[tindrlabs]

I had the exact same story until

- I started to constantly feel nauseous

- I started to feel vary anxious about everything

- I had a hard time eating or wanting to eat anything

- I started to feel overloaded by my environment

Got off of it and lost some of my super powers, but gained my sanity. Which was worth it. Converted over to understanding my strength and weaknesses, eating better and getting out.

[atemerev]

Looks like you took higher dose than needed. Ritalin is really dosage-sensitive, you'll have to calibrate it carefully with your doctor.

I'm taking the dose determined after some experiments (27 mg/day) for the last 6 months, and I don't feel particularly insane. Anyway, like I said, it works differently for different people.

[tindrlabs]

I'm glad to hear that. For myself, I became more afraid of the side effects then the ADD.

[mtdewcmu]

It also sounds like you probably have some degree of anxiety that was being amplified by the drug. Most of the time it's probably beneath conscious awareness or latent. I imagine that when you're always disorganized and getting in trouble for things outside of your control as a kid, it sets you up to develop an anxiety disorder.

[tindrlabs]

Maybe - I'm not going to self-diagnose myself as a calm individual. But this kind of anxiety was more like stage fear then some continual anxiety. Hands tingling, stomach upset, nervous. In the 8 years since I stepped away from the drug option, I've never again felt that sort of reaction.

[mtdewcmu]

It can be hard to untangle what caused what. My feeling after many years is basically that emotions are emotions and drugs are drugs: if you feel anxious, that's an emotion. The drug may have been involved in setting the anxiety off, but anxiety is still an emotion and not a drug effect. Not everyone is going to become anxious from any given drug, because different people have different sensitivities to the sort of stimuli that may trigger anxiety. A true drug effect will not feel like an emotion.

It can be useful to pay attention to when a drug is triggering anxiety; just in case you go on to try other meds in the future.