The feelings about what I like to call pharmaceutical intervention is different for each individual and family. A common perception seems to be that parents seem to medicate their kids all will-nilly, seeking a quick fix for behavioral or academic challenges. While that certainly happens, I know there are several families like ours, who exhausted all other interventions and therapies before turning offering allegiance to Emperor Pharma.
I can formally declare our medication attempts to be over for the time being. I knew there was going to be trial and error. I knew that we may have to try several combinations of drugs and dosages to have a positive impact on the boys distractibility and sheer inability to focus. I like to think that most parents do not jump at the chance to medicate their kid at the first signs of struggles in school. I was certainly among them, determined to try medication as a last resort if all other interventions, tools, and therapies failed. Online parent groups and chat rooms are filled with horror stories of medication attempts gone wrong or having unbearable side effects. Despite our hesitation, it was clear that if any kid ever truly needed medication to get through school, it was ours. We began trying a year ago, and have gone through just about every class of medication available. All had side effects that were considerably worse than the behaviors we were trying to improve. Non-stimulants made him so sleepy that he could barely function and get through the day. Stimulants turned him into a terrible rage monster – angry and yelling and combative and hard to be around.
We took a few months off and tried again with different products, then took more time off and tried again. The most recent time, after trying 3 different combinations of medications over several months, I was cautiously optimistic that he was responding better to a non stimulant as long as the dosage was very low. So we went ahead and agreed to add a stimulant after one month. Little did I know that I had just ignited a two day hellish wakefulness spree. Day one was great, we did his homework together quickly and without argument and I was excited that maybe this would work. While it was strange that he was still coming out of his room and trying to chat over two hours after going to bed (he normally goes to sleep quickly and easily), I thought he’d fall asleep soon and went to bed myself. When he came into my room after midnight I told him he could stay for a bit, and he may have dozed off briefly. I had no idea at the time that when sent back to his own room after 1am, he would not sleep one ounce again for 24 hours. After 3am I was awakened by our door opening and “Mom I brought you this”. He proudly set a bowl of ice cream on my nightstand with an enthusiasm that indicated he believed this was the grandest of gestures. In my sleepy haze my brain must have short circuited, because I could only respond with one word answers repeated three or more times. “No. No. No. Why? Why? Why? No. No. No.” in a tone that might suggest I was about be the victim of some deep betrayal.
I walked the bowl down the hallway as he trailed behind and told me matter of factly “I emptied the dishwasher!” I thought he was joking. When I arrived at the kitchen to put my ice cream bowl in the sink, I could see that the dishwasher was indeed open and empty. He has never in his life emptied the dishwasher or even attempted/offered to do so. I looked around and sure enough everything was put away in the correct places. At this point I wondered if I was in some kind of fever dream – what was this bizarre series of events and why was it happening? I’ve never done drugs, but I imagined this is what it would have been like if Jonathan Lipnicki’s character Ray had been on cocaine in Jerry McGuire, instead of asking how much the human head weighs.. He was incensed when I then told him he had to return to (and stay in) his room, as he was setting himself up to cozily read a book by the fire.
As far as I know he did go back to his room for an hour or two, but came into our room again shortly after 5am, chatting up a storm about who-knows-what. He proclaimed that he had gotten hungry, and I found a mutilated apple with a butter knife sticking out of it on the counter. I was honestly pretty impressed that he washed it before attempting to cut it using a dull knife with his non-dominant hand, considering his arm was broken at the time. Apparently he had gotten the dog up during his nighttime shenanigans as well, likely in an attempt to play with her. I saw dog shit on the floor after I found the apple, and that was how the day was going to officially start.
I can only imagine what he must have been like in school on Tuesday, given the fact that he was acting like Leonardo DiCaprios character Jordan Belfort in Wolf of Wall Street. His teacher would later politely say “It was as if he was driven by a motor”. My response was “It was like he was on speed all day, wasn’t it?” She agreed fully with zero hesitation. He was still full throttle when he got home, and again emerging from his room hours after being sent to bed, this time wearing a couple layers of lacrosse jerseys and wearing jeans because his stuffies were having a raucous hockey game in his room, and ice rinks are cold. The game continued into the first morning hours of Wednesday before I was finally able to get him to go to sleep. So overall he was awake from roughly 6:30 Monday morning until 1am Wednesday. No good. Extended release pills, my ass. They were in fact never ending release pills and I wanted to set them on fire. He slept until 10:30 the next morning and skipped school entirely rather than going in late, when he said he felt “drizzly” and had a racing heart rate. So yeah. We tried. We were never destined to be one of those families that just starts their kid on Ritalin or Adderall with immediate wonderful effects that are life changing and school transforming and oh-my-God why didn’t we do this sooner outlooks. That just wouldn’t be us.
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