William

Nice job @DrewK15 It’s easy to loose sight of just how far you’ve come as the months tic by. Keep up the great work. Hate to sound like Mr. obvious here, but I would suggest not taking on a heavy stress fast paced position out of the gates... I had a couple set backs going that route. It’s so tempting to want to rejoin the work world and get back to earning and performing at a high level, but that’s a trap coming out of years of addiction. I would try to find something your naturally skilled at and doesn’t require to much “extra” effort. The important part is building resilience and confidence as the days and months pass by at work...

@Morethanhalfmylife So sorry to hear about what you’re going through. You will survive this. It’s a very long process but you’re still young and your body and brain will heal. Don’t take @quit-once comment that it’s all mental after acute physical withdrawal to infer you won’t deal with “real” withdrawal symptoms long after the drug has physically left your body. You will, and you it’s important to realize it’s not just “in your head” Read through the hundreds of posts on this forum and learn as much as you can. Good luck and stay close to the forum for support!!

So well said!@Tom23Jones

Sorry to hear you’re going through a rough patch @DrewK15 I’m sure you’ve read enough posts to realize what you’re experiencing is completely normal. No doubt you just want to switch gears and move on already.. Remember how far you have come! It’s easy to lose track of all that you’ve accomplished when the depression phases come. Don’t dwell there. Keep up the fight! It does get better!!

@DrewK15 I’m sure it feels crappy to have been dinged on the background check. Instead of associating it with further consequences of your Adderall use days, I would try to look at it as a blessing in disguise. At a year out I doubt it would be the right time to put yourself into a corporate finance job. It’s so tempting to want to blast back to success. But getting ahead of yourself will only slow you down in n the long run. Find something part-time and progressively increase your stress tolerance and overall “stamina”. Like has been said before; have faith that doing the right things will lead to success. It will. So many years of instant gratification fueled by popping stimulate pills makes it difficult to accept that true accomplishments take time. Good luck and keep up the fight!

@Onedayatatime Congratulations on staying the course to this point. As you stated, going back up would be a huge setback. Don’t do it. I was on high doses of Adderall for 15 years. I tapered over a relatively brief time. A few months. Doing it all by dumping the addy beads into the hulls of emptied vitamin capsules because my insurance wouldn’t fill my script at progressively lower doses. For comparative purposes, I did a “medically supervised” taper off Klonopin that lasted well over a year. You’re not going to be able to avoid the awful process that is recovery from stims... But jumping off at 15mgs is very likely to be more tolerable then if you had gone cold turkey from the get go. I would consider a complete stop at this point. And like what was said above, try to manage, dare I say “embrace” the process... Best of luck! Keep on fighting!!

Welcome to the forum @Cojo44 I think the answer as to whether or not to take Wellbutrin probably best centers around your mental health history with respect to depression. If you don’t believe you ever had issues with depression before using Vyvanse and the subsequent withdrawal hell, then maybe it’s possible to wait a bit longer to see how you feel around the 2 year mark. 16 months is amazing progress, but for a lot of us here it’s about a 2 year grind before you really begin to feel closer to “pre-use” condition. However, if your like many of us here and have had long standing issues with depression, then I wouldn’t be afraid to stick with the Wellbutrin for a couple months and see how it goes. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, there’s a significant difference between antidepressant medication and amphetamines. Yes it’s a very good thing to have a healthy respect for taking ANY Rx drug, but I wouldn’t suffer with major depression if Wellbutrin could help moderate your mood. NOT supercharge your energy and mood, but help level you out. Most important is to be working with a health care provider that you trust and has demonstrated that they have YOUR best interests in mind. Make sure your sharing your concerns with them. It’s perfectly reasonable to discuss what type of taper would be required when the time comes that you choose to stop using the medication. Great job kicking the “pill” the heck out of your life. Keep up the fight!!

Grateful

@Slim33 At some point you’ll have to decide that quitting is your highest priority, if you expect to ever be free of it. Read @sleepystupid post above over and over and over until it sinks in. Good luck!

I’ve been drinking Vitamin water (zero - rise orange) for the past several months every morning. It’s not any big boost but it really helps me start the day off. I haven’t had caffeine since this whole debacle started so I’d been hunting for anything that could give some boost in mental clarity and this drink does that for me.

@DrewK15 Sorry you’re feeling lonely. But take heart, life has NOT pasted you by! Sounds to me like you’re grieving “time lost” to Adderall. Which is of course completely healthy. You’re young with your whole life ahead of you. Like you said, it’s a likely a very good thing you didn’t get involved in a relationship during your adderall years. Keep doing the right things and look for opportunities to meet someone new. Things will work out.

@DrewK15 I wouldn’t say I’ve improved a lot in being more effective at work in the last 3 years off Adderall. However, not obsessing on every little detail has helped things somewhat. I spent a few years in a leadership position with a large company involved in maintenance and repair when on Adderall. It’s ironic, but I did a great job delegating and getting projects done. But I completely missed the boat when it came to building relationships with other “supervisors” and keeping in touch with what my boss thought was a priority. I was always into the details of everything but never stepped back to get the necessary perspective of the larger picture. Just a speed freak in my office basically. And if I was on the job I was so into the details I never just made conversation with others. Looking back I can’t imagine what people thought of me.

@Frank B I agree that many of us that took Adderall were motivated to start with, and the drug helped us push even harder. I’m self employed too and I haven’t been doing much of anything but just getting by. I’ve spent my life in construction but I’ve never really elevated my business. Adderall makes its user way to self reliant. With endless energy I was constantly taking on parts of the job I should have subed out for $10/hr. Instead I was killing myself doing mindless demo work. I’ve been trying to find ways to give up some of the control in the work I do. I think as tradesman we sometimes get so hung up on perfection and “doing the job right” that we can’t see the larger picture. That being as a single individual you can’t do the volume of work that’s required for more then just an average income. We wind up beat up and burned out. Which is when the thought of an Adderall boost is so enticing. The math of a one man band just doesn’t add up. And that reality for those of us in the trades, especially as we get close to 50, is depressing and demoralizing. So maybe it’s time to take on an eager apprentice? I’ve hired plenty of guys over the years but it’s never lasted more then a couple years. But I’ve seen guys take on young kids out of high school and really grow their business. Maybe that’s a possible avenue for you. HVAC is a trade that keeps growing. I wish I would have got involved in that instead of carpentry all those years ago.

@oswhid sorry to hear how it happened. Hopefully things continue to be on the mend. It’s not unusual for people to be exposed to Adderall for the first time in equally innocuous ways.

@Frank B I’ve been feeling much the same way for months now too. And like you I didn’t want to come across like the last few years of recovery have been pointless. I’m hopeful that warmer weather and sunshine will help. For the record I think all that you’ve accomplished makes you a complete badass. I’m blessed to have a wife that encourages me when I feel like a complete pos. She remembers the decade we were married pre-Adderall, and reminds me I’m gaining ground on my old self. Without that constant reminder I would be a very high risk of relapse... She was also an angel for the 15 years I was on Adderall. What’s interesting is that the first 10 years of our marriage I was providing a nearly daily encouragement to her as she delt with her mother’s alcoholism a declining health. Strange how things work out. @oswhid Can you shed any light on why your husband turned to Adderall so late in life? My experience is that adults that turn to Adderall typically feel they are unable to keep pace with the expectations of life or more specifically, the expectations of others...

@LiberatedMind I agree with @sleepystupid go back and look at your old posts. But frankly it sounds to me like perhaps you just didn’t suffer enough while you were using... Hate to sound so negative, but a lot of us long time users at 7 months off were still realing on so many fronts that the thought of going back to the hell of using was far from our minds. Good luck to you, hope you decide to weather the current storm.

Congrats Frank. In a couple months you’ll be a virtual fish. I think it’s incredible how well you’ve made physical fitness a priority. I’m good for a few months then back slide.. So keep up the great work and let us know when you enter you first race.

Well said Frank B. You’re kicking ass. Keep up the great work. No doubt your kids notice all the positive changes. And they will remember the better you!

Dazzy, congrats on 31 days sober. Your brain is still operating in a heightened manner. Not sure I’ve seen much said about this, but it takes some time before your thought processes slooow down.... You seem to be hyper analyzing things, which is an Adderall hallmark. My guess is that if you’re still sober 6 months from now, you’ll look back at your posts and wonder how you had the energy... My advice would be to not concern yourself with dating. You’re going to need every ounce of energy for yourself! Good luck!

LILTEX41, Thanks for sharing that insight from Richard Branson! What a great perspective to have!!

Well said Frank. I deal with all of the issues you discussed. It’s very frustrating when you’re doing everything you can to maximize potential success across all fronts of life, and you still feel down and totally lost, it’s completely demoralizing. It’s like finally taking responsibility for your actions, recognizing there are no short cuts in life, being willing to put the work in, and addressing all the other bs cliche’s you hear growing up, but after all that, you’re still stuck wondering what’s it all for. Where are the results! Where’s the “fell good” in any of it... At least that’s the circle I’m often in 2.5 years post addy. But not always... I too have delt with depression and anxiety most of my adult life. I started using Addy in my late 20’s, I’m now 46. So no doubt some of what I’m experiencing is not related to long term addy use, but no doubt some is. Of course I also had about 7 years on benzo’s during the nearly 15 years on addy, so my situation is different then many. A word of CAUTION to any one considering using benzo’s to help get off stimulants; DONT! Addy is tough to beat, benzo’s are often far worse for nearly everyone who uses them. I’m not thrilled with how I feel and how my career is going right now, but I’m still in a much better place then I was. And if things were to get infinitely worse, I’d still never ever go back to the Addy years, NEVER! When it comes to antidepressants, I don’t have an all or nothing viewpoint. That is, I don’t think using an antidepressant that helps is a bad thing. So many of us that have lived through the hell of beating Adderall or (benzo’s, opioids,etc.) develop the position that all drugs are evil. Understandably so! But the truth is, there is a significant difference between using/abusing schedule II drugs, and using antidepressants. Yes I’ve had some bad experiences with AD’s, namely of the SSRI varieties. But I’ve found a low dose of Mirtazapine (Remeron) to help me a great deal. And I’m not ashamed of that, or think that it means I’m not “sober”. The brain has an amazing ability to heal itself, but it also has an equally amazing “memory” of pleasurable experiences. Whether or not the pleasure was drug induced. So life after Adderall is always competing against a euphoria standard that is not realistic. It’s ironic that I often hear people say “I’m finally starting to enjoy my old hobbies..” Sometimes I wonder if people are subconsciously responding to big pharma’s AD ad campaigns that often suggest that if you don’t enjoy things you once enjoyed, perhaps you’re depressed.. Here’s a novel idea, our interests change! Sometimes you have to change things up a bit. Going back to the same old things looking for that great spark, can be like getting back with an ex-spouse or girlfriend hoping to find the pleasure you experienced when the relationship got started; it ain’t gonna happen. So somthing I’ve found to help is to try some new things. Volunteer doing something you have never done before. Go somewhere different, talk to different people... It’s a bit awkward at first, but you might just surprise yourself and discover a bit of joy. I’m writing and rambling so much on this post, I’m having flashbacks to addy induced nonsense, lol Keep on fighting the good fight everyone! God bless!

Congratulations Kimber! Making the first year is something to be proud of. Dont be discouraged if you feel “mushy” and like your “treading water”. Your brain is providing you with some accurate feedback, something you weren’t getting while on adderall. It might be that now isn’t the best time for “what’s next”- rather, what is... It’s a common response to want to “take control” after being driven for so long every which way by adderall. Just remind yourself you took control when you stopped taking the drug! Now you need time to reconstruct a life that is driven by well thought out decisions. Not random amphetamine fueled actions. And this takes a long time. So when you feel pestered by thoughts of “what’s next” remember that could likely be a leftover thought process from your adderall days. Start small. Make meaningful decisions daily that you can associate with a larger goal. Just don’t rush the process. I was on Adderall for nearly 15 years at a high dose. I’ve been off now for 2 1/2 years. Things do get better! Be kind to yourself, God bless

I think I sounded a bit off track there. I'm sure your sleep and anxiety were miserable. Guess I'm more looking for details. I'm only getting 4-5 hours of relief a day from near panic level anxiety. But I'm not aware of what the hell I'm anxious about other then will survive my symptoms... Sorry to ramble and make this about me. Please forgive me I'm just in a desperate state of being. God bless

Thank you for posting your success story. It is exactly what I needed to hear. I'm fighting like hell to try and make it to 7 months. So happy to hear you have come through on the other side. Would you mind sharing what the worst part of PAWS was for you? I like so many here look at these to remind ourselves that we are normal. That skin crawling hell of withdrawal is normal. How was your sleep and anxiety? Thanks again and God Bless.

Frank, nice job stopping the devil! Wow, crazy how that stuff seems to play out. You no have that success to stack on all your others.