How to Take or Stop Taking Adderall - The Good, The Bad and The Funny. From People Who Have Taken
These Crazy Meds...and SCIENCE!
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Adderall Basics
Adderall Side Effects
Where to Buy Adderall /
Ratings How Adderall Works & Compares with Other Meds
Comments
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Adderall's Dosage and How to Take Adderall: With all
stimulants the drug companies and I are in full agreement - start at the
lowest possible dosage and see what works! Here it is, right in the PI
sheet, "Regardless of indication, amphetamines should be administered at the
lowest effective dosage and dosage should be individually adjusted. Late evening
doses should be avoided because of the resulting insomnia." At least
that is how it used to read. Now that has been watered down a bit.
Adderall was originally approved for childhood ADD/ADHD and all the
guidelines were just for kids, so they would start you out at 5mg once or twice
a day. With the XR version that would be one 10mg capsule a day. And
I'm really down with that method. Now the PI sheet has adults starting at
20mg a day no matter what. You know, they make 10mg capsules and
everything costs the same, so why not start at
10mg a day and see how that goes at first? It's easier to deal with having
to take more Adderall if it's not working well enough than to deal with the
side
effects of having had too much to start with. The maximum dosage for an
adult is 60mg a day. For kids it's 30mg a day.
For narcolepsy - as above. Start with the lowest dosage possible.
By 60mg a day it'll either work or it won't or the side effects will suck too
much.
For depression - using amphetamines is pretty radical, but not unheard of.
They are sometimes the only thing that will work. Good luck in
finding a doctor who will actually work with you
along these lines if you need to go this route. Again you should start at
the lowest possible dosage. I don't have a clue if the maximum dosage is
lower than 60mg a day or not.
How Long Adderall Takes to Work: You should start feeling results within
hours of taking your first dose. Now you might not get over your ADD/ADHD
or narcolepsy symptoms immediately, but you'll certainly feel something.
This is all part of the art of psychopharmacology combined with whatever therapy
you're getting and coping skills you're learning. It'll all be a matter of
finding the right dosage and learning to work with this med. Presuming
it's the right med for you in the first place.
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How to Stop Taking Adderall: Your doctor should be recommending that
you reduce your dosage by 10-20mg a day every three days if you need to discontinue it,
if not more slowly than that. For more information,
please see the page on how to safely stop taking these
crazy meds.
You shouldn't be tapering off any faster than that unless it's an
emergency.
So if you're at 60mg a day you take 50mg a day for three days, then 40mg a day
for the next three days and so forth until done.
If you've worked your way up to a particular dosage, it's usually best to spend this
many days at the next lowest dosage before going down the next lowest dosage before that
and so forth. This is the least sucky way to avoid problems when stopping any psychiatric
medication. Presuming you have the option of slowly tapering off them.
Average Time to Clear Out of Your System: Three days to get
clean.
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message that may or may not hit your mailbox is going to tell you the same
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Another problem is that you may not get a response even if I wanted to send you
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the e-mail just wouldn't go through regardless. Sorry.
Dead tree references:
Instant Psychopharmacology 2nd Edition Ronald J. Diamond M.D. © 2002.
Published by W.W. Norton
Essential Psychopharmacology Stephen M. Stahl, M.D., Ph. D. © 2000.
Published by Cambridge University Press
Essential Psychopharmacology of Depression and Bipolar Disorder Stephen M. Stahl, M.D., Ph. D. © 2001.
Published by Cambridge University Press
A Primer of Drug Action Robert M. Julien, M.D., Ph. D. © 2004. I
now
use the Tenth Edition. Sometimes that comes up on an Amazon search,
usually it doesn't.
Published by Worth Publishers
Physicians' Desk Reference
Editions 53 & 56 Maria Deutsch & Anu Gupta, Drug
Information Specialists, et al. © 1999, 2002. Published by Medical
Economics Company.
The Complete Guide to Psychiatric Drugs Edward Drummond, M.D. © 2000. Published by
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Mosby's 2004 Drug Guide David Nissen PharmD, Editor.© 2004. An
imprint of Elsevier. The
edition we're using isn't listed on Amazon.
Consumer's Guide to
Psychiatric Drugs by John D. Preston
Psy.D., John H. O'Neal, M.D. & Mary C. Talaga R.Ph., M.A.
© 2000.
End of books used for this article.
Hey, did you find this page all by itself through Google or some other search engine?
Great! But to really appreciate the entire site, you need to start here.
Created Sunday, December 05, 2004
Last updated
Friday, March 04, 2011
Copyright © 2003, 2004, 2005 Jerod Poore. All rights
reserved.
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course, the PI sheets, those are the property of the drug companies who developed
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Know your sources! As such the information
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Loudly.
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