Practices

Every practice in the library, in one list. Narrow it by how long you have, who it is written for, and where you are right now.

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12 practices

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If you are living on campus, ask the pharmacist to split the month's supply across two labelled bottles. Then whichever one you are carrying has a valid prescription label on it.

Carrying a controlled medicine loose in a bag, or in an unlabelled tin, is a disciplinary and sometimes legal problem quite separate from any medical…

A minuteMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 42:38One line of research

Skipping weekends, holidays and summers is a common suggestion and mostly it is the wrong call. The difficulty does not take a holiday when school does.

Unstructured time asks more of planning and self-regulation rather than less: whole days to fill, everyone at home, no timetable holding the shape of…

Five minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 13:28One line of research

Two products can hold the identical molecule and still behave differently in a person, because the difference lives in how fast the drug is released. A change of formulation is a real change, and it is a different thing from a change of drug.

The release pattern sets how high the level climbs, how quickly it gets there, and how long it holds. For stimulants that decides whether cover…

Five minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 20:114One line of research

Prescribers usually begin below the dose likely to work and build upwards. That means the first weeks can be underwhelming by design, and it is not the moment to decide the whole thing has failed.

Ask at the outset what the plan is: the starting dose, what it is being built towards, how quickly, and what you should be noticing at each step.…

Twenty minutesMedication and how it works

Looking for a whole subject rather than a single practice? Start from the nine areas.

Obsessions and compulsions

Reading, numbers and learning differences

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Feelings and focus

Equanimity and perspective

Food, caffeine and fuel

Breathing

Medical and treatment

Qur’an 94:5

One line of research

If you take a prescribed stimulant and your workplace tests, sort the paperwork before anyone asks. A labelled bottle and a short letter from your prescriber turn an alarming result into a filing matter.

Prescribed amphetamine shows up on a standard screen as amphetamine, because that is what it is. The test cannot tell the pharmacy from anything…

Twenty minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 12:67One line of research

Some settings simply suit an attention difficulty better. Expectations set out minute by minute, consequences that arrive the same day, a visible ladder to climb: military life often fits for exactly those reasons.

The point carries well beyond the army. When you are helping someone choose work, ask what the day actually looks like rather than what the job is…

Twenty minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 2:185One line of research

Stopping medication rises sharply in the early teenage years. If that is where you are, it helps to know this is the usual pattern rather than a sign that something has gone wrong with your child.

The pull is understandable: wanting to be in charge of your own body, hating being the one who is different, and a parent no longer standing over the…

Twenty minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 3:159One line of research

With many of these medicines the unpleasant part turns up on day one and the good part takes weeks. Knowing that in advance is most of what carries people across the gap.

The first fortnight can feel like a bad bargain, because it is one: you pay now for something that arrives later. Put a date in the diary two to four…

Twenty minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 94:5One line of research

Treat the first fortnight as a stretch that needs contact rather than silence. Say plainly that things may feel worse before they feel better, and arrange to hear from the person during that window instead of after it.

This is when most people quietly stop. Somebody who has been warned experiences a rough two weeks as expected; somebody who has not experiences it as…

Twenty minutesMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 3:159One line of research

For most people who get as far as asking for help with ADHD, medication is the single change that shifts the most. It is not compulsory and plenty live well without it, and it does deserve an honest look rather than a place at the back of the queue.

The reason is unglamorous. Nearly every strategy anyone teaches assumes you can pause before responding, hold a plan in mind while doing something…

Twenty minutesMedication and how it worksADHD skillsQur’an 26:80One line of research

Finding the dose is a search rather than a calculation. It goes up in small steps until either the effect you want turns up, or the side effects get annoying enough that you come back down a step and settle there.

There is no way to work the right dose out from body weight or from how bad things look, which surprises people who expect medicine to be more exact…

LongerMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 94:5One line of research

One of the founding figures of biological psychiatry summed the whole business up as some medicine helping some people at some doses some of the time. Knowing that before you start makes the first disappointment much easier to survive.

Most people need more than one adjustment: the dose, then the timing, sometimes the drug itself. Go in expecting the first prescription to be the…

LongerMedication and how it worksMedical and treatmentQur’an 94:5One line of research