Re: First day on meds!

[Anonymous]

Hi Carrie and Bluesman!

tonight I’ve been reading through your posts. I started on meds about 18 months ago and have never looked back. I knew I was an ADDer for a long time. Working as a teacher, I learned about it in school (recognized my dad had it), realized I had it, and yes, so did my son.

My son was put on meds way back ‘when’ and at that time, there was only ritalin available. By that I mean the new release formulations were not available. When I started meds, my doc put me on Concerta (the newest slow release of ritalin available). It is great for me and saves me from having to take multiple doses throughout the day. The regular release plain vanilla form really only lasts 4 hours. Most kids who used this old form of it took it every 4 hours on a school day. First dose was taken at home in the morning before leaving for school and the second dose would be taken 4 hours later which usually concided with their lunch break. That’s when the kids would all troop down to the office for the next dose. many docs didn’t give them a third dose because it caused difficulties for some of them to settle down to sleep.

Concerta is wonderful for a nice even release of the meds (the original sloooow release form of ritalin wasn’t so great- I saw how it didn’t work for my son and how it didn’t work for the kids I worked with). In fact, I often used to think I hadn’t even given my son his slow release dose! So he had to go back to good old ‘regular’ ritalin. Concerta works well for me and it seems to work well for the kids that I monitor doses for at school. (reminder to me- Fill out that SNAP form for student ‘x’ tomorrow!)

My psychiatrist gives me a script for using Concerta every day (including weekends) and has even given me the good old ‘regular’ ritalin for using in the evening for those days that just keep going and going. Report card writing time, evening commitments, etc. In fact, the first time I used my evening dose I attended an opera in TO because a friend was in town and wanted to attend a show. I’m not an opera buff but she was working on her Master’s in voice. Hey, it’s her thing and she was a visitor! How did it work that night? Fabulous! Who knew that sitting all the way through Madame Butterfly could be so wonderful!

Have you considered looking into Concerta instead of just using ritalin? It seems to bypass the ups and downs that ritalin causes. I just use plain for my 18 hour days where I want extended focus. (BTW, I use 72mg of Concerta and use only 10mg of ritalin for my evening dose. 10 mg of ritalin is not equivalent to a 72 mg dose of Concerta, it’s a lower dosage but all I want to use for the evening.)

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