Hey guys I just joined the forums a little over a month ago, this site has been an extremely helpful resource for me and I just wanted to introduce myself by sharing a little bit about my experience as it pertains specifically to adderall.
I first took adderall in the 12th grade to help with my SATs.
After that, I only took it infrequently and in 10-20mg doses for more difficult college exams or projects.
It stayed this way for about 2 years until I started taking them in much larger doses with increasing frequency.
By my third year at school, I was taking adderall every day except Sunday and some Mondays in 40mg doses or more for no particular reason.
Within 2 or 3 months, the 40mg baseline had increased to 60-80mg /day and this was also around the time that some of the higher doses in a given day started to become unknown because I had stopped counting.
At this time, I was taking an anti-depressant (prescribed) and that, combined with low doses of vyvanse resulted in seizures on two separate occasions within the same week.
I immediately stopped taking the anti-depressant when I concluded that these were an extreme case of something called Serotonin Syndrome and was relieved to find out that I could still take adderall by the shovelful and not have the seizures.
I continued a similar pattern of use and dosage into my fourth year of school except now I was taking anything with amphetamine in the name the second I could get my hands on it in addition to the daily adderall.
I did not graduate on time that year because I was in another world with my drug and alcohol abuse.
I returned to school that fall and worked 2 jobs while taking classes, all of which was fueled by astronomical amounts of adderall, I slept a handful of hours each week.
I finally graduated that December and returned home to take a month's break from all of it before feeling the pressures of getting a job and being a real person before re-upping on more meds and even successfully getting a 40mg /day prescription of my own.
Within the second week of my new job I had another seizure- I was taking anti-depressants again.
Again, I decided to cut out the anti-depressants but maintain the adderall intake.
After 3 months at this job I quit, using the seizures as a justification to my employers, but in reality, I was in such a state of psychosis that I couldn't function on a day-to-day basis.
I spent the entire summer unemployed, just waiting on refills- I would guzzle it down in a week then lay in bed for another week, then I would just wait 2 weeks for my refill. I never ate, slept, or worked- I basically just tweaked and smoked cigarettes for 4 months.
I am now 23 years old and am in an intensive outpatient program to help me recover from my addiction. Today I am 40 days clean of all drugs and alcohol and honestly it's just been okay- I'm hoping to find other means of motivation as I continue "on my journey".
Thank you guys very much if you took the time to read my story and I look forward to (hopefully) being able to support you in your journeys as well.