Adderall withdrawals: depression?

Hi, my 13 year old son has depression as result of Adderall withdrawal? Is it proved and if so, why didn’t doctor decrease the dose gradually?

Hi, since Adderall is quite strong drug it shouldn’t be used with any other strong drug or stopped suddenly. It belongs to class of stimulants, but it’s usage is generally safe. Adderall is a methamphetamine, and carries a risk of developing addiction. For this reason, the lowest effective dosage should be applied. If your brain gets used to stimulation produced by the drug, it will stop production of natural stimulants. So, when stopping a therapy you need to do it gradually, in order to stimulate body;s production a little by little. There are some natural ingredients that have proven to be effective in the treatment of ADHD symptoms, containing ginseng, centella and green oats. They can be safe alternative to Adderall.

adderall is an amphetamine, Desoxyn is not.

Depression is a symptom of ADHD especially in patient's who are moderately to highly introverted. Adderall makes the patient more extroverted therefore eliminating a large portion mental inhibitors that would cause the child to be withdrawn. Without knowing the background of your son, it is hard to say for certain if this is the cause of his depression. But if before medication he was prone to introversion, I would think this may be the case.

I have taken adderral a month and today is my first day off bc my rx ran out....all day i have been eating like crazy,and i HAVE NO ENERGY AT ALL...i just want to lay around, and i have been thinking of stuff depressing me like crazy.

I am 25 and am a relatively intelligent and highly motivated person. Not to mention I wouldn't say I was hyper, but I was always working and fast paced and was always highly productive. Anyways, I went 24 years without ever thinking I may have A.D.D., nor am I sure I do now. But anyways, I started law school at a very competitive law school last year so I obviously could do school work, tests, and concentrate well prior to ever taking adderral. However, once I started law school due to the intensity and having to read more than I could have ever imagined I couldn't stay focused and saw the Dr. about it. He proscribed me the generic version of adderral at two 20mg pills a day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. I was usually fine with just one in the morning so usually did just that. Once in a while I would not take one on a day that I wasn't doing any school work. I found that on days I didn't take it I was incredibly tired, weak, and unmotivated to do anything because I was so tired. But then if I later took one I became fine and productive and energetic. After a while of taking it my body seemed to get used to it and I didn't feel the very elevating effects anymore and instead I felt like when I was on it I was just at my normal level as I had been all my life. I feel like now my normal is when I am on adderral and without it I am a tired and unergetic version of myself. So needless to say, even when I didn't want to take it, I needed to just to be normal and functional. Recently, I decided to stop taking it cold turkey. So I decided to do so over summer break when I wasn't involved with school. I went about a month without taking it and was very tired for sometime but fought through it figuring I just needed to put up with it till my system got used to not having it. Anyways about a month after my last dose I began to feel super depressed and incredibly tired. I slept like 10 hours each night (not great quality sleep though) and was still tired all day and usually napped at least once per day. On days I had work I would be useless all day at the law firm I work for and then come home by 5pm and be ready to lay down and watch tv and thats it, whereas I used to come home and get a lot done and be able to stay up pretty late and get by on 7-8 hrs of sleep. I started having second thoughts about my career choice, where I have always been incredibly confident in. I felt like something was missing in my life for the first time and just overall sad and incredibly stressed when in reality my life is great and no event caused me to be sad. Since I was so tired which caused me to be unproductive and unmotivated that made my depression and stress even worse since I began to have my "to-do" list pile-up adding more stress and I began to feel like I just wasn't as good at things as I used to be and felt bad that my girlfriend kind of had to pick up my slack around the house with chores and such. I began to just want to lie around in bed and watch tv or sleep all day, and on a few days did just that. Also, my appetite, which has always been healthy, decreased drastically. I didn't even have the energy to go out with friends like I have always enjoyed doing so on the weekends. After a week or so of feeling really low I started to think there must be something causing this because I have always been an incredibly positive and perky person and no event has changed in my life recently which would make one feel depressed, I thought it may have something to do with the Adderral or a headache preventive I just started taking for my migraines. I cut off using the headache preventive with no change. My Dr. mention to me that he had heard of some people having depression when they aren't using adderral or at the end of the day when its effects wear off because Adderral is such an upper. After using it some days and not on some days and doing some research online I am certain it is because of the adderral, but not that the adderral is causing my depression, but since my body is on such a high when using it you can't help but feel incredibly low compared to when you are on it. And eventually, as in my case, it seems like once your body gets used to the adderral and has a tolerance for it that becomes your normal level and when you aren't on it you are not normal like you used to be but in fact incredibly low in comparison and very tired and weak in comparison to the awake and energetic feeling your body is used to on the adderral. I started using it again about 4 days ago, and instantly one day I was depressed and tired and the next (when I took one in the morning) no longer was I sad, tired and impersonal, I was energetic, felt great once again about my future in my career as I used to and went out and had a great time with friends. Once again I was just sleeping about 8 hrs. a night with no urge to nap or rest. It was a complete 180 from my severe depressed feeling just the day before. I took it for about 3 days and then tried a day off, I was a little tired and in the evening started feeling depressed, though not as bad as I had been when I was off it for a month. Today again I took one and feel like I used to before ever taking adderral and overall great. My Dr. has prescribed to me an anti-depressant I am going to give a try starting tonight and also I am going to stop taking the adderral. Not immediately cold turkey like I had a month ago, but 1 a day for a week or so, then a half for a while, then a quarter. And I am hoping that the anti-depressant will keep away any symptoms and eventually when my body is used to not having adderral, and therefore experiencing lows when I am not on it, I will be able to discontinue using the anti-depressant as well. After having done some readings it seems like my experience was not abnormal and eventually I should be able to get back to my normal self. This is because the chemicals the brain normally release are replaced with the adderral and therefore discontinue producing the proper levels of those chemicals. From another forum I read about someone with the same situation who slowly weened himself off of it allowing his brain to start slowly increasing the levels of chemicals it produces where it once didn't need to since the adderral was providing it. I am not a Dr. or have any medical knowledge, but this all makes perfect sense to me and I am hoping with some time I will not be dependent on adderral to have the energy I need to get through a day and I will be back to myself and not depressed because that feeling was horrible. Now that I have pretty much determined for sure that this theory is why I was depressed, mostly because it is only on days I am off it and all other factors are the same, I am going to tell my Dr. my plan of getting off of it and get some guidance. I suggest anyone feeling any depression symptoms while using adderral, not necessarily cease taking it, because that may cause depression as it did in my case, but talk to a Dr. and let them know what you're feeling and this possible theory that you have read about online, it seems to me a lot of people have felt like this and some say adderral is causing depression but others say it can't because the type of drug it is is an upper and in fact is sometime used to TREAT depression. As I have said, I don't think adderral makes me feel depressed, rather, due to my body's reliance and being use to it the lack of adderral in my system causes me to be depressed, and in fact taking a pill will treat that and make me feel great again. However, I don't want to be reliant on it and have to take it forever so I am going to try and get myself off of it. Good luck to anyone experiencing similar symptoms.

ur right on the money