This week I‘m taking Ritalin for the first time in several years. I thought I’d write a short thread about the experience of taking Ritalin as an adult with inattentive subtype ADD.

Having ADD is hard to describe because it’s my normal every day experience of the world. It’s those little mistakes you make now and then, only they’re all the time. Like leaving keys in the front door, forgetting where you put that thing, or finding your wallet in the fridge.

I don’t have any hyperactivity so for me, ADD involves thinking about several things all at once while doing something else at the same time; only you don’t have the capacity to do all of that properly so in reality you’re just doing bits of everything, often badly.

Ritalin basically works on the principle that it overstimulates the ADD brain to the point that it can only focus on one thing. So when I take Ritalin, the speed at which my brain can work stays the same, but there’s suddenly only one thing going on in it.

The best way to describe it would be if you stood in the middle of College Green I’m Dublin on a summer evening with loads of the normal noise of traffic, people, and trams etc and then put in noise cancelling headphones so you could only hear one engine from one taxi.

This might sound great but it’s actually very disconcerting. It takes my lived experience of having a busy overactive brain away from me. While having ADD is frustrating at times, it makes me who I am & is a part of my identity, it’s very odd to have that removed for a few hours.

When I take Ritalin, it’s like being the only car on a road that’s normally very busy. You become aware that your usual background noise thought processes aren’t there. I can pull individual thoughts into awareness but when I think about something else, the other thought fades.

This is a really odd experience because suddenly my head can feel quite empty, or solitary.

There’s a health body of literature about the efficacy of Ritalin in children and a growing body of literature about its efficacy in adults. But to the best of my knowledge the experiential aspects of taking Ritalin have never been explored in either children or adults.

Finally, lots of people have lots of views about Ritalin, “big pharma”, psychiatry, and ADD. Frankly, I don’t really care what you think unless you have ADD yourself, or work therapeutically with people who have ADD.

@Hoppsychology, @thornhillmom, @ErynnBrook this thread may interest you. It also may not interest you!