DOSE:	repeated	oral	Pharms - Methylphenidate	(pill / tablet)
	repeated	insufflated	Pharms - Methylphenidate	(ground / crushed)

BODY WEIGHT:

120 lb

I was diagnosed with ADD about a year ago, and have since abused my Ritalin and my friend's Adderall by snorting it and taking it orally. In all honesty, after having done this about 25 times, and Adderall only once, there is no real excitement left in taking more than necessary, and I only do it when I'm bored or need to be extremely productive. Ritalin is by no means addictive though - I have never had a physical or psychological longing for it.

What I find most interesting are the varying effects that Ritalin and Adderall can have. Sometimes the former energizes me to the point of feeling like Superman, like I am invincible and nothing can stop me from reading a novel the size of a dictionary and cleaning an entire house. Other times, I become paranoid and jittery. And on two occasions, I felt depressed, as if the world were melting before my eyes, and I couldn’t wait until, what I described in my journal at the time as ‘The Fog Of Stupid’, would ‘just go away.’

The first type of effects are desirable for someone with ADD, or at least for an intense procrastinator. I don’t know if I actually have ADD, because it is very simple to be diagnosed with it. A doctor asked me 30 subjective questions, and since I answered, ‘Yes’ to a majority of them, he will diagnosed you. I love learning and to an extent, I even enjoy homework, but unless a teacher or textbook is totally engrossing, then I cannot drudge up enough motivation to pay attention. I take several accelerated and AP courses in school, and on days when I do not take my prescribed amount of medication, I can feel myself zoning out more, taking less notes. And when it comes to homework, I just don’t do it.

However, when I feel that it is necessary to concentrate on something, I orally take 30 mg. of Ritalin. After about 25 minutes, the hyper-focusing and motivation starts to kick in. The first time that I did take more than my prescribed amount (about 50 mg) I wrote 13 pages in my journal, a one-page history essay, and drew and colored 15 pages for an extra-credit history project in a span of less than three hours. I had been procrastinating these chores for days, and suddenly, everything became inspirational, and I felt incapable of putting my pen down. My hand was sweating and ache-y from scribbling hundreds of words, but I was intent on completing as much as humanly possible in even less time.

Recently, I stayed home from school. I hadn’t taken the Ritalin the day before, so I had not written an important essay or studied for numerous tests. Around noon I took 40 mg. This had me wiping down counters, throwing away garbage, cleaning and vacuuming the floors, putting away dishes, and doing numerous loads of laundry until 4, when I took another 40 mg. I did not stop cleaning the entirety of my house until it was immaculate, around 6:00. At this time, I realized that there was nothing left to do, which was very stressful. I paced back and forth, from one wall to the other, shaking my hands and doing jumping jacks, for two hours. When my father came home, I climbed into his car, and willed myself to not speak too much. Thankfully he’s oblivious, because I recall trying to keep my mouth shut but then allowing myself to speak, and not stopping rambling on and on about stupid things.

Once in my mother’s home, I willed myself to feel normally, but only felt depressed and dull. But then I started talking with her and after a short period of time I felt perfectly fine. For all of the moving around I did on this day, I only had three cookies and a cup of tea in my stomach, which I consumed later that night. I’m not worried about my weight, but I like to eat junk food when I’m bored, and while on Ritalin, the thought of consuming food never passes my mind.

The ability to hyper-focus on my surroundings, particularly music, is also strengthened. If I allow myself to become a part of a blaring stereo, then I can feel the sensation of being totally consumed by sound. It is strange, and can be disorienting, but what I find even stranger, is how upset I become when I am not consumed by the sound. When the Ritalin is at its strongest, I automatically feel my heart beat as if it were the only thumping organism in the world. A good song can actually manifest itself in a physical form - I don’t ever see the music, but I can feel it, as if it were this massive entity swirling around my body and it is the only thing I can think about. When this doesn’t happen, and I feel detached from my surroundings, as opposed to being totally immersed in them, I get very irritated and disconcerted.

Occasions in which I feel paranoid and jittery come at a surprise. I once swallowed just 50 mg. before school and, perhaps because of some other anxieties as well, I became so riddled with paranoia about ‘what I was going to do’ and become frightened that I am going crazy that I got sick to my stomach and had to leave school early. Too much Ritalin always gives me diarrhea. The nurse sent me to a back room, unnerved by my jitteryness and apparent mild anxiety attack.

My worst experience with this was when I snorted 70 mg. of Ritalin at once. A bunch of friends and I were sitting in my neighbor’s house, and they were all high or tripping on some hallucinogens, so I decided to use the only drug I had. Rolling up a dollar bill, and crushing the pills into twelve thin lines with a kitchen knife and my library card, I quickly snorted each one, leaving a deep white stain in their tablecloth. Nothing - no effect for nearly a half hour. But by the time it did take effect, I was reeling. My breathing was reduced to strained gasps, everything appeared to be muddled and unreal. When my friend put her finger on my pulse she actually jumped back, and said, ‘Holy shit, I can’t count how fast that’s beating!’ I attempted to calm down by drawing some pictures, but they all morphed themselves into a creature from The Yellow Submarine: these ugly swirling shapes supposed to mean something. I really hyper-focused on these, and it was mentally painstaking, because I couldn’t help it.

Sometimes (like with music) I love becoming part of another object, but I loathed this, because I wanted to see what the whole picture looked like but it was impossible- my brain centered its attention only on bits and pieces. The rest of the night sucked too. While my friends were laughing and saying things like, ‘Oh my god, the world is so beautiful!’ I wanted to cry, or to convince myself that everything is allowed to be imperfect. This is when the ‘Fog of Stupid’ came along. My friend Jane (not real name) sat across from me in the diner we had migrated to. The neon lights of the sign were melting down the windowpane, everyone was speaking too slowly, and I didn’t know how to respond without sounding like an idiot to myself. I apologized relentlessly for being so annoying and stupid, she told me not to worry about it because I sounded normal, but everything she said seemed like a lie. Everything was so slow, and I recognized that it was my mind’s fault. There was a wall preventing any intelligible thought from passing through and processing itself - ‘The Fog of Stupid,’ the phrase I apparently repeated incessantly, along with ‘I don’t get it’ and ‘This doesn’t make sense.’

The food tasted like sawdust, and finally, too confused by own apparent craziness, I ran home. I listened to the same song on full volume for two hours, while the rest of my room melted in waves around me, images depicted in the song played around my walls. I did not hallucinate these images, I simply imagined them. I was able to scribble in my notebook for several pages, before it was clear that my mind was no longer infected with depression or stupidity. Note: nothing I have seen on Ritalin has been scary, just frustrating.

My only experience with Adderall has been decidedly different than the Ritalin. I was fairly drunk when I went to my friend’s house for a long night. We each snorted four lines of Adderall, I do not know the quantity, and for the next hour I was relaxed and unmoving, but I didn’t feel messed up. When my friends instructed me to help out with moving things around the house, and when they temporarily freaked out about something, I showed boredom and disinterest, which frustrated them. Soon afterwards, we smoked seven grams of marijuana, at which point I started bugging out and becoming jittery and upset. Other times that I smoked this much or more didn’t result in my seeing little bugs crawling around, and I am usually just delirious with the funny bone. On this day, I felt helpless to control the things around me, and I was very sensitive to everything, which I believe is due mostly to the Adderall.

I’ve never noticed any type of comedown or decline in my energy level to the point of a converse effect of extreme laziness. When I realize that it is no longer affecting me I feel fine, and am capable of doing whatever I’d be capable of at any other sober time. With high dosages I have terrible mood swings, and feel depressed, but never to a suicidal level - I usually just want to cry. I don’t end up crying, and when it finishes I’m perfectly fine.

I’ve never snorted any other type of drug, so I do not have something to compare with, but snorting this is not painful. I enjoy the feeling. Writing all this about ADD meds makes me realize how little a purpose snorting them serves though: the positive effects are few and unnoticeable, and the negative effects really just make for a slightly, but not terribly, unpleasant evening. However, taking anywhere between 40 and 80 mg. orally is excellent when I need to get a lot of stuff done.

Exp Year: 2006-2007	ExpID: 61183
Gender: Female
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Feb 10, 2008	Views: 39,227
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Pharms - Methylphenidate (114) : Not Applicable (38), Music Discussion (22), Retrospective / Summary (11)