Hey Guys, figured I'd start a log of the effects methylphenidate has had on me since starting. If anyone has any insight, let me know, I'd love to hear if these effects seem normal. I'm not entirely sure if I have ADHD, the symptoms I've read (books, websites, medical articles, my psych) seem to describe me exactly...I almost cried when i first read it (at age 23...)

5mg - Not sure I could differentiate from a placebo.

I tried 10mg and 15mg before this, but did not document the effects. 15mg gave exaggerated side effects of calmness/lethargy, tension in the throat, and also greater focus on any one given task... A real shame. I'll try it again in a few days though.

Wenesday Nov 12th. 10mg was taken at 7:00 PM.
8:00 PM - Marked calmness, I feel like I would be able to sleep if I tried. I read the news online, check e-mails, and watch a television episode.
The only side effect I've noticed is dry eyes. I felt no anxiety about the day coming close to an end (something I generally get)..
~9:45 I fell asleep much easier than usual. Caffeine seems to inhibit sleep for me. (I have terrible bouts with insomnia...This is a stimulant right?)

Friday - Nov 14th. 10mg at 7:30 AM -
8:00 - 8:45 - felt more alert and awake. Driving felt much safer, I seem to drive slower and stop / prepare to turn earlier.
9:00 - Calm but bordering on what I'd usually consider tired or lethargic. I've slept 8 hours a night every day this week (amazingly). The calm / tired response seems to increase with dosage.
9:30 - Slight dry eyes and maybe a bit exaggerated muscle tension in the neck and shoulders. My nose seems to be more open than usual (good side effect). I seem to be a bit more emotionally responsive (good and bad). Random bouts of anxiety experienced the first few days have decreased at this dosage. And although calm my heart rate seems slightly elevated 85, although I can slow it to 60 with deep breathing (something I'm not normally capable of. Usually when I try to slow it down it actually increases. My resting heart rate is close to 80 even during the running season.)
10:00 - Feel similar to the 8:30 calm / awake state, but focus has decreased. There seems to be a paradoxical effect with peak blood levels where I'm increasingly focused and have significantly reduced racing thoughts, but am simultaneously more and more exhausted/calm with higher probability of side effects (slight throat / chest tightness / dry eyes / very mild tremmors in arm / leg muscles / elevated heart rate).
10:10 - Drank a cup of tea at 9:30, this seems to eliminate the tired aspect while increasing the focus a bit more. Estimated 45-75 mg? I'll have to test the effects of small amounts of caffeine in more exact measurements.
10:40 - The effects have diminished significantly. My brain feels a bit foggy.
11:00 - Returned to baseline.

Note: With Methylphenidate I seem to make fewer self destructive decisions if there's any thought given to it. Speeding (10+ over) is dramatically reduced...I found this very interesting. Automatic distractions such as tabbing to the internet at work don't seem decreased. But my work load hasn't been very high lately.

Note: Seems to have a very small effect on my occasional letter / word ordering mistakes. Sometimes I replace a 5 for an F, write words out of order, or write a letter further in the word as the first character. I've always done this, and it seems to contribute to my poor handwriting. The frequency is perhaps a little bit lower with methylphenidate, but this is subjective. Interestingly, I seem to fill out forms in a more top down format (usually I skip around filling out various parts until it's complete).

Note: I'm an easily irritated person. This has always been an issue (thrown off center or flustered easily) especially when someone is misinterpreting what I'm trying to say. Methylphenidate didn't seem to help this, but I'm a bit more vocal instead of letting it bother me internally. When I communicate with people I'm no less anxious, but my responses are a bit more genuine and honest (even if negative, but never mean or cruel). I think in the long term this effect may reduce the 1-4x a month outbursts I find myself apologizing for after.


That's it for now, more updates to come later.

Sounds pretty normal.

Other Information:

Daily Supplements: (been doing this long before I was diagnosed)

Multivitamin (daily dose is 2x, I take 1x) - Morning
B-50 Complex (has the b6's 12 folic acid, niacin etc) - Morning
Ginko Biloba - 60mg 2x a day (morning and noon)
EPA DHA Fish oil ~1,000mg of each per day.
Vitamin C and Zinc if I feel any signs of illness or haven't slept etc.
Alpha GPC - 500mg 2x a day (off and on. Choline precursor.)
Piracetam (or oxiracetam / aniracetam / DMAE) varying doses when I need it.
St. John's Wort (300mg)

3mg of melatonin / 100mg 5-HTP on weeknights (thank god this works...)


Prior to being diagnosed I took approximately 400mg of caffeine per day in two - three doses.
I've tried L-Trosine, DLPA, DHEA, Rhodiola (works for mild depression), Sam-E (S-adenosylmethionine - terrible), Ginseng (american, korean, panax - all made me anxious), L-Theanine (calms me down), Kava (same), Sulbutiamine (Didn't notice much), and Taurine.

Curiously - Anyone else diagnosed with ADHD try SAM-E at any point?


Profession - Electrical Engineer (product design / failure analysis)

Exercise 3-4x a week cardio and weight training mixed. (went from 218 lbs 4 years ago to 145 now, I love the change, but it did make me a bit more restless).


Psychiatric History:
Another Psychiatrist had me on Prozac (god no!), lorazepam, wellbutrin (stomach issues), trazadone (Spontaneous Erections anyone? Try falling asleep with that), and Seroquel (best sleep aid I've ever had).

I have pretty bad comorbid social anxiety issues, insomnia, and mild depression.

Possible PTSD but I don't think this is a "disease" so much as a hinderance in my early development. When I was 7 years old my family was in a bad car accident, (mother, father, brother and myself). My parents were in the hospital for 6 months and I was put in foster care away from my brother (2) (concussion, torn ear, broken collar bone..luckily). My father died from complications years later, but my parents divorced directly following the accident. I had flashbacks until I was 16 or so, but they have since gone away. I know that this has affected my life in many ways, but there's no sense in trying to picture how it'd be had it never happened.

Now you know all my secrets...almost. Hope they were all medically relevant.

Note: Seems to have a very small effect on my occasional letter / word ordering mistakes. Sometimes I replace a 5 for an F, write words out of order, or write a letter further in the word as the first character. I've always done this, and it seems to contribute to my poor handwriting. The frequency is perhaps a little bit lower with methylphenidate, but this is subjective. Interestingly, I seem to fill out forms in a more top down format (usually I skip around filling out various parts until it's complete).

HA! Well, now I know for sure. I'm on a pretty low dose of Focalin, but I'm doing this...typing letters out of order a lot.

It's not so much I can't stand it, but I've just gotta be a little more careful.

Monday - Nov 17 - 25mg at 8:15

8:47 - Begins to affect me a bit here.
9:08 - Stiffness in neck and shoulders (a bit more than usual).

9:55 - Ability to focus on work has been greatly improved. Once a project is started getting it completed is much easier. Bench testing the NQ's went quickly. It's odd really, there's just a stillness in my mind I'm not accustomed to. One way to describe it would be to say that generally I'm analyzing what I'm doing while I'm doing it and generating various opinions, whereas with Methylphenidate I'm simply working. Definitely doesn't seem to make me any happier or more sociable (perhaps the opposite) (cold calculated). But this may be more an effect of my environment.

10:15 - Note: I seem to get much less useless paranoid thoughts when walking down the halls at work. When I see a person I may just say hi, or nothing at all. But I won't necessarily start mentally analysing what they probably think about me, or are thinking at that moment.

With Methylphenidate real issues / problems seem to bother me more, but imagined/created/predicted problems seem to either come and go or not occur at all. I think this attributed to a lot of the calm nature.

25mg doesn't seem to cause many effects, which is odd (when I first started 10mg I had more headaches / tightness in throat and chest). However, this dose seems pretty high. I'm no longer "tired" like I was on the 10-15mg dosage. But, I'm also not "stimulated" / bouncing off the walls at all. Behaviorally from an outside perspective I probably seem quieter than usual, but less nervous.

Note: I've also noticed that I don't laugh as much (good and bad). Generally I seem to laugh (not inappropriately), but more nervously after I finish a sentence. It's a quick laugh, and isn't done because I thought what I said was humerous. (This is a behavior I try to prevent). On the flip side, I'm just much less upbeat light-hearted.

In conversation, I seem to tailor what I say less to my own anxieties. My statements seem more neutral. This seems to relate strongly to the reduced "imagined" opinions I experienced when simply walking around. I believe I'm just a more solitary person than most, and perhaps I force what I perceive as sociability in an anxious and analytical way.

10:26 - Slight headache for about 15 seconds, but it went away. I may just need more water.

10:32 - Switching between multiple assignments (or these notes and work) is much easier than it normally would be. Picking up where I left off isn't met with a few minutes of trying to regather my thoughts to figure out what I was even working on or should be doing. Work, and general priorities seem to flow in a more linear manner in general. (thoughts too). This is the biggest benefit, and unfortunately this effect was only seen at 20-25mg thus far.

10:41 - Repetetive tasks are no longer mentally frustrating. 14 products from work requiring manual entry of test data (took only 30 minutes).

11:11 - Still seems to be working, but mildly diminished. the 25mg dosage has much more of an effective "area" for me. Lower doses have a 1 hour time frame where I get these beneficial effects.

11:25 - Definitely on the downslope. More long mental "pause" moments. But no racing. The seriously short timeframe where this "works" is a bit frustrating. Multi-tasking is an important part of my job, and side projects are seen through to completion with MUCH fewer loose ends. Mainly because I don't simply forget about it.

Note: I haven't used a list today whatsoever, which usually results in nothing getting done. Today: NQ04 units were bench tested, manually approved and sent out for shipment (e-mails sent), Hi-Pot Limits were calculated / set up for IQ32 boards and the appropriate people were notified of this change.... Various problems that came up were dealt with without losing track (a co-worker needed me to verify some measurements on a BQ product, rework staff was trained on power-pak fet soldering, an inquiry about systemic routing of a product was answered / fixed. Networking issues with my laptop were dealt with. And this log was updated.)

12:00 - Effects seem to be completely gone. Anxiety / depression increase as it tapers out of my system. These effects seem to last for 2-3 hours (based on my previous experiences and increases 20-25mg doses.)

Moderator note:
Please bear in mind that 'testing' dosage levels is a risky business, (regardless of scientific processes and intellect levels). Please make sure that you consult your Dr/pDr about your 'testing'. There is a reason why they spend 6-8 years of studying to become a Dr.

I may have failed to mention. My doctor gave me a prescription for 5mg pills x 120 and told me to test from 5-25 mg to see what the effect was.

So, after upping the dose increasingly until I hit 25mg, I dropped down to 15mg.

At 15mg I didn't notice much of anything, I felt slightly more calm and less stressed, however it was combined with one cup of tea. This is probably the most "effective" dosage for me, which means it's not likely to solve all of my symptoms.

Today I tried 20mg, no tea. At this dose I was very tired feeling, and it was difficult to get any significant momentum going on a project because it just makes me feel lazy and unmotivated. The calmness just makes me content sitting and relaxing rather than actually doing anything. I really don't understand how a stimulant makes me feel less stressed... Reduced oxygen supply to the brain through vasoconstriction?

However, I think I have a good way of describing my symptoms now that I've tried methylphenidate. It's as if when I'm under the influence of the drug my inability to recall something leads to more of an uhhhh... moment until I do actually remember what I was doing...Or I decide that it wasn't important enough to continue along and it doesn't seem to bother me further. But in the process of trying to remember, there's more of an empty searching pause. Without MPH when I try to recall something, or think hard it's almost as if my brain gets dizzy with thoughts and just starts grabbing at everything around it, anxiety increases, and I start retracing my steps or thoughts. It's this feature that makes me feel "calm" in select events. Also, my degree of being all over the place with multi-tasking hasn't changed much. Even as I'm typing this on 20mg I occasionally look over to my Art of electronics book and read a little. However, I quickly return and start where I left off instead of becoming engrossed with something else. IE my active memory doesn't get flooded with extraneous stimulus. But at the same time, it somehow feels like I'm working at a slow clock cycle.

It may just be that I generally franiticly try to get something done in fear of getting off track, etc. And when I can manage to get into that groove, I'll complete work rapidly. This definitely decreases my daydreaming, but it feels like I'm mildly listless...Then again, I'm at work. I definitely ignore less of the things I genuinely perceive as important though.

I have no idea how to interpret these results. Is it possible that the calm / content effect is just euphoria from a dose that's too high? I'd also think that this would make me feel stimulated instead of "ready for bed".

Regardless, no dose really did what I was hoping...aside from 25mg which had fairly significant side effects, and 10mg when I only had 2-3 hours of sleep. All in all, the high dose may have just induced slight euphoria, and all other doses just seem to slow me down, but in a calming way. It's great for sitting around my house or doing various activities I'm interested in, but at work I'm no more effective on it than off.

Also worth noting: Repetitive tasks are easier and less frantic. I seem to rush less, and probably would make fewer mistakes. But constantly dynamic projects, which seem to pervade my line of work are met with more difficulty because I just don't care.

So, after upping the dose increasingly until I hit 25mg, I dropped down to 15mg.

At 15mg I didn't notice much of anything, I felt slightly more calm and less stressed, however it was combined with one cup of tea. This is probably the most "effective" dosage for me, which means it's not likely to solve all of my symptoms.

Today I tried 20mg, no tea. At this dose I was very tired feeling, and it was difficult to get any significant momentum going on a project because it just makes me feel lazy and unmotivated. The calmness just makes me content sitting and relaxing rather than actually doing anything. I really don't understand how a stimulant makes me feel less stressed... Reduced oxygen supply to the brain through vasoconstriction?

However, I think I have a good way of describing my symptoms now that I've tried methylphenidate. It's as if when I'm under the influence of the drug my inability to recall something leads to more of an uhhhh... moment until I do actually remember what I was doing...Or I decide that it wasn't important enough to continue along and it doesn't seem to bother me further. But in the process of trying to remember, there's more of an empty searching pause. Without MPH when I try to recall something, or think hard it's almost as if my brain gets dizzy with thoughts and just starts grabbing at everything around it, anxiety increases, and I start retracing my steps or thoughts. It's this feature that makes me feel "calm" in select events. Also, my degree of being all over the place with multi-tasking hasn't changed much. Even as I'm typing this on 20mg I occasionally look over to my Art of electronics book and read a little. However, I quickly return and start where I left off instead of becoming engrossed with something else. IE my active memory doesn't get flooded with extraneous stimulus. But at the same time, it somehow feels like I'm working at a slow clock cycle.

It may just be that I generally franiticly try to get something done in fear of getting off track, etc. And when I can manage to get into that groove, I'll complete work rapidly. This definitely decreases my daydreaming, but it feels like I'm mildly listless...Then again, I'm at work. I definitely ignore less of the things I genuinely perceive as important though.

I have no idea how to interpret these results. Is it possible that the calm / content effect is just euphoria from a dose that's too high? I'd also think that this would make me feel stimulated instead of "ready for bed".

Regardless, no dose really did what I was hoping...aside from 25mg which had fairly significant side effects, and 10mg when I only had 2-3 hours of sleep. All in all, the high dose may have just induced slight euphoria, and all other doses just seem to slow me down, but in a calming way. It's great for sitting around my house or doing various activities I'm interested in, but at work I'm no more effective on it than off.

Also worth noting: Repetitive tasks are easier and less frantic. I seem to rush less, and probably would make fewer mistakes. But constantly dynamic projects, which seem to pervade my line of work are met with more difficulty because I just don't care.

Ha, interesting to see someone who is as 'weird' and over-analytical as me!! :D

Im having quite a few similar effects with MPH after a couple of days. Except I would not say it has calmed me at all, except when I am talking to people (I have GAD like symptoms rather than Social Anxiety). It has improved my interactions with people, except right now as I am coming down and am getting a bit irritable again. The slowness was definitely an interesting observation. Didnt bother me that much except didnt feel sharp.....If I could keep this feeling but free my head up a bit and feel a bit of this legendary 'calm' thing that would be great :)

It would be nice if I could get to a point similar to what its like when I am in a test- I concentrate well and for a long time and am really sharp- and extremely calm- and I get tired after a while and want to relax- just like a normal person!! MPH has given me the concentration part, but other aspects of it are not as enjoyable. Hope its only a temporary side effect or something........