Scarletta
02-14-09, 02:35 AM
I'm not sure where to post this, so I'll try it here. I was a long time Adderall IR user. Last month we switched to Ritalin just to try rotating give me a break from the Adderall. Well the Ritalin experiment has been really bad. I've suffered from dizziness, nausea, extreme fatigue, anxiety, etc.
So on Monday my doc is giving me my normal script for Adderall. I can't wait.
But through these few weeks I learned that for me, the only thing that worked at all to avoid most side effects and to give me some focus was taking my doses 4 hours apart. Not taking any in between. But that would only give me like an hour or so of good focus. By the 4 hour time I was back to baseline and the dose would help me focus again. If i took anything in between, it was like I never got back to baseline and so it wouldn't work later. Weird.
And at night, after the 4 hours is up, the crash is big time sleepiness. But here's the strangest thing, I can't get up in the morning, I've been sleeping 12 or more hours a night! To me this makes no sense.
With the half-life of Ritalin being 2-4 hours it is basically ineffective after that. So I could see falling asleep pretty fast. But why should I need so much sleep from this short-acting med?
With Adderall, I never had much of a crash. Since the effects last 4-6 hours for me, and the half-life being 10-13 hours, occasional insomnia was a problem....but never this hours and hours of sleeping! I'd have no trouble getting up on time.
Since Adderall is supposed to be so much more potent than Ritalin I am confused about this.
The only thing I can think of is that Ritalin drains my body a lot more than Adderall does. And when it wears off, it's like when you're done running a marathon. You totally crash, and for hours. You require more sleep than I do when I'm not on meds...which seems counterintuitive with a stimulant.
If I was going to stay on this, which I'm not, I'd almost have to wake up 4 hours after I fall asleep to take another dose of Ritalin just to keep up the cycle and to stop me from sleeping for hours before my next dose.
does anyone have this experience or have any idea what causes it?
Thanks!
So on Monday my doc is giving me my normal script for Adderall. I can't wait.
But through these few weeks I learned that for me, the only thing that worked at all to avoid most side effects and to give me some focus was taking my doses 4 hours apart. Not taking any in between. But that would only give me like an hour or so of good focus. By the 4 hour time I was back to baseline and the dose would help me focus again. If i took anything in between, it was like I never got back to baseline and so it wouldn't work later. Weird.
And at night, after the 4 hours is up, the crash is big time sleepiness. But here's the strangest thing, I can't get up in the morning, I've been sleeping 12 or more hours a night! To me this makes no sense.
With the half-life of Ritalin being 2-4 hours it is basically ineffective after that. So I could see falling asleep pretty fast. But why should I need so much sleep from this short-acting med?
With Adderall, I never had much of a crash. Since the effects last 4-6 hours for me, and the half-life being 10-13 hours, occasional insomnia was a problem....but never this hours and hours of sleeping! I'd have no trouble getting up on time.
Since Adderall is supposed to be so much more potent than Ritalin I am confused about this.
The only thing I can think of is that Ritalin drains my body a lot more than Adderall does. And when it wears off, it's like when you're done running a marathon. You totally crash, and for hours. You require more sleep than I do when I'm not on meds...which seems counterintuitive with a stimulant.
If I was going to stay on this, which I'm not, I'd almost have to wake up 4 hours after I fall asleep to take another dose of Ritalin just to keep up the cycle and to stop me from sleeping for hours before my next dose.
does anyone have this experience or have any idea what causes it?
Thanks!