DMX as treatment for ADHD

[altair1972m]

I have Bad ADHD and Bi-Polar and had unnacceptable side effects from Strattera, Paxil, Trileptal, Lamictal, Abilify, Lexapro, and Focalin.  I have a low tolerance for drugs, but seem to be able to quit cold turkey with no issues from addicted drugs.  Past suicidal ideation is an issue.

Everytime I take dextramathoraphine for a cough, I seem to be a little happier, can focus on work better, and don't spill my guts to all my co-workers.  my primary said he did not like the studies he knew on DMX as an ADHD treatement.  Does anyone have any information that might indicate a safe dose and success at treating ADHD or bi-polar?  Are there long term effects of DMX used in low doses (as opposed to the doses used to get high)?

[Sandman2]

  I just found the treatment section of the website you mentioned.  Its great.  I agree 100% with all they say (because it pretty much is what I advocate).   I think its one of the most inclusive sites I have seen.  How do you feel about what they say?

[Sandman2]

   I think what bothers me the most is that many parents may use the meds as the only treatment.  If the meds can be combined with good behavioral therapy the child has a much better chance of going off the meds later on and hopefully, sooner than later.  Furthermore, (hopefully) they will have not only the means to deal with ADHD but an understanding of what it is and thus how to live with it.
   What I have a very hard time dealing with is the parent that takes the easy way out and just gives the meds vs the parent that just punishes (or ignores) their child.  

[thebabyalex]

The statistics might be off somewhat, but these are human lives, not numbers to be discussed. The social, economic and familial ramifications of such large scale drugging, if what Mr. Whitaker says is to afforded any credence, is staggering! I would urge you to read the book and come to your own conclusions. As I have already said, I do not necessarily ascribe to this new-left psychiatric critique, as proffered by the likes of Whitaker and Breggin, however, any disscussion over the long term effects of psychotropic use should not be jettisoned, certainly with so many children presently being drugged.

[specialmom]

I just had a discussion with my sons in which they had done something wrong to someone and should not have.  The other person was not innocent in the whole escapade but their reaction to it was bothering them.  They have a conscience and realized that it was not the right thing to do.  No teacher, parent or other adult was involved but it was how they felt inside that bothered them.  I told them that when we feel like that--------- to not listen to the part of us that says "well, they did this or that" but instead to listen to the part that feels bad and to apologize in earnest to the other party.  So babyalex, I would like to apologize to you for my insensitive comment.  

[Sandman2]

   I agree to some extent with your thoughts on schools.  They are a reflection of our society, but unfortunately don't respond to change very well.  What scares me even more is the continued cry for more testing which makes the schools even more into a factory system kicking out little mechanical men.  13 million children on psychotics is sobering.  I knew it was a lot, but 13 million?  Do you mean all at one time or is that a total figure?  I do know that they have been using these meds for more than 30 years, so one would think that they are beginning to get some kind of a long term consequence.  But I doubt that much tracking of kids is done after about middle school. And unless, there is profit in it - I'm fairly sure they are not looking at the kids who are now adults.  So yes, I have just a gut level feeling that there has not been much research into that area after a certain age.
  For kids like your nephew, I really do think (hope) that schools are better equipped now to work with kids who have different needs.  But like a lot of things in life, some teachers will be great and some will have no clue how to differentiate.   Some times just to be able to work the system is all it takes, but very few parents know how to do so.  Being an informed advocate for - and not giving up on - your child is probably the most important thing a parent can do.  Unfortunately, too many parents and probably schools take the easy way out.
   I do think that if a child does get into the special education program, it can help and protect the child.  I am sure there is a huge variation in the programs even though the law is pretty specific (again its how you work the system).  But without these programs, teachers could do what they did in the 70's - slap you into a corner, isolate you, fail you. At least its harder to do that now.

[Sandman2]

  Ok, your first sentence got to me.  And its partially why (I think) I spend time on this forum.
    I started teaching in 1970.  At that time there was absolutely no mention/preparation/resources for kids that did things differently.  You fit or you failed.  In 1974 I was offered 4 periods of a class that was labeled "modified".   So I had two different sets of 6th graders for English and History.  I got them or took them because the prior teacher moved them along at the same pace as his regular class and then failed most of them.  The man was almost sinfully inept.  The kids had labels like emotionally handicapped, dyslexic, modified, etc.  I don't think the term ADHD was used at that time.  The reason I mention this is that I got absolutely no training or help in working with these kids.  I was in a fairly wealthy district in California and I think that if it had been available, I would have been so informed.  This was pretty much the state of "special education" through most of the 70's.  Actually, the kids and I did pretty well.  I had spent most of college and high school teaching swimming.  I used the same techniques.  I broke things down to smaller steps, taught it till it worked and then moved on.  I also was lucky.  There were not mandated standardized tests so I could move at their speed.  They were successful - a hand full because they had a lot of other problems, but they were (and still are as I am still in contact with some of them) one of my most favorite classes.  And I've got lots more stories like that.  The point is that in the 70's if you were in school and didn't quite fit in - good luck.  If you were lucky you got a teacher who could help, if not you were screwed from the start.  There was nothing, I repeat nothing in terms of help for the
teacher.
    I moved to elementary school teaching in 1978.  Pretty much the same situation.  The only difference was that since I was the sole male member on staff, I got all the "discipline" problems.  Which included kids that I know would have been identified as ADHD today.  Somewhere in the late 70's or early 80's they started special education classes for kids that really had special needs.  Hopefully, these teachers had special training.  The kids were isolated in these classes and I don't think it was a very healthy situation.  The great thing about elementary school is that you have the time to get to know the kids.  If you take the time to know them, then its not that hard to work with them.   But once again, I don't really remember much help for teachers regarding techniques that would work with kids with special needs.  So I started doing my own research - because guess what, I was getting a lot of kids that needed a different approach to learning.  To make a long story short.  In 1990 I became principal and attended every IEP the school had.  We had a great psychologist.  He didn't push meds.  He pushed parental responsibility.  He gave techniques that I knew worked from my own feeble attempts.  He wasn't into BS.  I learned a lot.  After 4 years of  attempting to solve everybody's problems (found out I was kinda compulsive), I said screw it and went back to the classroom where I knew I could actually make a difference.  
    If you are still reading, one of the points I am trying to make is that in the 70's and at least part of the 80's if you were in school with any type of a learning problem - you didn't get much help.  I won't bore you with the kids I knew who got screwed by the system.  The kids who self-medicated themselves to death.  The kids who were abandoned by their parents because the parents were too busy or too screwed up to spend the time needed to help their kid.   All of that left a very lasting impression on me.  I don't give a damn (and frankly don't know much about) the mental health profession.  I don't look at ADHD/ADD as a "mental illness" (in fact there are recent studies linking it to pesticide exposure among other things. I frankly don't care much where it came from.  I look at it as something that has to be dealt with. I have no ties to MH groups or pharmacy groups.  In fact, if you were to look at my posts -  one of the things I am very consistent on is saying that meds are no magic potion.  You can't just give it and figure your job is done.  You need to work with your child and your teacher to find strategies that will make the child more successful.   Very early on you said, "I don't see how a child, early in its elementary school career, can grow up thinking he has a brain disorder, and yet, manage to grow up with no hang-ups."  That hit home because I have seen kids grow up and self medicate because no one ever took the time to explain to them how to work with what they've got.  I don't know if information will solve that problem.  But I do know that if they are just medicated and swept aside- its a long road ahead.
   Ok, this was a lot longer than I had intended.  Because I will probably be writing to this forum for a long time, I want you to know where I am coming from.  
   I appreciate you sharing your experience.  Our experiences shape us  

[specialmom]

Again, I'm just going to say okay to you babyalex even though I don't agree with you.  You are actually making an excellent case for medication . . .

[thebabyalex]

The pharmaceuticals are not solely to blame, but I think that a "reasonable" apportionment of blame is certainly forthcoming. However, not much will change; fewer might be pre-emptively drugged than before, only to be made up by more on the sick role.

[thebabyalex]

I don't see how a child, early in its elementary school career, can grow up thinking he has a brain disorder, and yet, manage to grow up with no hang-ups. My entire life was marked by mouthing the excuses that I had come to see as my biological limitations. The counselors came later in life, to tell me that "maybe" I should consider this line of work, blah, blah. And I thought that the ethics of the counseling profession would have frowned on such prescriptions during my fifty minute sessions!
I was drugged for the first four years of my school career, and in hindsight, I wonder for what good: my grades did not improve, my attitude towards teachers did not ameliorate, and most important, my seriously dysfunctional family life (father an alcoholic, but spare me the correlative studies!).
As an adult, in my thirties, still unmarried, undecided with my career, and going to school part-time, for the third and final time, I frequented the university counseling services, and was given the "standard" battery of pencil to paper diagnostic tests. The MMPI is a joke! My career as one of the faithful in the church of mental health ended. I made a clean break of it; I should have seen it coming years before but loosing my religion was a totuous affair with fits and starts. I have read and studied diligently over the topic of ADHD, as well as the lliterature on the history of psychiatry.
Drs. Thomas Szasz, Erving Goffman, and Thomas Scheff, I think, have it right, about "mental illness", that is. But the irrepressable nature of psychiatry, as that of culture's social engineer, is well ensconsed in our social and legal insttitutions, and under the aegis of the state, serves at its pleasure, and vice versa. The coercions as cure and the excuses of psychiatry are many, and it is all but impossible to enumerate them in this post. However, any mention of any normative definitions of normalcy and mental illness, respectively, must take into account the legal, ethical and psychosocial judgements made of deviance. It is not merely the anatomical and genetic context, however compelling the science, that our culture must come to settle the score on problems in living and social conduct. The present course of psychiatry, since the early 1970s, has seen the pendulum swing toward the biological and the determined (as that in "progressive" disease). It is hardly cynical to see both the strategic and economic advantages that such a consensus can assume. No doubt the pharmaceutical companies are to be blamed for the biomythology of mental illness, with its "reverse engineered" , speculative science of brain function. No one knows exactly how the "mechanism" of action of these drugs works in the so-called "imbalanced" brains, but one is to believe that some therapy has been effected, when, one's behavior is altered; alter the individual and you alter the social.

[Sandman2]

  Ya, specialmom was right.  this is a waste of my time.  adios

[Sandman2]

   Thank you for distilling down your motives and aims.  Mine are also simple.  To help people on this site who ask for it.  That is my agenda - pure and simple.  If they want information about meds, I give them a site to check out.  If they need help in working with their child, I try and provide that.  I have about 1400 posts on this and on the child behavior site.  Feel free to check them out.  Most people that post to this site have a desperate need for information, and I try to provide that.  Admittably, I also have my own bias's.  I am sure that you will disagree with some of my posts.  If you pretty much follow Dr. Breeding's work, I will disagree with some of yours.  I am also fairly sure that there are things that we both would agree on - as I really like some of Dr. Breeding's strategies.
   If you want, why not start a post on labeling kids in school and we can debate if it helps or not?

[thebabyalex]

I'm not trying to rain on your parade specialmom. My motives and aims can be distilled down to one thing: doing what I can to expose the myth of mental illness. You assert that, "a label is not a stigma.", and I would agree. However, a label carries with it the stigma of the deviant so labeled. Our culture handles "deviance" in many ways, and such doesn't necessarily result in the involvement of psychiatry, school, employer, or any other important social presence in the deviant's social network. Once the child or adult has reached the point of being labeled, many other things have happened to the individual. There is, as noted, the internalized notions of illness assumed in one's self-concept, that much is clear. Secondary deviance, as Thomas Scheff has called those forms of deviance that get the attention of the MH profession,  is no less a career for many who never manage to shirk one's trouble self-concept and social relations!

[specialmom]

I think it is best if we leave babyalex alone.  

I am so happy I can speak from a place of success with my child and found his diagnosis of sensory integration disorder to be a blessing that enabled him to accomplish what he desires.  I am eternally grateful for his label as it allowed us to help him where he needed help.  I wish that for all families who are trying to find their way.  Having a child that is content, happy, well balanced and succeeding in the world they live in should be every parent's goal.  

[thebabyalex]

Most of us who respond to these posts try and offer advice (based on our experience or research)
Speaking of personal experience, I have found that the mainstay of sites dedicated to the "discussion" of ADHD do not admit for anything but the reductive take on (mis)behavior. The conclusion I have drawn, and one I think most consistent by word and deed of members on those respective sites, is twofold. One ostensible aim of these sites, that of sharing knowledge and experiences, cannot allow for anything other than that of ADHD as a disease (disorder), of a determined course. Secondly, the confusion of "symptoms" with that of (disease) "signs" allows for a considerable amount of obfuscation and, generally, much confusion over the etiological. And I am the one who is said to have an agenda! There are now well over ten million children on some psychotropic drug or other. In the book "The god delusion", Christopher Hitchens's posits that for every twelve individuals who never break free of their strict, fundamentalist, religious upbringing, only one individual free himself from the imprisonment of the mind. I wonder, given how pervasive the myth of mental illness is in our culture, with the blandishments of psychiatry to dazzle and dumfound, if the above statistitic holds true for those who have been labeled at an early age? There is every reason to believe that being labeled as a child is as dour as being hammered with religious indoctrination.

[Sandman2]

The people who start posts on this site do so (I believe) with the specific intent of getting some advice on how to deal with their specific problem.  Most of us who respond to these posts try and offer advice (based on our experience or research) to help the initial post.  I would love to see you offer some specific advice to help people.  Or,  if you want to offer  your philosophical agreements with Dr. Breeding please start a separate posts where people will have a chance to respond.  As it now stands, you are doing a disservice to the initial poster.

[specialmom]

Um, okay.

Good luck.

[thebabyalex]

I was in the business of helping people overcome mental illness for almost two decades and saw a tremendous amount of success over the years.  I also have a son with a developmental delay very similar to add/adhd called sensory integration disorder.  

Mixing your apples and oranges? SID is similar to ADHD? You say you had a career of helping individuals overcome mental illness? No less helping those individuals to accept the biological reality of his sickness? No where in your posts do you mention anything of the psychosocial in the one labeled. Your reductive-biologistic take on problems in living is consistent with that of clergy of the church of mental health, with sin being supplanted by the medical sounding term "mental illness". No matter the change in nomenclature and of the vestments of the profession, you have no less taken on the career of dispensing with your sacraments of (mental) health. The means by which such a transformation has taken hold in modern culture, of such notions as sin to that of "illness" and, redemption to that of cure and treatment, has been some three hundred years in the making. Our culture has long since dispensed with the demonological in explaining all manner of sinful and bad behavior. Now, the sacraments of mental health and wellness concern themselves principally with the medical: a form of biological predestination, as with ADHD? The mental health profession concerns itself with the moral order of man, yet, the language at its disposal has run afoul.

[specialmom]

At some point one has to realize when they are dealing with an injured party and I'm at that point.  Disingenuous or not, good luck.

[thebabyalex]

"It does not sound as though you've had an easy life.  Those that have suffered become the harshest critics.  I had a different response all typed out and erased it because I will keep in mind where you are coming from which I think is a place of pain."

And what have you labeled me as? Please, spare me the disingenuous feelings and your clinical assessment.

[thebabyalex]

Are you a doctor? I take it you are drawing from a different source of literature on this discussion of "medicating". There has been an ongoing debate over the merits of medicating, and with more drugs than ever before for all manner of putative disorder, the polemics over drugging or no is well pronounced. I do not agree with the "drugging" crowd nor do I necessarily agree wholesale with the position of people like Breggin or Whitaker, both of whom advocate for the "proper" place of psychopharmaceuticals, and who both adhere to myth of mental illness. It might seem an academically moot point to ask but do the drugs merely mask or dull affect, or, does the respective agent treat that which has no physical basis? I have read Robert Whitaker's "Anatomy of an epidemic", and nowhere, do I gather that Mr. Whitaker, and his like ilk, are anywhere near questioning the very basis of medicalizing problems in living and social conflict. In short, the prevalent opinion, as reflected in the mainstream literature, is of a consensus that "somehow" the brain of, say, a depressed person, must be biologically abnormal, and the "selective" use of drug treatment will "restore" the imbalance. Such speculative pharmaceutical R&D has promoted such a biomythology, certainly in respect to the misapprehension surrounding depression and other affective disorders. Any challenge, it seems, of the biomythology of mental illness, has come and gone. And those who have taken up the critic's standard are just parroting what the mainstay of biopyschiatry has communicated for public and media consumption. This is no less than a propagandistic tour de force; where every one, at one time or other, "suffers" some form of mental illness. Very little is ever mentioned of the moral and social, unless, of course, such critique concerns itself with how much drugging is necessary.

[specialmom]

The traditional "talk" therapy that you mention works best when combined with medication and vice versa.  That is typically the standard of care for those in the mental health profession.

It does not sound as though you've had an easy life.  Those that have suffered become the harshest critics.  I had a different response all typed out and erased it because I will keep in mind where you are coming from which I think is a place of pain.  

I visit the add/adhd forum because of its connection to sensory integration disorder.  I have a personal interest in this due to my son and found that some young children can benefit from some of the strategies that we've used with success with our own child.  I try to share that as add/adhd are very similar.  

I wish you luck on your journey and hope you wish me luck on mine.  

[thebabyalex]

I was originally diagnosed with ADHD when in grade school, when the moniker was that of MBD. Years later, the diagnosis was altered to that of Bi-polar, which is what the VA shrink determined, after about the first ten minutes conversation. The point is is that the VA is but emblematic of the push for biopsychiatry in treating mental distress, over that of traditional "talk" therapies. The issues going on right now, with regards to PTSD in our returning soldiers and airmen, is another case in point.
My insight is both anecdotal, and the result of a considerable amount of self-reflective study and examination of the nature and history of psychiatry, up to present. The truth is not always easy to swallow, and it is never easy to attain, especially when one discusses such a subject fraught with so many moral and social ramifications as that of psychiatric medicine. The mission of psychiatry is clear, but not widely appreciated by a captivated public and media.

[specialmom]

I really do with that during your years of seeking treatment for mental illness that you speak of that they had been able to help you.  I will say that it gives you a unique perspective that I try to decipher in your writing.  

And if your son truly has sensory integration disorder, I hope you have educated yourself in ways to help him beyond telling  him he has watered down genes.  

[thebabyalex]

I also have a son with a developmental delay very similar to add/adhd called sensory integration disorder. Is this a neurological condition? My sister-in-law's son seems to be "neurologically impaired", athough I have a hunch that he is just the result of watered down genes. As for your magnanimity, that you are "helping", I suppose that confirming what others have already confirmed for themselves (that one's problems have a biologically determined basis to them) can be operationally defined as "helping". However, it is nonsensical to introduce other conditions as a means of adding credibility to the assertion that ADHD is likewise biological. How many children, after all, are ever diagnosed while on vacation? As liberal psychiatry would have it, "Alter the individual and you alter the social." Such is the manner in which the MH profession, as our culture's social engineer, would have it. Wherefore the individual in such a reductive, collectivist take on human conduct?