Slashdot Mirror
Working with ADHD?
Famanoran asks: "I've recently been diagnosed ADHD ? and am now taking Ritalin. I've found that it helps me rather significantly, but I'm keen to try other things that may help. My question is to the ADHD'ers on slashdot: How have you coped with ADHD, and how have you found it affect your work performance? Do you object to having ADHD? Have you tried natural alternatives such as DPA/EPA (Omega3), 5-HTP (natural precursor to serotonin), and what were your results? Also - How do you find it working in groups of people, either as the only ADHD'er there, or in a group of ADHD'ers? Do you think that your ADHD contributes to your abilities technically, or is it a hinderance?" Previously, Ask Slashdot dealt with ADHD in children, now what suggestion do you have for the grown-ups, with the additional burden of a career, who find themselves in the same situation?
You are most certainly incorrect, my friend. ADHD is a neurological disorder and those tasks do not require true concentration -- just a form of "zoning out." They are non-chemical stimulants, exactly what caffeine does chemically. In fact, Ritalin is very close to cocaine in chemical composition -- and is a stimulant, just like your proposed caffeine. So, I'm no doctor, but I certainly can offer something along the way of non-useless pseudo-advice.
ADHD is a often bad diagnosis. It's like saying "My kid is too kid-like." I'll explain...
I was diagnosed with ADHD as a child because I could not pay attention in class. The real issue was I had/have a hearing disorder that makes it very difficult for me to zero in on specific sounds and tune others out.
This bogus diagnosis led to improper treatment. Sure, the drugs helped, but the underlying problem was not addressed, and I did not reach my full potential.
Do not trust western medicine like it's never wrong.
Compared to war, all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance. God, how I love it. - Gen. George Patton
...any site claiming to have 'information' on something when that site is specifically in place to try and scare people away from something (like, say, psychiatry).
Reliable info on psychiatric medications is unlikely to come from a group referring to itself as the Antipsychiatry Coalition. That is what is referred to as 'bias'.
Hmm, well. As someone who's also been diagnosed with ADHD, I have found that the most effective treatment is just to get outside in the fresh air and get a bit of excersize every day. Of course, in our current culture of instant gratification and having both parents working, we have come to a point where parents aren't willing to take the time to find a better alternative than to drug their child. Personally it sickens me. I knew this one family that put their 5 y.o. child on Ritalin. I ask you, what 5y.o. isn't hyperactive? And what kind of parent drugs their 5 y.o. kid for being a bit rambuncious?
I myself only took Ritalin a few times, and I hated the way it affected me. As such, I don't take perscription drugs (not that I don't do other drugs, but that's another topic). No, for me the simplest thing to do was go outside and and run a few laps.
Okay, now for the history of ADHD. Recent studies beleive that ADHD was a genetic defect that prooved useful for attracting mates, as the higher levels of activity exhibited by the ADHD addled individual was a sign of better health and strength.
So, if the ADHD is getting in your way, then you should seek treatment. But a lot of people take Ritalin when it isn't neccesary. And watch out for dependencies. I knew a kid who no longer needed it, but he continued to take it because he claimed he could function without it. Ritalin is a mind altering drug, and people today don't give it enough respect.
Anyway, how many posts are we gonna get reffering to Focusyns from the Simpsons?
YOU SUCK BALLS!
Also ADHD is about a problem in regulation of attention. The ability to stop paying attention to something is just as hard for people with ADHD as paying attention.
Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.
Moderators, please refrain from spending all your points modding up every easy joke about ADHD to +5, Funny. Not only are you supporting misinformed stereotypes, you're also ignoring posts that might actually have some meaning.
I'd also ask you to overlook lengthy posts that ask "Do you really have ADHD or do you just play too many videogames?" People, lets assume, if only for this discussion, that the person asking does, in fact, have a real psychological problem, and really is helped by medication, and isn't lazy, or possessed by demons, or resistant to alien mind control, or any of the other oddball opinions that always come up.
Someone admits on Slashdot having a medical disorder that has had difficulty finding acceptance in society and all of a sudden dozens of insensitive jokes pop up on slashdot? And they're moderated up too? Would you guys laugh if Richard Stallman had scizophrenia? What about things like alcoholism or depression? Personality disorders aren't funny. They are difficult for the people who have them and making jokes about them is rude and insensitive. I am apalled by the Slashdot community's response to this.
Can we just ASSUME, for once, that someone diagnosed with a psychological disorder actually has a psychological disorder?
I've been diagnosed as bipolar, and I am sick to fucking death of having people tell me that I don't have a problem, and that I've just been mislead by the drug industry. I'm sick of people telling me that I should stop taking my medication, because I don't need it, when in fact, I go off my goddamn rocker without it, and that I like taking it.
I know that ADHD has been notoriously overdiagnosed, but the asker isn't asking anyone to tell him whether or not he has it. He wants to know how others like him deal with the same kinds of problems.
This was the problem I had, the whole "in my major" thing. I was acing the tech stuff (CompSci, Chem, Math) but couldn't keep my eyes open for anything remotely liberal-arts-ish. My advice is realize you HAVE TO PASS THIS STUFF to keep your ride and get your sheep-skin, so just hunker down and do it. Easy to say.
I've found that latley I've starte to appriciate the crap they wanted to jam down my throat. I never read a single word of Mark Twain when I was 18yr old, but now I have his complete works on my Palm and read it whenever I have a spare moment, and really really enjoy it! _Conneticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court_ is just amazing. I was %100 sci-fi pre work-force, but now I really love the classic-lit stuff. Maybe we need to try to recognize this in our students and nurture it more appropriatly.
Oh! A butterfly!
M@
Krispy Cream is people
For an honest "ask slashdot" question from someone with ADHD, can the mods please not mod up post such as this as "funny", because they're not and they interfere with the purpose of the question. Making fun of the subject in this manner is a tired joke anyway.
Try also to not let this turn into a debate as to the acceptedness of ADHD as a diagnosis. For many of us, this is a subject that is close to heart and quite frankly, many are tired of the obvious jokes and unacceptance. ADHD is real, it's here, so please, even if you don't have it, please respect it for what it is.
As for me, I did encounter a bit of uncertianty when I informed my boss about my own ADHD. Many do not know anything about it so understanding is a constant struggle.
As for meds, I have found Aderall XR to be quite effective, but like many ADD drugs, its amphetamine status makes it a pain because of the triplicate forms and many doctors can be apprehensive about prescribing it.
There is a new drug released this year who's name escapes me, but it's a non-amphetamine drug that is much easier to deal with. Problems I have read, however, are some rare cases of folks finding they get odd violent tendencies or it can only make their ADHD symptoms worse. Just goes to show how much we truly understand this disease.
For herbal remedies, I have yet to see a well controlled series of scientific studies of any treatment that makes as significant a difference as the more generally accepted medications.
It's a fact of ADHD, If you have it, you take mphetamines, aka speed. Many respond quite well to it, so once you get over the fact that you're taking a "controlled substance", you can move on with your life and actually thrive quite well.
"Too many children are being labeled for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and improperly placed on psychotropic drugs such as Ritalin and Adderall to be 'calmed down,' according to House testimony. Most child-health specialists agree that about 2% of schoolchildren 'are so pervasively overactive or inattentive that they are very difficult for anyone to manage.' But up to 17% of schoolchildren are being labeled for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, said Dr. William B. Carey, director of behavioral pediatrics at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia." --The Washington Times - 9 Jun 2003
---------
David Neeleman is the CEO of JetBlue Airways. He has now been told that he has ADD. He didnâ(TM)t take drugs. I wonder where he would be today if his parents had forced Ritalin on him. Most probably not the head of a profitable airline.
NYTimes - ADHD - Neeleman
--------
"They made a list of the most common symptoms of emotional discomfiture of children; those which bother teachers and parents most, and in a stroke that could not be more devoid of science or Hippocratic motive--termed them a 'disease.' Twenty five years of research, not deserving of the term 'research.,' has failed to validate ADD/ADHD as a disease. Tragically--the "epidemic" having grown from 500 thousand in 1985 to between 5 and 7 million today--this remains the state of the 'science' of ADHD."
adhdfraud.com
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
Seriously. I have ADHD and it really sucks.
A lot of easy jokes have been made here, and frankly they all suck. I make sure not to mention to anyone that I have ADHD unless they are a good friend or need to know because the "did you take your meds?" joke isn't just tired by this point, it's painful.
I take Ritalin. It helps me a lot. It's the difference between holding down a good job and being unemployed and possibly even homeless. It really is that night and day. I am trying something new that can be taken along with Ritalin that might replace it, but in my all too real experience without Ritalin my life is a disorganized mess.
I don't really have more to add, but ADHD isn't as fun as you might think. It hurts your job prospects, it hurts your social life, and it hurts any projects you try to attempt.
On the upside, ADHD often comes with the ability to hyperfocus. I sometimes work on writing music for 8 or 9 hours at a time, completely obsessed with every minor detail, even forgetting to eat. If I could turn this on and off at the drop of a hat, I would have had a 4.0 in college. Instead I fought the ADHD like crazy and got a 3.3.
Most of you probably don't realize that ADHD has a tight association with dysthymia, a mild but chronic depression that in and of itself is self-destructive. If you're not careful the two disorders will feed off each other.
I'm 26 now. The Hyperactive part of the disorder mostly means that I'm a bit eccentric and excitable, where in the past it made me a social pariah. I've got a good therapist helping me leverage what advantages ADHD gives me and minimize the downsides. I'm glad I'm confronting my ADHD head on instead of dismissing it as a myth or an excuse for parents/teachers.
I agree that it's probably overdiagnosed, but for those of us who really have it, it sucks.
.
Sounds like standard behaviour for any healthy kid who's a bit bored and wants to go running around with his friends, getting covered in mud, falling out of trees etc.
Alternatively, reading it again, it sounds more like someone who doesn't get enough exercise and enjoys sports more than office work. i.e. 99% of all office workers.
Could it be our bodies haven't adapted to our office/TV/car dominated lifestyle?
[I] was placed on academic probation in under a year despite having a 3.8 in my major
3.8 in under a year? That Intro to CS class must have been really tough.
No offense intended to sufferers of ADD/ADHD, but falling asleep during spanish class, church, family reunions, etc., isn't exclusive to the disorder. Anyone can stay focused on something that he/she is interested in (sex comes to mind). Staying focused on something that you don't enjoy is called self-discipline.
You sir, are a moron. You're actually stating that methamphetamines make people forget that killing is bad? Troubled students who shoot their peers have deeply rooted emotional problems that need serious attention. Ritalin is the wrong drug for these types of problems, but that in no way means it is responsible for their actions.
Maybe so, but you can look at a specific set of symptoms and categorise them. What you're saying is akin to "There's no such thing as cancer, only tumors growing out of control!"
See, you give a specific set of symptoms a name so as to distinguish it from others. Is it so hard to believe there is a set of people who exhibit the same symptoms and respond the same way to the same medications?
A truly amazing fact, is the response to nervous system stimulants among individuals diagnosed with ADHD. When a "normal" individual takes such drugs, they tend to become very hyperactive, whereas the inverse is observed among ADHD patients: stimulants slow them down.
Also, there is a characteristic imbalance of serotonin and dopamine. The result is depression, often severe, with no response to SSRIs and other such anti-depressants, because an SSRI works to block the reuptake of serotonin -- but in the case of an ADHD patient, there is less serotonin to begin with.
"[A] high IQ is like a Jeep; you will still get stuck, just farther from help!" --Just d' FAQs, c.g.a
Which is not to say that biological psychiatrists don't actually help people. I myself have gotten a lot of good use out of them. But only after wasting a lot of time on blind alleys. It's taken them a long time for them to understand that people don't fit into the neat little models and categories that medicine likes to use. Only now are they beginning to understand how much empiricism there is in their art.
Now, whatever the chemical similarities between Ritalin and caffeine (and I don't think Eric Raymond is a reliable source for anything except his own pet theories) not everybody has a a similar response to these two drugs. I myself find R helpful for controlling the symptoms of ADHD, and coffee not at all. On the other hand I get a pleasant buzz from a cup of strong coffee, but no direct change of mood from Ritalin at all. (That's very atypical -- took my psychiatrist a long time to accept that I was being honest with him.) Bottom line: every body (pun intentional) is differnt. You use what works.
Same here. If I could stay up for 22 and sleep for 8 then I would have zero problems. I'm just not ready to sleep after a mere 16 hours. Typically I sleep about 3 - 4 hours per night, feel like absolute crap in the morning, drag all day, and by 8pm I feel fine and am ready to stay up until 3am again. At 3am I force myself to go to bed, although I feel fine, but as soon as I am horizontal I'm out like a light.
For me, I find I have ADHD symptoms if I am tired but not if I am well rested. It is rather dramatic actually. Those rare occasions where I get a full 8 hours of snooze make me extrordinarily productive the following day. Thats a problem with technology jobs, you never become physically tired so your sleep cycle gets all messed up. When I worked labor jobs I was so physically tired that I never had much trouble making myself sleep.
Now that we are all more or less brains in a jar in front of a computer, the 24 hour cycle is just too short.
Clickety Click
Well, I've spent years working with children with severe and real ADHD problems, often mixed with other physical and mental handicaps.
I have only ever seen one approach result in a significant improvement in their quelity of life, and that is occupational therapy.
There is no drug out there that 'treats' ADHD, they all just mask it, which gives the brain no reason to learn its way to an improvement, the drugs are the worst enemy of an ADHD sufferer who actually wants to get better.
A seriously approached treatment program with a qualified and knowledgable occupational therapist can make a LARGE difference in even severe cases of ADHD, I've seen it - and I'm not talking about your average cases here but the type that land you up in perminent special care and are often linked to other physical and mental handicaps.
ADHD, like many brain dysfunctions, can be 'learned' out with enough work - maybe not totally, but often to a level that makes it very manageable.
Thom Hartmann ("ADD: A Different Perception.") doesn't believe that the ADD condition is a disability.
He believes there are two kinds of people, Hunters and Farmers. Hunters have to scan the horizon, taking in all the inputs in order to find game. Farmers plod ahead, focused on plowing their current row.
http://www.thomhartmann.com/hunterfarmer.shtml
He found a high incidence of ADD in some natives in Canada (Inuit?), a tribe that gets most of their food by hunting.
The problem with today's education system, is that we're trying to force Hunters to be Farmers. Ritalin, an amphetamine, calms Hunters down.
But there are many successful Hunters that don't need to conform to the Farmer world. So, the Hunter should find a career that utilizes his traits (as noted in the above URL), and he will be successful and happy.
My son was constantly getting kicked out of daycares for being too aggressive, and when his kindergarden teacher was totally exasperated because he would never sit down, we had him diagnosed. Giving him drugs was the last thing we wanted to do, but the alternative was major damage to his self-esteem because he couldn't control himself and felt like a failure. Too much Ritalin will make a kid into a zombie, I didn't like that. But just the right amount allowed him to control himself and he was much happier.
Now that he's in high school, he quit taking those drugs. Earlier he had switched to Adderol, but it affected his heart. Now he's trying to deal with being a Hunter. It's very challenging, he's smart and scores high but gets very low grades because homework doesn't get done.
I know he'll be successful in whatever he decides to do. I don't consider grades to be an indicator of his future success.
So if you want to try meds to help you get along better in life, work with the doctor on them, but remember that you're in charge, and if that's not how your doctor wants to work, get another doctor. If Ritalin isn't doing it for you, and something else might, you and your doctor can experiment. (And of course that's for most other kinds of medicine besides ADHD as well.) Maybe Wellbutrin works for you (some people absolutely hate it!), maybe Dexedrine or other traditional amphetamines do (my niece's doctor had her on Dex in high school), maybe caffeine and/or exercise breaks work better. (Remember how schools dealt with energetic kids before Ritalin? Recess twice a day plus gym class, and sometimes actually paying individual attention to the kids...)
The big caveat with a lot of these drugs is that they are messing with your head, and everybody's reaction is somewhat different. If you find yourself getting wacked out or strung out, it's time to get attention quickly, because taking mind-altering drugs that aren't a good match for you can really mess you up, and the reason you're taking them is to help you cope better, not worse. Lots of people I know do anti-depressants, and some do manic-depressive drugs, and sometimes they find that after a while life just sucks, or that it doesn't suck badly but it just isn't any fun either, or that everything's fine and normal most of the time with occasional interruptions of suicidal depression or psychotic anger, which is not something you want to leave alone...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Sure, I'll bite, why not?
I can't read more than two pages of a book, even an engaging one, at a time.
I can't write (I love to write) more than a scene at a time.
I can't watch a whole movie in one sitting.
I can't read long web pages without just drifting off onto another page.
I can't listen to someone talk for more than one minute.
I can't drive long distances without almost getting myself killed because I zone off.
I can't organize anything in my mind. Nothing. When I had to put furniture in my home people wondered why I had the TV in the dining room. Truth it, that's the only place it fit the way I arranged things. Five minutes later my wife had it arranged properly. Five minutes.
I have to have to-do lists out the yang to remember the basics of everyday life.
I run out of gas because I forget to look at the guage until it's too late.
I like the fact I have to go to work, and I do it well. It's normal life I have problems with. Things like, well, reading a book. Fine, you don't have to live this life. I do. The core fault of prejudice is assuming too much. You're assuming that because you can't understand not being able to control what you are interested in, that the disorder cannot exist. That's a fallacy.
Since I never even take aspirin and already had to live with AHDH for 29 years before I even realized there was a name for my behavior and had arranged with a more or less fitting lifestyle, I had/have strong resentments against taking any drugs. To handle some of the problems I use some of the following tricks:
Since I started being self-employed (again) I try to simulate the office.
memomo: free web based language trainer DE-EN-ES-FR-IT
Umm. . . .
It is. Anger management problems ARE a recognized disorder, people get treated for it all the time. Hell I was treated for it.
You would be laughed at, it is a social disability.
A competent doctor (admittedly getting harder and harder to find by the day. . . .) would advice for therapy, much higher success rate and all. :) (I went in for a dual therapy / meds approach)
Also please explain to me why people who have short tempers just need to take anger management classes, while a person with ADHD must go on all these meds?
Those two paragraphs contradict themselves. A person with anger management issues is NOT considered "normal" (WTF is normal any ways? :-P ), they are sent for anger management classes.
And to answer your second question, it is because the success rate of therapy classes for most very low to mild cases of anger management issues is very high.
Indeed, it is not until the extremely severe cases of anger issues that medicines start to be prescribed with regularity. But yes, they ARE prescribed.
HOW THE FUCKING HELL IS MANIC DEPRESSION A PERSONALITY TRAIT.
Please explain to me how the f*ck people trying to KILL THEMSELVES is a freakin PERSONALITY TRAIT.
regularly reoccurring bouts of SUICIDE are NOT an "issue" to be worked through, THEY ARE A SERIOUS FREAKING PROBLEM.
Yeesh, next you are going to tell me that OCD is just a personality trait to! (Oh it is perfectly A-OK that she cut her fingernails down to the point of SEVERELY BLEEDING, bleck!)
An alternative view, pills can allow a person's natural traits to come out instead of being OVERRIDDEN by a CHEMICAL IMBALANCE.
Without the pills it doesn't much matter because I do not have any control as to what I do!
Hey, don't get me wrong, I have always advocated for a dual therapeutic and medicinal approach with the pure therapeutic approach being tried first, but the fact is that making a blanket statement DISMISSING all of wide variety of medical research that has gone into treating ADHD as being irrelevant is FOOLISH.
The pills CAN and DO and WILL CONTINUE to help people, it is unfortunate that some idiot doctors choose to over prescribe them out of either ignorance of malevolence.
Where did I say they where side effect free?
I personally use Dexedrine, which has the side effects of SHARPENING my concentration and SPEEDING up my mind. Soon after taking my dosage I can work damn near miraculous math problems in my head and figure out the solution to just about
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
First off, I am ADHD but manage it quite well. In my opinion, many diseases like diabetes, hypoglycemia, ADHD, and certain mental illnesses are diet and lifestyle related. Note: I said "related" and not "caused".
:)
Shocked?!!
We live in a society where the docs tell you, "You aren't responsible for your disease and condition, just take this magic pill."
Tell me about your diet. Is it filled with sugar, carbs, and caffene? How regularly do you eat (3 meals per day)? Also, have you ever had your blood sugar checked?
Tell me about your excercise routine. Do you excercise daily, infrquently, or never?
What has helped me is:
1. Laying off the caffene, only one shot in the morning.
2. Eating well balanced meals that aren't filled with sugar and carbs at regularly scheduled times. I even eat Oatmeal for breakfast everyday now.
3. Daily excercise.
Don't lose heart. If you can do it for 20 days you can make something a habit/lifesytle change.
As for ADHD in children, have you visited a school lately? Schools now come equipped with vending machines and the Pop companies (coke/pepsi) give some of the profits back to the school. Where has common sense gone? Give kids stimulants and empty calories like pop and potato chips then expect them to behave and perform well? Whaaaaaa?
Note: I do believe that there are people with legitimate brain chemistry problems. However the vast majority of people just need to eat right, excercise, and work on some self discipline and they will be fine. Check Amazon.com for these books..
The Myth of ADHD and Other Learning Disabilities. Parenting Without Ritalin.
The A.D.D. and A.D.H.D. Diet! Updated
And remember, you are responsible for you. You have a disorder. You are NOT this disorder. Also there are no "silver bullets". No magic pills or herbs that will magically cure. However, I do get daily emails from some guys telling me that have an ancient formula to make my "package" larger.
Good Luck!
Amen to that. I don't want in any way dispute that people diagnosed ADHD etc. are suffering. But I think that a lot goes wrong in todays medicine business.
Kids bad in school -> Give them ritalin
Kids too active for their parents -> Give them ritalin
people don't care for themselves,f*ck up their lives and get in a bad mood -> give them prozac.
people eat too much, don't exercise, ruin their health -> need a plethora of medicaments.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think something like depression doesn't exist, or that people diagnosed ADHD are hypochondriacs - with ADHD though it might be that psychologists invented it to fill up the last "else:" statement of the diagnostic process.
The southpark episode "Timmy 2000" comes to mind to satirically show the processes which might happen in families and lead to kids getting drugs.
I went on chemotherapy for a platelet proliferation disorder in 1995 or so. It is called malignant by some doctors and benign by others, but definitely isn't metastatic. I researched my condition, found the expert researcher in the field, and made an appointment with him at the Mayo clinic. When I got back from there with a recommendation to go off chemo, my hematologist in Berkeley took his other three patients with the condition off of chemo as well. I am still symptom-free today. And I am a father now, but would probably have gone sterile if I stayed on chemo.
And this is just one of my three medical horror stories, another of which is a hyperactivity diagnosis in my youth with which I would take issue today, and the third of which is a motor speech and movement deficit that it took until I was 18 years old for me to beat. But I have beat all of these things.
You must fully engage in your medical care, and be the main person driving it. Not your doctor, you.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
I have been coping with depression and mood swings, although I had serious problems with intermittent hyperactivity in high school, which I "grew out of". I am now 25 and still have difficulty with mood, etc. Heavy drug use complicated things as well.
... this was compounded by my shrink "firing me" for a variety of reasons. I hit the wall very very hard. The additional complication was that I was taking 5-HTP in the evening to help with sleep. As the dose of the Zoloft was supposed to be dropping in my body over the next two weeks I increased the amount of 5-HTP I was taking both in the morning and in the evening to about 250mg a shot. After the psychosis of the Zoloft cold-turkey (serious) began to subside I felt better for a couple of days, then all of a sudden I turned red, my body went up to about 105oF and I started hallucenating. My heart felt like it was going to explode. I got sent home from work and slept it off for a few days. My doctor told me in passing that it was probably serotonin syndrome and that I should have gone to Emerg.
In January 2002 my depression was at its worst and I decided to start doing more research into brain chemistry and try to start making some positive decisions. At this point I started refining various regimens similar to what you have been taking.
The most critical thing I have found is to get *enough* sleep and *enough* stimulation. Too much or too little sleep seems to throw *whatever* brain chemicals are present out of whack. Too much stimulation, stress or worry seems to do the same. You spoke of being emotionally flatlined -- well, if you are an extreme person you are going to cause this to happen.
I read a couple of online forums which have since disappeared which helped me get my vitamins in order -- I take a mineral + base vitamin supplement (Life Brand senior's vitamins, better mix of minerals than most "SUPER HIGH POTENCY" adult crap) then I add on C, B-50 Complex, E, Calcium+Mag+Zinc (very important if you are a sexually active male) and Salmon Oil. Occasionally I take a small amount of Ginkgo and Ginseng, both only in the morning.
In Feburary 2002 I was in a deep depression and I was put on a massive dose of Zoloft. Over the period of 1995 - 2002 I was on and off doses of zoloft up to 200mg. It made me a zombie, 100% impotent and the depression was still there. I would usually end up doing opiates or anaesthetics to just zonk my emotions out anyways. I started ramping the dose of Zoloft down but since I was working 3 jobs totalling around 70-80 hours a week in high stress conditions I wasn't getting alot of sleep either (this is very easy on a high dose of Zoloft. You just don't sleep.) I finally got sick of the constant withdrawl effects of zoloft and went cold turkey. THIS IS A VERY BAD IDEA
So just a warning. Don't mess around with SSRI's and 5-HTP (or l-tryptophan) and MOST IMPORTANTLY DO NOT TAKE St. JOHN'S WORT WTHIN 1 MONTH OF A LARGE SSRI DOSE!!!
Next Point. I have in the meantime reduced my "illegal" drug intake to nil, reduced my sugar and caffeine intake to almost nil, started sleeping at least 6hrs/night or more and started a sauna/cardio/weights program a few days a week. Over the year I helped the down bumps with 5-HTP and when I was over-stimulated I went for a run. Now when I get depressed or excitable it seems to be able to run itself out without drama in an hour like other people seem to do.
The problem is that in the meantime it can be a very long process to get to that point.
Remember, MORE dopamine and MORE serotonin are only sometimes the answer, sometime you just need a little tiny bump. A glass of red wine or some red meat can in some cases do WONDERS.
Anyways...
--- ask me about nihilism, I will have nothing to tell you.