Is ADHD medication mediket dangerous?

[Waitingforsleep]

Starting to worry about giving now as I have a prescription and getting the jitters. Am I getting it all blown up out of proportion?
Read about sudden death ?
Any advice ? Thanjs

Thanks, I'm just not doing so good. I feel I have spent the weekend shouting and get cross but it's so hard to live with :(
She hit my arm yesterday and It still hurts now. I'm tired as both dcs insist on sleeping with me and they non stop argue in the day. Am feeling very grumpy today not a good start :(

We moved up to 20mg within a month, prob quicker if ds hadn't had stomach aches and headaches. He was 7 at the time. Moved up to 30mg not long after and he stabilised there for a year then started to have little effect so moved to 40mg then 50mg in short time frame.

We took ds off for a day yesterday and it was awful. I shouted, my husband shouted. Everything took 10x longer and way more back chat

Ok so we are still on 10mg and as I had said felt no difference however the past few days dd has been calmer more focussed and although outbursts has stopped and apologised quicker.
We are going onto 20mg tom. Dr said to go up steadily.

My question is- I thought it didn't build up in the system- was a pill like paracetamol in the body then out again- so it couldn't be building up and why would you go up mg steadily?

Could someone explain? Thanks!

I am not an expert. I understand it is a controlled medication and there is a phenomenon of the body getting used to it, the sensitivity decreases with time. So, at the very beginning the body, or rather mind, would react sharply on a small dose and then the dose should be increased relatively fast to a suitable plato, where it is optimally effective. The next significant increase is years after, when the body weight increases as well.

My DC is taking Concerta for 12 years since the age of 7 without any negatives, and the effect is visible to the naked eye in terms of focus and behaviour. She initially started on Ritalin (methylphenidate fast release) and then moved to slow release Concerta, which avoids the roller-coaster during the day. I don't know about Medikinet, I understand it is methyphenidate all the same.

What I really want to say is that you seemed so worried and unconvinced about the medication, that there might be a 'negative placebo' effect, you might be poised to look for negatives and to interpret everything this way. Maybe you are not, but just consider this.

Maybe when your DC takes 20 mg the plato will be reached and you will start seeing an obvious difference.

Thank you! Sorry for my ignorance, what do you mean by plato?

I'm not unconvinced as such but so far I feel nothing has made me think oh yes this is doing something/ working so to speak. It's hard to know what I should be expecting.

The worry is I suppose as my journey to get to this point and diagnosis has been horrendous so it's hard to trust things.

Thank you for replying apart from the Plato bit I got it :)

Oh and I think my one is a slow release one? Could you explain the roller coaster too.
Only concern with dd is her appetite at the moment

The plato - imagine you go up hill very sharply and then it is all flat for a long time, so you reached a 'plato'.

The fast release medication acts only for about 4 hours, so for DD they needed to give her the second tablet at lunch time at school. When the first tablet weares off as it were, there are mood changes and then there is a second wave of mood change when the second dose starts to work. So it created a mood rollercoaster in the middle of school day. The slow release is basically a controlled release - it evens out , spreads the amount of the chemical released throughout the day, avoiding mood changes.

Concerning the appetite - if it is lower than usual, the medication works. In my DD, she does not eat during the day, but you can see when the tablet wears off by the number of trips she makes to the fridge and cupboard in the evening. On the days when she would forget to take the tablet, I would notice by her ravenous appetite . Overall it did not affect growth and eating in my DD, she is tall and healthy.

Thank you, I will see what the 20mg brings the weekend. Yes I see when she is hungry, normally after school as she can't eat at lunchtime - slow realise one tablet in the morning. Thanks again

Ahh so today 2mg - I have to say great conc traction etc but her right eye keeps twitching!! Almost like a tic?!

You can get side effect like tics. This article may help.
www.additudemag.com/adhd-treated-tics-tamed/

Kids can build up a tolerance to the medication. It's where we are with ds right now. He's nearly maxed out the dosage he can take and it's increasing ineffective. Over the summer we are taking it off completely to try and reduce his tolerance.

I agree about tolerance. When DS was on medikinet it seemed to work at first but soon we got into a cycle of seesawing from habituated to it to zombie effect. What confuses me is the paediatricians always emphasise that it's out of the body within X amount of hours so therefore it's as if it had never been in the body. How does that square with building up a tolerance to it?

That's what I don't inderstand re being out of your system and tolerance?
Zombie effect doesn't sound good.x

I have to say dd has been amazing today after being day 2 of 20mg but the eye twitching is really unnerving me. I will ha e to go back to 10mg until I can speak to her dr.
I'm not keen on treating the tics with something else and wondering should we simply try another type of ADHD drug?
It's annoying as I can really see a difference today!

Omg so we are now day 3 into 20mg and I have a different child! Is it really this obvious it feels crazy to make such a difference?!

Brilliant! so did the eye-twitching just resolve by itself?

So far this time but as only 3 days am still looking out. She said she had a headache today but that's hard to know if the meds as she suffers with them anyway. Will keep on monitoring but cannot get over the difference it feels so odd!

After two amazing weeks dd is times worse tonight - like she has been unmedicated today. Currently attacking her dad what's happening??? :(

She is acting so odd! Has anyone had a bad reaction to this? I am so worried

Is it strange behaviour when the medication wears off? I've heard it explained like this: that if you were feeling very calm and then that calmness started to wear off the very irritation you feel at no long being so serene could cause you to act up worse than you had been in the first place. If that makes sense.

I have looked up rebound too but it hasn't been when wearing off althoughast night was horrendous and I suppose could have been when wearing off the morning and earlier in the day she would have been medicated so that doesn't explain that.
Am so tired today it's been an awful weekend :(

Hope it’s working out ok OP. Honestly been a life saver for us.

I think reading your thread you’re getting a little bit of ‘two steps forward, one step back’ - looking from a wide perspective she is generally getting better with some setbacks? I would bear with it and try not to worry too much about the side effects. They do diminish and so do the tics. Also remember they have to tell you about them, but that doesn’t mean your DD will get them, and certainly not the severe ones. So many kids have been taking them for decades and most find a great benefit.

As an aside - I think you need to be kinder to yourself here - as for many of us it’s been a big traumatic journey so far and you need to cut yourself some slack - do t feel bad about ‘feeling bad’ if that makes sense. You (as did I) may fod. Seeking some councelling or advice for your own journey here may help you cope. The mental health of parents of kids with SEN is notoriously overlooked and often in a bad state. I have found meltdowns from DS to be very upsetting and so difficult to get over - when DS himself has snapped out of a state and been apologetic for really bad meltdowns I have been reeling from it hours later. I’ve grown to know myself more and build that into my own life - managing expectation of my own reactions as well as DSs.

It helps to write it down so you can look back at how far you’ve come too - in three month look at what you wrote and you might be surprised

That's so kind of you. I wish I had real life friends to talk about this all with it really helps.
I haven't heard from the dr, I did wonder if was two steps forward one back but was so confused.
The tics yes they went so that was fab.
But after 4 days of horrific outbursts and a general being on edge I took the doseage down and have been too worried to go back up.
We are back on 10mg with no direction.

I don't understand how two weeks could be really calm (although in a way she was little bit too calm/robotic) and the suddenly be much worse.

I'm worried about putting the dose up again and that not being the right thing to do :(

so are things going better on 10mg? what do you mean by 'no direction' - that you're currently getting no guidance from the paediatrician?

Yes probably slightly better but nothing really and no nothing from the paediatrician as I still waiting to hear a week later!