NOTE: This was posted on Who has it/how much? But I realized it seemd to fit better into (what I expected to find in) Prescription Drug Info. The two seem to have morphed, but I'd already copied the thread and I think it belongs here anyway. This IS Prescription Drug Info, right? I mean, if INFO is the flipside to HOW MUCH? I don't know. I'm confused.

I don't think it fits anywhere better than here.
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Ritalin is a phenethylamine amphetamine meaning that it is highly abusable (chemical cousin to Ecstasy), so it's Schedule II, and therefore more difficult to get online than a lot of other things.

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Flippie, I appreciate your information regarding the pharmacies.

Please forgive me for ranting here, but I would like to mention how ridiculous it is that methylphenidate was rescheduled into Sch. II back in the 1970s, and how silly I find it that this pharm is considered "highly abusable." In all my years I've never seen Ritalin abused the way meth or amphetamine often is; it really just isn't that sort of a drug. Further, although it may have some chemical similarity to MDMA and amphetamine, I can safely say the effects of methylphenidate and MDMA are so utterly different that the similarity begins and ends with their chemical diagrams.

Again, sorry for the rant, but I feel it important not to allow baseless stigma against pharmaceuticals to circulate unchallenged. Ritalin is not for everyone, especially those with a predeliction to abuse speed; however, I know many individuals who have benefitted from Ritalin for decades without ever having "binged" a single time. It can be a real lifesaver for people who suffer from low-grade daily fatigue, and most I know who use this drug do so responsibly.

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Methylphenidate is indicated for use in childdren suffering from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. These children's bodies produce an excess of a "sleepiness" endocrine (forgive, I'm not a medical student doing my pediatricis rotation, I only played one while reading my mother's medical school textbooks as a preteen and then have proceeded to act them out for the past 11 years as the adult sister to an ADHD brother). In response to this excessive sleepiness, the body then "overcorrects" by sending the kids in to ADHD mode. Some "mothers" think that they are being responsible by medicating their children only when they send them to school, where they have to concentrate. Unfortunately. when a kid with ADHD isn't medicated according to plan, the body is going to be in a constantset of overcorrections, and the "unexpected" dose (which is every dose, if a child is only getting his 7am pill, and his lunchtime pill, 5 days a week, when school is in) is always going to result in an extreme reaction.

Take an ADHD kid who has been going wild out to lunch with his family and unable to settle down and eat, running around, introducing himself to all the other diners, and starts to cry when he's forced back to the dinner table. He's not on a proper regimin of his meds. So mommy gives him his medicine. Twenty minutes later, he's passed out over her shoulder. This is no benign drug you are talking about.

As far as your defense regarding "many individuals who have benifited from (off-label) use of methylphenidate for decades," I'm wondering how they got their hands on this drug in the first place. Ritalin has never been prescribed on-label for adult fatigue. There is a good reason for this, too. It's an addictive drug. Using ritalin to "fight fatigue" is a great starter for the definition of its primary theater of abuse: The bedrooms and dorm rooms of students all over the US popping, crushing and snorting, even injecting this drug so that they can stay up all night and (in this, their case is even more legitimate than your's) concentrate on memorizing the anatomy of the mitochondria, pick their way through the most awful, dryest memoir of George Kennan travelling pre-industrial Russia, memorizing 5 pages of conjugations for one-count 'em-one! French verb. And these students risk all the typical health risks associated with the use of speed. Further, because they are students, faced with 700 pages of reading a week and 70 verbs to memorize a week, when they start to feel their minds slow down, they have no choice but to pop another pill. Unlike your garden variety street drugs, methylphenidate poses a special predelication towards abnormal activity in the brain at much lower relative stimulatory doses.

Are you aware that after a routine 10mg morning dose of ritalin in a doctor-supervised ADHD pediatric patient taking all medications according to schedule, shortly after an antidepressant was introduced, the child walked out of his house towards the bus stop and, ten minutes later, fell down and had a grand mal seizure?

In case no one has picked up on this yet, the DEA makes a real arbitrary distinction between C-IIs and C-Is. The only difference between C-IIs and C-Is is that the AMA has guidelines on the use of C-IIs. When you throw out those guidelines, there is absolutely no distinction. Many C-Is, with no AMA guidelines whatsoever, are safer and less mind altering than their C-II counterparts, used AS instructed. (Bearing in mind that an opiate-naive person in acute excruciating pain is liable to get a swift shot of fentanyl- compare that to a hit off a joint or a line of coke) (Not that anyone here has ever used an illegal drug in their precious lifetimes)

Let me just hit you with some spare facts: Because methylphenidate is not a "true" amphetamine, it causes many more complications than its illegal counterparts do to provide the same amount of stimulation. It creates excess electrical activity in the brain that can lead to seizures and causes palpitations. You would be safer using cocaine or dexedrine in "reasonable amounts."

Do not fool yourself. You are abusing this drug. If you are suffering from fatigue, you need to get a CBC done and consult with your doctor on what deficiencies might be causing this. There are many legitimate herbal remedies for your problems, but chances are good that you also need a major lifestyle overhaul including diet, exercise, work, and play. Perhaps modafonil, a medicine that is actually marketed to promate daytime wakefulness might help you out here.

But don't delude yourself. You are abusing ritalin. You are not the only one. ("Hey, kettle. You're black." I could have said at many times in my life.) But you are using a psychologically and physically addictive drug in a manner for which it has never been approved.

I know I sound like a be-yatch, but my data, though infused with emotion is based on facts, clinical trials, personal experience, and our own US Government's studies of young adult drug abuse, as well as multiple editorials that have appeared over the years.

Please go to see your doctor about this fatigue problem. You don't need to risk your heart and your brain to get through the day. (NOt always so easy to believe, I know).