Be careful. I was wrongly diagnosed with AS as a kid.

Post Reply New Topic

Nope. There is no pharmaceutical that is prescribed just for the treatment of AS.

I was diagnosed after age 40 with inattentive ADD after a few questions. They never asked me about my social problems because the discussion wasn't about that. I am presently on the highest recommended dose of Strattera (the others produced tics) and still I struggle quite a bit. The meds do help me in being able to prioritize better but I still get extremely fatigued easily. They said this was because it took me longer to process things. The antidepressants also help a lot (highest allowable dose) but I'm still not as capable as other people. I don't know what I've got, but it limits me.

I'm glad you are finding the medication helpful. There really is a lot of overlap between ASDs and ADD. I just wish when I was a kid they had tried things OTHER than pharmaceuticals, as I hated taking pills every day that made me feel like a zombie.

Note: As a small child, I was diagnosed with ADD, as an adult, I was diagnosed with Asperger's.

I have both ADHD and AS. The meds help with the ADHD part of it, but unfortunately not with the AS. Ah well, at least with the meds I'm not as much of a disorganized mess...

~Kate

There aren't any medications prescribed for "Asperger's", as far as I know. Rather, there are medications prescribed for individual symptoms brought about from Asperger's, such as anxiety or depression. Since Asperger's is more like another state of existence, though, and considering that many people develop coping mechanisms for a lot of the issues it comes with, I imagine that many people may need medication for certain related issues at one time, but not at another. For example, I have times every so often where I'm depressed, but I'm not depressed constantly, every day, every week, every month, all year. I also probably could have benefited from drugs, therapy, or other forms of intervention back when I was a child. But since I only saw a therapist once in my life (the situation I described above), I was never given an AS diagnosis, which might have helped me A LOT as a kid. Now I'm an adult that has either learned how to deal with my issues, or simply accepted them as a part of my being. A drug likely wouldn't help me very much now.

So yeah, in short, that's a bit of a complex question. Any medications prescribed to an Aspie would have to be done on a case-by-case basis, since the struggle one Aspie has can be very different from the struggle another Aspie has at any given time.

As to my oldest brother, when he was diagnosed with ADHD (which he did/does, indeed, have), my parents didn't drug him. Instead, they had him start taking piano lessons. It worked very well! Now, about 15 years later, he has a hobby and a skill that not only helped him focus his attention as a child, but that he really enjoys! With his fun sense of humor, he's designed theme songs for several of his friends and plays them from his keyboard every time they walk into his house, haha!

... Now to just convince more parents to see the positive sides, the "blessings", hidden in what they think are "curses"...

I am sure that if they ever develop such a medication, they will start prescribing it to a lot of folks.

Once someone finds a real passion in life, and especially where they can make a good living with it, a lot of their symptoms get much better. Many famous people would have been drugged up if they were teenagers and young adults, in an effort to make them more normal. Society would have suffered as a result.

That is so true. That's why I'm so glad that my parents decided to try to re-direct my brother's ample energy, rather than take it away with adderal or ritalin. He hasn't made a living out of his musical talent (though, granted, he does work part-time at a radio station now. But he does technical stuff in that respect. It's not like he comes up with clever jingles.) It has made a huge impact on his life, however, and has (in part) come to define who he is. He's a music man now, for sure. I can't say that he would've been the same if he had been simply put on a drug. I can, however, say that I'd be missing an essential part of the brother that I love (the creative, spontaneous, fun, musical part!)

I was exaggerating for effect, but thank you.

careful with the adderall...can be great in the start...and a nightmare in the end.
Of course mileage varies....but be weary.

Fact:
Anyone regardless of adhd add nt or aspergers aderral will increase productivity.
It's a stimulant...and no matter who you are it will be stimulating to the mind/body.
Course there is the 1%'rs (probably billionairs.....{bad joke]) who will fall asleep on this stuff..........
But generally speaking stimulants act as their name insinuates.

There is a reason college kids buy adderall and the rest of the bunch to study...because it works regardless of your mental diagnosis/state.
On the downside....if your mental state is one of anxiety/paranoia and or delusion....it will increase these factors...

Hitler was given stimulants....look at those results....terrible out come but nobody can argue that he was not productive...though in a destructive way.

I'm glad hitler got those stims. Otherwise he might of made wise enough tactical decisions and won WWII. Well na, he would of eventually lost, but it would of cost many many more lives.

I used to take adderall, but back then I had insurance. The generic isn't available on any $4 wal mart plan so f*ck. Focus however is something I haven't had any problems with for years. I'm more concerned with trying to decrease my anxiety, then increase my productivity, cause I'm pretty productive if its a job I know about (computer jobs)

They help some but they don't help enough to make me fully functional. I was medicated for anxiety a couple of times in my childhood and adolescence but not for depression or ad(h)d. So I am an example of what happens when you don't medicate. I think my life might have turned out a little better if I had been. Perhaps I wouldn't have started abusing alcohol to self medicate my depression and developed alcoholism. I'm sober now but I lost a lot of years that other people spend building their lives. If I had ad(h)d meds, perhaps I could have focused enough to make a life plan. As it is now, I'm a poverty level cleaning lady. The thing is when I was young they it didn't occur to them that children could be depressed and they didn't think girls could be ad(h)d.

I think things like this should be suggested and that medication such as ritalin should be a last resort.

My brother has Aspergers. He, at the of 14, refused medication.

Adderall or Ritalin don't "take away" your energy though. They're stimulants, as has been mentioned--they give you more energy, if anything. The reason they make you less hyperactive is that they give you more energy up in your head, and you can control yourself better, control your thoughts better. I stim less when I'm on Concerta, because I don't have to move as much to be able to think more clearly. It gives me more control--not less energy. The only time it really makes me "zombie out" is when I take too much of it. That intensifies the problems I have starting movements, and causes me to go pretty much catatonic for a half-hour or so after the dose. Naturally I refuse to take any more than 37 mg extended release, or 10 mg at a time normally, because of that effect. Dosing has to be carefully regulated; otherwise you get undesirable effects. Sometimes doctors don't realize that a higher dose is not necessarily a good thing, and that lowering the dose is an option too.

What does give me less energy is when I'm on any sort of neuroleptic--including Risperdal, which is the only medication approved for autism. That doesn't just make it harder to start movements, like a too-high dose of methylphenidate does. It actually makes it harder to think, to plan. It makes my ADHD traits worse. I probably couldn't have a meltdown on it if I wanted to (which is the point--neuroleptics for autism are usually prescribed for meltdowns)--but I also couldn't get anything done, and would likely be unable to live on my own, because of how difficult that is for me already and how much more impairment I experience on neuroleptics.

For the record, my diagnosis is ADHD-Inattentive, either Asperger's or PDD-NOS depending on which doctor you ask, and recurrent depression. (They're trying to pin Tourette's, PTSD, and narcolepsy on me too, but I know better than that--all those traits are subclinical and not worth diagnosis.)

I have been taking medicine since I was 10 years old and at first I didn't mind it until I found out it was not temporary. Then I didn't want to take it but mom made me. I had no choice. When you are a kid, you have no choice but get pills shoved down your throat. Turns out the pills I was on for two years were the wrong kind because ADD was not the correct diagnoses for me even though I do have it my mom says but it didn't explain everything. They messed me up in 6th grade so I had to be taken off them and I was pill less for a a while but I was put on different ones instead by my psychiatrist.

I haven't been on medicine since I was 23 and I don't plan to be even though my mother and husband both think I should but I don't want to pay the cost for them or give up breast feeding.