Posted by Lita on 11/4/2008, 3:42 pm, in reply to "Re: Smoking and ADD"
71.111.149.69
No, my doctor is totally against her smoking. She just explained to me what she thinks is going on, and has offed to provide alternatives; I guess she can order some form of pharmacological nicotine in pill or powder form, but my daughter refused, as she has no intention of quitting. At least she is honest about it. Her smoking doesn't bother me too much, I smoked since I was her age.
--Previous Message--
: an interesting story but i am not buying the
: idea that a doctor would approve of smoking
: by a 13 year old. if the nicotine has this
: positive affect then there are safer ways to
: get it than smoking cigarettes.
:
: --Previous Message--
: My boyfriend, Tom, is a closet smoker. It’s
: kind of cute but a tragedy, too. Anyhow, he
: reads your board, showed me your question,
: and I thought it might be helpful to
: respond.
:
: My daughter was diagnosed with attention
: deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADD or ADHD,
: as my doctor calls it) when she was five
: years old, and she has been on medications
: most of the time for the last eight years;
: she has also been treated for depression.
: My ex-husband, now serving the seventh of a
: twenty year sentence for cocain trafficking,
: has this disease, and I take medications for
: chronic major depression (with full
: remission, so I am not clinically depressed
: with treatment). Anyhow, I understand it to
: be a genetic thing. My daughter’s different
: medicines generally work for awhile but
: loose their effectiveness, then have to be
: changed. She has been a difficult child to
: raise, having many of the problems
: characteristic of ADHD, including defiance,
: learning disabilities, poor impulse control,
: and antisocial behaviors. Last year, at age
: thirteen, she was caught stealing cigarettes
: from my neighbor. It turned out that she
: had been taking my cigarettes for six months
: and already learned to inhale, showing many
: of the signs of addiction. So I started
: buying her cigarettes, with smoking seeming
: like a much lesser evil than criminal
: behavior. As soon as she started smoking
: regularly, her overall behavior improved,
: and it has remained that way. The doctor
: explains it as some type of interaction
: between her prescription medicine, nicotine,
: and a chemical imbalance in her brain, which
: is probably affected positively with the
: combination. She now smokes up to a pack of
: cigarettes a day (on weekends, half that on
: school days) and her addiction makes
: cigarettes a powerful reinforcer, and this
: has been incorporated successfully into her
: behavior modification program. Her use of
: medicines has been reduced and this has
: absorbed the extra cost of the cigarettes;
: and her medications have continued to work
: without needing to be changed. At first it
: was difficult giving her cigarettes and
: watching her smoke, but it doesn’t bother me
: at all anymore, given the outcome.
:
:
:
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