Hi Miles,
I'm sorry to hear about your experience. Ritalin is a powerful stimulant and yes, drugs like this can do a lot of damage, but it does not have the ultimate power over your life. You can reverse the effects. It may take some time to readjust yourself, but it can and will happen. You have the power inside you to heal yourself. Please remember that no amount of money can guarantee your health and well being. You are the only one who can do this for you. Anything you try, any healing method, any service provided by another, is just a tool you can use to heal yourself.
I will tell you my story, which is quite different, you might not be able to relate to this but maybe you can take something useful away from my perspective. I took Ritalin for awhile myself. Believe it or not I actually volunteered myself for it. I was your age, 17, a senior in high school. I was known for being "gifted", but for years I had trouble concentrating. Everyone saw me as being really smart, never needing to study, even being angry with me because they thought I didn't apply myself or work hard enough. But inside I always felt like something was horribly wrong with my brain. I never talked about it, but even as far back as the second grade I worried all the time that I might have a brain tumor. At that age I cried at school almost every day. Everyone expected so much of me, and on the surface it looked like it all came easy for me, but inside I always felt like it was a huge struggle to think clearly.
Over the years it just got worse. I got put through a lot of counseling in school, a lot of BS, it never served any purpose other than to let me escape from class for awhile. They loved to talk about emotional issues, but no one ever once addressed the possibility that I might be having problems at school because I actually had a problem with school! I was obviously intelligent and capable of making good grades so they assumed there was no way I could have any sort of problem with learning or academic performance. I felt like a freak, an idiot savant. Then one day I read an article written by a woman who discovered as an adult that she had ADD. Everything she described about herself sounded just like what I experienced. I decided to talk to my doctor about it, and he immediately prescribed me Ritalin. He didn't care about getting an official diagnosis, his only concern was that I might be wanting to use it as an appetite suppressant!
So I tried it. I will never forget what it felt like when it kicked in and started working. It was incredible. I was actually able to listen in class without feeling like my brain was jumping around all over the place! I could follow a single train of thought! Wow! For the first time in my life I felt like I was on the same wavelength as everyone else in the class. I went through so many feelings. I was angry and sad because so many people accused me of being lazy. I knew damn well that my brain didn't work the way everyone else thought it was supposed to and now I finally had proof! Whatever it was that made me different, this drug fixed it and made me just like the others!
But you know what, it was horrible! It was the most horrible feeling I ever had in my life! It was worse than feeling scatterbrained! It was worse than not being able to pay attention! It was boring! I felt completely hollowed out inside. I was like, man, this is it?! This is what I've been missing out on all these years?? This is what everyone wanted me to do? Calm my brain down just so I can listen to this boring useless bullshit all day long?? Wait, and I have to take a drug to do this?!? What? This is crazy! I didn't realize all this immediately, it took me several months to sort it out. Meanwhile I graduated high school, went off to college and just got more and more burned out every day. I only took the Ritalin off and on, and sometimes I ended up snorting it out of spite for myself and my inability to conform to everything. Later on I found out I could function even better just getting drunk several nights a week so I dropped the Ritalin altogether.
The college counselors wanted to make sure I really had ADD so I went to get tested. I was officially diagnosed with ADHD. I wasn't willing to continue taking medication, and going to class was a waste of time if I couldn't pay attention, so I stopped going. I learned everything on my own out of the textbooks, and went to class only to take exams. I scored well on tests, I could do the work, but my teachers treated me like I was a criminal because I didn't follow their routine. So I realized that the educational system does not care how well you actually perform, or how much you learn. They only care about making you jump through hoops and do things a certain way, and if you have to take drugs or drink to be able to do it, so much the better.
It is easy to assume that ADD is a bogus disorder when you look at how many children have been prescribed Ritalin and other ADD drugs. But I believe that ADD/ADHD is a real condition which is poorly understood, and has been obscured, possibly deliberately obscured by all the controversy surrounding it. The symptoms and effects of it are real in those who genuinely experience it. There are a lot of variations of what those effects are in different people, but the one symptom which seems to me to be universal is the inability to filter out background noise. I wouldn't say this is a brain disorder, I think it's just a difference in auditory processing. I am a musician so I believe my brain was designed to work this way for a good reason. But it does cause me a lot of frustration.
Outside of that particular issue I think there are many possible factors, or a combination of factors which can contribute to ADD/ADHD symptoms, some are:
-Giftedness
-Untrained psychic abilities
-Food allergies
-Nutritional deficits
-Chemical sensitivities/poisoning
-Ear imbalance
-Spinal misalignment
-Dissociation
-Repressed memories
-Psychic attack
-Electronic interference
-Mind control programming
-Implants
Drugs like Ritalin are designed to normalize a person who is different and mask the original cause of the symptoms that were generated by it. The drug itself is a form of mind control. It would be vital to find out why you were put on this drug in the first place. What symptoms were observed in you, or what excuse was used for giving you this treatment? You might want to consider whether or not some of the problems you are experiencing now were already present before you ever started taking Ritalin, especially in terms of cognitive ability. It is possible that you had some underlying issue all along which has been covered up by the use of the drug.
I am no expert on methods of healing, I can only offer my intuitive impressions, and ideas from my own experience. I feel that drugs like Ritalin, Prozac and the like throw the physical body out of sync with the etheric body. This is what causes the feeling of being empty inside, it disconnects you from your own energy! Homeopathic remedies can be very good with this because they work with the subtle energies of the body. These are inexpensive and you can probably pick them up at a local health food store, but it does take some careful research to choose the correct one. Flower essences might be helpful too, and they are very gentle. I would not take on any agressive treatment because your body has had enough of that already, and you said you are sensitive.
Stimulants put a lot of stress on the heart and weaken the heart muscles. It would be good to focus on healing your heart on every level, physically and emotionally too because your sense of trust has been damaged by you have experienced. I would suggest taking some time each day to focus on your heart and pay attention to any feelings that come up inside you. Allow your thoughts to explore your heart. This is all about the relationship of the heart and the brain. They need to work together, the brain guides the heart, and the heart gives lifeblood to the brain. Allowing that connection to open up will restore the blood flow and revitalize your brain cells. Whatever you "think" about how you feel, allow yourself to begin to really feel it. There is no positive or negative to this as long as you do this in your own time and space.
