Ritalin - Methylphenidate for Discussion

[EricP]

Just wondering more than anything how come there are few to none ex Ritalin members here suffering from long term withdraw symptoms. I have read about Ritalin - Methylphenidate and it is used for the same purposes ADHD etc and is a controlled substance with similar dependence and withdraw symptoms. It seems Ritalin stimulates dopamine mildly compared to Adderall and mainly blocks uptake of dopamine which is not the same as Addreall which actually forces an overabundance of production. Also medically I have read Adderall/amphetamines have potential to be neurotoxic due to its mechanism where as Ritalin is known to be neuroprotective and is often even prescribed to people with mental diseases and the elderly.

Reading deeper on other forums messages from ex users of Ritalin it has seemed that early withdraw symptoms for some are similar to Adderall and others actually say they had no problem stopping at all. I have also found no evidence of long term withdraw symptoms from Ritalin on other sites like we have here with stopping Adderall.

I am NOT suggesting anyone go and take Ritalin however I am just more curious about anyone's insight on this and also curious for those who have tried to stop Adderall 2 or 3 times unsuccessfully if switching to Ritalin could be a step down toward complete recovery if the withdraw is less coming off that medication?

I could be completely wrong about all this however wouldn't be posting this if I hadn't done a decent amount of reading on it to create my curiosity. 

[SeanW]

interesting post, also would like to hear more on this 

[quit-once]

My very first experience with speed was Ritalin.  At the age of 16,  I found a bottle of Ritalin in my mom's medicine cabinet from 1971 and it said "take one pill daily or as needed for energy".  After trying it I knew (stimulants) would be my drug of choice.  I tried Ritalin again about 15 years later and it felt like a dirty high.  I snorted it and that wasn't so good.   Then I discovered Adderall and went on to pursue that horrible addiction for another nine years.

[Cheeri0]

Interesting. Would like to hear more on this also. I was on Ritalin for a few months, and found that I didn't feel as euphoric as I did on adderall. 

I always thought that Ritalin was just more frequently prescribed to the under-15 crowd and adderall was for adults (this was a simplification made by my doctor at the time), so abuse stories were all about addy because that's what people were likely on when their parents stopped monitoring their intake. But if there is something physiologically distinguishing the two addiction potentials I'd love to hear about it!

[Greg]

Before I started abusing Adderall I was abusing Ritalin insanely , with a couple prescriptions and buying them. I was going through a bottle in a week and snorting it. It is JUST as bad as Adderall in that it causes paychosis, its horribly addictive, makes you psychologically dependent on it and I've posted many times on here that I thought withdrawal from Ritalin was actually MUCH WORSE then adderall. Although it's clearly a pretty close race. I was never able to successfully quit Ritalin bc I couldn't tolerate the withdrawal. I went to hospital detox, outpatient therapy, NA everything and still relapsed. It wasn't until I switched to Adderall that I was able to successfully quit. Dont get me wrong though , quitting Adderall was still incredibly, incredibly painful. 

[SeanW]

2 hours ago, Greg said:

Before I started abusing Adderall I was abusing Ritalin insanely , with a couple prescriptions and buying them. I was going through a bottle in a week and snorting it. It is JUST as bad as Adderall in that it causes paychosis, its horribly addictive, makes you psychologically dependent on it and I've posted many times on here that I thought withdrawal from Ritalin was actually MUCH WORSE then adderall. Although it's clearly a pretty close race. I was never able to successfully quit Ritalin bc I couldn't tolerate the withdrawal. I went to hospital detox, outpatient therapy, NA everything and still relapsed. It wasn't until I switched to Adderall that I was able to successfully quit. Dont get me wrong though , quitting Adderall was still incredibly, incredibly painful. 

Damn..

[SleepyStupid]

On 4/11/2018 at 2:30 PM, EricP said:

Just wondering more than anything how come there are few to none ex Ritalin members here suffering from long term withdraw symptoms.

i think this has less to do with the actual mechanisms for Ritalin and Adderall, and more to do with prescribing habits and general access to resources like this site. Adderall was just the king of the stimulant domain when the most growth happened. i'm not saying people didn't abuse speed in the past, but i think this chart below speaks for itself. if we allow for the argument that there are people out there that genuinely and medically DO need stimulants, then either there's an epidemic of this condition or there are a ton more people getting this stuff that simply don't need it. if you don't need it, you'll probably want to come off it at some point... andddd end up here lol.

i've never tried Ritalin or Concerta, but I have tried Vyvanse and abused the shit out of that too. all these drugs have the potential for abuse (and misuse).

 

 

[EricP]

Great to hear info on this and am glad in a selfish way as I was somewhat thinking that maybe I should have switched to Ritalin a year ago as an easier to sobriety. Sounds like scary stuff, obviously it wasn’t intended to be abused nor was adderall but the path to get away from it doesn’t sound any happier.

Hopefully anyone else with experiences will chime in as the post is a good resource for others awareness as well. We might all be “quitting adderall” however stims in general seem to be evil and we have to support each of us and make each other educated and aware of what’s bad as these doctors seem to be willing to prescribe just about anything.