angry.bob]

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.