I seriously doubt ritalin would have changed his behavior. Drugs only work to maintain a kind of stability. (I know many kids on these type drugs. Their behavior remains the same, just greatly subdued.) Drugs do not influence ones world views and beliefs. Perhaps he may have been more likely to listen to his peers. Who knows? But certainly, mood altering drugs can not be beneficial for chess performance. One thing he was is ... focused. I think any drugs would have been a distraction to his obsession with chess. He was never diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia that I know of. The disorder is attributed to explaining his behavior, which seemed to be progressive with age. A typical case.
What was eating Bobby Fischer?
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From what I remember, originally, yogurt. The Spassky-Fischer match was the first World Championdhip that I became aware of-in fact, the first chess match I saw to attract media attention and oh boy, what attention-,talk about a circus.My father said if it wasn't for his antics (or to that effect), he'd have never beaten Spassky-implying off-putting behaviour a la John McEnroe later. I looked at GM results in candidate matches some time after and tournaments over the years and one set stood out-Fischer crushing these other top GM's 6-0 ; don't think it had ever happened before and haven't heard of it since (am I mistaken?)-even with Kasparov, the only player who seemed to be equally. dominant-so concluded my father was wrong. I also remember Fischer reportedly saying something like he enjoyed watching their egos being destroyed(words to that effect)as he beat them. Chess genius,then -and an unstable, unpleasant,hate-filled psycho-job to boot.