Is ADD a "disorder"

[bluedolphin]

Im curious if Doc works differently on people that have ADD or ADHD? It seems from what im reading from this and other treads, that some of you feel relaxed after taking DOC, wile others are getting a speedy feeling from DOC.

SO if any of you do have ADD or ADHD, maybe you can step up to the plate and say so.

Im gonna be trying this soon @ 3mg's "IF" I can find the time! I'm not ADD or ADHD. Nor have I ever recreationaly used METH; the only drug i can relate speed to is Coffee. for the record yeah i tried meth in 86 and that was just a 1/2 gram in a weeks time. Frankly i don't care for the stuff, but that was to long ago to remember it.
Cheers

I think ADD and ADHD are more or less bullshit cultural "disorders". Not that I am probably either one.

But I do have a semi-permanent tolerance to dex-amphetamine ... not that I use it frequently, but it takes about 20mg to do what 10mg did several years ago even on the rare occasion that I do take amphetamines.

I appear to have no amphetamine crossover tolerance that affects how hard I trip on DOC, because it seems to me like I'm getting normal effects from DOC.

By the way, Adderall makes me much more hyper, less focused, and much more physical side effects than DOC has on me.

 

[subdefy]

I disagree with ADD and ADHD being bullshit cultural "disorders" but I do agree that it's overprescribed. Hell it's not that I only have trouble concentrating on schoolwork it's that I have trouble concentrating on what I enjoy. Also how do you know that it is not this cultural which induces it. There is speculation maybe conclusions? on how infants watching television could set them up for ADD/HD. Also I'm well aware that amphetamines induce concentration in both those that have ADD and those that don't but what about Strattera (an SNRI)? How is that able to be effective on some children?

I've used 2C-E and found it gave me a very focus feeling which could possibly be attributed to the amphetamine edge?

 

[bluedolphin]

^^
All I'm saying is 50 years ago no such thing as ADD existed. 200 years ago there was no amphetamine or anything.

If you want to think of yourself as "disordered" that's your choice. I have trouble concentrating and getting stuff done much of the time, but I simply attribute that as part of my complex, yet mostly predictable, personality.

peace

 

[subdefy]

^^ Says you. There are many theories on how ADD has come to be. One that predates this society is the hunter / gather ritual. How do you know ADD didn't exist 50 years ago? Perhaps it simply wasn't diagnosed. Hell, homosexuality was a disease 50 years ago.

 

[bluedolphin]

^^
Well, in 50 years I think there's a good chance the idea of "ADD/ADHD" will be revamped, possibly called something else all together and treated differently.

No doubt in my mind anyway that an amphetamine or Ritalin diet is probably not the way to "fix" a large group of people.

People don't really change. Society has. So I guess we're just looking at this from different angles.

 

[Jamshyd]

If it helps any...

I used to live in the middle east, and in the culture I was in, ADD is unheard of (being hyperactive is simply being hyperactive) and Homosexuality is no less a disease than the flu! (I'm gay myself - luckily, I did not tell anyone about it while living there, or I would have ended up in a mental asylum). That was 6 years ago, and I don't see it changing (so even with things being diffent here in North American society, they are radically different in other societies).

This, to me (especially as a sociologist), proves that a lot of "mental disorders" are really simply personalities that don't conform to society's norms, and western society in particular has an over-medicalisation problem. Like that HPPD bullshit.

That being said, I will repeat what I said earlier about DOC - just because it has Amphetamine in its structure, doesn't mean that it will have amphetamine-like subjective effects. If we were to follow this line of thought, then Strychnine should be trippy since its an indole

 

[fastandbulbous]

That being said, I will repeat what I said earlier about DOC - just because it has Amphetamine in its structure, doesn't mean that it will have amphetamine-like subjective effects.

Fenfluramine - 1-(3-trifluoromethylphenyl)-2-(N-ethylamino)propane - is an amphetamine (it can also be called m-trifluroro-N-ethylamphetamine) and it produces sedative effects in most people at clinical doses, so the amphetamine skeleton is no guarentee of CNS stimulant activity. Serotonogic amphetamines are a lot less likely to produce CNS stimulation than the simple derivatives (which are mainly dopaminergic/noradrenergic). Just remember alpha-methylfentanyl has an amphetamine structure incorporated into the molecule; now that's anything but stimulating.

All I'm saying is 50 years ago no such thing as ADD existed

Neither did PTSD and people were executed during WW1 who should have been hospitalized for the condition, but that doesn't mean that it didn't exist. 400 years ago, the idea that disease came from bacteria didn't exist, but it didn't stop people dying from plague.

ADD/ADHD is a real condition characterized by an insufficient dopamine release in the reward pathways from activities such as reading. Amphetamines & methylphenidate work because they increase the amount of dopamine released in the reward pathways, thereby allowing the person to continue the activity.

Mind you, from what I've seen on these boards, CNS stimulants are massively overprescribed to people who don't have the condition at all (esp in the US where medicine=money/profit). Some people getting prescribed the drugs are either after cheap/legal drugs, are lazy or are just plain not the sharpest knife in the draw. For these people, the drugs are not going to improve learning or concentration etc and doctors who dish them out by the handful deserve their arses collectively kicking for pandering to what people want as opposed to their medical needs.

 

[gloggawogga]

ADD/ADHD is a real condition characterized by an insufficient dopamine release in the reward pathways from activities such as reading.

Characterized by not caused by. Its just a correlation, like serotinin levels to depression, and its not there in every case. Causation is only a hypothesis.

Also, there could be underlying causative factors (environmental or cultural conditions) that are in some way signaling the brain to release less dopamine. If so, try to find out those factors instead of taking speed.

CNS stimulants are massively overprescribed to people who don't have the condition at all

Do they use diagnostic tests at all? Do they scan your brain to check dopamine activity? DSM-IV is profit motivated psuedoscience, it is purely subjective what goes into it and how it is intepreted. If they could come up with a way to measure a childs dopamine pathway activity and use that as diagnostic tool before prescribing drugs it would be alot more credible.

Of course, if a medication works for you and you are happy with it, you should keep taking it.

 

[illusion25]

lol i think some people have hyperactive personalities and are add/adhd. it is just the chemical balance in people.
but i think that because somepeople are hyper then they are labeled as add.
I am a very hyperactive person when im sober, get alot of anxiety and insomnia. this is not because of drug use but i was born this way. it is my natural body chemisrty.
So one reason why i love weed is because it helps me out with life and how i deal with it. i pretty much self medicate myself. and pot helps out alot more than stimulants do. stimulants can help people concentrate, but have a lot of bad things that come with it.
I think the whole add business is a way of BIG CORPORATIONS and drug companies to sell "meth in a pill" to thousands of children/adults every year. it is a million dollar business. Some people do get help from these stimulants but for the majority it is over prescribed and very much over labeled.

 

[human]

ADD is indeed wayyyyyy overdiagnosed, but I mean...have any of you ever seen people who are true ADD cases? I've known two of them in my life, one was a close friend. He'd jump all the hell around in his thoughts, couldn't keep a train of thought long enough to make it from origin to destination. Hyper as all hell, even past puberty, talked fast all the time....I dunno, always seemed like a textbook case to me. There was no denying that the kid had an attention deficit. Sometimes it's just too pervasive, too consistent, and too debilitating to think that someone is just making it up.

And the absence of knowledge on an issue does not suppose that the issue isn't real.

 

[Jamshyd]

ADD is indeed wayyyyyy overdiagnosed, but I mean...have any of you ever seen people who are true ADD cases? I've known two of them in my life, one was a close friend. He'd jump all the hell around in his thoughts, couldn't keep a train of thought long enough to make it from origin to destination. Hyper as all hell, even past puberty, talked fast all the time....I dunno, always seemed like a textbook case to me. There was no denying that the kid had an attention deficit. Sometimes it's just too pervasive, too consistent, and too debilitating to think that someone is just making it up.

It is only "deficit" because it does not conform to what society considers the norm (which is almost always implicit, btw - because it is deemed normal and "True"), and it is only deblilitating because of this apparent deficiency.

If the norm were "ADD," then people with no "ADD" would actually be ill.

Glog: I think I have never agreed with you more than I did in that last post. Very well said .

 

[subdefy]

If so, try to find out those factors instead of taking speed.

What about those who are not taking speed and SNRI's which are helping such as Wellbutrin and Strattera?

 

[Toltec]

Im curious if Doc works differently on people that have ADD or ADHD? It seems from what im reading from this and other treads, that some of you feel relaxed after taking DOC, wile others are getting a speedy feeling from DOC.

cheers

 

[human]

Jamshyd, it wasn't a deficit based so much on society's norm but based on the ability to complete most tasks within a reasonable amount of time. I guess you could argue that reasonable is defined by society, but at some point it's so far over the line that debating exactly where it is is pointless. That's where he was. It's debilitating beacuse he just plain couldn't get shit done. I'm not saying that I believe ADD is a well defined disorder or anything, but, well, I know what I've seen.

 

[Jamshyd]

I am not denying that he is different - of course he is. It is just that he is "ill" simply because of how society defines it's own level of comfort with how long, say, a conversation must last in order for it to be coherent. And of course, since we all make up society, it is hard for us to see how radically different the level of "normal" can be.

Toltec: I hope your post is simply misplaced from the thread splitting, or maybe you're trying to make a point...?

 

[Church]

For what it's worth, ADD is definitely real. For some people, it can completely overtake their lives without proper treatment. I myself have what would be diagnosed as ADD or ADHD, but I wouldn't know since I've never seen the point of getting checked for it. I don't particularly care for amphetamines, and everytime I've done them in the past they just make me feel pretty focused and 'normal' while speeding up my heart to uncomfortable rates. Besides I self medicate with cannabis.

...Anyway my point is that there has never been a need to be formally diagnosed as such, but I definitely have a 'condition' (if that's what people want to call it) that keeps me from focusing on one thing at a time, that other people around me throughout my life do NOT have. I am also aware that other people have it worse than I do, while there are probably many people getting misdiagnosed with it unnecessarily. I know a few people who really have severe difficulty functioning without heavily medicating, and I know people like myself that have it, and it definitely messed with us while growing up, but I dont need any adderall to function when a little cannabis and mind-exercising seems to let me function.

I also want to say, to anyone who's ever told anyone else to "look me in the eyes when I'm talking to you!" can go right ahead and FUCK OFF because some of us have a serious problem training the eyes on one spot for too long.

Anyway I hope everyone is lovely tonight.

 

[fastandbulbous]

I am not denying that he is different - of course he is. It is just that he is "ill" simply because of how society defines it's own level of comfort with how long, say, a conversation must last in order for it to be coherent. And of course, since we all make up society, it is hard for us to see how radically different the level of "normal" can be.

Thing is, that applies to all psychiatric illness, but very few people go as far as saying that manic-depression or schizophrenia dont exist and ADD has a much more solid grounding in a physical understanding of the illness than the other two I mentioned. ADD is as clearly due to a lack of dopamine in the reward pathways associated with learning - would anyone be talking about a condition being a social classification as opposed to a medical one for Parkinsons disease? After all, it's just a deficit of dopamine in another part of the brain (the substantia nigra) as compared with 'normal' people.

Don't get me wrong, there are lots of people out there who use ADD/ADHD as an excuse for their lazyness or lack of ability (for reasons not related to the known physical observation seen with ADD) when it comes to learning; an afternoon in an NMR scanner would prove that one way or another (pity it's too expensive at the moment), but there are some people out there who have a reward system that isn't rewarding curiosity, and therefore learning sufficiently. Treatment with a dopamine reuptake inhibitor like methylphenidate corrects this (just like L-DOPA corrects the deficit in Parkinsons). That's a 'proper' condition in my book.

 

[BilZ0r]

Coincidence, I'm just about to go to an ADHD conference. Intereting paper: They get groups of ADHD and normal kids, and show the pictures of red and blue dots, some pictures with more red dots and some with more blue dots.... they ask the kids "does it have more blue or red?", then they congratulate the kids more often when they get it correct, for one color not the other.

Normal kids answer correctly, but very slowly develop a bias towards the congratulated color, while ADHD colors quickly took on a massive bais.

I don't really know whether this tells you that ADHD is a "real" disorder, but I think the fact that it had a serious genetic factor indicates that it does to me. (identical twins are massively like to get it if the other does, and it's associated with the Dopamine transporter gene).

Characterized by not caused by. Its just a correlation, like serotinin levels to depression, and its not there in every case. Causation is only a hypothesis.

Well there's no real evidence that depression is caused by "low serotonin". I mean, there's pretty good reason to suspect that the dopamine transporter theory is pretty reasonable, there's treatment, genetic and behavioural reasons to suspect it.

 

[DjTaZZ]

ADD is just an excuse for little kids to get a hold of brake fluid AKA methamphetamine. (the shittiest drug of all time)

 

[stoy420]

I do believe that add/adhd are over diagnosed. It seems that from time to time, there will be almost an 'in' disease that everyone, or rather everyone's kids have. I think its the same with asthma and lactose intolerance (though that could also be conected to all the shit we put in the air and in our milk). Also, I doubt add/adhd is one of those things that you either have or don't have, its more of an issue of what degree you have it to.