Over the treatment, side effects I suffered were massive loss of apetite (And everything that goes with not being able to finish a meal, general feeling of faintness, malnutrition), stomach pains, headaches, constant anxiety (Maybe better described as a fear you can't shake?), tired all the time, eventually a sort of zombie feeling, where I'd only leave the house to go to school, didn't like talking to people, etc.
I really felt like a different person. When I took myself off the meds, I made different friends, and my old friends stopped hanging out with me. When they forced me back on, my old friends came back and my new ones left. When they permanently took me off the meds, my old friends left and my new ones came back, and most of them are still close today. None of this was conscious, and none of the people involved were actually told I'd gone off or on medication until well after the fact, it just sort of happened, and discovering that some people who'd been my friends for years didn't like me if I wasn't medicated (Thats how I saw it at the time) really frightened me.
I'd refuse to take the meds over school holidays (Which was OK'd by my doc), and I'd feel significantly better, so I quickly grew to resent them as a child. The paediatrician tried lowering doses very early on once I started showing side effects, and almost immediately my teacher sent home a letter asking what was going on, after spending a while exhausting other options, the paediatrician basically said it was unavoidable, we'd just have to cope one way or the other.
I guess I'm saying I understand they're a miracle for some people, but from age 7(ish) onwards, no type or dosage helped without harm, so I hated them. In the last few years, I have strongly considered (And still am) giving it another try, since rationally I know it likely won't be as bad as it was growing up, but I still have a pretty strong phobia of medication in general.
About text books, I'm actually pretty good with theory text books, things that present new ideas and concepts I can absorb, but 'How To' books I have trouble with, and mostly I can only read the code and learn by example.
Also: I suffer from both. Official last diagnosis is ADHD-C.