Medication for Autism

Medicating our middle son Joel who is autistic has been an experimental and learning process that has evolved through many mistakes and some successes up to the present time. As parents desperate to find an answer or at least some sort of medical help for Joel, we searched through journals, magazines, and sought a myriad of physicians' opinions. To deal with his allergies, Joel was taken through difficult and painful allergy tests and for over a year was injected with various anti-allergy medications.

In addition, Joel was medicated for ear problems, sleep problems, bladder control problems, behavior problems, learning problems, and physiological problems. We have worked through homeopathy, vitamins, enzymes, minerals, and many types of behavioral improvement drugs. Each new regime invited hope of improvement, a false sense of optimism, and finally a big disappointment.

I recall using a common drug for many years when we continued to increase his dosage to insure proper behavior for his obvious hyperactivity and attention deficit disorder. After steadily adding more of the drug to his body, I one day realized how thin he had become and how extreme was his behavior. I took him off the drug (only to be fussed at for improperly dealing with my son by a physician in another city) and watched him gain 15 pounds in a few weeks.

I recall making an appointment with a so-called specialist, who came highly recommended. We subsequently spent $250 plus a motel room, only to have the specialist see him for a total of 15 minutes, inform us he was very slow to obey, and write a prescription for yet another different but similar behavior altering medication. Within 3 weeks, we recognized he once again was losing weight and rebounding dramatically off the medicine each evening. We decided not to return to that physician, forgot to cancel the next appointment, and received a "no-show" bill for $150!

Many years and many medications later, we did our own exhaustive research and discovered a correlation between various neurological disorders and autism. Autism is primarily a neurological problem not a behavioral one. Although the causes of autism continue to be debated, ultimately it is a weakness in the brain neurology that results in a wide disparity of problems within the autism spectrum. Following this conclusion we conferred with a physician who agreed to try but also monitor a drug to treat the neurological problem rather than the behavioral one.

Although things are far from perfect, we immediately noticed vast improvement and continue to be thrilled with the results. While we do not reject the power of vitamins and behavior modification techniques, we are happy right now with our medication choice. It is quite expensive and we continue to search for the correct insurance package that will adequately meet our needs.

But amidst our journey for Joel, truth emerged. Ultimately, we realized in our constant quest for the right medication for our son, that we had actually discovered the secret ingredient to success for Joel. It was right in front of our noses for years and was the same ingredient we used for our other children. We had applied a constant and devoted emotion to Joel that we use today. It is called unconditional love and it will never change.