Ritalin/Adderall/Concerta/etc.

[13]

I know that recreational use of these stimulants is increasing* on college campuses. However, I've been hearing from a lot of friends that they have been using these as "academic aids" as well.

What I want to know is:

- Have any of you popped these pills to sharpen you up for test-taking and/or paper-writing?

- How often do you do it?

- Do you feel that your marks improved?

- Did you feel the side affects associated with these stimulants?

I'm curious if you use it even if you are not ADD.

* Big time

[basom]

i had a prescription in HS and college (ritalin). i was diganosed with ADD. i felt like it helped me for certain things, like getting through hundreds of pages of thick reading at a time with out my mind thinking of a hundred other things while i was reading, leading me not to remember anything i had read.

no real side effects that i noticed (i wasn't putting the shit up my nose like a lot of the idiots in college), maybe a little less apitite. but i was often using another drug after studing that helped that out.

for me it was a positive, but i didn't take it all the time.

[VTskibum]

I knew alot of people that used 'em academically in college, tried it once myself, but I'm probably AD... hey look at that big bird!

[schuss]

there were a bunch of idiots who asked me for it a ton (I was the cancer merchant, so they assumed I had drugs too). Probably does help somewhat, but there's never a bad time to develop a work ethic instead of relying on chemical help.

[Viva]

J Investig Med. 2004 Apr;52(3):192-201.

Methylphenidate does not improve cognitive function in healthy sleep-deprived young adults.

Bray CL, Cahill KS, Oshier JT, Peden CS, Theriaque DW, Flotte TR, Stacpoole PW.

University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville, FL 32610-1042, USA. cbray@ufl.edu

BACKGROUND: Abuse of methylphenidate, a treatment of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, is reported to be increasing among students for the purpose of improving cognition. METHODS: A single capsule, containing methylphenidate (20 mg) or placebo, was administered to healthy young adults orally following 24 hours of sleep deprivation. Measurements included percent change in score from sleep-deprived baseline on four standardized tests of cognitive function: Hopkins Verbal Learning, Digit Span, Modified Stroop, and Trail Making tests. Measurements also included percent changes in blood pressure and heart rate from sleep-deprived baseline and plasma methylphenidate concentration. RESULTS: Differences in cognitive test performance were not observed between intervention groups. In subjects receiving methylphenidate, mean percent changes from baseline for systolic blood pressure and heart rate were increased relative to placebo between 90 and 210 minutes following capsule administration (maximum increases of 9.45% and 11.03%, respectively). The timing of peak differences in physiologic measures did not correlate with peak serum methylphenidate concentrations. Exit questionnaire ratings of "capsule effect" and perceived performance on the postcapsule administration of the most challenging cognitive test were both higher (p = .044 and p = .009, respectively) for the methylphenidate group than for the placebo group. CONCLUSIONS: Cognitive improvement among sleep-deprived young adults was not observed following methylphenidate administration. Benefits perceived by abusers may relate to increased confidence and sense of well-being, as well as to sympathetic nervous system stimulation. Moreover, methylphenidate administration results in physiologic effects that could be harmful to certain individuals.

[Big E]

Viva, you lost me at Methylphenidate.

[Viva]

Pay Attention: Ritalin Acts Much Like Cocaine
Brian Vastag


JAMA. 2001;286:905-906.

Washington—Advanced imaging research has answered a 40-year-old question about methylphenidate (Ritalin), which is taken daily by 4 million to 6 million children in the United States: how does it work? The answer may unsettle many parents, because the drug acts much like cocaine, albeit cocaine dripped through molasses (J Neurosci. 2001;21:RC121).

Taken orally in pill form, methylphenidate rarely produces a high and has not been reported to be addictive. However, injected as a liquid it sends a jolt that "addicts like very much," said Nora Volkow, MD, psychiatrist and imaging expert at Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY. "They say it's like cocaine."

Acknowledged as leaders in the field of brain imaging of drug effects, Volkow and colleagues have spent several years tracing the effects on the brain of drugs of addiction, using positron emission tomography (PET) and other advanced techniques. Among their long list of findings, they've identified the brain's dopamine system as a major player in compulsive behavior, including drug taking and overeating.


A PRAGMATIC PARADOX

Building on that base, Volkow, associate laboratory director for life sciences at Brookhaven, hit the trail of a legal stimulant. Although they have used it to treat attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) for 40 years, psychiatrists and pharmacologists have never known how or why it worked. Chemically similar to cocaine and other stimulants, methylphenidate presents a pragmatic paradox: it decreases activity and increases the ability to concentrate in people with ADHD, but in studies, about half of those without ADHD find it unpleasant, like drinking too much coffee.

"I've almost been obsessed about trying to understand [methylphenidate] with imaging," said Volkow at a recent media conference. "As a psychiatrist, sometimes I feel embarrassed [about the lack of knowledge] because this is, by far, the drug we prescribe most frequently to children."

So the team went to work with PET scans to examine the dopamine system, which stimulates reward and motivation circuits during pleasurable experiences—eating, having sex, learning. To pick one of many pleasures, tasting chocolate ice cream will trigger cells in the basal ganglia to release dopamine molecules. These float across the synapse to neurons in a reward circuit. Receptors on these cells sop up the dopamine, activating signals that translate to "this experience is worth paying attention to." Too much signal and the experience feels unpleasant, overstimulating. Too little, and the experience elicits a yawn; no pleasure, only boredom and distraction.

Volkow wanted to know how methylphenidate affects this signal. But instead of focusing on dopamine receptors, she tracked another part of the system. After the pleasure signal is sent on its way, dopamine molecules recycle back to the neurons that produced them. There, transporters—also called autoreceptors—act as vacuum cleaners, scouring the synapse for another go-around.

Earlier research had shown that cocaine blocks about 50% of these transporters, leading to a surfeit of dopamine in the synapse and a hit of pleasure. Because of methylphenidate's chemical similarities to cocaine, pharmacologists thought that it might work in the same way, only less potently, blocking fewer transporters. Animal studies with high doses of methylphenidate indicated that this could be the case.


STARTLING RESULTS

Using a radiotracer, [11C]raclopride, that labels dopamine transporters, the team scanned 11 healthy men who took various doses of oral methylphenidate. The results were shocking.

"We were surprised as hell," said Volkow. "We didn't expect this." Instead of being a less potent transport inhibitor than cocaine, methylphenidate was more potent. A typical dose given to children, 0.5 mg/kg, blocked 70% of dopamine transporters. "The data clearly show that the notion that Ritalin is a weak stimulant is completely incorrect," Volkow said.

More pondering led the team to consider two theories. Methylphenidate could be blocking the recycling of dopamine exactly as cocaine does, leading to strong signals that would yield a high and lead to addiction. But this did not jibe with four decades of clinical experience.

So they considered another possibility. Perhaps methylphenidate seeps into the brain slowly, and as one by one the drug molecules block the transporters, dopamine cells shift gears. Like a union foreman yelling to an assembly line to slow down, the cell interprets the transporter congestion as a signal that too much dopamine is being produced. The neuron cranks down production, sending less dopamine into the synapse, suppressing the reward signal.

The two theories opposed each other. But Volkow was unfazed. "We had to let the data speak for itself," she said.

That meant measuring the amount of dopamine floating in the synapses. Fortunately, the investigators had at hand another radioactive label that binds only to open dopamine receptors. A weak PET signal would mean low numbers of open receptors, which in turn would mean that large amounts of dopamine occupied the synapse.

After combining data from the volunteers, the team got its second surprise. Those who took methylphenidate displayed high levels of extracellular dopamine—just like people using cocaine. But if methylphenidate works like cocaine, why aren't millions of US children getting high and becoming addicted?


CAPTURING THE ANSWER

The answer came after Volkow combined her results with those from another research team. In 1999, Darin Dougherty, MD, and colleagues at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University Medical School reported that people with ADHD have many more dopamine transporters than those without the condition (Lancet. 1999;354:2132-2133). This surplus increases the collective cleaning power of each cell; as dopamine fires into the synapse it is quickly sucked back, before it can home in on reward circuit receptors. "There isn't enough time for it to produce a signal," said Volkow.

It finally started to make sense. Children with ADHD produce weak dopamine signals, meaning that usually interesting activities provide fewer rewards. In effect, their attention circuitry is underfed. At the same time, they experience a related effect: random, distracting neuron firing. Or, as Volkow put it, more noise and less signal. This background hum interferes with concentration, making the child more distractible.

Methylphenidate flips the relationship, upping the signal and reducing the noise. After someone swallows methylphenidate, it enters the bloodstream and eventually finds the brain, where it blocks dopamine transporters and increases attention signaling. Again, cocaine acts the same way. But the two drugs differ in a significant way: methylphenidate takes about an hour to raise dopamine levels, whereas inhaled or injected cocaine hits the brain in seconds. "It is the speed at which you increase dopamine that appears to be a key element of the addiction process," said Volkow.

While the team is unclear on why this speed factor is so important, future research will focus on it. They also plan to map dopamine levels in volunteers who have ADHD when they are at rest or while concentrating. Other research will search for molecular tools to screen children for dopamine transporter levels; those with high levels could be identified early and encouraged with behavioral solutions before methylphenidate is prescribed. "We know that social interactions can increase dopamine receptors," said Volkow, but whether better interplay also affects transporter levels is unknown.

The long-term dopamine effects of taking methylphenidate for years, as many do, are another unknown. The only two large epidemiological studies conflict. One reports more drug addiction in children with ADHD who took methylphenidate compared with children with ADHD who took no drug (J Learn Disabil. 1998;31:533-544); the other shows the opposite result (Pediatrics. 1999;104:e20).

Because people with low levels of dopamine receptors are at risk for drug addiction, Volkow said that researchers need to understand if methylphenidate can alter the whole dynamic of the dopamine pathway. "Could chronic use of Ritalin make you more vulnerable to decreased dopamine brain activity as cocaine does? It's a key question nobody has answered."

[Buster Highmen]

Phhtttt. Step up to some dexedrine or crank. What's a decent college chem department for anyway?

[Viva]

Viva, you lost me at Methylphenidate.

Ritalin 8910

[gonzo]

shit is bad bad bad. just like any other addiction, once you try it for studying and it works, the next time you are studying all you can think about is how much more you be able to study if you had some. i saw so many friends get in that loop in college and steered clear. i already had to have half a can of chew in my face and a gallon of coffee to be able to sit down...no need for more dependencies...

[basom]

i already had to have half a can of chew in my face and a gallon of coffee to be able to sit down...no need for more dependencies...

i'd have to say i'm glad i had a presciption for my add rather than resorting to a can of chew and a gallon of coffee to get my work done.
i think dip and coffee are much more addictive than ritlin when used as intended.

[Viva]

Coffee can help the ADHD person to focus...up to a point.

[mr_gyptian]

I had to read the book Cocaine Changes for a "class" called Drugs and Society.

I think four chapters dealt with a study where the doc's concluded that cocaine use in a controlled situation enhanced academic/job performance.

Our prof. who was the head of NORML in CO at the time said that and you could literally see going on over our heads.

[Will]

Never tried any of them. Knew folks (not ADD) who took them for pleasure and as study-aids.

The pleasure group said that a line of Adderall was better than coke.

The study group swore on a stack of bibles that taking an adderall allowed them to so completely focus on the task at hand (either lots of reading or paper writing) that they could blast through something in 6 hours that should have taken 10. Furthermore, what they produced wasn't crap; generally they wrote good papers and took good notes on what they were reading.

edit - 1) Adderall is hard to spell.
2) Just remembered this: a girl a few years younger than me once told me about her experiences at a fancy boarding school out in CO. Her roomate's mother sent the two of them an economy sized bottle of Adderall with a letter hinting that they should use it for studying for finals and the SATs.

[bigsugar]

I was diagnosed with ADD as a youngin.........and I cannot take that shit. I would go all day without eating, would hardly talk throughout the course of the day, and was real goddamn irritable once it wore off......it also gave me a weird, spacy, itchy feeling, and not the pleasant kind of spacy either. We tried all the different scrips, and they all had the same effect. Doctors and family just gave it up once I got to high school. The thought of taking any of those still repulses me.

[Mountainman]

Coffee can help the ADHD person to focus...up to a point.

Coffee and chew get me through all of my studying.

[Lane Meyer]

I've heard of DJs popping a fee Adderalls just before a set to help them focus for the next 4 hours while they spin deep into the night. They prefer it to other things that people in their audiences take to do the same thing. Never heard any bad things about it...not supposed to be too addicitive, except for what Gonzo was saying about "needing" it to maintian performance when the task is repeated later on.

[Tippster]

...Our prof. who was the head of NORML in CO at the time said that and you could literally see going on over our heads.

Could you translate this sentence into English, please? Maybe I'm ADD, but I have no fucking idea what you're trying to say here.

The Prof. said WHAT?

WHO saw WHAT?

There was a sign that said "GOING ON" over your heads?

Goddamn I gots ta git me some Ritalin...

[Keoni]

Where the hell can I get my hands on a vial of dopamine?

[dropinskiout]

yeah, i've taken both ritalin and adderall. I'd say each of my last 3 semesters i've taken 2-3 pills while studying for finals. I get them from friends who have ADD/ADHD.

I've both taken them orally and snorted it (generally 1/4 pill every 2 hrs). It definitely has an effect on me. It keeps me awake w/o the jitteryness that comes with caffiene. Also, I am less distracted by other things when I use it. I will often study for 2-3 hours straight with out realizing it.

Have my marks improved? Probably. Side effects? Typical loss of appetite...same as any "upper". No real withdrawal/addiction symptoms, but my exposure to it is pretty minimal.

[powpowpowderwheels]

In HS i would take a 15mg pill (orange) of adderall to help study for finals. It worked for a couple hours, and the effects are amazing. It makes studying/concentration 100 times easier, but i would not say that it improves cognitive function. I would rather study than call than listen to music or go to TGR boards . Also, it felt like it released endorphins or something, because it would give me a very pleasant buzz. I never had the desire to take it when i was studying other times, like someone suggested, but maybe that was just me.

Also, i *hear* if you take some and then hit a bowl, fun things happen...

[rip]

One of my roommates started taking piracetam and now swears buy it. I have tried it and it does seem to work well. Your mind seems less cluttered and it is easier to focus. Out of all of the information I have found on it nothing seems bad, it increases brainflow, protects the brain from damage, and check this out about working in higher altitudes

http://www.ceri.com/update.htm

more info:

http://www.hyperreal.org/nootropics/...rilidones.html

this stuff is dirt cheap too, like 20 bucks for a friggin huge bottle. The powder tastes horrible though, for a super brain booster mix with a redbull, it cancels out the taste and you become one lean mean studying machine.

[mr_gyptian]

Could you translate this sentence into English, please? Maybe I'm ADD, but I have no fucking idea what you're trying to say here.

The Prof. said WHAT?

WHO saw WHAT?

There was a sign that said "GOING ON" over your heads?

Goddamn I gots ta git me some Ritalin...

National Organization for the Reformation of Marijuana Laws.

Colorado

light bulbs going on over our heads.

[dipstik]

I was under the impression that Concerta is actually a cocaine based drug... aka "kiddie cocaine"

I started taking it (concerta) this summer (under prescription) and it has really helped me out. I never used to be able to read something for more than 10 minutes without getting completly distracted....I don't think I actually read a single book throughout high school. It was either a few pages here and there or just SparkNotes. Ever since I started taking Concerta I've been able to get my reading (among other things) done, and actually understand it. In fact I read 130 pages of an english book in one sitting a few nights ago...for me it was pretty impressive.


Anyway, in terms of side effects, I've lost a lot of weight. I was never fat, but I've been eating a lot less than normal...I'd guess that I've lost 10 pounds since July. Not a huge deal, more of a benefit than anything.


If you're thinking about taking them to help you study, I wouldn't bother. Granted they will help you concentrate (my doc calls them "smart pills"), but it takes a few doses until your body starts to react to them, and even then it's hard to tell. You won't all of a sudden become super concentrated either, the differences are very subtle. It's also probably not a good idea to take drugs you don't know how you react to the night before an exam. Then again I'm only speaking with knowledge of one drug, and it's in a time released capsule. So I guess if you smashed it up and then took it you would probably get a "concentration high".

What I can't understand is why kids would sell their ADD prescriptions. First of all it's a huge risk, the penaltys for selling a controlled substance are a lot harsher than selling weed, especially if it has a cocaine base. Secondly its pretty expensive, even with insurance, so theres not exactly a lot of money to be made. Thirdly it's a pain in the ass to get. I have to physically pick up the prescription from my doctors hand and show all kinds of ID when I go to pick it up in person (can't "call it in" either) at the pharmacy. I have to do this every 30 days, as the prescription can only be for 30 pills/month. So from that standpoint its a lot easier, safer, and profitable to sell other drugs.

[MOHSHSIHd]

i had a script for concerta for a couple years....didnt help with school and i felt like a crack head....lost like 15 pounds and skied 100 days...


pros:

can ski ten days in a row and feel like a fucking rockstar

cons:

weight loss
feel like an ethiopian crack whore