This or protein intake and stress. Or when you start your work two hours after taking the meds.

I noticed one of my candles left lots of wax behind after burning, so I thought “what a shame to throw it out, yeah, let’s make a new candle” (this while being in the middle of doing something completely different that I forgot about).

Oh and I know the actual pills do not look like this, but I wanted to make it a bit more interesting, so I took an empty clear capsule of L-Tyrosine, painted it, and then I took a little part from the info paper that comes along with the pills that said “alza 36” and pasted it on the pill to make it look a bit more “authenthic” and used sand beads for the granules that you can find in capsules.

A tribute to focus and perseverance!

I thought concerta only works perfectly for me in the first 5 hours because around hour 6 I wouldn’t be able to concentrate at all and I’d start fidgeting and get so irritable but eventually I figured out what’s going on.

At hour 6 concerta hits its PEAK effect in your body, so if the amount of concerta at hour (2-5) was perfect, at hour 6 it’s simply too high for you so it’s not therapeutic at that time.

So now I simply take a break for an hour/hour and a half, wear noise canceling headphones, reduce stimulation, then get back to work once I feel better and it turns out concerta lasts me 11 hours. If I manage to use them and start at the right time (because if you’re scrolling during the break it will be hard to get back on task so be careful)

Just make sure to drink water and eat consistently and be cautious about drinking coffee during the day. I genuinely think a lot of us are confusing temporary overstimulation with concerta wearing off.

hello everyone! as the title says, i've been on concerta for almost six years now*.*
Edit bc most of it got deleted :/// but now i get to add more info! 

ANYWAY (since i know you guys don't want to read all of this. yeah you.) heres a quick run down. I was prescribed Concerta. started off at 18mg and now i'm steady on 36. It is important to note: i am 19, in college, a girl, and diagnosed with bipolar depression and OCD (lmk if you have any questions about overlap)

Soooo, if you are new to this medication, about to start it, or are struggling on it, here are 10 tips that i have that helped me!

1. starting off on concerta is difficult... i had a lot of shakiness, fast heart rate which exacerbated anxiety symptoms. GIVE IT TIME! it goes away with consistency. stay with it (unless specified by a provider or issues that cannot be fixed with time lol) I also take 60mg of propranolol every morning as prescribed, so this definitely helps me as well.

2. Do not take it too late! I refuse to take my concerta 36 any later than 10am. I find that any later than this impacts my sleep pretty poorly. Of course, everyone’s schedules are different, so if this doesn’t work for you/fit into your routine, dont force it lol

3. Breakfast is so important when it comes to taking this. I find that when i lack a decent breakfast and water, i feel like shit for the rest of the day. Someone in the comments mentioned having protein in your meal and i totally agree. Food that is filling and good for you is the way to go! I also find that eating some refreshing, juicy fruits helps with my hydration as well.

4. The dry mouth dilemna… arguably one of the most annoying side effects. Water is also so so important when taking it. Take the pill with so much water that rivals what the ai data centers use!!! The more water i drink before it kicks in helps a lot for me. I also chew sugar-free gum throughout the day, during classes and lectures where i dont want to keep reaching for my water bottle. There are also mouth watering tablets/gum/toothpaste that ive been meaning to try.

5. Dealing with potential bowel movements. Idk if this is tmi, but oh well. About an hour into taking it, my stomach starts to tumble. This isnt a universal side effect, BUT, i make sure to allocate enough time between when i take the med and my obligations. And regardless of stomach problems, taking some time for yourself before it kicks in is great as well.

6. Snacking over a meal. Concerta is known to suppress appetite (not a universal side effect, but very common) forcing myself to eat a large meal only makes me nauseous. If i can, i find snacks that i can handle (albeit not the healthiest all the time…) to eat throughout the day. I find that i can eat cereal and fruit normally while the med is active. See if you can find a snack that works for you if this is a problem you have! 

7. Dealing with ‘The Crash’. If you’re on concerta, we all know how you feel after it wears off. I personally hate being around people sometimes at that stage LOL. if possible, finding quiet spaces is ideal. Noise cancelling headphones help as well. A lot of people have a lower dosage tablet that they take when concerta starts to wear off to combat this (i personally take 10mg when i feel i need to). i suggest talking to your provider about solutions

8. Having a set agenda by the time it is fully active. When it comes to school work, if i dont have everything i need laid out in front of me, i will focus too much on something completely off topic. I make sure i have the right files, tabs, papers, etc. open so i dont get off task. I literally hide my phone as well so i dont get sucked into it.

9. Post-it notes are your friend… if you’re anything like me, i talk a LOT—on and off concerta. I feel very inclined to talk to people naturally and i love to text people, but there’s a time and a place and do not waste time on things that aren’t very productive. When im working on assignments, i keep a stack of post-it notes that say “THOUGHTS FOR LATER” so i wont forget what interested me, but i also won’t zero in and waste time on it.

10. KEEP YOUR PROVIDER UPDATED!!! Do NOT suffer in silence. If the medication isn’t working for you and/or the side effects outweigh the pros, let your provider know. It is literally their job to make sure it is working well. Medication is never fully one size fits all. 

ok that's it lol lmk if you have any questions!!!!

I have been diagnosed with adhd-i. I didn't actually know I had ADHD I just knew I was struggling worse than everyone else and would get stuck for hours on end on the couch trying to tell myself to get up and go do work but sadly I wouldn't until either someone forced me or I put it off so long where I had to do it out of necessity.

And dont get me started on the thoughts! It's like a round table full of people shouting at me in different volumes and then some random music and a drill in my head, which I thought was normal. Anywayyyy...

They gave me concerta, I was scared to take it at first because I have super bad imposter syndrome so I kept thinking I didn't have it. So I took it and omg it was like a switch, one second I was sat there with beats in my head and a 1000 thoughts and then suddenly one .... It was actually super overwhelming at first. I remember looking at my boyfriend like what just happened ?!

Everything was quiet, I could feel my brain try and give me more thoughts but it couldn't.

I cried, a lot, realising what I was dealing with was very overwhelming and very emotional.

Anyway, here are some things I didn't realise concerta would fix:

1. My dyslexia ( I can read just fine now)

2. My dispraxia ( i don't struggle with directions, falling over, getting overwhelmed in games )

3.My ocd ( i don't even think about it anymore)

4. My binge eating

5. My snacking

6. Getting stuck ( I can just get up and go now)

7. My anger ( I would get angry if someone asked me to do stuff)

8. My work ( I can do work now)

9. I can talk to people without over thinking

10. I enjoy life

These are a few things, there's a lot more but these are main ones. Honestly, it changed me and I'm so happy. If you think you might have adhd please go get tested because you might be like me and be silently struggling.

Have a great day🤗

TL;DR: Taking 2x18mg in substitute for 1x36mg and 3x18mg in substitute for 54mg felt oddly different from the singular dose. It came on too hard and crashed too fast. Most of it i find to be attributed to faster instant release due to larger total surface area for dissolution, and possibly due to different individual osmotic dynamics. Calculations support it. While calculating the different instant release slope, i also found that 2x18mg hit a higher peak and crashed faster, at least mathematically. This proved to be the experience for me in practice too. Not medical advice btw. May (and probably will) be erroneous. Just sharing what i found. Feel free to correct me (please)

Any similar experiences?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

DISCLAIMER: THIS MAY HAVE ERRORS, AND THIS IS NOT MEDICAL ADVICE NOR SHOULD IT BE INTERPRETED AS SUCH. I'm not chatgpt ;-;

So, i take 54 mg, having started at 36 mg in december 2022, bumping to 54 around mid-2023, and settling there since. 54 mg is not available where i live, so i have to combine lower-dose tablets to get the one i want. Concentration curves from studies and a semi-physiological model for the Concerta methylphenidate osmotic time-release agree on a biphasic release curve, and that between dosages of individual tablets there is a linear relationship in the sense that the curve for that dose is a scalar multiple of the previous (2x in this case). However this assumption does not necessarily propagate to, say, 2x18mg substituting 1x36mg. This intrigued me when i repeatedly felt that taking two 18mg pills in substitution of a 36mg pill had more anxiety, gave me a bit of a headache, crashed a little sooner and crashed hard. Basically all the effects of too high of a dose (for me), minus the too high dose.

It then hit me, that they're practically cylindrical. there's a massive surface area difference. So from my calculations, two 18mg pills (approximated as cylinders as their oval caps barely make a dent) have a 44% higher surface area compared to a single 36mg pill. If the mass of the drug is the same in the IR coating, then (at least, following an approximated noyes-whitney model with uniform conditions, near-sink (coarse, but acceptable approximation for initial absorption)) the most significant first-order factor in the difference between IR dissolution rate is the ratio of the surface areas. That's all i could do with my knowledge overlap.

To start, i digitized time-release curves from a study that built a model for them (which found a close to 100% match in accuracy) (trying to keep in simple terms here, please spare me the pedantics), and interpolated through a lot of points for the relevant graphs in order to have a simpler numerical model to play around with, instead of just building a whole model from the study at 1 AM. ADHD tax. After this interpolation, i accounted for the faster IR component by numerically warping the initial time portion accordingly. Accounting for the difference in surface area, the 2x18mg combo had a higher slope meaning it would dump the drug faster in your blood initially, leading to stronger effect (and side effects). In plotting comparisons, i also found that, just like what i felt when i took that combination, 2x18mg peaks higher and slightly faster, and crashes harder, oddly enough in both 2x18mg with and without the warping that counts for the IR difference.

I'll attach my "homework" in hopes that it's useful to someone, and i'll take it down if it proves to be wrong or needs to be amended. Otherwise, i'm an engineer not a pharmacologist, and this isn't a graduation thesis so please spare me pedantics ;-;.

I'm very curious though- for people that have repeatedly tried these different combinations, do your experiences line up with this?

I thought i was crashing or something. My ass. I bought one of those jelly pouches you put in half a liter of water to replenish your electrolytes and chugged up.
Wouldn't you know i'm back to almost-neurotypical(concerta should still be working).

WTF

(i really hope i havent placebo'd myself.)

I currently am taking 45mg (M36) and wanted to share this, maybe someone needs to read this.

I really felt like it wasn’t working on me or something started at 18 to 36 and now 45mg. And it was doing its effect but not fully until I changed these few things:

1- Protein intake in the morning, no carbs really helps

2- I removed coffee from my life completely and anybody that knows me is really surprised by that fact.

*I felt like the caffeine in my system (used to take it an hour before taking Concerta) was bumping heads with the compound. (Not a doctor so I can’t try to explain this in a smart way lol)

3- No matter what happens, I workout at least 30 minutes per day. It helps the blood flowing in my brain and get super focused after a workout.

4- I live my life with intentions. Meaning I have a plan for my day - or else I can find myself doing nothing… but deeply lol

5- Water, water, water - the second I started paying attention to my water intake I felt like the bad sides I was feeling from the medication stopped.

6- eating healthy really makes a HUGE difference compared to when I eat junk food during the day.

Just wanted to share this with you all, wishing you a focused and productive life, much success to you!

- ADHD is a disorder with many causes most of which are unknown, some genetic, some environmental, some developmental. We don't know the actual root of ADHD.

- We do know that throwing dopamine at it helps. But this does not make ADHD a strictly dopamine-related disorder.

- People with ADHD show fundamental differences in how their brains connect and function, and sometimes even developmental delays.

The point is, ADHD is not strictly dopamine and treating it as such is faulty.

You wanna get the most out of your meds?

1. Hit the gym. It's the one tried and proven thing that works. You may lose an hour of your time but you make the rest much better, and your emotional state and physical health too.

2. Plan your god damn day.

3. Reduce distractions and set up your workspace that way.

4. Have an accountability buddy.

5. Chop things up into small bits and do tasks one by one.

6. Magnesium could help you relax and sleep better.

7. Take care of your sleep. Sleep at the same time, wake up at the same time, get quality sleep and try to sleep in 1h30m cycles.

8. Stay hydrated.

9. Eat enough calories. Stepping on the gas won't make you go faster if you're running on fumes.

10. Don't overwork yourself. Even the average human can only fully focus for about 4 hours a day. You'll only burn yourself out and make it worse.

THAT IS IT. Quit suggesting weird mushrooms to people. Quit suggesting god knows what chemicals. You are not a doctor, nor a neuroscientist. Quit suggesting "antagonists", "racetams" and whatever fancy schmancy PhD from reddit university of applied woo-tropic sciences shit y'all pulling lately cause what the fuck. Seriously snap back to reality.

Some of yalls' suggestions are downright dangerous. Ashwagandha has caused permanent anhedonia for some. In many cases you dont even know what you get. People get addicted to kratom so bad there's an entire sub dedicated to quitting it. They try kava to "upregulate GABA and reduce anxiety" and end up wrecking their livers. I also read the occasional "addicted to racetams" story. L-tyrosine you already get from most things you eat on a daily basis, the same with tryptophan. Stop that shit. Wtf.

Hi everybody! I'm a 27 y/o late diagnosed adhd'er who started on meds about 2.5 months ago and whoo boy! Medication has completely changed my life.

I've been a chronic procrastinator my entire life. Always missing deadlines, arriving late, submitting assignments at the last minute, forgetting to respond to friends and loved ones, getting distracted mid conversation- the usual. It's slowly been destroying me, and adding to the ever growing mountain of stress and fear and guilt in my life.

But through my insurance I was able get evaluated for ADHD. I started 18mg of concerta and within a few weeks it was like the heavens had parted and I was seeing sunlight for the first time. It's not perfect, but my quality of life has improved DRASTICALLY.

I'm an artist by trade, and making art, marketing it on social media, etc. requires so much time and focus. BOOM. I can sit down for hours and edit videos, or work on a costume in pieces over days. I'm not just sucked into my phone like some kind of adhd-zombie anxiously swiping for my next hit of dopamine.

I respond to emails on time. I show up for friend's birthday parties. I make appointments to see the dentist. I do my laundry. I 'm reading books again\

WTF

And not only that, but on days when I can't take my meds, things are still easier. It's like the neural pathways connecting desire and action have been strengthened. I feel capable. I feel empowered.

Idk if this is helpful in any way, but. I just needed to get this off my chest. Medication has changed everything for me

I’ve always been a huge people-pleaser, afraid of confrontation and speaking my mind when I know it may make people uncomfortable. I would overthink everything I say before I do, and constantly replay things I said in my mind after.

Since titrating up on Concerta though, I’ve noticed I’m much more willing to be candid and honest with people than ever before. I’m more decisive in communicating the things I want, and I feel less hesitant in doing so. Has anyone else experienced this?

35y w/ Autism / ADHD

On Concerta 36mg in the morning

Previously had to stop due to sensory issues, libido being tanked, insomnia and the dreaded crash 💥

Today, I changed my meals (usually - high protein oats, muesli bar, lunch with some protein) to high protein (3 egg omelet with wholegrain bread, protein bar, beyond burger on wholegrain roll) and WOW.

I take the Concerta 30 mins before breakfast with 2 big glasses of water (I also take Magnesium 1000mg, MultiV, L Theanine 200mg, drink 2-3L water and avoid caffeine like the plague because it causes insomnia).

No crash. No anxiety. No palpitations. No irritability. It’s been a smooth as ride. I’m shocked!!

I haven’t slept yet (it’s 6pm here, so we’ll see how that goes) but… fingers crossed!

It’s like a different drug!

For the last decade or maybe longer I've been battling with depression, obesity and all it's usual ailments: high blood pressure, deep lethargy, terrible sleeping and eating habits. It didn't matter how much I wanted it I was never able to get into a positive routine of excersicing, dieting, going out. I had pretty much given up.

About a year ago somehow I landed a wonderful job. However my lack of motivation and constant fatigue made an underperformer. I always did quality work, but I failed to meet deadlines, sometimes failed to get online on time for meetings. I was even put on a PIP just 6 months after being hired (if you don't know what is that, it's bad bad news) thankfully a manager of mine noticed I might be going through something and wanted to help out. They hooked me up with a psychologist (first time I've ever seen one) and I laid out how I felt. This might have been the best thing I've ever done in my life.

She told me I had strong signs of untreated ADHD and it certainly have been leading me through a very large set of bad habits. She referred me to a psychiatrist who ended up confirming the diagnosis and put me on Concerta 36mg, in my country this is a very regulated substance so it is kind of expensive but nonetheless I gave it a shot.

It has been 2 months since I began treatment and I can say for sure I have never felt this good in my life. My work performance skyrocketed, I talked with my boss about all of this and he has been very supporting. I can now clean the house whenever I need to, I can wash clothes when they need washing, I focus on my job, I sleep much much better and have been on a walking routine nonstop for three weeks. I very much feel like I've been asleep for half of my life and just now I am awaking.

I know this might sound all a bit exaggerated but truly I never knew I was living life on hard mode and was so very close of giving up. I only hope others in a similar situation can find hope in proper clinical treatment.

Note: This is an extra from my prescription—no plan on taking it.

That’s all

Same as the headline, my first time trying out stims, havent tried anything else yet

Started taking Concerta at age 14. Went off it around age 22 to take Vyvanse for a little under two years. Then went back on Concerta. I’m now 31.

I’ve mainly taken 18mg and 27mg and both have been great for me at different times in my life.

New to Concerta? Have questions? AMA.

Edit: I’ve also taken Ritalin 5-10 mg as an add-on to Concerta for a couple of years.

Edit 2: If you find this AMA helpful, please upvote the post!

Edit 3: Thank you everyone for all the questions! I will try to get to all of them this week.

For those who take the meds at suhur and have trouble falling back into sleep...

I noticed that by putting the pill in an empty vegan capsule (intended for homemade food supplements), it delayed the action just enough to go back to sleep to have some extra hours of sleep. it does not seem to interfere with the Osmosis liberation mechanism.

noticed that i wale up fresher as well! and not too late!

Hope it helps, any insights or feedback on your end ?

Here’s an experiment I did, I dropped a 36mg Concerta (Generic MFGR Trigen).

You can see how it works throughout the 19 pics:

-First the outer layer which has 22% of the medicine on the outer coating dissolves quickly in minutes.

-Next the the black part begins to expand (the black part is inactive with no medicine in it) and slowly pushing the white part out of a tiny hole in the front (which has the active medicine in it). This starts to happen between 1-2 hours.

-Finally about 8 hours later I too it out for the final picture where you can see all the medicine except a tiny insignificant left is remaining.

I dropped it back in the water and the next morning overnight when I looked the black part had pushed out into the water as well. So probably the last 5% it looks like is expelled at 8+ hours.

Of course our body would cause this to happen at probably a different rate. For a video of how this happens there’s a graphic representation here:

https://relexxii.com/how-it-works.html