Ritalin has helped me in the past when studying for exams on subjects as boring as accounting or sadistics. I did, however, find the the side effects of ritalin were unacceptable to me under normal circumstances. As such, I only used it when I felt I needed it. As to making the drug makers rich, my last bottle of ritalin (that lasted me 6 months) was $5.00. I hardly feel like I was being raked over the coals. Something that helped me greatly was simply reading and understanding Driven to Distraction. A very good book on the subject with many tips on overcoming ADD without using medication. For me, the side effects were sleeplessness, fast heart beat, and a complete loss of appetite. Plus a strong desire to chain smoke.

I personally feel that ADD is used too often as an excuse to medicate children that are simply being children, loud, hyper, excitable children. For me, however, the meds did exactly what I wanted them to. Allowed me to read, comprehend, and regurgitate information with ease.

Unfortunately, ADD seems to affect people with higher than normal intelligence much more often than people of average intelligence. This can be particularly maddening to the person suffering with it. In my personal case, I graduated from high school with a 4.27. Whithout EVER having to crack a book. This was never a problem until college. All of a sudden, I was expected to actually READ the text, not just absorb in class. I soon found out the hard way that I simply couldn't do it. It didn't matter how many hours I sat there with the book in front of me, I just flat out couldn't get it to sink in. This only really applied in subjects that I wasn't interested in. I would ace something like physics, only to fail accounting. No problem in calc, but I couldn't handle english lit. To make it more of a problem for me, growing up I was never interested in sports, was rather short, extremely thin, not terribly good looking or popular. The only thing that I felt I had over people was my intelligence. In college, this crumbled. Imagine going from a 4.27 to a 1.80 in one year. I couldn't handle it. As such I lost interest in ALL school. This, of course, led to even lower grades as I stopped caring whether or not I passed. After 4 years of college, in which I only passed 2 years worth of classes, I was diagnosed ADD. From that point forward, I made nothing lower than a B. Too bad it was too late to bring my GPA up much more than a C-. I dropped school after 6 years, never did graduate, and got a job in the computer field as a sysadmin. Been doing it nigh on 8.5 years now, and with that kind of experience, companies don't really care if you have a degree or not.

Then again, if I knew then what I know now, I'd be a fireman getting ready to retire at 44. Ceste la vie.