ADHD-Life

Day 33-39 on Strattera

How I feel

Well You all noticed that I have not been so faithful with my daily writing.
I haven’t been writing for 5 days now I think.
To be honest, I really didn’t feel like it.
Thanks to Strattera!
I felt terrible!

If you want my opinion on Strattera, Don’t use it! Don’t try it!

complains/side effects

I know I have been sounding very positive about Strattera in the beginning.
But more and more I started to realize that the irritation feelings became stronger.
Then when I talked with my wife about it, she couldn’t agree more.
I started to dislike myself more and more!
My wife could hardly say anything to me without getting ‘bad response’ from me.
Concentration is one of the many problems I have.
So many times when we are going somewhere with our car I drive wrong unless my wife tells me how
to go. But when she does that I get irritated, and respond not nice, like it is her fault that I can’t concentrate.
Concentration is just one of many problems.
Before I started with Strattera I had some very bad days.
Then it would be better for me and my loved ones to be alone.
But now thanks to Strattera I feel like I have only bad days!
Especially the last 2 weeks it was getting worse!

Sometimes I totally freaked out without any reason.
I could be sitting on a couch and become angry, just suddenly without any reason.
I could suddenly really flip out, freak out or however you want to call it.
Most times it happened when I was alone, so that was good.

But the worse moment I experienced was with Easter.
We where going to eat dinner at my mother in law.
She is a fantastic, sweet and very smart woman.
Not only that, but she is also a great cook, so I’m always happy to go to her!
But with Easter I went to the woods right before I was going to her.
I went into the woods and went crazy.
I really had to keep on talking to myself that I was ok.
That I am not crazy and that it probably was an side effect of Strattera.
I started to cry, became very emotional etc.

My dog came to me with a ball he found.
That helped because I could focus on playing with my dog.
and slowly I get out of that feeling.
It was a very scary experience.
After that I have been thinking about the research I had done before I started with Strattera.
That so many people in America, I think it was more then 300 killed themselves.
And if I understood it correctly it was also proven that it was connected with the use of Strattera.

Here in Sweden they are testing it now on about 600 people.
It is only available via a special license, well if it is up to me I hope they will not
be allowed to put it on the market here.
I was one of those 600 people and as far as I understood, no people here in Sweden
had any good results. I base that on reading and responses I heard and got.
So I don’t claim this as being a fact. All in my blog is my opinion, not facts.
I’m not a specialist, I’m not a doctor.
But I am a smart guy with user experience in the field ADHD and medicine.
I have tried Effexor, Ritalin, concerta, Metamine, in English known as dextro amphetamine
and I probably forget to mention a few. Nothing worked.
And all medicine have side effects. now I have been reading also reports on the effect of
the use of Ritalin and other stimulants on children. I don’t remember where I read it.
It’s also not so easy to find critical reports from experts, and I wonder if they, I mean the medicine industry,
is trying to keep those reports away from the public?

I know I sound totally different now then when I started with testing Strattera.
Of course I sound different! I was hoping Strattera was going to work for me.
My life is a life of allot of stress, troubles, confrontations etc.
I’m tired of living the life I do, well that doesn’t sound right.
I’m not tired of life, but I want to live a normal life!
I want to be able to give love to my wife whom I love more then anything else in this world.
I want to be able to enjoy life without stress and chaos.

People outside on the street probably don’t see that I have such a big problem.
After all I have my own company, I have a company together with my wife.
I also work on a normal job fulltime.
We live close to nature and have fantastic animals.
I have family, and also a very nice family in law.
A car, a moped, a bike. I’m not bound to a wheelchair or anything.
So everything is ok right?

I know I should be thankful for all of that.
I don’t know how to explain what the problem is, but maybe you get a little idea of how the life of someone with ADHD is (and how hard it is for the partners of some one with ADHD) if you read the posting about the start of my day. Then you might get a little better understanding. This story does not have a happy ending.
Well not yet anyway. It’s just a start to a new adventure, now without medicine.

I’m a Christian, I believe in God. Maybe I have been putting my hope to much on medicine instead of Him.

I will keep on writing this week about the last days of testing Strattera.
I went down from 80 mg to 40 mg. after that I will continue to write, although maybe not daily
about ADHD in my life. So keep on reading