15 yo son refuses attention meds b/c he googled side effects

Post Reply New Topic

I can see both sides of the argument. But, as a parent who really wants to see her children become independent some day, I'd bias towards getting him to take it. Parents have rights too, and if I had my druthers, I would not be taking care of adult children for the rest of my life, even if they would be happy with my doing so. So, if there were steps that I could put in place to raise the likelihood of them being able to take care of themselves in the future, I'd take them, whether the child understood or not (not like the insulin example, more like eating your vegetables, getting a job, or any of the numerous other things that kids don't want to do, but have to).

Now, the tactics of how you accomplish that are up to you. Parental decree, bribe, joint research, etc. You know your child and family best, so you'll have to make that call.

That being said, once he starts taking them, perhaps you can keep a log of the effects, both positive and negative. I'd listen to him very closely, and if he says that he doesn't like the feeling in his brain, honor that and try something new. You could even go over the log together to determine if the pros outweigh the cons. However, him having the option to outright refuse to try any meds at all would be a non-starter with me.

Thank you moms and Jacoby so much. And also Mr. Big Mouth. All sides are important to weigh and make a decision based on all perspectivers.

Every time i've asked for advice on this forum i have been greatly helped, listened to and i've learn a lot about aspergers from my nosy personal questions. My son is the big winner from all this since an informed mother can do a much better job and empathize with his difficulties and feelings.

I took the vyvanse once day, monday, and did nothing for me, but i know that every body is different so that's that for the experiment.

yesterday he and i had the appt. with our primary care doctor so she could explain that not everything on the internet is reliable, and that one needs to "interpret" all those scary things that are mentioned as side effects, and the doctors are trained to do that.

This week he's in exams period so he wont be going to his weekly psychologists appt, but i will keep it for me, to ask her stuff that i need to understand better about his behaviors.

I am curious as to why the psychiatrist skipped over adderal as next step after ritalin, but i think ikt may be becuase last year at that time i told her he couldnt swallow the capsules because of their large enlongated shape. I might show up at her office tomorrow to ask that question, in case its better to start with adderall.

Saturday is the target dat to start.

Loving someone who has difficulties that can cause him suffering at any point in his life is hard. It's also a responsability.

I'm going to read Temple Grandin's soft push book because i'm afraid i protect him too much and that was done to me (i'm NT) and i was a mess in life because i had no inner discipline or structure. I rebelled and made the mistakes and some of them hindered my growth and finding a better place in life all these years back. I ended up marrying a serious man with lots of discipline (I believe he is borderline aspie) who loves me although every now and then i do have to deal with his tantrums. Temple Grandin said that it's better to cry when frustrated because if you dont learn to cry youll end up with anger and that a person who "throws a wrench" at work loses his job while a person who cries when frustrated keeps his job.

Anyways, this week i havent done much becuase i'm going thru MS fatigue which is something that scars the hell out of me, that my kids will need me to be strong in the future and that my MS will stand in the way with physical fatigue and mental fog. So all my energies go to taking care of my kids and making a few bucks here and there by teaching english conversation skills so that we can afford the private tuturs, and next year he can go to a private school where there is more information and attention for those neverending days when he forgets what his homework is, or when he didnt listen in any class (always) etc. My energies his whole life have been to create a secure social life for him, giving parties, making cakes, having the premanent friday get-togethers with his friends at my house, etc. This (along with the fact that I made sure that he and his 19 month younger sister adored each other, which they do (although spend less time togehter now at these ages). They were my little puppues always together always laughing and hving fun. He was never bullied because he had good friends at school and that provided a protective bubble in case any idiot thought to do anything which no one ever did.

His therapist says hes still so happy because the one who lives with and carries the worries and the planning etc. is me. This is not a good thing for him. I don't want him to doubt his abilities in life, he needs to have good experiences that mis mother didn't set up for him. But the fact that he was always loved at school in spite of what i've done socially for him, says that he is a lovable kid. Although if had not taken those measures starting so little, it's probable that he would not have learned those important social beahviors that he did learn and that he might have been mildly made fun of at school. And I had no idea he had aspergers til they diagnosed him at 13. Good thing that i had teh foresight that this kid who was very likeable but needed speech thearapy to be understood and who liked to talk too much about ant farms, or whatever when the kids his age just wanted to run, so they didnt pay attention to his intent at conversations, so i realized that he needed help. but nevr did i think that the help was becuase of aspergers, so i was very lucky to have been so determined to help him sociall, because who would have thought that the need in the end to socialize was such an urgent and fundamental need that needed intervention, not to simply take its course naturally.

Sorry for the monologue. I'm actually telling this to myself i guess.

Long road, haard work. No socal life for me (but i had my kids to love, so who cares). Summarizing all his subjects for him in my word files so later we could study for exams with very simplified language and reduced main points. year after year after year. countless emails to teachers. countless phone calls to friends asking what the homework was. Bad MS relapse. Keep on fighting. He deserves all i've got to give. And i'll keep on till my body and brain can. He deserves it. Made sure as well that this sister didnt feel left out of all this attention. She's a great girl. However, no cousins, small familiy, so i also "work" my second cousinjs and their kids (my kids third cousins) who live on the northern shore 5 hours away and I've always "worked" the relationship, made sure they bond. For their future. so they're not alone. Tell my kids the importance of not losing touch (like i've done with my US friends) becuase we need friends. In the bad moments we need their voice, their understanding, and when possible their help.

Goodness, i've gone too far. Well, hopefully on Saturday, Fernando will take his vyvanse and if it doesnt work, hopefully he'll agree to try Adderall. And hopefully one day his dream of being a programmer will become reality. And hopefully he'll never have to suffer loneliness.

Jacoby, whenever one this website whenever i've spoken to anyone, but especially a young person like you, and read hints of suffering in life, past or present, it touches me in a very personal way, becaue i think that young people with aspergers need all the love around them that htey can get and all the mentoring and support and services that they deserve. So whatever has gone on in your life, whatever you're facing now, I pray to whatever power there may be out there or just karma that you can find your way to know how to ask and receive guidance, support and love.

Because vyvanse is better than Ritalin and doesn't have as many actual real side effects. Also vyvanse is somewhat less likely to be abused. It is converted to the drug in the liver so it can't be snorted, plugged or shot. Crushing the time release inside does nothing to make it instant release. It takes the liver for that. The only way it's abused is if you take several at once to up the mg that is being released is high enough to give you a good sustained high mg buzz for 12 hours. But most don't go to all that trouble and vyvanse isn't commonly found on the street. So it's a drug that more doctors are switching to.

It worked so great for my son and without side effects like other drugs can cause. My oldest son was on Ritalin back in the 90s and it worked great but he couldn't eat or sleep on it and it just wasn't worth that. Adderall side effects were worse. My younger son couldn't tolerate adderall and straterra made him too negative, on top of his already very negative crap. We didn't bother with concerts and just went for the new drug. It was great.

It has a delayed onset so I could give it to him about 5am and by 6 or so when I woke him back up it was starting to work and then really kick in by school time. It worked smoothly with no ups and downs and no feeling of a buzz or speed etc. He had a regular appetite and ate all three meals normally and the comedown was smooth without a sudden wear off crash. He never noticed it. It's the best in my opinion but drugs effect different people different ways. However I couldn't suggest strongly enough that you try vyvanse before trying addies.

Thanks OliveOil,
I feel comfortable with trying the vyvanse now. And as the Debbie reynolds song goes, que será será. Will her look up all sorts of horrible things....yes, of course. I have to give him the name of the medication. But he's so happy with his new desktop marvel computer (which he's not allowed to start using til saturday - pill day 1) he promised to use it for a month. On the condition that we dont tell any of his teachers (he's not studpid this one) so that their observations on his attention span can be made without prejudice of knowledge. What happens after the one month promise? Oh, lord, i don't even want to go there. I told him he better not act less attentive to prove that the meds don't work.

In some ways your son could be like Reginald Barclay on Star Trek. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reginald_Barclay

Gosh I don't know this character. I'ved never watched the series.

I have to confess that due to events i have not tried to give it to him. First his school put him in a robotics competition and i didnt want him to get weird on me during that so i postponed the medicine. then i didnt want to start him on his meds because hes got a one week class trip to italy coming up at the end of april and didnt seem like a good time to start now, since during the trip who knows what would happen ...

the bottom line is that my kid contols ME. He's spoiled, and I'm weak. He will never take the meds. I will make a another attempt when he returns from the trip, for the final 6 weeks of the schoolyear, but.....he's the boss. I'm such a weakling....

Parents can do very much whatever the hell they want to their children as long as the latter aren't yet completely independent from them. It's not like anyone's going to stop them. Whatever any written law says matters very little if the children actually have to count on their parents to enforce it. In fact, the parents can keep the children ignorant of their supposed rights so they're even more helpless.

I'm a year younger than your son and refused meds because of the same. Maybe look for something natural? I'm sure you can find natural 'focus' medication on sites like Amazon.

I was in the same position as your son about 2 years ago, I even ran a Minecraft YouTube channel and my IQ is simelar. I didn't want to take Ritalin because although it helped me with focus it also had some side effects which I really hated. I was also a bit of a conspiracy theorist at the time.

I spent almost all of my free time on my computer or watching TV. My mom thought of me as spoiled but I did that because I was under a tremendous amount of stress in school and my coping strategy was to forget that school existed whenever I could by distracting myself. My mom threatened to take my computer if I didn't do better in school and that just made everything worse because it increased my already high stress level which made my autistic traits show through more and increased the risk of meltdowns and shutdowns in class, that made doing well in school even harder because I either had to stop doing work whenever my stress level got too high or run the risk of making a complete fool out of myself.

Now 2 years later I recently found out that I won't be graduating normally and I will have to take summer school and do credit recovery to pass high school. I'm not too disappointed because with my anxiety and focus problems it would be a miracle if I could pass normally and I'm just happy that I was able to do as well as I did. It may not be what my parents wanted but I am OK with it. I will still be able to go to college and persue my dream job. I probably could have done better with medications, but I think that a delayed graduation is worth not having to go through those side effects every day.

But parents have every right to decide it's not worth supporting their child at home an extra year, even to avoid damaging their brain.

Hemlock and black widow venom are natural too. Natural != safe.

Good for him for dropping the medication. ADHD medication actually IS amphetamine, which is prescription speed. He risks lifelong addiction, brain damage, inability to feel pleasure unless he is on the medication. He'll have to keep increasing the dose to get the same effect, and it will eventually stop working, and make the adhd worse.

His interest in school is dropping, because they don't teach anything meaningful in school, except how to colour a map properly.

Don't take away his computer. Chances are, its the only think that makes him happy.

Medication side effects are terrible, and there are many natural alternatives and diet changes that work much better.

Good for him for ditching the pills. I wish I had that kind of sense when I was his age, but I liked my ADHD meds, because they made me high.

The pills could also be contributing to his minecraft addiction. They destroyed his reward centre. They design school for kids with 70-90 IQs, not kids with 120, which is close to mine.

He is bored out of his mind. Probably miserable. Please do not take the computer away. Grades don't even matter anyways. I made honours 4 years in a row in highschool, and I'm a miserable drug addict now.

Maybe you could be a little tougher on him though. Kids these days are so soft and lazy, it pisses me off.

How did you get addicted?

People get hooked on meth all the time, and drugs like Adderall, Concerta, and Ritalin are in the exact same class. In fact, methamphetamine is even sold under the name Desoxyn as an ADHD treatment.

Most medications do have extremely adverse side-effects that mess you up.

I am prescibed to two medications I do not take.

The first one, used for schizophrenics as an anti-psychotic or to treat irritability in autism, causes dizziness, worsens depressions, insomnia, weight gain, male breast growth, increases effects of alcohol, vomiting, and makes me feel slow and weak.

The second is an anti-depressant with the exact same effects.

Both have severely terrible withdrawal symptoms.

The original reason I was prescribed the first one, irritability, I overcame years ago yet it's been a struggle to get off of them.

The second was a recent prescription but after hearing all the side-effects I'm not interested in even trying it once.

I also think it's good your son is actually being smart and getting off the pills.

I recommend meditation, exercise, healthy eating, 8-9 hours of sleep per night, aromatherapy, green tea, anti-anxiety supplements and multi-vitamin supplements and see how he goes.

Psychology is a relatively undiscovered field, and most psychologists or psychiatrists will just push whatever pills they can and see what sticks.

Most medications aren't designed to 'help' you or 'improve' your lifestyle.

They're just designed to keep you docile and in a weakened mental state - most mental illnesses are treated by making the patient harmless, but not better.

I'd rather have a slightly messed up mental state but keep it inside if it means I can still be confident and happy, instead of my brain being dulled by the drugs making me slow and stupid but harmless.

At 15, I'd lost all focus in school. I was learning meaningless and irrelevant stuff, expected to be someone that I wasn't, and it didn't suit me.

Like your son, OP, my focus was computers. In my case, websites. I self-taught web design when I was 11 and really enjoyed spending time on computers to practice this, and also just for fun.

And why not? I grew up and now work in that industry.

I think the problem here, OP, is that you want him to achieve things the way 'society' says that he should. Pay attention in school, get the grades, go on to further study, get the career. But this isn't the only route. You've mentioned taking away computer access to get him to take the drugs, but that seems incredibly counter-intuitive. Computers are his interest, and being on them he's learning the skills that he needs to get the job that he wants in future. It seems like instead of encouraging his interest and helping him to work towards it by letting him do it his way, you want to drug him up and make him reach the same point someone else's way - probably more slowly, and with less room for the creativity that could make him something special and put him beyond the ordinary.

You've said yourself that right now you have a happy young man who's using his time to develop his skills and interests, which in turn he'll be able to use in years to come. Think carefully about why you really want to potentially lose that happy young man, putting him on the path of life-long medication, just to make him conform a little more and follow the 'usual' route.