Concerta? Does it work for you?

[Anonymous]

Thank you, i_have_ad…SQUIR and zsazsa for your responses. I know I just have to give it time. I think I need some kind of mantra to keep myself in the moment of slow and steady wins the race, but it’s not normal for me. I really must say that just the awareness alone is amazing, it alone has seriously changed my life! I feel as though I have been sleeping for 48 years and some(thing) else was running the show. I can now see why I had the huge number of difficulties I had in the past., it makes me feel embarrassed. After seeing everything I’m seen on the site, I understand why my wife often looks at me and says ohmmmm. She was trying to tell me that I was breaking the speed limit. She use to say “your so hyper” I thought it was just a cutesy phrase. It’s interesting but I know why my wife and I are together now. She has always known me, we were in kindergarten together and she was always so happy, I could never understand why. It’s funny because I never thought we would ever even date and here we are 20 years later with 4 undiagnosed boys. It’s weird but for the first time over the past short while, I feel there is a chance that things will get better. My point is you never know what your future holds ( slow and steady wins the race ).

ohmmmmm,

John

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[Anonymous]

This site needs a “like” button like facebook does lol. So I’ll create my own! [LIKE] Heather likes this.

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[Anonymous]

Make sure its Concerta – not the generic

http://www.caddac.ca/cms/video/player.html

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[Anonymous]

It’s the real deal.

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[Rick Green – Founder of TotallyADD]

I was the MC of a big event last night, the Neurological Health Charities of Canada’s annual dinner and awards. It’s a group of 24 charities working together, everything from Cerebral Palsy to Addiction to ALS… Amazing group. And one of the top with the Cerebral Palsy charity was telling me about her experience as a Doctor in various hospital. She said that Doctors and Nurses are drawn to certain specialties and every E.R. department is full of ADHD Docs and Nurses. Adrenaline junkies.

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[Anonymous]

Great site, great forum, I’m finally embracing the fact that I have to put up a fight and wrestle with this ADHD thing that has been stalking me for a lifetime (53 now, considered moderately successful, had it all and occassionally almost lost it all because was always fighting these emotion loaded demons that no one else would apparently see.. you know the story). Anywho, started on Teva-Methylphenidate 18 mg today. I know, it was supposed to be Concerta but my my prescription did not state “nosub” so our friendly neighbourhood pharmacist took the liberty of substituting for the generic drug, so I have an appt. with my Dr. first thing in the AM to change the prescription to Concerta with explicit “no substitution”. Lesson to the wise I guess, I think it was a bit short sighted to ignore the Janssen-Orthe patent and allow the rather inferiour Novo subsitute here. I think it is a cause worth fighting for. However, even if it was not the genuine Concerta, I noticed a HUGE difference as soon as I popped the pill, WOW! I had a number of meetings throughout the day today and I was really shocked at how lucid I felt and how I could follow every topic in the conversation without having to first filter it through my emotion screen. Yesterday, conversing with others was almost as if through an emotional veil that obscured some of the verbal and non verbal cues ordinary people would pick up during a conversation and occassional I would lose the thread of what the conversation was about. Today however, everything was coming through rich, loud and clear, no static!!! Well this only day 1 so we’ll see how it goes. Tomorrow is the switch to Concerta and then the real work begins on the cognitive behavoir therapy and all that good stuff. But I now have hope… so I’ll post as often as I can and yes, it does feel good to share

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[Anonymous]

Second day on the Novo substitute. Have picked up the Concerta pills today and will start on those tomorrow, so I’ll be able to really compare the difference between the two. So far, the generic seemed to do the trick, both days took an 18mg tablet around 7:00 am, seems to kick in about a couple of hours later and lasts until approx. 3:00 pm. Then I’m on my own again but sticking to the “one a day” diet for now. Huge improvement in productivity and focus at work, also a sense of contentment like everything is just fine… should have really started on this many years ago. Noted a couple of side effects, persistant headache and feeling of pressure in the chest. So tomorrow I’ll start on the 18 mb Concerta and see how it goes…

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[Anonymous]

oh yeah and one more side effect: problems sleeping. Always had sleep problems, been taking Zopyclone every night for the last few years. Anyone know of any effects from taking Concerta in the am and Zopyclone at night ?

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[Anonymous]

I don’t quite understand the substitution thing. My pdoc gave me a script for Concerta and stamped it with “No substitutions”. He has declared that his patients are reporting quite a bit of dissatisfaction with the generics so he clearly stated he wanted me to continue with the Concerta ( in addition to the fact that my med plan coverthe cost 100%).

So when I took in my last prescription to the pharmacy, they tell me they will have to give me the generic. What??? I tell them that the doc has said “No substitutions”. No, they tell me, teh message can’t be stamped, it has to be in writing. They will have to call him and get it from him verbally. (Go ahead. I know he’ll give you an earful. He ranted a bit about the ‘games’ the pharmacy people play with his patients the last time I was in to see him.)

Our conversation continued and I explained that the last time I brought in my script that a pharmacy trainee (what do you call a student pharmacist?) called me and asked ME which drug I wanted. “Do you want Concerta or the generic?”

Since I hadn’t really looked at the script (gee, he gave me 3 different ones for different things, all of them repeats) I asked the trainee what the doctor has specified. Concerta. Hmmm….. well, since he wrote Concerta and not the generic, just give me Concerta and I’ll check with him the next time I go back to get the script renewed.

So when I explained all this to the real pharmacist on this last visit he says, “Oh, well if YOU requested Concerta we can just give you Concerta based on that. We call it a patient request.” ???????

So they never bothered to call the doctor because I specified I wanted Concerta!!!!! And they were going to call the doctor because he used a stamp that said NO SUBSTITUTIONS!!!! All I had to do was say that I wanted the Concerta??? I’m still shaking my head.

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[Anonymous]

if you have not already checked it out, here is blog for more information on generic substitude vs genuine Concerta here:

http://www.addadhdblog.com/generic-concerta-in-canada/#a8c98

I’ve switched to the genuine Concerta this morning and keeping observation on effects and counter effects. So far only noted very slight differences… it does seem to “kick-in” at about the same time, couple of hours…we’ll see how rest of day goes.

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[Anonymous]

Hi everyone! I registered just to answer this post!!!

I was reacently diagnosed as an adult but oh it was sooo obvious with 20+20 hind sight (pardon my spelling… I’m french! LOL!!) … just like you I had high IQ, great grades, not the typical portrait I guess, but chroninc difficulties througout my life since I was a kid and still today… I was misdiagnosed along the was at a great cost to my mental health and self esteem but now I’m a graduate student at a top Montreal University, I work as a reasearcher and I have a 6year old son so you can say I am very active from early in to morning to late at night and I live a mentally demanding and high pace life… kind of like you maybe??

I am also struggling to get the right dosage of Concerta… at first it felt like I was taking tranquilisers… wanted to dose off all the time unless I was actively engaged in something… so my doctor and I kept upping the dose all the way to 72mg which is when I started to feel like myself again, quick thinking!! I took it aroung 7am and it was wearing off by 2pm… I felt gradually drop down and it was harder to focus and unpleasant… like a rebound almost. I was unpatient and agressive even… I managed a while like that… tried to get as much as I could by 2pm but you can’t realisticly organise the world around your medication schedule… I had meatings from 1-3pm, and homework with my son… so I looked up some videos on CADDAC.ca and one Dr. explained that the rebound effect was often caused by the rapid drop so a smaller dose just before the drop could counter balance that effect… Speaking with my doctor about the demands of my life and the need for me to be on top of my game in the evening as well (as I will start teaching one evening a week soon), led us to try this regimen: 72mg in the morning and 36 mg at 1pm, just before the drop. It make sense to have a larger dose in the morning than in the afternoon because what is leftover from the morning carries over on top of the afternoon dose. The CADDRA recommended max dosage for adults is 108mg if there is no cardiac risk factors in the family… see the link! (http://www.caddra.ca/cms4/pdfs/caddraGuidelines2011Document7A_MedTables.pdf)

I see a difference in my functionning in the afternoon and the evening for sure… harder to fall asleep without a minute dose of mirtrazapine (7.5mg) but I plan on trying melatonine this week to replace that. Here is an article on sleep and trouble feeling alert that I really love:

http://www.additudemag.com/adhd/article/757.html#disqus_thread

Not sure if it’s the regimen I’m going to stick too but I’ll give it a chance for a few weeks at least before I decide… I feel a little jittery… maybe 27mg in the afternoon would be enough.

If Vivanse was covered by medicair in Canada my Doc would want me to try that but for now it’s too expensive for me… you may want to look into that option if you feel Concerta isn’t cutting it…

Good luck to all of you!!

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[Anonymous]

Right… hmmm… gotta slow down and read the whole question before answering! Sometimes I wonder how I get through school! Did I mention I’m 28 and went back to school 5 years ago as a mature student and there is not a single semester where I do not fail to hand in at least one paper! One of my friends came over once and she declared: “so that how you juggle it all! You just don’t clean!!” Not fair! I read a post once where a lady said she suffered from the CHAOS syndrome: Cannot Have Anyone Over by Suprise!! LOL!! Love it!!

Coaching is one way… medication is another… there are certain this that we are not wired to do well! No medication can compensate for everyting! I thought that at 108mg I would be fantastic… but no… there are certain things that are just not natural for us Add-ers, medication ca support us if we put the effort but it will not make us good at some thing that we never learned how to do efficiently. You can’t take 4X the dose of ritalin and not open you book to study and wnder why you failed an exam… I guess we just didn’t naturally pick up by observation what others did, by trial and error because of our deficits in executive functions… that means that to take back control in a area of your life that isn’t in control, it will take more that meds… meds will help support your efforts, but you need to develop skills that you haven’t learned, break down the taks, determin where the weakness lies, make a game plan, stick to it…

For example, did you know cleaning requires many executives functions like task initiation, working memory, planing, organizing, prioritizing, sustained effort… if your meds aren’t right… you will have a hard time getting started, avoid a task that demands of you a certain set of skills that arent your strenght, you may get distracted many times along the way, making the taks 20X longer that it should be, forget what your are doing or had intended to do which is your working memory that get your frustrated because your are lost in your own kitchen (and since you called yourself slob in your post I bet you have a tendency to be hard on yourself when you struggle with something simple), you may have trouble with planning so you start to vaccum before you clean the counter so the the floor is dirty again, and organizing (if you are like me, everytime you put something away in a logical place it is never to be found again!!!) , and then you can’t really evaluate the scope of the task so you feel like you must reorganise the cupboard before you do the dishes so you have enough room the put the dishes away, the realise the inside of the cupboards are dirty so you take everything out to clean them and that is such a huge job (not what you had intented) and you¸get lost in the perfectioninsm of it… get tired before your done because trouble with sustained attention and on task persistence once you will switch from scrubbing the cupboards and will have never washed those dishes! Sound familiar? A little over exagerated perhaps! LOL!!

My best trick: LISTS! Give it a try!

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[Anonymous]

Thanks for the post gotta-lol, I have also heard of melatonin as a good supplement for sleeping, and LISTS… yes agree. Haven’t heard of Vivanse but never now… for now seems that Concerta if fine and still deciding if to use Concerta genuine or substitute. good luck to you!

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[Anonymous]

OH!!! Geniuine or substitute COncerta is an easy call!

Concerta genuine has a special delivery mechanism that release the molecule in phases throught the day… substitute is not as sophisticated in its engineering and basically just releases all at once so you do not have the same controle at all.. basically there is a reason why Doctors write on the priscriptions DO NOT SUBSTITUTE… not the same thing at all… the generic is not equal the the brand in this case… worth thinking about!

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[Anonymous]

Concerta worked the best for me! i was on it for 4 years and it made such a difference. i went for one semester having a D in english to an A the next! However, I had to stop taking Concerta because it made me depressed and then it was only helping my school but hurting the rest of the parts of my life. So then I became what I call the “Chemical Guinea Pig.” I have been on 7 different medications and even different combinations of them as well. I have to meet with a specialist to see if he can come up with a combination of Concerta and something else that can counteract the depression. so Concerta worked the best for me but it may not be the best for you. you just have to try and figure out the medication that is right for you.

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