I have been on an increasing dose of Amphetamine Salts, which are so far having no noticeable affect, and which taste very sweet.
My son and I are both ADHD and he doesn’t take one of his medications except on school days, so he has weekend pills left over. I took one of those before work once, just to see if it helped and had one of the most productive days at work that Ive ever had. I was able to concentrate, finish tasks, etc. without constantly getting sidetracked. So I know I have ADHD and that some medication will work for me.
So hjave we just not gotten the dose right yet, is it the wrong medication for me, or is my doctor prescribing me a sugar pill? (why yes, I can be paranoid, why do you ask?)
Sounds like the placebo effect is relevant here, but I’d suggest it kicked in when you took your son’s pills. They could have exactly the same dosage but the fact it wasn’t from your regular stash meant you ascribed greater effects to them.
Just a WAG, but wielding Occam’s Razor that seems more likely that your doctor slipping you sugar pills.
Of course if the dose is radically higher/lower in your son’s pills then that might be the cause, but I don’t know enough about Amphet Salts to know if a single pill of a higher dose would generate such noticeable effects.
I don’t believe they have a sweet taste. Such meds are made to give to children amd they don’t wants them chewing the meds as that effects (increases) absorption rate, so I doubt they wold make them sweet.
I’m not saying you don’t have ADHD but just because the meds work does not confirm you have it.
Doctors have prescribed placebos since the dawn of time. Overtly for probably the last hundred years. But perhaps less so now. Back in the days when you took a scrip to a real pharmacist who actually mixed up the prescription, there were plenty of scripts for what was essentially syrup, colour and something bitter, with perhaps a little alcohol. It wasn’t all that long ago that a tincture of laudanum might provide the bitter component. That is arguably not a placebo of course. Not exactly good medicine either.
But you are asking a much deeper question. Which is one of medical ethics. Doctors must of course act in the best interests of their patients. But if they judge that initially a diagnosis might be better effected by prescribing a placebo this gets murky. They might be right. If there is a significant enough chance that you are not ADHD, simply handing out the amphetamines is probably itself unethical. But the question of the ethics of deliberately not involving a patient in the decision making process of their treatment is clearly an issue. In the past, doctors as minor deities made such behaviour easy. Modern times and expectations change. But when it comes to placebo effect and the question of the patients best interests you get a very difficult problem. It is manifestly clear that the placebo effect mostly fails to work if the patient knows the drugs are just sugar. So the simple act of involving the patient in the process acts against what a doctor believes is in the best interests of the patient. Which is a fun place for discussion.
There is very unlikely to be any law against prescribing placebos in most places. You might be able to make a malpractice suit out of it, but I would judge that someone doing so would be doing the world a very significant disservice. The last thing we want is are yet more situations where a doctor faces legal threats that guide their actions against best medical practice.
First of all, physicians certainly prescribe placebos sometimes. However it would be illegal for a pharmacist to dispense those labeled as something else. (“Official” placebos come under their own drug names, like Cebocap.)
It could indeed. Also it sounds as if OpalCat may have taken one of those in addition to her usual.
I don’t know of any jurisdictions where prescribing a placebo is illegal. It is a thorny ethical question which the American Medical Association has addressed.
“Physicians may use placebos for diagnosis or treatment only if the patient is informed of and agrees to its use. A placebo may still be effective if the patient knows it will be used but cannot identify it and does not know the precise timing of its use. A physician should enlist the patient’s cooperation by explaining that a better understanding of the medical condition could be achieved by evaluating the effects of different medications, including the placebo. The physician need neither identify the placebo nor seek specific consent before its administration. In this way, the physician respects the patient’s autonomy and fosters a trusting relationship, while the patient still may benefit from the placebo effect.”
Lots (probably most) pills have a sweet-tasting coating because the underlying drug tastes bitter or otherwise like crap (though some may actually taste sweet).
A doctor would not be able to prescribe a placebo and have it labeled as generic Adderall. I only have a few years in community pharmacy, but have never seen a placebo prescription, as well. I can’t speak to the particular generic that you’re taking, but the first excipient in the brand name tablets is lactitol, a sugar alcohol, which may explain why it tastes sweet to you.
Is the kiddo’s med actually a different drug? Or made by another manufacturer? Although it flies in the face of pharmaceutical science, some patients really do prefer the white one over the blue one or whatever different colors generic manufacturers decide to make their pills.
I can’t comment on the medicolegal side, but surely if you or your insurance company are paying prescription costs (however low) for placebo pills, that would count as fraud, regardless of the medical issues.
I also agree with what Jackmannii said - modern medical ethics demand that patients are fully informed about any treatments they have as far as paractically possible (and as much as they can understand and want to know). The only time I have come across placebos in actual medical use is during clinical trials, where the patient would normally know they might be placed in the placebo arm, but would not normally know whether or not they actually were until the end of the trial.
One other thought - is it possible that you and your son are on different versions even if it’s the same drug - sustained release/enteric coating or similar for one of you?
Tell your doctor that you suspect he’s giving you placebo pills and that you’re taking stims that were prescribed to someone else, and I’d say there’s an excellent chance he’ll adjust your treatment.
It’s totally inappropriate to take someone else’s meds. No offense, but you’re really just coming off like a drug seeker upset that your scrip isn’t getting you off enough.
I was going to mention this, as well as the wisdom of son only taking his meds ‘on school days’, and having ‘weekend pills left over’, but knowing how easily these threads from the OP can go off the rails I thought better of it.
For the record, this is fairly common, and even OK’ed by doctors. Some will write Rx’s for 20-ish tablets, so as not to have extra at the end of the month, but some parents will just skip a fill every few months.