Does Ritalin work for adults | ADHD Information

Greetings! 

It is common for doctors to start with Ritalin to treat your ADD/ADHD.  My pysch started me on Ritalin 10 Mg, twice a day.  Then bumped me to 40 mg.  (20 in morning, 20 @ lunch)  Then I was struggling late in the day, so he added a third dose making my total 50 mg.  Still struggling with crash and tiredness, he bumped me to
3-3-1.  3 in morning,  3 @ lunch, 1 in afternoon.  Still not much improvement.  I was always tired.  It helped my hyperactive side, but not my attentive side.  I daydreamed about naps rather than running around all day. 

So then he switched me to Adderall after several months of trying to experiment with Ritalin as treatment. 

I am now on Adderall IR (instant release not XR), I take 20 mg when I wake up, 15 mg @ lunch and 5 mg at dinner.  (I split the last dose to avoid the come down side effects)  It works much better for me.....

Differences in Ritalin & Adderall in my treatment:

Side Effects on Ritalin: 

mild facial tics (never had before), tired, hungry (could eat allllllll day), restless and severe come down effects like, feeling fuzzy, tired, cold ,etc.

Side Effects so far on Adderall (been on nearly 2 weeks):

First few days- increased heart rate, couldn't stop cleaning my house (seriously, I even started cleaning my parents house when I went to visit them), suppressed appetite, grinding teeth.
Also, my blood pressure has went up some.  I am a 28 year old female (5'1, 98 pounds).  My normal blood pressure was quite low ranging around 80/60 - 90/70.  My Blood pressure now reads around 110-70 to 120-80ish.  Which is normal for most, but high for me.  My heart rate can still be quite elevated.  I am a very active person, but little activity can send it up.    Ranging from 80-108 during normal walking around routines.  (I also exercise 5 days a week, so this is unusual for an athletic person.) 
INSOMNIA.  oh yes.  I have probs going to sleep at night.  I take .5 Xanax to help me out every once in and again. 
My appetite is back.    Some days I am starving and somedays I can't force myself to eat an animal cracker.

Sounds like a lot to take in.  But over all, it works fantastic.  My house is clean, I am organized, I am getting my work done @ the office Early!!  So I am going to give it a few more weeks and see if some of the side effects calm down.

So to answer your question....(wow i was detailed)......ritalin works for some and not for others......and vice versa with adderall!!!        & nbsp;   

Thanks Miss. I am also feeling totally tired and run down on the Ritalin. My insurance company wont cover Adderall. I know for a fact that it works for me as I have been on it before. Uggh. I dont know what to do!  Thank you slim for taking the time to reply to my post! I really appreciate the insight. Thanks again!!My doctor prescribed it for me. I always heard that Adderall worked best for adult ADD so I am wondering what is the difference. I am newly diagnosed and I am hoping this will work for me!! Jessiecpt,

I'm sure other people will answer your question, but the general answer is that different things work for different people.  I'm a 42 year old male and before I started Strattera, I snuck 10mg of my son's ritalin for a day.  It worked instantly and was an amazing experience.  As a test, my wife sent me to the store to do the grocercy shopping (a chore I always screw up).   Just driving was amazing.  Street signs became completely obvious.  I realized that we are constantly making decisions about the future and that making the right choice was easy.  And, I was motivated. Before I left for the grocery store, I clean my entire clothes closet. 

Strattera doesn't kick me in the behind as much as the Ritalin did.  I have some problems with side effects, not as much as some other people in the group.  Overall, I really like Strattera.  The nice thing about it is that it's not a controlled substance so it's easier to coordinate getting the prescription.  My wife wastes half a day sometimes trying to schedule prescription pickup to fill my son's Ritalin.

Hope that helps
I am 32 and take 10 mg ritalin twice a day. I tried adderall but it didn't seem to work as well as ritalin, although the highs and lows of ritalin are bothersome. There are some things that I have noticed since taking it that I wanted to ask you guys about, just to make myself feel better about it being the right medicine. I was diagnosed with ADD, inattentive type. My mind, for the most part, felt slow and like I just wanted to sit around and daydream about everything. Of course, then there were those moments of intense "purpose and motivation", kind of like I had been down but suddenly I felt like superwoman and I am actually going to get this done this time. When I started taking the ritalin, this seemed to level itself out. But I have also noticed that I actually have a harder time really keeping eye contact with people (and this was never a problem for me) because I feel like I am staring a hole in them or my gaze is too intense. Also I feel like my mind races at time faster than I can actually keep up with it and suddenly I am more passionate about things or more emotional. It is like I was so used to being slow that now, my mind being at the "right" speed, I feel overwhelmed with all of my thoughts and I am trying to learn to keep up. Does this make sense to anyone? I mean, I can tell a huge difference in my organization, my memory, my ability to debate a topic relevantly but I feel like some of my social skills are suffering because I am bouncing around with all of my motivation.  

Ritalin/Methylphenate works great for me. I'm doing 15mg for breakfast and 10mg for lunch and have seen no side effects. I'm 47 and had a very similar to Slim's during my first "experiment", but it has worked so well that I have found no need to switch.

However, my sister and one guy in my self-help group cannot handle Ritalin, so it obviously depends on the person.

Works for me.

60mg / day.

For the last 12 years.

I'm 52 years old.

I think I started out with 5 mg doses and it was amazingly effective. Gradually got it up to 20 mg/day. I'm in France and they have just recently approved Ritalin and there are only a few specialists. If you don't react to Ritalin, you are out of luck (fortunately I know I do).

I have an appointment with a psychiatrist in early April. Have ordered a small bottle of PS in the meantime.

[QUOTE=postmoderndoll]amazingly effective[/QUOTE]

amazingly effective

good phrase

the naysayers should crawl in my head and try it

I took Ritalin for about 5 months in college and was double-majoring, took 21 credit hours, did a full-hour piano recital, conducted cognitive science research, and ended up on the President's honor roll. I later got off it impulsively and almost 9 years later, I'm trying to get another diagnosis for my ADHD (I'm a classic ADHD, but cannot for the life of me find the diagnosis from years ago).

What made me decide to go back was that upon reading my college transcript (I went to an Ivy League), I realized that I had a C-average except for that sememster, where I had an A-average, but I have no idea why I got myself off the meds, probably because I believed that my problems were fixed and that my motivations were back

Since then, I've had successes in my field but behind every success was monumental effort to accomplish the most basic tasks. I'm really worn down at this point and cannot wait to get back to the meds. For me, it was truly day-and-night, and I measure this not by my behavior (as I do not remember the details anymore), but by how much I was able to accomplish simply by staying on track.

I'd like to know how many of you out there are long-term Med users and how you cope with your ADHD-ness.