SulpiciusG

Phone phobia, anyone?

If it can be characterized as social anxiety, you might want to check out some studies done in Turkey with adults who experienced social anxiety (SA) and some with ADHD too. There were on an antidepressant that was supposed to relieve their social anxiety, but it didn't. When the two patients with ADHD and SA started taking Ritalin for their ADHD, it helped, and to the surprise of all, a positive side effect occurred: their social anxiety went away. Eventually they were allowed to stop taking the antidepressant; the ADHD treatment was the only drug they needed. Link: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25955266/ Done again with 18 patients https://www.mdlinx.com/article/methylphenidate-improved-both... Neither study had a placebo control. Who cares When something works for social anxiety, it works. If people could wishfully-think their way out of that debilitating state of affairs, they would.

There are massive risks with Ritalin/methylphenidate. How to you ever stop taking it? Does it impair health over the long run? Will you abuse it, sell it, or smoke it? Ideally it could be used like training wheels, briefly, until the person got into the habit of not being socially anxious,and then kicked to the curb. I cannot say I recommend any psychiatric drugs. When people "try" them, they should be aware that it is easier to enter drugworld than it is to leave it.

Optional: If you observed Scott Staph's (Creed singer) 2014 or '15 meltdown, you already know what a bad result on stimulants prescribed for ADHD can look like. It was hard to piece his story together because it's a story of harm by pharma. Most mainstream stories left out the part about an antidepressant making him feel like hell and his attempt to feel better on Adderall instead. In childhood he'd had an ADHD diagnosis and was prescribed a stimulant for it. ABC had the details: https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/creed-frontman-scott-st...

Unfortunately he got sucked into the BS "bipolar" fantasy world after that. The drugs prescribed generally do not work and each class of drugs has a way of making life exquisitely hellish. When I read that he was going for treatment, I figured that was it for his career. People can't function on those drugs. If only he could just get away from it all for a while... https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/creed-frontman-scott-st...