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My son has recently been placed on 10mg per day of Metadate CD. Today is his first dosage day.

Do any of you have any experience with this drug? If so, I know a frightened father who would love some insight/assurance/information on it.

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Join the Army, see the world, meet interesting people - and kill them.

~Pacifist Badge, 1978

Ritalin is perfectly safe. One of my best friends is on it and I've never noticed any change in his personality besides the desired effect of paying more attention. I do not however suggest you take it yourself .

Edit

Edit- Its an individual case though. Often times things vary from person to person.

This post has been edited by MogMaster on 4th February 2005 20:56

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I know someone who takes this medication, and he's perfectly fine. He said that at times it did make him excessively drowsy and at times less aware. He said it was only the kind where you wouldn't hear anything unless someone directed it at you. These were only a few times, and he says that he'd probably rather have the side effects rather than have a shortened attention span.

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"We're not tools of the government or anyone else. Fighting... fighting was the only thing I was ever good at, but at least I always fought for what I believed in." - Frank Yeager (a.k.a. Grey Fox)

As long as your son's psychiatrist isn't a quack, he should be fine. Personally, I was on Ritalin for seven years when I was a kid - misdiagnosed with ADD, that is. The stuff made me paranoid as hell for several hours a day and caused bad twitching spasms. Apparently if you don't actually have ADD then those medications, which contain amphetamines -- found in drugs like speed -- will effect the user just like an "upper" instead of actually doing anything to help them (since they technically don't need it, heh). I don't know if that applies to all the medications, like Metadate, though.

Other than that I can't think of anything to be wary of.

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Ritalin, as with any other medicine, has it's adventage and disadvantage...
it's imperiment that yor and your son will think these out!

Im diagnosed as ADD and took ritalin a few years back...it was a nightmere!
however today there are better medication with less sign effects...
without medication(espetialy in my school years) I couldn't concertrate at all! and ritalin helped me focus I've desided to quit after the medicine started effect me quite hazzardusly and since then I can hardly pay attantion

also there is nothing to be assamed off bein ADD it as astimated by the CDC that 1 out of 10 children has Attantion Deficit Disorder or other forms of Learning disabilitis... infact resharch shows that ADD children have higher IQ rateing for some reason

http://www.breggin.com/ritalin.html

I don't have any experience with ADD, I'm sorry to say. But I am aware that a great many kids are overdiagnosed either with ADD or the severity of it. It's in your best interest to make sure you are in total agreement with your doctor(s) before you exhaust all your options and turn to drugs, IMO.

Best of luck with it for your whole family.

Edit

Yeah, I'm not very bright.

This post has been edited by Rangers51 on 5th February 2005 15:21

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Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

"Metadate CD, was FDA approved on 4/01. There is nothing new here, being just a reformulation of Ritalin for sustained delivery. Most information that applies to , and also applies here. "

The above is from http://www.adhdhelp.org/metadate.htm

Another link:

http://www.healthsquare.com/newrx/cx1383b.htm

It seems to say that they're more or less the same thing.


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I had an old signature. Now I've changed it.

Well, day one was in the books yesterday. Hunter (my son) woke up before my parents (the daytime sitters) did, and got dad's mustache trimmer scissors and sliced up the blinds in the den, then cut the phone line to the computer.

I'm willing to give the medicine a mulligan, but if I get the same kind of results after today when I get off work and go pick him up, then the medication is done.

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Join the Army, see the world, meet interesting people - and kill them.

~Pacifist Badge, 1978

I'm ADD, and I got druged with lots of thing s. Don't let your kid turn out to be like me, don't give him the damn pills. I don't view ADD as much as a disorder as much as a different mode of thought, which is how you're going to have to learn to behave like to adapt to if you plan on teaching your kid.

A lot of ADD kids learn better throgh a hands-on method. I learned more about agriculture from being drug outside and into a garden than in a damn classroom. As a matter of fact, classrooms are probly the bane of your child's existance. Here's a neat trick, teach him math, something that ADD kids either get, or don't get, by using candy as a hands on me ans of addition, subtraction, ect.

I'm not gonna try to tell you how to raise him, but being an ADD kid myself, I can probly give you a lot of advice on what drugs they will use. They might try Dexadrine, don't let them use it. If it works correctly, precious Hunter will be antsy all day in the classroom, absorb EVERYTHING around him (therefore effectivly learn in class) and become groggy i n the late afternoon, nearsighted over the course of a few years, and probly cause himself some early injury from all the hyperactivity he'll get. Dexadrine is an amphetimine offshot....like crack. INVESTIGATE everything they try to give your child.

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At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid.
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I was hoping someone on here had been through it personally. Thank you, AD.

I don't think he really has attention deficit the more I think about it... He can stay on task, I mean. he can watch a movie, or sit and color or draw for an hour or things like that without getting distracted. His problem is that he acts on impulse, without thinking about what he's doing at all before he does it. Now given, a 5 year old is a 5 year old... but some of the things he does and says are totally off the wall, and sometimes a bit scary. Anyways, the doctor assures me that the Metadate is meant to "slow his thought process down" just enough to make him consider what he's doing before he does it. Two days into it, I can't tell much difference... but the doctor did say it may take 2 weeks to see results.

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Join the Army, see the world, meet interesting people - and kill them.

~Pacifist Badge, 1978

As a kid, I was told I had ADD after I had taken some test. I had always been a very busy kid, talking and moving a lot. I never could focus on anything unless it was REALLY necessary on a VERY short notice (at which point I usually excelled, because I was never slow with learning). I was also EXTREMELY forgetful over long periods of time. I could never keep an schedule, because I would forget to do what had to be done. I always lost everything. When I was a kid I was a creature of chaos

Medicine? I never took any. It always bothered me when people stated that I was busy and everything, so around 16 I made a conscious effort to become calmer and more collected in everyday life, and have my things done and prepared. And I succeeded, I can happily add. Although I'm still a little chaotic, I haven't screwed up as much as I used to in my childhood in a long time, and when I recently told a few roommates I had always been a busy kid and had a one point been diagnosed with ADD, they thought I was kidding. They called me an 'oasis of tranquility'!

I can't really advise you what to do. Theoretically, I think I wouldn't give my child(ren) medicine unless it was really a problem, but I have never lived with an ADD child, just been one. I've always been a little iffy about medication unless necessary, so I'm not completely impartial on the subject.

On a slightly related note: Was I the only one who laughed at the fact that AD has ADD? It's all in the name

This post has been edited by Djibriel on 7th February 2005 15:54

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The Collapse of Heaven and Earth

to add another side of the story, i was also diagnosed with the (in my opinion, entirely contrived -- but it's another topic in that, i guess) condition of adhd when i was a youngster.

Quote

His problem is that he acts on impulse, without thinking about what he's doing at all before he does it.

i had, and still have, the exact same problem (mine was also that i often got bored with the rate at which the classes moved and thus would "lose focus" -- in that i was already through processing the information that was being presented to the class for the nth time). the doctor tried to prescribe ritalin to me, but my mother wouldn't let me take it (and i thank her for that now). as such, i really don't know anything about those drugs, but i can tell you that friends growing up with who were likewise diagnosed and *did* take the medicine almost invariably hated their medicine and skipped as many doses as they could get away with.

the way ritalin works is by blocking dopanie (and possibly norepinephrine; the exact mechanism has yet to be described) reuptake in the brain (like speed, NOT like crack). so like, you have all these extra neurotransmitter molecules floating around in the brain, which is all well and good for a while (although i have seen ritalin/adderall make people "focus" so much that they couldn't notice or think about two things at once) -- but when the effects of the drug wear off, your brain's dopamine reserve, since it has not been reuptaking the molecules, is slightly depleted. thus you become tired and even less able to focus when the effects of the drug wear off (for some parents, it's a win-win: jr causes fewer problems in school, and he's so chill at home he doesn't even have to be watched).

i'm glad my mother didn't let me take an adhd drug. not only do i not acknowledge adhd (at least not the way it is diagnosed nowadays), but it doesn't seem like a desirable drug to be made to take every day. as others have said, make sure you are in total agreement with your child's pediatrician/psychologist.

I myself got diagnosed with ADHD years ago, in a way similar to gozaru~'s. Some shrink just decided that because I thought about too many things, therefore I had ADHD. On that note, I'll advise everyone here, ALWAYS BE SKEPTICAL ABOUT WHAT A PSYCHOLOGIST OR PSYCHIATRIST SAYS. You never know what kinds of side-effects might pop up with these drugs, and with a condition like ADD or ADHD, which would theoretically need thousands of dollars and brain surgeons to accurately diagnose, but is so easily confusable with normal behavior, don't trust them. I have a personal hunch myself that either someone 'created' the ADD/ADHD label just to deal with his/her children or his/her client's children, or it was first seen in a actual, serious ADD/ADHD case and then got misapplied thereafter in a frenzy/hype.

On the other hand, I have the theory that most 'mild cases' of ADD/ADHD are actually signs of precociousness among children.

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Quote (Hamedo @ 7th February 2005 08:06)

Anyways, the doctor assures me that the Metadate is meant to "slow his thought process down"

Can anyone tell me what's wrong with this picture?

Oh, and>
http://www.ritalindeath.com/
http://www.shirleys-wellness-cafe.com/ritalin.htm
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/03/04/...ain542774.shtml

Don't risk it. What's worth more, his life or his attention?

I can back up Silverfork's claim of spasms, as a friend of mine was on the stuff. It was pretty severe.

This post has been edited by Mikey on 8th February 2005 15:53

Yeah, that had my eyebrows raised too.

I was diagnosed with ADHD, but I was too young to remember. I didn't find out till I was maybe in my teens that it was official. Never took pills for it till after I moved outta the house. Welbutrin for me, but I ditched it in favor of a notepad and pencil. Worked just as well and didn't cost nearly as much.

Simply put, I'm rather like my parents in that I'm real skeptical of the legitimacy of ADD/ADHD. Kids are hard to deal with, and pills just seem like an easy out that'll prolly come back to bite ya in the ass later on in life.

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i was diagnosed with ADD since before i can remember.... i have also been on ritalin for the same amount of time.... but accually recently (sometime in the last 7 months) i switched to something called concerta... which they say is just like slow acting ritalin.... so that i kicks in periodically throughout the day.... but yeah the only difference i noticed with this new pill is that i get tired a lot more... but yeah that's my knowledge on the subject

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~ A Hero Is Someone Who Stands When Their Legs Are Gone~

I've never had ADD myself, but I have taught classes full of them. I agree with everyone that ADD is ridiculously overdiagnosed. But I do see instances where perscription drugs are beneficial. I have kids who just can't function in a classroom if they forgot their Ritilin, to the point where they need to go to the office for awhile, or we have to send them home. When kids really need it, it's very easy to see the difference between when they've taken it and when they haven't. I don't know much about Metadate CD, but if I were you and I thought there was a good chance Hunter has ADD, I'd give the pills a little more of a chance, then compare what he's like when he's medicated to when he's not.

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Ouch. The Drug issue is a tricky one.

I can't say I've ever taken it personaly, but I know a fair bit of people who've had it recomended to them. Honestly, I've often found that it really wasn't neccisary, and that their teachers and doctors were using drugs such as Ritilan as a quick fix. Half of the time their poor school marks and concentration stemmed from just being BORED.

As an interesting side note, many psycoligists belive that ADD is a new, subtle bit of evolution in humans. Wiring the brain to work overtime to adapt to the new, more fast paced enviroment that the children are growing up in. It may, or may not be true, but it offers an interesting insite into this "disorder."

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