Concerta \ Ritalin troubles

Post Reply New Topic

Has anyone had experience with Concerta or Ritalin? I've been on it for a year now, and it has been very good with my concentration, but recently I have started feeling unwell and 'strange'. It's hard to explain, but I feel very agitated and feel like bursting into tears for no reason. My mood feels all over the place and I'm starting to think my thoughts are becoming paranoid towards other people.

I'll call my doctor tomorrow, but does anybody have similar experiences as this? There's so much rubbish on the internet about this stuff, that it's hard to find objective information. I'm on 18mg Concerta XL daily.

It is an amphetamine-like drug and some of the side-effects of chronic use of stimulants (including cocaine, amphetamine and even caffeine) are paranoia and emotional lability. Another possible thing is that (I've just read) that emotional lability can be a symptom of ADHD itself so maybe you are developing tolerance to your med and need to up the dose.

I've taken it since I was 6 and have had no problems.

If you have been on it for a year with no side effects until recently, then I would say that this is more likely to be another issue rather than an effect of the drug, unless of course, you have increased your dose recently.

I developed severe facial tics. I was told to discontinue the Concerta ( I had been on Ritalin previously) and they went away after about a month.

Concerta is useful to me. I've been better able to handle transitions since I started taking it.

18 mg is a low dose, so it could be something different; but you should definitely mention this to your doctor. Anxiety and paranoia out of the blue are just not good signs.

was on both concerta and strattera. the former made me lean and mean, literally. it made me very cross, and why i don't know. i lost about 20 pounds on the stuff, that part of it was GREAT i could fit into my high school clothes again. but i had to switch to something else because i was just too damned angry about too many things too quickly. so mr. shrink put me on strattera, which calmed me down and straightened me out but gave me terrible GERD. i would wake up in the middle of the night choking on my own stomach acids, that also played havoc on my dental work. then my insurance stopped covering either med and since they both cost between $300 and $600 monthly, i had to drop them. my thinking since then has gotten disorganized, chaotic. i can sit down and write this, but just ask me to verbalize sensibly, and all that comes out is DUHHH.....

p.s., the 18mg daily dose is very small, if you have the emotional lability on this dose you might consider asking your doc about switching to another drug. strattera worked for me 'till the gut said no more. but it might not have quite that same effect on many other folk.

Thanks for the replies. My doctor was meant to phone back today, but he didn't. In any case, I've had a thought that I've been taking my pill much earlier in the morning and the bad spots seem to hit in the evening. Could this perhaps be the drug tapering off in my system?

Was on ritalin when I was younger and they had to take me off it; it made me a monster. Recently was on risperidone, which made me a zombie with no emotions that couldn't form a coherent sentence (I took myself off that with a quickness). I never liked the idea of taking drugs anyways. I think I might look into neurofeedback, it sounds promising.