Misc Do you develope tolerance to high-dosed Ritalin 80-100mg/day?

[glab]

I have been to another adhd doc. I told him so far I have tried ritalin la 20mg as a max single dose and didn't get effects.
He said that 20mg is not enough as a single dose for an adult and that he has patients which take 80-100mg/day.
He said I should try 40mg Ritalin LA single dose and if it works then I could take another 20mg 2-3 hours later.

But what worries me is that even if this would give me positive effects then I'm already moving in a very high dosage range.
If I take let's say 60-80mg ritalin daily then will I not develope a tolerance sooner or later? Will I then feel absolutely crappy and
unmotivated on days where I don't take it? The last thing I want is to become dependent on stimulants.

Or is there anything I could do to prevent tolerance? Would cycling prevent it? But how many off days would I need to prevent or reverse tolerance?

 

[sekio]

Ritalin LA means those are time released pills (like Concerta), then 20mg of ritalin is not a lot at all, it'd be equivalent to only about 10mg peak blood level. And some people do need up to 3 times that dose of IR ritalin.

and yea, if you take ritalin on a regular basis you'll build a dependency on it. That is kind of self evident. It is hard to say how bad you will feel on an off day, but it certainly won't be something like opioid withdrawal where you can't do anything at all.

At the same time, if you get a prescription you should have more than enough to have a dose every day. And if you take it every day, at the same time, on a regular basis, then you will minimize crashes from the level of medication dropping in your blood.

You shouldn't really need to cycle unless you feel it is important, because Ritalin is not a monoamine depleter (unlike amphetamines). So as long as you have a good diet and enough energy to get through the day you shouldn't get crashy.

tl;dr: Try it, take it as directed, if it actually works for you you may be pleasantly suprised.