I have ADHD, and I've been treating it with meds for over 15 years now. > dosage should not make you feel "high" -- if anything it's almost the opposite Even

I have ADHD, and I've been treating it with meds for over 15 years now. > dosage should not make you feel "high" -- if anything it's almost the opposite Even when I was young and fit, many years before I started taking any meds, my blood pressure and pulse rate were consistently on the high side. I've always had what could be called somewhat of a 'jittery' or 'high strung' personality. In my 30s, I started taking a low dose of Ritalin, and it made a hell of a difference. For the first time in my life, I was actually, fundamentally calm. I gathered some pretty detailed data over a pretty long period of time, and there was an iron-clad correlation: when the Ritalin was in my blood stream, my blood pressure and heart rate were lower. > most ADHD people develop tolerance to medication over long periods of time From the beginning, in order to defend against this possibility, I always took the meds sparingly, only on work days, and not all of them. For a number of years, I organized my schedule around taking the meds three days a week. On those three days, I did most of my deeper, focused software development. On the other work days, I'd focus more on meetings, digging into operational issues, troubleshooting, basically everything except deep focused software development. Prior to starting the meds, I had many successful years in technology at various organizations. That continued after the meds, but with one big difference: while I was able to sit down and focus before the meds, it took an enormous amount of effort and energy. I'd come home from work and immediately nap for an hour before waking up with enough mental energy to go about the rest of my evening. On the meds, my total ability to focus was roughly the same, but it didn't take nearly as much energy. A 9 hour day at work would not leave me drained. I've always had the fortune of having the prescribing docs break up my maximum daily meds into many small dosed tablets, which gave me a lot of flexibility. Thankfully, after all this time, the meds still work very well for me.