There have been a lot of thoughtful threads here that offer pros, cons, and the variety of personal experiences. In particular: note that the impact on someone with ADHD (maybe Paul E was one such?) are likely to be different that for a non-ADHD person.

searchyc.com seems to be down right now but a google on ritalin at HN will give you a lot of starting points:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&as_q=ritalin&as_e...