Chapter 17
How To Taper
ADD, ADHD And Stimulant Medication
THE FDA HAS
published approved guidelines for tapering off these
medications. Those guidelines are what I published a decade
ago and this approach is as effective now as it was in 1999.
Reducing this class of medication is rather straightforward
and usually does not cause a problem.
Reducing the Medication
Reduce the medication gradually and if side effects begin
that are too severe, go back to the last dosage you were
doing fine with, get stable again and then reduce the
medication again, but this time at a slower reduction
amount.
The above can seem too basic and too easy to understand for
it to be misinterpreted. However, that is not the case.
Gradual
– Most of us take the word gradual to mean slowly, but there
is a need to give a good example of gradual. Imagine you are
in an airplane that is about to descend for the landing.
What would you like that landing to be like? Would you
prefer to not feel the decent and when the plane touches the
runway you do not even feel the tires touch ground? This is
a landing where I have heard the passengers cheer and thank
the pilot when they get off the plane. This is also the
gradual landing we want for you when reducing your
medication.
Gradual when tapering off a medication would be; a slow and
steady decent that does not jar and bump the person reducing
the drug. Gradual would also be a speed of reduction that
would allow the person to still function in life and reduce
to a minimum the chance of withdrawal side effects.
If you agree with the above, this removes the idea of
skipping days of the medication in order to reduce the
dosage and get off the drug. Skipping days or alternating
from a higher dosage to a lower dosage every other day is
not gradual. One only needs to examine the half-life of the
medication to establish that datum. You go in withdrawal
every other day and feel an overdose effect the days
you are going back up on the dosage.
Never Skip Days of the Drug
All drugs in this class come in completely different dosages
and with most being in a time-release the variances are too
vast to list in a book of this type. We will first take what
to do with a non-time release medication.
ONLY REDUCE MEDICATION EVERY 14-DAYS
Non-Time Release Medication
If you are taking a non-time release medication, reduce the
medication as near to 10% as possible. You can get a pill
slicer from a pharmacy to help with this. Every 14-days
reduce the drug by another 10%. After 10 reductions of the
drug you are drug free.
Time Release or Extended Release Medication
There are specific dosages the drug is
available in as a time release. After 7 days of the
pretaper, you reduce the drug to the next lower available
dosage. Every 14-days you should be able to reduce the drug
again to the next available lower dosage.
Continue with this method until
completely off the drug.
DO NOT OPEN THE CAPSULE AND REMOVE THE BALLS.
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