Baby Babbeh posted:

Here's a question for people who've tried various medications.

So I was diagnosed with ADD when I was very young. The details are a little bit fuzzy in my mind because childhood for me feels like it sort of happened all at once, rather than as a sequential progression of years. I'd say it was before I was ten. I was on a host of pre-ritalin drugs, the only one of which I can remember is Cylert, which if I recall was taken off the market because it causes liver failure.

The last drug I was on was Ritalin. I was on it until roughly the fifth or sixth grade, so early teens. I eventually stopped taking it because I didn't like the way it made me feel: clouded, sort of drowsy, less creative. The last was sort of the deal breaker, because while I found I was much better at actually sitting down and writing, the actual quality of the writing suffered. I'm 25 now, and haven't been on any sort of medication since then.

My question, by way of that longwinded intro, is whether the drugs to treat it have improved since then? I've learned to cope with my disorder, I think, and can function pretty normally. Still, I'm not in complete control of my life. I still struggle to start things, or to get things done on time, or to do things period, sometimes. I don't think it's bad enough to excuse the side effects I experienced before when I was medicated. Yet if the drugs have improved considerably since then, it's bad enough that I might consider getting treatment again.