Loading practices
Loading practices
Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Medication and how it works
This is a good place to notice the shape of your own reasoning. Going from these drugs touch the same regions to therefore they do the same thing over a decade is a guess, and a guess can be sensible and still be wrong. If a non-stimulant is what suits you, choose it for what it has actually been shown to do.
This explains how treatments work. Never start, stop or change a medication because of something you read here.
'They have no knowledge to base this on: they merely follow guesswork' (Quran 53:28). A reasonable hunch is still a hunch until somebody measures it.
النجم
وَمَا لَهُم بِهِۦ مِنۡ عِلۡمٍۖ إِن يَتَّبِعُونَ إِلَّا ٱلظَّنَّۖ وَإِنَّ ٱلظَّنَّ لَا يُغۡنِي مِنَ ٱلۡحَقِّ شَيۡـࣰٔ ا
They have no knowledge to base this on: they merely follow guesswork. Guesswork is of no value against the Truth
Qur’an 53:28read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the non-stimulant evidence covers is symptoms. A review of atomoxetine in children and adolescents found it more effective than placebo, generally well tolerated, and not inferior to immediate release methylphenidate in the trials it gathered. None of that speaks to brain structure over years, which has simply not been studied for this class.
Garnock-Jones KP, Keating GM. (2009). Atomoxetine: a review of its use in attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder in children and adolescents.. Paediatric drugs doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Knowing which part of what you believe was measured and which part was inferred saves you a surprise later.
If you carry a firm dislike of medication from childhood, it is worth asking what you actually remember. Often what is remembered is a row between two adults rather than anything the medicine did.
Count good days, not unbroken runs. Whatever yesterday was, brilliant or a write off, the only live question is what can be done with today.
These medicines do not pour a foreign chemical into you. Mostly they help you hold on to the serotonin your body already makes, so whatever follows is yours.