I had to quit Ritalin in year 11 because the anxiety was completely fucking ruining my social development, regardless of whether it was useful to get good grades. I'm unmedicated now (30) and still in some ways quite a difficult human to deal with due to erractic behaviour and unreliability and disorganisation, however, I don't think I could go back to the ritalin man.
Ritalin (methylphenidate in general) is a rough one, cause of its stupidly short half life (as short as 90min in some). On top of that, most extended release systems for it are garbage. Sure on average, the blood plasma level graph is smooth, but you look at individual profiles, and some individuals have way higher peak amplitudes. In my experience, MPH, even the ER/concerta stuff, thrashes your mental state too much to be productive. I actually had more stability dosing slivers of MPH IR every hour, but man, that's tedious, it's easy to miss, and once you drop, it's not the same, even if you get back to therapeutic range.
