7 replies to this topic

[emmarockswoo]

Hi. I suffer from ADD and depression, which results in extreme lack of motivation, brain fog, confusion, mental slowness. I desperately need to be much smarter and more organised. I would appreciate any reccomendations of what to take and how much. Anything to help my mood would also be beneficial as half of the time I feel despair and the other half i feel numb. I am 19, eat healthily and dont drink or smoke.

I take royal jelly, ginseng, strattera (60mg). I dont take ginko because it improves circulation and I have a problem that sometimes my hands and feet will be purple and cold, and at others hand feet and face (especially nose) will be bright red and boiling hot! I can cope with the coldness but I don't want to risk increasing the red-nosed look! I used to take fluoxetine but stopped as the effects were short lived - i was as depressed as before after a month or two of taking it. I also take digestive enzymes and probiotics for IBS.
I am in the UK, so I don't know if some nootropic drugs are not allowed over here.

I would really appreciate some advice. Also try to keep answers relatively jargon-free - I am totally new to nootropics and I confuse easy!
Thanks!

~Emma~

Edited by emmarockswoo, 27 June 2007 - 11:16 PM.

[medievil]

first of all try to get your hands on some dexedrine
second, you might wonna try either deprenyl or tianeptine, both shown to be effective for ADD

[cmorera]

dexedrine is amphetamine btw, im not sure how good of a solution that is.


i haven't heard of tianeptine being useful for ADD

im not really sure of any advice, im kinda in those same boats myself.

[brain]

yeah. i would say no to stimulants as you have circulatory problems which they could exaggerate. it is possible that your circulation issues are the root of your cognitive fatigue. i would at least give gingko a shot.

for your add, i would reccomend high doses (at least 3x RDA) of magnesium (with deficiencies being common in add patients), 500 MG of DHA (fish oil, or conjugated PS-DHA is better), and 50 mg of b6 daily. if you aren't already taking a multivitamin, take one. bacopa might help with your short term memory. vitamin E may also help. im not sure if wellbutrin is approved for ADHD, but i dont see why it wouldn't work. it will do essentially the same thing strattera is doing only it will take care of dopamine as well (also associated with add) and improve your mood. you could take rhodiola rosea for a bit of a mood lift. dl-phenylalanine may also help. i would also make sure you dont have any food allergies. try cutting wheat and gluton. brown rice bread and rice patties make this easy. after reading up on IBS it seems that St johns wort might help you. possibly 5-htp. have you tried a SSRI?

do you have any other health problems?

Edited by brain, 30 June 2007 - 10:08 PM.

[lucid]

Wellbutrin had a kind of nasty side-effect of making me really aggresive, so if you try that I would look out for it. I still take it though to counteract the effects of an SSRI i take called cymbalta. Together cymbalta and wellbutrin work pretty well together for depression, taking them in the right balance is important too.

[agrove]

I would be careful with the d-amphetamine, I have ADD and used adderall for a few years I stopped after having to go through rehab due to realizing (on my honeymoon of all places) that I had developed a horrible addiction. Perhaps if you never took anything besides the twice daily prescribed dose you would be okay, I started that way, but when stressful events would occur I would up the amps a bit and eventually I was upping the "amps" 4 days a week and taking days off where I would down xanax (legally prescribed) to counteract the adderall effects. I currently use piracetam and aniracetam as well as 1/2 - 1 tsp of Thai (only thai works) Kratom when I need to write a paper or organize something. I truly believe that treating ADD with daily stimulants detracts from the creative potential that ADD can also afford one if one adjusts their lifestyle accordingly.

In other words, I watch no TV and spend my time either reading, listening/watching lectures, or doing research. I bounce from thing to thing and keep 5 different projects going at once and then only work with the ones that appear to have the most potential at that time. So I multitask and get distracted but have created a lifestyle where my distractions in some small way help me solve the problems I'm being distracted from.

Learning to use ADD without taking drugs to make your brain more "normal" seems to me the ideal route. In the world economy, it should benefit you if you have a brain that produces variations of ideas that others are seeing versus taking drugs to make you more detail oriented like your "normal" peers. In the latter case you have to take drugs, that have risks/side effects, to reach the "normal" level. In the former, you take what you are given and utilize for your advantage. Read some Dr. Thom Hartmann (though I don't like his politics, he is good psychologist = www.borntoexplore.com).

Best of Luck!

[zoolander]

I think emmarockswoo was looking for nootropic recommendations and not a list of medications such as amphetamine. I'm sure the doctor that she most likely got the straterra through would have recommended those if she needed them.

Emma at the end of the day you should read as much as possible and make an informed choice on what you think might be the best choice for you. Asking others for recommendations is putting your health in their hands. As far as I know we don't have a lot of qualified doctors who post here so most of the recommendation for medications come from unqualified individuals that like to through dangerous recommendations around like there nothing. Personally, it concerns me when someone recommends amphetamine for any condition. Yes yes it may work in some situations but in general there are a lot more safer options these days.

Anyhow........my advice is that you read up and make an informed choice. Read as much as you can first. If you still have questions after you have done a lot of reading then ask as many questions as you want here. Asks questions about dosage and so on. Ask people about their experiance with a particular supplement. Importantly though is never to just accept a recommendation because someone has recommended it. Look for people who are authorities and people that will back what they say with scientific references. I know that you may have problems reading large bodies of text so start with this.....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nootropic

[Mixter]

I have a problem that sometimes my hands and feet will be purple and cold, and at others hand feet and face (especially nose) will be bright red and boiling hot! I can cope with the coldness but I don't want to risk increasing the red-nosed look!

That's IMO not very common with depression. *Might* be adrenergic side-effects of strattera. But I would see your doc (have you tried an endocrinologist?) and exclude thyroid problems. Often thyroid causes or aggravates depression, in autoimmune cases, it may dangle between short under- and long overactive (thyrotoxic) periods initially...