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My son is on methylphyndate and quanfacine for fasd and I really don't see any benefit of them. So far though the side effect is absolutely zero appetite. I and he would like to be off the meds. So far my wife thinks they help and the psychiatrist is slowly increasing them with no fixes in his attention issues

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I was diagnosed with ADHD in third grade and medicated though grade school. I continued to struggle with symptoms as an adult but I was not interested in going back on medication as my side effects from the meds had been so wholly miserable. ADHD was however, part of my identity, I was ADHD. I happened to visit a functional medicine doctor for another issue and he identified some pretty significant mineral and nutrient deficiencies. I took care of those as part of my treatment plan and it was almost scary how much my symptomology improved for ADHD. I no longer feel it is appropriate to label myself as someone who IS ADHD. My idea of what ADHD is, what causes it, and what it means totally changed. To me now it is a set of symptoms with a root cause. That root cause can be different things for different people, but it does not make sense to me anymore to think of it as some immutable part of who a person is. It frustrates me that I had gone so long and had to endure side effects like loss of appetite, feeling like I was buzzing, out of body like experiences all while on meds, when nutrition seemed to be the primary driver of my issues! The biggest frustration I have now when I try and talk to people about this experience is being told that clearly I NEVER actually had REAL ADHD and I had been misdiagnosed! Excuse me? Sounds like a no true Scotsman attack!

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Questions: if stimulant drugs provide a boost in focus, why don’t those diagnosed with ADHD show improvements after being on the drug?

Is it common practice to gradually increase the dosage for patients on stimulant drugs?

Of all those diagnosed with ADHD, what percentage of those actually have some kind of legitimate problem? And is that problem neurological?

What is the connection between tech usage and ADHD diagnoses? I would’ve expected a correlation with the rise of smartphone usage, but the spike appears before then.

Does this all come down to pharmaceutical companies trying to make money? How do we know who to trust in medicine?

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The rates of diagnosis are way too high in children. Most of these children being diagnosed do not truly have the condition. I was on Concerta for years (I think I was a teenager when I switched to Concerta) and it's worked well for me. Because of insurance reasons, I am no longer taking medication (my health insurance stopped covering brand name Concerta). Unless insurance starts to cover the brand name again, I will likely never take any ADHD medication for years. I was four when diagnosed and that was long before we had iPhones. Today, I don't truly need medication. When I was younger, I did. Today I don't.

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Pharma fucks

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Diagnosis is bullshit

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And like ADHD, so many other Mental epidemics. But isn't pharma, the product of human minds?

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