4 ms·

This is exactly why I've been trying to get my step-daughter off of the meds. She is on the autism spectrum, and her previous guardian solved behavior problems

by hosh 10y ago

This is exactly why I've been trying to get my step-daughter off of the meds. She is on the autism spectrum, and her previous guardian solved behavior problems by pushing more and more meds. We've weaned her off of the anti-psychotic and in the process of weaning her off of the anti-anxiety. We'll see if we can do the same for the vyvanse or adderall. I have worked with a lot of intense emotions and pain within myself. I have faced them in life and in meditative, psychedelic, and dream states. There are not a lot of darkness and intense emotions that faze me much anymore -- though it isn't as if I've become invulnerable to emotions. If anything, I've become to be more sensitive to emotions, and being OK with that vulnerability. Whatever the emotional state or the narrative, the way it dissolves generally remains the same. In all the things I have tried, the key ingredient has always been mindfulness. I have found that surfacing up deeply-buried emotions don't do much if one becomes mindless and intoxicated by those emotions. At the same time, I have also tried suppression and repression. Numbing oneself or cutting oneself off from the emotions at best, defers the emotional work you end up doing. Instead, it usually causes more damage. Mood-altering drugs can help _if_ they are taken along with therapy that necessarily includes mindfulness. The therapy helps change and shift deeply-held beliefs, and it is the mindfulness that lets one unwind the damage from root cause. The drugs in question can help if they support such a process, to be able to help face the scary things within you. If they are taken as a way to _avoid_ this kind of work, yeah, I too also hear they can freeze you at that emotional maturity level.

lawnchair_larry 10y ago
Those are mighty strong assertions from someone with a sample size of 1.
- hosh 10y ago
  Feel free to ignore it.
- vic-traill 10y ago
  Personal experience isn't Science, but it is a powerful influence on one's beliefs. I'm okay with that. I do hear you that it shouldn't be generalised to a broader experience.
wincy 10y ago
Adderall and vyvanse are a lot different in my experience than anti anxiety and anti depressants. The anxiety and depression seemed to be caused by my environment. Now that I have a happy family and a well paying job that I love anxiety is rare and I'm not depressed. I tried going completely off the Adderall completely and was miserable. I found myself not completing goals, and having a really hard time doing any sort of long term planning for about six months. I now take an extremely low dose which is consciously barely perceptible but helps me immensely. Obviously everyone is different but I don't think I could work as a software engineer without 5-10mg of adderall on weekdays.
- hosh 10y ago
  Keep in mind, adderall and vyvanse work different for someone on ASD than someone with ADD. My daughter, who is on the spectrum, has trouble completing goals and having a hard time doing any sort of long-term planning on vyvanse ... even for the things she is highly-motivated to work on. She is currently on 15mg of Adderall. I am only now just teaching her how to organize and plan. It required building a lot of more fundamental skills first: unwinding the entitlement attitude (that seems common in this current generation), getting her used to checking a list of tasks, day by day, teaching her how to use her visualization skills for both planning and for shaping and solidifying intent. (She is very good at visualization. She doesn't use her skill wisely). We're now just getting her working with a planner and weaning her off of direct supervision. Today was the first day she woke up on her own with the alarm clock. This was months in building her to this point since she first started living with my wife and I during the custody transitional phase. My daughter had somehow trained her brain to ignore the alarm clock with her previous guardian, and the entrenched entitlement attitude did not help. We have had to do a lot to get to this point. The final bit was, in each of the past three nights, I had her visualize (using both sight and auditory modalities) the clock turning to 7:15, hearing the exact sound, and then seeing herself get up. Last night, I introduced to her "intent" and how to shape and form an intention to get up. (And man, I wished I had someone teach me how to shape and focus intent when I was a kid... not that I would have been in the right mindset to take that in back then). Will there be a regression? Likely. Stuff like this takes time and persistence. This milestone is still one step in many. My intention is to teach her how to use her mind and how to use it well. If we wean her off of Adderall, it would come after a lot of intense, ongoing coaching on how to shape and solidify intent, how to use visualization to accomplish what she chooses rather than to sabotage herself, how to organize, how to reason, and a solid basis for morality, ethics, and values. The hardest part will be learning how come into focus and gather will without the use of a consciousness-modifying substance.
rtpg 10y ago
I can't speak much for depression, but there's a huge amount of research that cognitive behavioral therapy is almost useless for other illnesses (namely ADHD-families). Inversely, medication is _very_ effective for ADHD (assuming this is what the adderall is for, given its comorbidity for a bunch of other stuff). While I can respect the person themselves making the decision to try and wean off these treatments, taking them away from a child who might not understand the implications is fraught. I was "convinced away" from ADHD meds in high school, and I had a lot of issues in college + work before getting proper treatment again. Suddenly so many anxiety-inducing behaviors were under my control again. I would love for CBT to be effective, because the meds do change me, but I've tried it, and there's been research showing it's ineffective. Inversely, the research shows that ADHD medication treatment is super effective at reducing symptoms, even outright eliminating them for a good subset of patients! It's the most well-treatable mental illness known to science (more-so than depression, even). Taking away this medication from someone else is like taking away someone's glasses or crutches. At least get their consent, please don't force it on them. And always offer them the option to get back on treatment if they're uncomfortable.
- hosh 10y ago
  Fair enough, thanks for sharing. I have a good friend who has ADD and is of a similar opinion as you. He has strong libertarian leanings and I asked him how does he reconcile his political philosophy with his use of ADD medication. He told me he considers it as getting him to the same starting line as everyone else. My own experiences with therapy relate more with meditation and concentration exercises rather than CBT (I kinda doubt CBT works for ADD and ADHD, though I'm not basing that opinion on science). I don't know to what extent meditation and concentration exercises helps with ADD though there are books written about it, and I have talked with at least one person who has ADD and has been practicing it for a while (but I didn't get a chance to ask him how well it works). I know that for myself, someone who does not have ADD or ADHD, the only way to increase control over attention and awareness is mindfulness and concentration. I am also speaking about "concentration exercises" in the classical sense, such as the term "jhana" from India. That is to say, when I am talking about concentration, I am talking about relaxed (rather than forced), one-pointed focus on one concentration object sustained over long periods of time, rather than the conflated sense of "concentration" when speaking casually about it or in the context of academics or work productively. The mindfulness is related to regaining impulse control by being aware of impulses that flow through the mind. The other thing to consider is: Autists tend to be given ADD or ADHD meds, but no one really knows if they actually work for the root cause, because we don't really know the root cause for ASD. The closest neuroscience has to offer as a theory is something called Intense World Theory on Autism. All the other theories on Autism are based on behavioral markers rather than neuroscience. An Autist might _present_ as ADD or ADHD, but they are not quite like that. So here, sample size of 1 opinion: my wife has ADD and my daughter is on the Autism spectrum. They both get distracted. My sense of how and what distracts them when observing them and talking with them tells me it might look the same, but it isn't. It's something our family counselor has noted too, having worked with other people on the autism spectrum or with ADD As such, ADD and ADHD meds affects someone on the Autism spectrum differently, and depending on physical development.

by hosh 10y ago

lawnchair_larry 10y ago

Those are mighty strong assertions from someone with a sample size of 1.

hosh 10y ago
Feel free to ignore it.
vic-traill 10y ago
Personal experience isn't Science, but it is a powerful influence on one's beliefs. I'm okay with that. I do hear you that it shouldn't be generalised to a broader experience.

wincy 10y ago

Adderall and vyvanse are a lot different in my experience than anti anxiety and anti depressants. The anxiety and depression seemed to be caused by my environment. Now that I have a happy family and a well paying job that I love anxiety is rare and I'm not depressed. I tried going completely off the Adderall completely and was miserable. I found myself not completing goals, and having a really hard time doing any sort of long term planning for about six months. I now take an extremely low dose which is consciously barely perceptible but helps me immensely. Obviously everyone is different but I don't think I could work as a software engineer without 5-10mg of adderall on weekdays.

hosh 10y ago
Keep in mind, adderall and vyvanse work different for someone on ASD than someone with ADD. My daughter, who is on the spectrum, has trouble completing goals and having a hard time doing any sort of long-term planning on vyvanse ... even for the things she is highly-motivated to work on. She is currently on 15mg of Adderall. I am only now just teaching her how to organize and plan. It required building a lot of more fundamental skills first: unwinding the entitlement attitude (that seems common in this current generation), getting her used to checking a list of tasks, day by day, teaching her how to use her visualization skills for both planning and for shaping and solidifying intent. (She is very good at visualization. She doesn't use her skill wisely). We're now just getting her working with a planner and weaning her off of direct supervision. Today was the first day she woke up on her own with the alarm clock. This was months in building her to this point since she first started living with my wife and I during the custody transitional phase. My daughter had somehow trained her brain to ignore the alarm clock with her previous guardian, and the entrenched entitlement attitude did not help. We have had to do a lot to get to this point. The final bit was, in each of the past three nights, I had her visualize (using both sight and auditory modalities) the clock turning to 7:15, hearing the exact sound, and then seeing herself get up. Last night, I introduced to her "intent" and how to shape and form an intention to get up. (And man, I wished I had someone teach me how to shape and focus intent when I was a kid... not that I would have been in the right mindset to take that in back then). Will there be a regression? Likely. Stuff like this takes time and persistence. This milestone is still one step in many. My intention is to teach her how to use her mind and how to use it well. If we wean her off of Adderall, it would come after a lot of intense, ongoing coaching on how to shape and solidify intent, how to use visualization to accomplish what she chooses rather than to sabotage herself, how to organize, how to reason, and a solid basis for morality, ethics, and values. The hardest part will be learning how come into focus and gather will without the use of a consciousness-modifying substance.

rtpg 10y ago

I can't speak much for depression, but there's a huge amount of research that cognitive behavioral therapy is almost useless for other illnesses (namely ADHD-families). Inversely, medication is _very_ effective for ADHD (assuming this is what the adderall is for, given its comorbidity for a bunch of other stuff). While I can respect the person themselves making the decision to try and wean off these treatments, taking them away from a child who might not understand the implications is fraught. I was "convinced away" from ADHD meds in high school, and I had a lot of issues in college + work before getting proper treatment again. Suddenly so many anxiety-inducing behaviors were under my control again. I would love for CBT to be effective, because the meds do change me, but I've tried it, and there's been research showing it's ineffective. Inversely, the research shows that ADHD medication treatment is super effective at reducing symptoms, even outright eliminating them for a good subset of patients! It's the most well-treatable mental illness known to science (more-so than depression, even). Taking away this medication from someone else is like taking away someone's glasses or crutches. At least get their consent, please don't force it on them. And always offer them the option to get back on treatment if they're uncomfortable.

hosh 10y ago
Fair enough, thanks for sharing. I have a good friend who has ADD and is of a similar opinion as you. He has strong libertarian leanings and I asked him how does he reconcile his political philosophy with his use of ADD medication. He told me he considers it as getting him to the same starting line as everyone else. My own experiences with therapy relate more with meditation and concentration exercises rather than CBT (I kinda doubt CBT works for ADD and ADHD, though I'm not basing that opinion on science). I don't know to what extent meditation and concentration exercises helps with ADD though there are books written about it, and I have talked with at least one person who has ADD and has been practicing it for a while (but I didn't get a chance to ask him how well it works). I know that for myself, someone who does not have ADD or ADHD, the only way to increase control over attention and awareness is mindfulness and concentration. I am also speaking about "concentration exercises" in the classical sense, such as the term "jhana" from India. That is to say, when I am talking about concentration, I am talking about relaxed (rather than forced), one-pointed focus on one concentration object sustained over long periods of time, rather than the conflated sense of "concentration" when speaking casually about it or in the context of academics or work productively. The mindfulness is related to regaining impulse control by being aware of impulses that flow through the mind. The other thing to consider is: Autists tend to be given ADD or ADHD meds, but no one really knows if they actually work for the root cause, because we don't really know the root cause for ASD. The closest neuroscience has to offer as a theory is something called Intense World Theory on Autism. All the other theories on Autism are based on behavioral markers rather than neuroscience. An Autist might _present_ as ADD or ADHD, but they are not quite like that. So here, sample size of 1 opinion: my wife has ADD and my daughter is on the Autism spectrum. They both get distracted. My sense of how and what distracts them when observing them and talking with them tells me it might look the same, but it isn't. It's something our family counselor has noted too, having worked with other people on the autism spectrum or with ADD As such, ADD and ADHD meds affects someone on the Autism spectrum differently, and depending on physical development.