I didn't know this, but I take my medication as rarely as possible because I hate the comedown, appetite suppression, and tolerance building that occurs. It sucks, but I had a feeling there was some long-term downside like this. Hopefully lessening frequency to occasional use also lessens the likelihood of what you describe.
I don't think it's a causative relationship. My feeling is that there are a group of disorders related to Dopamine production that overlap with ADHD, for obvious reasons, and if you have one of those you're more likely to get diagnosed with ADHD.
On the flip side, getting treatment for those disorders, provided you have one of them, can also help with some of the ADHD symptoms.
What a beautiful advise, it remembers me of two friends with major depression who stopped taking their meds and thus will not have a bad long term experience with their anti depressants.
One committed suicide last year, one the year before.
Oh, I hear you say that they only should have stopped taking them “if they possibly can”. I’m sure their families now know that they possibly couldn’t.
I would appreciate if you could work that into your future medical horoscopes...
I would really suggest stopping that advise unless you're a medical professional, the long term effects should be considered and attempting to be on a methylphenidate for extended periods of time isn't to be taken lightly due to even obvious and relatively minor effects like increased blood pressure. But, for some people it makes quite a significant and noticeable differences and adding to the stigma of taking a medication by reinforcing that it's non-essential will decrease some folks' quality of life.
Presenting information about the long term effects is good and I, especially, appreciate it - but please don't attempt to judge treatment efficacy when, especially in the realm of neurological disorders, treatment efficacy can vary wildly from case to case.
So please do share your story and invite people to learn, but don't council others.
Just because you don't have anecdotes on your hand doesn't mean that's not the case. I don't know what your definition of "long-term" is, but ultiple specialists I have seen over the years happened to mention that they have patients who have been pretty much on the same stimulant prescription for ADD for 10+ years. I didn't reach that number of years yet, but I am getting close though. Once the specialist finds the drug and dosage that works for you, there should be pretty much no need for any changes to prescription or dosage. That seems to be pretty sustainable to me.
