Posted by med_empowered on August 27, 2008, at 22:00:07
In reply to adderall causing depression, posted by wishingstar on August 27, 2008, at 21:23:39
it really depends...on the one hand, amphetamines like adderall are pretty old school treatment for depression..they can work when other things fail and/or make other meds work better. Are you taking other meds?
I think it could be a problem with keeping the adderall @ a steady-state in your system. In my experience, stimulants work a lot better if you take them at least 2x daily. So if you're on an xr, add an IR tab later in the day..that sort of thing. It prevents a crash, and crashes can be devastasting if you're already depressed.
On the other hand..some people really don't respond well to amphetamines. They do make depression worse for some people, and they can definitely induce and/or worsen agitation, anxiety, and psychosis.
The easiest solution I can think of is a "drug holiday" from Adderall to see how you feel: if you feel better off of it than on it, you might want to ditch it. The only downside to a drug holiday is that tapering/discontinuing amphetamines can cause temporary dysphoria (this is more common at higher doses), so you might mistake that for a worsening of depression. If your dose is pretty low, though, you might be able to do a quickie taper or just flat out stop the drug w/o any major problems.Hope this helps...if it gets really bad, you should probably give your prescriber a ring and see what he can do for you.
poster:med_empowered
thread:848694
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20080822/msgs/848700.html