Ritalin effects on a person without ADHD??

amlptj

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Ok i've been going online to find this answer but they only give me the side effects for those with ADHD. Now i know that some people take this drug along with Adderall to stay focused even though they dont have ADHD or ADD. Now what exactly are the effects of these drugs on a person without ADHD or ADD. Will it simply help them focus? Or if taken in high enough doses can there be more drastically dangerious side effects? Could it act like a form of speed? Cause sleeping problems? Increase a temper?

These are the desiered results i need for my story, so can Riddlin and or Adderall do this? If not, does anyone know of a drug that could? And Could Adderall, riddlin or a drug that can give me those desired symptoms be easily sleeped into and desolved into a drink without a person noticing?
Thanks for any help you could give me!
 

Chasing the Horizon

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Ritalin, Adderall, Dexadrine, etc. are all basically 'uppers'. In low/recommended doses they'll help just about anyone focus, whether you have ADD/ADHD or not.

Higher doses can cause extreme jitters, rapid heart rate, insomnia, and sometimes paranoia or other mental instabilities (though you usually only see that in prolonged abuse). Similar to cocaine in a lot of ways, really. Take enough and you can die.

That's all just off the top of my head (and maybe from some personal experiences *cough*). Google probably will know more . . .

ETA: Not sure about dissolving it in a drink without the person knowing. Crushed up the pills are extremely bitter. Don't think that would work too well.
 

rugcat

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Ritalin in particular was in great demand back when I was in college. It focuses the mind and enables you to concentrate, without the scattered ADD symptoms that can accompany amphetamines -- it's a CNS stimulant, but pharmacologically distinct from the amphetamine family -- closer in structure to to cocaine, I believe.

I know one woman who used to take it every time her job forced her to learn a new computer program, or things she just wasn't interested in. Said it was the only way she could focus enough to learn.

Another woman told me that taking Ritalin, for her, induced multiple orgasms during sex. But that's anecdotal.
 

Drachen Jager

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They did a test in rats. One group was given cocaine, one group ritalin.

The observed behaviour was the same. For all intents and purposes it might as well be cocaine.
 

Giant Baby

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Now what exactly are the effects of these drugs on a person without ADHD or ADD. Will it simply help them focus?Now what exactly are the effects of these drugs on a person without ADHD or ADD. Will it simply help them focus?

No. It will usually improve focus.

Or if taken in high enough doses can there be more drastically dangerious side effects?

Yes.

Could it act like a form of speed?

It is a form of speed. Good to go, there.

Cause sleeping problems?

Yes. Even if the individual feels calmed or even restful or sleepy in response to the med, the body (and brain) still responds to the medication just like it's a stimulant. Which it is.

Increase a temper?

Yes.
 

anne_holly

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I think of that scene from the movie Charlie Bartlett, where he just keeps running back and forth in the bottom of an empty swimming pool.
 

DrZoidberg

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If you are in the vicinity of Stockholm I'll let you have one of my pills :)

There's been plenty of studies made on them now and if you just take one pill (for educational purposes) they're completely harmless. If you take them in the evening you can bet yourself you'll have problems sleeping. People who take them as medicine, don't (take them in the evening that is).

BTW, Ritalin if dosed high enough creates the same ADHD symptoms as the medicine is intended to alleviate. Hyperactive, moody and super spontaneous.

Fun trivia. The latest science is that the mechanism by which Ritalin alleviates ADHD is a mystery. It just works for whatever mysterious reason science has yet to uncover. Christians are free to insert god here here ;)
 
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Drachen Jager

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Fun trivia. The latest science is that the mechanism by which Ritalin alleviates ADHD is a mystery. It just works for whatever mysterious reason science has yet to uncover. Christians are free to insert god here here ;)

"According to research of U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory methylphenidate works in the treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder by increasing levels of dopamine in children's brains.[13][14][15] Dopamine, a neurotransmitter, plays a role in feelings of pleasure and is naturally released in rewarding experiences.[16] Neuroimaging studies of medication-free depressed patients have found that depressed subjects have a functional deficiency of synaptic dopamine.[17] Dopamine decreases "background firing" rates and increases the signal to noise ratio in target neurons by increasing dopamine levels in the brain.[14][18] As a result, the drug may improve attention and decrease distractibility in activities that normally do not hold the attention of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.[14] However, sympathomimetic amines do have a dependence liability and a potential for tolerance adaptation because of their dopaminergic effects when taken in doses outside of their therapeutic range or for an extended period of time." - Wikipedia
 

Shwebb

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I am prescribed Ritalin, partly to help alleviate depressive symptoms but also because I have problems with daytime sleepiness. (I used to be on Provigil and then Nuvigil, but I developed an allergy and can't take them--I found that they weren't so helpful as Ritalin, for me.)

Ritalin does help with focusing for me, and it gives me a mental energy more so than a physical one. (I can still fall asleep after taking one!)

I think it would be relatively easy to grind one up and hide it in something to eat. (I'm eating oatmeal right now and bit a tiny amount off a pill and put it in a spoonful of my oatmeal and it didn't seem detectable to me. Hey, anything to help out a writer in need of first-hand experience!)

I'm accustomed to taking the medication, and I've noticed that there can be issues with tolerance. When I discussed this with my doctor he told me that parents of ADD/ADHD kids will sometimes withhold it on weekends so that it's more effective during the week when the kids are in school. Usually folks are started out rather slowly, and for good reason--the first time I was prescribed the med I did not sleep a wink for four days. To say I was really ticked off at the doctor would be an understatement. Dosing for adults is usually 20-30 per day, but up to 40 mg per day isn't uncommon, either. Unless you are dealing with extended release, I think that grinding up the tablets will increase the rapidity of the absorption. I've heard of people insufflating it (snorting), but I don't know how the body uses the drug in that manner without looking it up myself.

Personally I don't see why anyone would want to take large amounts of the stuff, unless his/her reaction to it is different than mine. Larger amounts can make me jittery and cause my hands to really shake, and I often will feel rather nervous and anxious. It can cause the heart to beat faster and even race (probably that sensation also increases the feeling of anxiety). Perhaps some people experience that as a euphoria, but I don't and consider it as an unwanted side effect I can handle okay.
 

Hallen

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And, it can cause, or exacerbate eating disorders. For my son, it made food "taste funny" and he would refuse to eat much of anything. It was one of the main reasons I took him off of it.
 

agentpaper

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Yes you could slip it into something like grape juice or wine without them tasting it. My daughter takes an EXTREMELY bitter medicine and we have to crush it and put it into her grape juice. She'd never take it in ANYTHING else, but she can't taste it in that. I can't taste it, either, so it isn't just that she likes the grape juice. :D
 

psykeout

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I can only offer my own experiences with Ritalin and ADHD. I was diagnosed at 2 years old (yes...I have paperwork). I took it until my formative years (13-14) and it actually helped out my symptoms to a point. It didn't help me concentrate like Adderall does, more of a "normal" type feeling.

Adderall, on the other hand, gives me the same high as speed used to (when I still did it). I can't imagine that Adderall and Ritalin would do the same thing, as wouldn't that be a conflict of interest for the drug companies?

Just my $0.02...
 

DrZoidberg

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"According to research of U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory methylphenidate works in the treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder by increasing levels of dopamine in children's brains.[13][14][15] Dopamine, a neurotransmitter, plays a role in feelings of pleasure and is naturally released in rewarding experiences.[16] Neuroimaging studies of medication-free depressed patients have found that depressed subjects have a functional deficiency of synaptic dopamine.[17] Dopamine decreases "background firing" rates and increases the signal to noise ratio in target neurons by increasing dopamine levels in the brain.[14][18] As a result, the drug may improve attention and decrease distractibility in activities that normally do not hold the attention of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.[14] However, sympathomimetic amines do have a dependence liability and a potential for tolerance adaptation because of their dopaminergic effects when taken in doses outside of their therapeutic range or for an extended period of time." - Wikipedia

I'm not a medical researcher but what I heard from several sources is that most of this is speculation, and clinical trials have been less than conclusive. The medication seems to have pretty random effects on some with ADHD and they don't know why. The more they study it they less the results seem to make sense. The main problem is that we don't know exactly how the attention system works in the brain for anyone, healthy or otherwise.
 

Wiskel

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I'm not a medical researcher but what I heard from several sources is that most of this is speculation, and clinical trials have been less than conclusive. The medication seems to have pretty random effects on some with ADHD and they don't know why. The more they study it they less the results seem to make sense. The main problem is that we don't know exactly how the attention system works in the brain for anyone, healthy or otherwise.


You're right, when you're dealing with living brains the research options are very limited. Neuroimaging and measuring electrical activity are what we have. For very obvious reasons you can't do experiments to see what happens if you deliberately destroy bits of the brain or purposely upset the brain chemisty of a child.

The neuroimaging work is good enough though that it has some validity. It's more than just speculation. There is almost certainly something up with dopamine activity in the frontal lobes in ADHD.

Now if you ask why dopamine is important, that's the point where we move into speculation.

Medication effects are also complicated. If you want to decorate your house you'll go and buy the exact paint you want. Buy different sized brushes and rollers and make sure the paint doesn't end up all over your carpet and sofa. You wouldn't dream of just loosening the lid and chucking a tin of paint through the front door.

Every age describes itself as advanced. There's a lot more advancing to do when it comes to understanding the brain and targeting the medications we use to the effect we want. Give it a hundred years and science will bang its head on the wall with frustration at some of the things we think we understand today.


Craig
 

Canotila

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I was diagnosed with ADHD as an adult and prescribed Adderall. It was extremely addictive and screwed me up big time. After four days I forced myself to hand it over to my mom so she could destroy it.

It made me severely OCD. So, whatever I focused on I was OCD about. My mom swears that I spent two hours straight laying on my stomach on the front lawn, with my nose two inches from a skinned bird head (the cat left it) that had hornets crawling on it. She said I kept saying, "duuuuuude, it's soo coooool." I remember watching the hornets, they almost moved in slow motion and were super vivid. After that I decided to give one of my roosters a bath and she says I lathered up his tail feathers and rinsed, and repeated that over thirty times before she stopped me.

The other screwy thing is that it messed up my color perception. Red and green were switched. So, no driving. Which was good because I probably would have crashed anyway.

The pills are tiny and crushable. I could definitely see a few being crushed and dissolved in something strong tasting like coffee or sprite without the drinker noticing.
 

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My daughter was on Ritalin (small dosage) and then Concerta (I think was the name of it) when she was younger: 1st or 2nd grade. She was just daydreaming in class, but seemed to figure it out by the time she was in 3rd grade.

A few years after that, I heard that some high schoolers were now taking those same drugs that were prescribed to their younger siblings. It was described as being "the poor man's cocaine".

The kids would crush it up and snort it just like cocaine.
 

Canotila

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My daughter was on Ritalin (small dosage) and then Concerta (I think was the name of it) when she was younger: 1st or 2nd grade. She was just daydreaming in class, but seemed to figure it out by the time she was in 3rd grade.

A few years after that, I heard that some high schoolers were now taking those same drugs that were prescribed to their younger siblings. It was described as being "the poor man's cocaine".

The kids would crush it up and snort it just like cocaine.

One of my friends worked in a drug rehab facility for several years. He said every single meth addict they had was a formerly a child who had grown up taking prescribed ritalin. Once they hit 18, the government stopped paying for their meds and so they started self medicating.
 

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Ritalin has similar effects as cocaine or meth. So if you remove ADHD medication from somebody with ADHD and they then start doing illegal drugs, that isn't necessarily evidence that it was bad that they got the Ritalin. It might as well just be evidence that they in fact have ADHD and shouldn't have stopped taking the medication to begin with.

An addictive personality will be addicted to whatever gives the greatest rush, chemical or otherwise. In my case it's been martial arts, weird sex and writing prose. The fact that I didn't have a taste for drugs, I put down to my specific brain chemistry. Just luck in other words.

The difference between Concerta and Ritalin is only in the packaging. Ritalin is designed to be absorbed as quickly as possible. Concerta is designed to be absorbed slowly. It's the same active ingredient, Methylphenidate. If you grind up Concerta, what you get is Ritalin. There's really no point in snorting it rather than eating it. I think it's more of a "cool" factor than anything else.
 

DeleyanLee

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All I have is an antedotal experience.

After my best friend's divorce, her ex got the kids and quickly remarried. The new step-mother couldn't handle the 9-year old son's attitude and bullied the doctor into putting him on ritalin to "control" him.

A few month later, he came to visit his mom (when I saw him) for a holiday weekend. The kid tried to commit suicide over the course of the weekend. The ritalin was the only thing different in his routine from before. My BF & her ex (not the step-mother) talked to the docs and a shrink and made the decision to take him off the ritalin--and he's never had another suicidal episode (he's not in his 30's).

End note: my BF and her 2nd husband gained custody of him shortly afterward.

Don't know if that helps or not.
 

Canotila

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Ritalin has similar effects as cocaine or meth. So if you remove ADHD medication from somebody with ADHD and they then start doing illegal drugs, that isn't necessarily evidence that it was bad that they got the Ritalin. It might as well just be evidence that they in fact have ADHD and shouldn't have stopped taking the medication to begin with.

Oh, that wasn't what I meant to say at all. I was just providing a real life example of how similar the two drugs are. I agree that there ought to be some way of providing affordable psych meds for folks who shouldn't be quitting them cold turkey (or at all).