Methylphenidate is primarily a pretty selective brain stimulant with fewer peripheral & less prominent anorexic effects. But I noticed Ritalin makes you shy & introverted while Dexedrine & Adderall make you confident & outgoing. Concerta & Ritalin are good for ADD but not for mood (or as an anti-depressant).

similar, yet different. i dont like ritalin at all. it makes me nervous in doses that would be decent if it were dex. i used to take it when i went to school, in small amounts, and it did help me focus. but i would prefer dex anytime.
I found these online and was interested

Can anyone compare and contrast the two

Ive taken adderall a few times and liked the increased confidence, talkativeness, friendliness and clear thoughts.......and was thinkin about giving a few conertas a show see how they fair.....but if they make you shy, foggy, and hyperfocused Im not sure

I know everyone responds differently tho so if anyone could give me some insight

yeah i get the same reaction
i dont use them anymore but i think d-amp (adderall) releases dopamine along with reuptake inhibiting and reversing the pump. The "releasing" effect gives you that confident talkativeness. Mph is mostly reuptake inhibiting so there isnt that much of a release or rush of dopamine from my experience but there is still increased dopamine which gives you the hyperfocus

were you using instant release MPH, focalin, or concerta? I found IR MPH to be more anxiolytic than concerta. It didn't make me shy per se, but I definitely didn't care for socializing.

I've had the same foggy and hyperfocused experience with methylphenidate.

Have you tried both adderall and dexedrine?

My insurance doesn't cover concerta and I'm getting tired of dosing MPH 4x a day. My pdoc has offered me dexedrine but I was turned off by the excessive confidence (and subsequent cockyness) and hypomania. However, if it makes you more friendly as you say, that might not be so bad. MPH works great for leveling my mood but it definitely kills the joy from most activities. It's a decent drug and is perfect for a short-acting stimulant, but dexedrine might be a more practical solution.

Haha Ive had the reverse effect.

Adderall made me horribly withdrawn and anorexic. I tried it on a few occasions to disasterous results.

Ritalin seems to do the trick. Not saying it makes me necessarily outgoing or confident but, after being on Ritalin for pretty much 13 years, I guess you could say Im used to living with (and being outgoing and confident with) Ritalin.

Dexedrine(/Vyvanse) was nice (much less peripheral stimulation) but gave me a nasty temper that I didnt even realize. I snapped on a few friends a couple of times on it and decided Id never take it again. I dont think this was attributed to over-confidence, it was just a jackass mood/temper I always had.

I used to think I could tell a strong difference between the two. Taking them now, I can only really tell that MPH wears off faster. I think you have to experience any personal difference yourself.

Agreed. MPH can be a lot like AMP. I think a lot of the subjective difference in it's effects is due to pharmacodynamics more than anything else. For instance, IR and especially snorted ritalin are much more like AMP.

Honestly, for me, even a low-dose of methylphenidate (5-10mg) is enough to make me much more confident, yet intense, composed and articulate. 20mg is probably the sweet-spot dose though if I need to be at my best.. well between 10-20mg at once.

Perhaps it's because I don't have ADD to begin with.. but yeah, MPH makes me pretty social, longer conversations, puts me in a great, confident mood as well.

HOWEVER I must also add that I tried dex once and it made me more confident than ritalin but also it kinda made me act pretty unnatural (I.E it was so potent it was obvious I was something because I acted very much out of character) and that was only 15mg spansules.

IMO MPH is better because it's less neurotoxic and more studies done on it to determine safety.

I love how MPH will make you feel relaxed and composed, yet intense and READY and just confident. For me anyway, although I tend to be a rather confident and social person anyway but it just brings it out very well. IMO it kinda feels like the original Stimulant X but less dirty feeling and much less longer lasting.

I might give a concerta a shot...since my frieind offered me some...as did my docter...


Somethings up with my sleep quality though that i need to get squared away first

So what do we agree on is more DESIRABLE? AMP or MPH? But I guess that depends on what you're trying to achieve... Increase physical performance, mental performance, focus, or whatnot...

For calm study purposes and listening to a teacher I would prefer methylphenidate. The only drawback is that methylphenidate IR seems to last no more than 1½ hour in my case.

For manual repetitive work or physical activity I would prefer amphetamine. Sometimes, I seem to have trouble sitting still in classes on Dexedrine, which is not the case with Ritalin (but my neurologist doesn't want to prescribe me both).

For social purposes... seriously none of them... In my case they make me LESS social.

To add to this thread...

Ive taken Ritalin for the longest time. Like 10 years. In the past 3 years I switched off of it trying to find something else because it was causing me a little too much anxiety. I had tried Adderall before and tried it again in the past 3 years. Both times were disaster.

Adderall causes me intense social withdrawal and makes me super anorexic.
Dexedrine makes me feel really clear headed and less anxious than any of them but makes me angry and subtly nasty.

Ritalin, maybe because after years of taking it Ive learned to live with its effects, gives me the best treatment for ADD symptoms. Sure, it withdraws me just a little bit socially but I think this is more of a function of being less impulsive and thinking before I act rather than letting it all hang out. Although, I do admit, it is a little harder on Ritalin than off Ritalin just to hang loose and go with the flow. My mind doesnt 'flow' with my surroundings and the moment at hand as easy.


Also interesting to note, Im highly ambitious and entrepreneurial with Ritalin and, on anything else, I could care less about any of that and would opt for a secure, well-paying job over the uncertainty and excitement of starting a company.


To those who say AMP makes them more outgoing and confident... how do you feel that helps with your ADD symptoms? If I felt more outgoing and confident, I imagine I would want to go out and be social rather than stay inside and focus on homework.

Most of the motivational differences are probably psychological. AMP is a stronger dopaminergic and overall stimulant than MPH, so unless you were taking a tiny dose the motivational effects should be stronger in AMP, or at least similar.

AMP tends to make you more confident and outgoing but at the same time tends to increases focus, motivation and self-control. So it usually isn't a problem as far as getting work done goes.

well my pdoc insists i have a learning disability but is not sure it has to do with ADD becuase I can study and retain information if Im interested in it.......thought sometimes i space out slightly

BUt i have alot of trouble with reading and writing.....I read very slow......and sitting down to write a paper is hell for me i cant organize my thoughts. put together sentences etc.......and my notes are very unorganized

another thing that might be affecting this is highschool was so easy for me it was a joke.....i never studied or did homework and pulled out a 3.2 gpa......literally zero effort.....i dont think i brought a book or notebook home once junior or senior year

I go to a pretty challending school becuase it is small and has alot of ivy league professors....though it is not an ivy league school.......but since i need to put alot of effort in to get decent grades rather than no effort to get good grades its stressful as hell.......my GPA is like 2.6 and I bust my ass alot

Ive tried adderall....took a 20mg XR tablet and went to the gym for a little bit and said i was gonna study after 30 mins of working out.....well it hit my like crazy...since i struggle with depression and adderall gave me euphora and complete abolishment of anxiety ....i just wanted to talk and make freinds and go to the beach and stuff....so tahts what I did.....so later on i was coming down and took another 20mg and started to study with a girl in my classes but every 2 mins i would look up from my books and start conversation.......i had 5 caps that i went through in 3 days and then became really depressed after......after i told this story to my pdoc she refuses to prescribe me adderall or dexedrine

she said shed consider MPH if i was still struggling becuase she doenst think itll induce the same hypomanic behavior...


Basically Im looking for a mood lift....but also an effect that will make my thoughts flow and me have the ability to sit and read a book or right a paper without difficulty......

Tianeptine helped a bit...but nothing drastic

I might try the EMSAM patch for depression/ADHD

Also Id like to add I think alot of my depression and other mental problem stem from the fact that I have a huge ego and very very low self esteem....i dont know if theres any signifigance to this in my reaction to AMP but i definatly LOVED the confidence....especially when talkin to girls and superiors...i was smooth and collected

Honestly, more than anything else it seems like you are just being lazy and not putting effort forth on things don't want to do. Stop looking for a pill to do all your work for you and start looking at things honestly.

Self-actualization is a difficult and long pursuit. Fine-tuning your mind to this goal is a multi-layered problem. You're trying to solve it by starting at the wrong end.

Yeah, the problem with getting drive and focus from a pill is that by its nature it can't be specific. It can "increase task saliency" as they say in the literature, but the best case is either A) it gets you to the point where you have to struggle like everyone else to pursue and achieve a goal, or B) you get overfocused/manic and hyperfocus on whatever shiny is in front of you.

If you're depressed and thinking you should be at the gym instead of playing XBox, well, the stimulant is also going to make XBox seem that much more captivating. If you feel too tired, maybe that energy boost is just going to go to staying up till 3am maxing out your gamerscore, and not getting pumps at the gym.

The problem with being intelligent is that you can be fantastically lazy, never employ or learn significant goal-directed behavior through most of your life, and still succeed somehow, whereas someone who is not able to recognize patterns and deduce things as rapidly and in as many steps ahead as you can has to actually learn that shit and become proficient at it just to meet those same standards you do.

As an example, I had an upper-level managerial accounting course in college. I dislike accounting and find it tedious. I skipped every class except the tests, getting 0s on all homework/quizzes, never studied, took the tests and used logic and inference to deduce what I was supposed to do, and ended up with a "C" in the class. Amusing, but in the end, all I have is a bachelor's degree and a mediocre GPA, because I invested little effort or time. Those who succeeded invested more.

That isn't to say drugs have no place... it is just that their place is correcting deficiency, not attaining enlightenment for you and developing skills that take years of effort to become proficient at. Despite what fags like Timothy Leary think. Even if the magic faerie of neurological problems came by and hooked you up with a brain free from every DSM-IV-TR condition, guess what? College is still difficult and stressful. Maybe college isn't supposed to be ezmode, roller coasters, and lollipops? Maybe you should have to bust your ass to the degree you can't even hold a job at the same time, and rely on study groups, tutors, and every trick you have at your disposal to achieve the results you desire? Life for almost every animal on earth is defined by desperation, hunger, and a beautiful but terribly unforgiving environment. Don't assume just because you have opposable thumbs and lesbian porn DVDs you can turn away from that.

Stimulant induced euphoria and mania can be enjoyable, but is hardly sustainable. I have to agree with your PDoc here.

Every campus has resources, tutors, and study skills education available. There are far more ways get help than a psychiatrist alone, but before you can find those things or use them, you have to want to.

Powerful words.

Glad to see the lesbian porn DVDs were not neglected.

Agreed completely. Drugs are for after you get everything else down pat IMO

Markog, I would suggest perhaps you start recording what you do everyday before you go to sleep. If an activity was a waste, record what you could have done better with your time, and if it was positive write down why and how it will help you. This way you can begin holding yourself more accountable for your behavior.

Also, clean/organize your shit and start making lists of things to do. In the beginning, just focus on sitting down and working on small tasks or segments of large tasks to completion. You don't have to become a machine in a few days, but forcing yourself to get things done at first is a big step.

The above is just a framework that will get you into the right mode of thinking. You may choose to discard parts or all of it in time, but it will get you in a different mode of activity if you stick to it with discipline at first.

(Insert standard diet/exercise/meditate/reduce substance abuse comment here)

Also, if you do meditate or something analogous, I have a suggestion. One of my favorite visualization exercises, that I do after I write in my journal and meditate, is imagine all the things I did that day that made me better or secured some sort of resource I need. I start moving through days, months and years, imagining how they will accumulate into a reality that I created through my own focus, discipline and vision. I see my strength as a person and all my positive attributes increase exponentially due to my hard work and ability to endure.

I see all these things flowing out of me like a fountain, I feel it coming from the bottom of my nature and tell myself that I can't stop it. I see what I could have, what I can do, and I realize how I can never give up or settle.

I find it ironic that in some ways, the more discipline you have, the more control you have over your life, the less choice you seem to have as to what you do with your time. The decision as to whether you waste time stops becoming a decision at a certain point, and starts becoming something automatic, an expression of the way you have chosen to live your life. Of course more choices open up at this point, and they are usually much better than as to whether or not you should do a lab report or play Smash Bros with the fuckups down the hall. Oh yeah, and Lesbian Porn

Another brotelligence PRO-TIP I would like to pass on is at some point ask yourself, "What would I do today if I had no problems, no weaknesses, no XYZ? What would my goals be?"

You would be surprised at how you can surpass your expectations and make things better with merely using your imagination a little to kick things off.

Another goodin'

I saw a study a while back that showed at top levels in sports success was determined by positive thinking more than anything else. I actually think it might have been in one of Daniel Goleman's books. Positive thinking is underrated.

Speaking of Daniel Goleman....

Dexedrine works, but due to abusers, they won't prescribe IR anymore, and the XR spansules last too long and keep me up.

That's funny, 'cause I got prescribed IR Dexedrine on my second visit to my doctor for ADD.

My gun safe is full of shitpiles of extra IR Dexedrine and I'm slacking getting my refill this month cause I've got so much lying around...

No, you can't have my home address.

Yeah, doctors are much more hesitant to give out the IR, but it is still available.
Infact, my insurance only covers IR dexedrine and my pdoc has offered it.

causation, correlation, potato, potahto

I don't think he's lazy.

Forcing the willpower, direction, study groups, all that helps, surely.

Yoga, meditation.

...I imagine memantine, if it potentiated limbic dopamine, would help too.

I bet aricept, if it improved executive function in conjunction with his psychostim, would help too.

socializing a lot i hope? getting good sleep?

While I completley agree, I do need to improve my study habits, saying Im being lazy is kinda bullshit, you have no idea how hard I work, just becuase I have trouble sitting down to write a paper, because Im impulsive....lazy....Little harsh? I could call you lazy for brushing me off as lazy......but thanks for your other advice I did find that useful!

I by no means am looking for a magic bullet to make me smarter....I know that wont happen....I just have alot of trouble organizing thoughts.....taking in information....I have to say every sentence I read in my head or I dont grasp it.......I need to improve my study habits and learn some other writing skills and such buttttt I also think there is another component.....not saying I need a stimulant to fix it just saying being "lazy" isnt my problem, since I bust my ass all the time.....If i was lazy I wouldnt be in the library 10-12 hours a week

My writing professor write this on my paper word for word

"In anaytical papers you must aviod overwriting, you seem to be straining for words + phrases which takes away from the clarity that will put a premuim on accuracy" " Sometimes you word and phrase choices muddle what might stike a reader as good obervations and insight. Becuase it is hard to follow your thoughts you lose credibility with the reader."........I got a B- on the paper but Im sure if it was organized and put together well i would have gotten an A.......this might not be ADD just poor writing skills or poor speech and thought organization but there is still probably something I can do about it....

Preplanning -> Organization -> Draft -> Proofreading -> Revision -> Repeat

You should be able to catch obvious mistakes like what your professor notes on a proofreading, and if you cannot, you need to study what makes them mistakes. Perhaps by critiquing others' writing first. If after identifying them as mistakes you cannot find a way to resolve them, at that point you need to do better planning/organization.

There's no pill for that.

Damn... thinking about it... I also have a terribly hard time with self-discipline... I actually shouldn't be on the computer right now! But be preparing to go to sleep! This being said, good night!

Another bit of brotelligence:

It is very easy to misuse willpower. We know we can force ourselves to do something, or not do something. But for every 9 times we do this successfully, we fail once. (or whatever)

The underlying question to free will is... who chooses to have a choice? Why do you have to use an extreme amount of will, when someone else had to use much less?

Consider a child molester. I imagine most child molesters out there have extraordinary self-control and will. They probably fight harder than I do every day to stay in line. But is the problem on those rare occasions when their self-control and will fails the fact it failed was not perfect, or is it that having compulsions to fuck children in the first place?

Or consider depression. In depression, the prefrontal cortex is hyperactive as it attempts to suppress the hyperactive limbic system generating intrusive negative thoughts and feelings of despair. When the depression is treated, the pFC activity decreases, as there is less need for it. Those with depression aren't shutting down the highest levels of their mind and being lazy-- they're actually overusing them just trying to keep the limbic system in check.

The limbic system is pretty fucking retarded. It is mechanical. Stimulus, response. It is dynamic, changing, and learning, but in very basic ways; association and repetition. Say you have a boat. Your boat is a piece of shit and leaks water, making you monitor the leaks carefully and bail water / activate bilge pumps. Additionally, the rudder is touchy, and you have to exercise extra attention and caution when steering. One day, you are a little tired and lax, and that leads to shit getting even worse. Is that because you were a little lax that day, or because your boat is a POS and requires too much maintenance and attention?

Much as is the case for even a child molester, your self control and will are going to fail, and are not perfect. So a key component becomes using your will in a much easier way, but one that requires consistency-- the slow changes that make it so you don't have to fight those mental battles so hard in the first place.

I actually believe someone who accomplishes less than average, while stating they put in more effort than average.

The key is using your will and self-control to not only manage yourself in the moment, but also shift things over time and even though the changes are slow, not lose faith. It would be like fixing a rivet on your boat every weekend, while still needing to run the bilge pumps. Just don't lose faith because there are many rivets that need maintenance and the bilge pumps still seem to run a lot. You are doing two things at once, and that can be more frustrating.

So, consider a child molester. Instead of fapping to child porn and just creating a time-bomb when they're going to actually molest someone, maybe they could delete their CP collection, start fapping to some "barely 18" porn, then slowly work their way up to fapping to MILF porn. MILF porn cures for pedophilia, you heard it here first, folks.

But in the context of this thread, the issue is unfortunately more complex and multifaceted. You need recognize what you're putting tremendous effort and will into, and find out how you can change those things to make the willpower you need to expend more manageable. It's probably not molesting children, but staying positive about yourself and life, keeping faith, intuitively using executive control and organized, lucid approaches to academia are things you will find difficult to force in the moment through will alone.

You don't have to do that, and if you can't figure out how, don't despair. As the AA saying goes, fake it till you make it. Your reward for using extreme amounts of will is you do change things in your brain to make the choices you make most of the time easier. In the end, brute force can and will win. Still, do yourself a favor and find easier ways if you can. And that's what the boat analogy doesn't quite encompass.

I highly recommend some sports psychology books here in general, and there may be some specific to academia that I' not aware of. "The Winning Edge", "In Pursuit of Excellence" are two titles off the top of my head. The skills they teach apply to everything in life, and are directly relevant to everything in this thread.

You may say, "But Frangible! Even if through all these things I can stay positive, motivated, etc, I'm still doing a lot of work for the same results that come easier to others." So? Just merely doing the thing makes it easier with time. And everyone has strengths and weaknesses. What's the alternative? Where does that path lead? Self pity, despair, and apathy will take you on a very dark place where you will pray for the chance to get back to where you were and fight.

Yeah, you know all that neuroplasticity you make work for you? Well it also works for reinforcing apathy, despair, avoidance, etc, and making those easier.

Stimulants can make these things easier in the right dose for some people. If they work for you, great. I'm not some anti-drug asshole. But don't expect them to do anything but give you a chance to struggle and fight. And that is still up to you and the choices you make.

frangible...your so wise......like a miniature buddha...with a cpu

seriousely....unbelievabeley intuitive and brilliant.....sometimes i wonder why you waste you time helping me and not work for some important political figure.........

Thanks.



Alas, Bush already had two terms. FOUR MORE YEARS! FOUR MORE YEARS! USA! USA! USA! USA!