I've taken adderall on and off for 7 years, and I'm 27. In my opinion, ADHD is often a fuzzy diagnosis, but I would say that I'm legitimately classified as som

I've taken adderall on and off for 7 years, and I'm 27. In my opinion, ADHD is often a fuzzy diagnosis, but I would say that I'm legitimately classified as someone with mild ADHD. Many of my closest friends have also been people with ADHD, and we've talked a lot amongst ourselves over the years about the effects of the drug. I've noticed a lot of patterns, and determined my own set of best practices: - Take your adderall in the morning. If you take adderall later in the day, it can affect your sleep schedule. If you don't sleep well, you may find yourself wanting to take more adderall to compensate for your lack of sleep the next day, and so begins a snowball effect that inevitably ends with a crash, and a net a loss of productivity. - Extended release works better for me, and it has much less addictive potential than "instant release." - Determine your personal minimum effective dose. Don't trust what the doctor happens to prescribe you to be the precisely perfect dose for you. There is most certainly a point of diminishing returns for net productivity gains. Higher doses have higher side effects. - There are social consequences. If you'll allow me a moment of hippie speak, I'd say that adderall makes your mind resonate at a different frequency than that of regular humans. It's not so easy to establish rapport when you're not even operating on the same frequency. - Long-term productivity gains for what I'll call production tasks is questionable. For boring work that just needs to get done, suck it up and just do it. Learn the Pomodoro technique, and improve your general capacity to focus by practicing meditation (if you have mild ADHD like me - I can't speak for people who have moderate or severe ADHD). - Adderall works for me as an excellent tool for expanding production capability. If you have a repetitive business task that you can potentially automate, adderall works very well to help you think through automating it. Due to the social side effects and my dislike for the inevitable down cycles (end of the day or off days) associated with regular use, I currently limit myself to use once a week. I use it ONLY to organize my week ahead of time, and to increase my production capability (learned this phrasing from Stephen Covey) by automating repetitive tasks. This is the system I've settled on after 7 years of trying different routines. I could really say a lot more my experience with this drug, but alas I'm not on it right now :) If anyone has more questions I'm happy to follow up.