Perfect timing! Yes, I feel the exact same thing.

I’ve been on titration with medikinet XL with 20 mg for a month which was ok, then after a review got told to try 30 mg for two weeks and 40 mg for two weeks.

30 mg made me feel a bit stressed at work, but nothing that bothered me. Like having 3 coffees when you have a lot going on and you need to get things done quickly. As you say, this feeling only lasts for a while only.

Now I’ve moved to 40mg and I hate it. Roughly 2-3 hours after taking it, I get exactly what you describe. I’ve been trying to explain it as a 7-coffee panic. Same situation as the above but with so much coffee in my body that I’m at the edge of having a meltdown and bursting into tears.

This, of course, comes with high blood pressure and heart rate. My understanding is with extended release you get a first “peak concentration”, then lowers slowly, and you get a second peak at about 4h or so, depending on formulation. Yesterday, at a time I think matched the second peak roughly, I was watching a stress-free TV show on the sofa, in a stress-free environment with no tasks to do… And suddenly this feeling came in and I had almost 90bpm resting heart rate for no reason when I’m normally in the low 70s.

I hate it and on Monday (I have my next medication review) I’m going to ask for alternatives or to get put on 30mg. That made me productive and motivated but without feeling like I’m being motivated by panic.

Damn, and I’m trying to get changed over to Elvanse. This is far from encouraging.

Anyway, what’s your total dose for the day? I take 10mg every three hours and find this works fairly well. It sounds like your dose might be too high.

I didn’t get on especially well with the extended-release formulation either.

I had this exact problem. Its why I stopped using Methylphenidate. What I did find helping was not drinking any coffee or caffeine. I also made sure I ate something shortly after taking it in the morning. This was with XR caps, not sure if it’s different with instant. I didn’t have these same issues with other meds though.

Simulants help with ADHD but make anxiety worse. I had to get off them.

There are non simulant ADHD meds. Strattera and Wellbutrin are options.

Hey fellow ADHD friend! I also had a similar experience. It’s really awful and scary, so I’m sorry you experienced it.

My solution was simple: break each tab into quarters. After I got used to 5mg, 10mg ended up being the dose for me. It takes the edge off of ADHD but without making me feel like my soul had been scooped out with a melon baller.

Of course, this assumes you aren’t on an SR/XL/XR formulation, just straight medikinet.

Go talk to your doctor, that shit is not normal

I start to feel as if I was on the verge of having a panic attack

Methylphenedate felt weird and unpleasant the first few times for me too. But once my body got used to it, it essentially just had the ADHD quelling effects of a strong coffee, but better and broader. (When I took a bit too much I also felt like ODing on caffeine). IMO I’d give it a few more tries, although obv I don’t know how bad the first try felt for you.

Figuring out the right meds will likely involve some that don’t work or have side effects. Do you have the same excruciating feeling from both of those meds?

I tried some other ones first, and there was a range of one that made me feel comlletely apathetic about literally everything. Like I just didn’t care about anything at all. Not deprrssion, just detatchment. Another made me angry at everything.

In my case, the methylphenidate was the one that made me feel in control of myself. Thoughts were still coming in on a whim, but I could focus long enough to do something with it. Massive improvement to my life, but I kinda tweeked a bit for the first hour and it seemed to wear off lpetty darn fast. Tried out several dosages and settled ln 20. Tried the sustained release (SR) and Extended Release (ER) versions and out of all of the stuff the 20 ER methylphenidate was the one that I can take which lasts for like 8 or so hours with no jittery feeling and I can focus on what I want to during that time. SR is ok, but doesn’t last as long for me.

If you are taking the standard dosage, I recommend seeing if you can try out the SR or ER versions. They use different methods of slowing down how fast the medicine is dispersed and one may work better than the other. It could also be the dosage or even the wrong medicine for you. But the slower release meds gave me no jittery feeling compared to the regular kind.

Also, if you are ingesting other stimulants including coffee, tea, or energy drinks they can affect how you feel on the meds. For me coffee + non ER dosages were not a great feeling. I do drink coffee with the ER version and don’t have any side effects.

Damn. :( for me methylphenidate caused massive dissociation and anger, so couldn’t take it. Elvanse is much better and reduces my general anxiety a lot as well as mood swings, but evenings are getting harder and harder because of the crash and also as I’m increasing the dose I sleep worse (I fall asleep fine but wake up several times middle of night).

I realized that a big problem for myself is that I subconsciously focus intensely on anxious thoughts. I feel like Howl in Howl’s moving castle where he summons the darkness upon himself. It was really eye opening to read that difficulties with attention can show up like that.

In the beginning with Elvanse I experienced sudden thoughts/feelings about an oncoming panic attack (!ALERT! 10 SECONDS TO PANIC - 10 - 9 - 8…) but for me realizing that conscious re-directing of attention to something else helped. Then the thoughts seemed to go away at some point.

Also the starting dose (30mg) was too big for me and I’ve slowly been going from 15mg to 50mg. I mix it with water and take it over a course of about one hour so it doesn’t strike so hard and crash is not so sudden. It really wasn’t pleasant in the beginning to try to cope with the intense physical feeling it causes, especially with the attention on IS THIS NORMAL, SHOULD I BE FEELING THIS WAY, THIS CAN’T BE RIGHT -thoughts.

Some people take beta-blockers with Elvanse to reduce the physical uneasiness. For me it helps to a certain degree.

But people are different and not all meds work with everyone.

Mediknet felt like that for me, but I had good responses to Ritalin LP and Xaggatin (an off-brand Concerta, which was good despite Concerta not working well for me…)

I looked into it and Mediknet has a much shorter duration than other extended release methylphenidates. My experience was it started too strong, making me feel too racy, and then finished early leaving me exhausted. What made things better was eating breakfast first, and splitting the dose (take half after breakfast, and other half 3-4 hours later).