misperceptions about meds not working?

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My son ( who's 15 & high functioning), stated yesterday that he doesn't think that any of his meds work except for the Prozac......now, from the outside looking in, son ABSOLUTELY looks & acts a million times better on his current med cocktail ( prozac, wellbutrin & seroquel)~ it's very rare for him to have a total meltdown now, and he's actually sleeping ! heck, he's even gone back to playing his saxophone !
anybody else have a similiar experience ?

I never realized until I was 20 or so how I was different from being on meds to being off meds. My mother would say "you are such a different person now that you are on this set of meds" but I could never tell the difference at all. It is still really hard to see the differences, but now I know myself well enough at 24 (25 in 2 weeks, start buying me gifts) that I can see what I was like on as compared to off. Its one of the hardest things to notice about yourself though. As long as he respects your thoughts on the subject, that you see him doing better and acting better, he will be fine.

If it ain't broke don't fix it... was my initial reaction. My son is oblivious the the incredibly evident effect ritalin has on him, and the thought of taking him off medication makes me panic .

On the other hand, I understand your son's resistence to drugs, and brain chemistry does change. Did the doctor who prescribed the drugs give any time perpectives? Perhaps you could talk to a psychiatrist about, at some point, gradually lowering the dose of one of the drugs, and seeing what happens? (If things go wrong, you could put the dose back up, and if your son realises the drug cocktail isn't "forever", it might be easier for him to cope with)

thanks for the insight, vegasadelphia.....at the moment, he seems to respect our opinions about the meds~ i think it helps that we fought to get him off of one of the meds he used to be on, which we ALL knew wasn't working~well, everyone in the family at least....had a hard time convincing the doc that it wasn't working.
there have been days when he hasn't taken his meds~usually because he forgot, or was in a rush...and we've tried to point out to him how different he acts when he doesn't take them.....i thought that this would somehow sink in....

Ster,

This is by no means meant in a negative way (I just wanted to state that in the beginning).

Just a few years ago, one of my best friends quit taking her Lithium after being on some dosage of it for many years.

She killed herself shortly afterwards.

She began with the idea that she didn't need the medicine any more. She began having ideas about feeling fine, and she then worried that the Lithium hindered her creativity.

She then began to think that the Lithium was controlling her personality.

When she reached that stage, she stopped taking her medication without letting anyone know.

It is SO good that you are mindful of your son's attitudes and thoughts about medication.

I don't really have anything to contribute to this other than a hug to you and your son.

Take care.

thanks for the reply. i totally understand what you're saying.....i respect his opinion, and am trying to remain positive with him about staying on his meds....we've always found ourselves in the position of physically handing him his meds, and watching him take them ( or should i say, we watch him now due to a few instances of him saying he took his meds, but did not~that was early on in the med routine)....
we've also explained to him that a change in meds means more dr visits, & the possibility that a new med might work...might not work....might make things better....might make things worse.
at the moment, he is against going through that ...and so he's changed his mind about changing meds.

Excuse me for butting into this part of the site. Yes I am a parent, but not in the sense it is used here.

I have been on the med road for about 10 years and may only now be getting to one that works correctly. I have lost count of the doctors, each with their own thoughts on what ailed me, and each with their own approach. I don't have a clue how many meds and med combos anymore. That is a key. I had to come to the conclussion, it was up to me. No one can stand in my shoes and know what it is I'm feeling. This is tough for a younger person, as the skills to communicate might not be there. Sometimes they aren't in me, just by the very drugs that are being tried. I can't say that strong enough, the very nature of some of the meds makes it very hard to explain yourself. If you're lucky enough to be able to get it in some form that normal people can fathom it. I am 56.

Bipolar is their current approach. They're going to get an education soon on what has been really going on. I can now use terms I have learned here. I can now express what I'm feeling, why I do what I do. It just has fallin into place. Oh there maybe a bit of bipolar working it's magic, along with a couple of other things we already knew about. I wasn't worried about the tag alongs, I wanted some kind of place a little more comfortable with what ever it is I have. I never expected 'perfect", I didn't even want normal. I like what I have in many respects. There are parts that could be better. I'm not to fond of the deep depressions, but even these are better now.

They list out a bunch of side effects, it is long, it is scarey and then say go home and take them. They will ask questions that I no longer know from what point in time I should answer from. They will ask me to compare stages, hell I've been doing it so long I don't even remember what I was like before the meds. I stopped taking them, I told them I would, my god they about had heart attacks. They then tagged me with a bad attitude and didn't ever want to try meds again. NO!! I wanted to know who I was before, I needed a base to look from to compare to. I would hit a med dose that felt good, they wouldn't stop, well maybe we can make it a little better, it didn't and when we went back to it, it wasn't there any more. I even got, you're thinking too much about your illness. I mean wtf? Every time I walk in it's all about how I feel, did you keep a jornaul, they set me up to do it and then tell me I'm a bad kittie for doing it? Sometimes you just want to shout, leave me alone, go a way. There is a lot more to this list, a very lot more. Frustrating is an understatement. Not changing meds every 1-2-3 months was a hard lesson to learn. That's when I had to say, leave me alone, I don't know yet. They may not have the time to wait, but I do and they work for me.

My wife is a trained observer, an Anthropologist. She can see me take a med and see a marked difference in me, sometimes I don't, sometimes I do. Some of these happen so behind the scenes. It not like taking an asprin and the headache goes away. These be sneak up behind ya kind of drugs. She'll say my that is working well, then I tell her yeah, but guess what, I don't happen to remember my name anymore and just who are you lady. Thats not so far from the truth, as one might think. So despite her keen eagle eye and her very valued input to my doctor meetings, she still can't feel what I do. She needs to be there, because I tend to put up masks, just to be able to be in the hospital setting to begin with. Even his office, his closeness can be troubling to me. That is not a good setting to be talking about meds when you are having overload from just being there. So yes she needs to be there, she needs to try and keep me "honest", but she still can't feel what the meds are doing.

It was me that said, I'm tired of not being able to get in the car to get to this meeting. What ever happened to good ol valium? Oh my god you used to take drugs 35 years ago and they are addicting. I won't use the language I used to him. I have a perscription for valium and it is wonderful. Some days I take none, somedays I have to take a couple. I was on the first dose of my current main med and it was a huge break through, I could remember things from 3 weeks ago, I could really write for the first time in my life and it was just all so breath taking, a whole new world, a new expression. I went back to to the doctor to tell him how wonderful it was, he changed the dose, thought I was being manic. I almost killed myself with the depression that the new dose put me in. I went back to him and asked, now dear sir (you can bet your life I didn't put it like that), if you had been mute all your life, would you not get a little excited if you could suddenly talk? The point on this is, I can get easliy talked into doing something else. I now am controling the dose of this one, he is just sitting there, he is out of the picture till I give the verdict. I am the boss, he works for me, he advises, I listen, I am the decider.

This thing I just tried to make in some form or fashion of sense, was only to try and show you another side. From the one that's taking the drug/s. I don't know what he feels. I don't hold any answers. I can tell you that the meds used for bipolar and Aspie are very often the same, very often. And all to often they are "cast offs". Drugs that were used for something else that were observed to help some people with the two above mentioned. I can tell you that Bipolar very often brings a friend or two. I can tell you that the Syndrome can do the same. I most likely have a combo of the two, but am thinking Aspie is the main, it fits more, it explains more. And besides they would throw me out for not being strange enough if I was just BP and I like it here

I look at all this as a blessing. Maybe a little dash of curse thrown in. I can do things that others don't even have a clue about. Life has taught me that. Your son is young, re-enforce this and no matter what the outcome of the med road is, I know he'll be a stronger person for it. I hope in some little way this is insightful. It isn't all doom and gloom. I rather like it here, but it can be a very rough road to age upon. I am glad they even know it exists now. You're an angel to even be here asking.

postpaleo, thanks for the insight!
i am sure son is probably more than "just an aspie", but i don't care to proceed further down the crazy dx route~i've spent tons of $ gettting dxs that were wrong.
i, too, have been on meds & my hubby ( who's also an aspie) is on meds. hubby can often get a more understandable response from son about the meds~seems like they understand each other better than i understand either one of them
since son has been on the current meds, we have seen tremendous strides in his attitude towards himself and others...in his ability to tolerate frustrating situations.....don't get me wrong, i totally appreciate the fact that son is comfortable telling us about his concern about the meds. i know that i would never have talked to my own parents to the depths my son talks to us..
i guess i'm just having a hard time figuring out why he can't see that the meds are working. personally, i can tell the difference between how i acted before i started on anti-depressants & now that i'm on them..

He might be trying to say that he doesn't feel better, not qualifying "calm" in that feeling. My husband took anti-depressants to fight stress-induced depression and he never felt good or right on them. He had to take them because he was blacking out and suffering from amnesia.
So, the immediate danger was gone, but other side effects creeped in and made him still down. Eventually, he quit his job and went off the meds and normalized his moods.

I've seen people on anti-depressants that feel happy, and maybe that's what your son expects.

Two of the meds you mentioned him using right now, I know very well. The last you mention doesn't ring a bell, but that means nothing, probably been there too, just don't remember any more. It is impossible to know which is doing what or some kind of combo effect creating some completely different result. Sure you can look at the text book and make a guess and I would assume that's about all you can do. I would only hope the cocktail was done in a slow process and not some boom, here take all 3.

Some meds just don't work the way an aspiran or an anti depressent work, those are kind of a "bang", I'm here drug". The others are just so very subtle, so quiet. Those are the hard ones and when you're in the middle of a cocktail and going about the day to day ups and downs, it is tough, very tough to know with any insight what is doing what. hence the observer. Now from the observers point of the view the course is clear. From our point of view all we can blert out is, it doesn't feel right. You have a couple of really good things going. your husband and son can relate, still doesn't mean that your husband can feel what he does, even if they both used the very same meds. Communication is key. Your son is 15, he is capeable of getting out what is going on, but the translation of what he is saying isn't always on target. His choice of words might be misleading. If what is going on now is working, even limited, don't mess with it. It's not like he is refusing to open his mouth. But I can really relate to the need to remember what it was like before the pills, it was refreshing to see how bad it was, strange isn't it.

My own road was one of the anti depresent way with stabilizer. Now I'm on a stablizer and the need for the anit depressent just isn't there. couple reasons and this site and the knowledge of aspi is a part. The other big one I already mentioned, valium, it helps with dealing with the real world on a real time basis. Takes the stress off, hence reduces the bad feelings of being out there, the depressed feeling of not having delt with it in a way that was good to my way of seeing, the frustration, the fears. Some of this just decreases with age, having done them and practice. Oh hell I don't know where I'm going with this. KISS= Keep It Simple Stupid, it should be tacked up on every freakin doctors wall. If he can't sort through it, it will be an endless road. he'll rebel every chance he can. Well that's from my paranoid point of view. Oh, Lamotrigine, seems so far to be my break through drug. And at a very low dose I might add.

Money and doctors and socializing medicene and government and... damn don't let me go down that road. you'll see a rage that ain't pretty. Just saying that, I wonder where I put my valium You'll get it, he'll make it, no matter what I think, you're on the right road, at least for now. The older he gets the more he can contribute. remember he's a teen, those are rough years. Even though we knew it all then, we have to get old to see that, I do now and didn't then. lol, yeah, right.

I still think you're an angel and I see your husband as a saint. you guys rock!!

Death to speell check, till it can tell slang.
postpaleo

i hate spell check, too....thanks again for the insight.