holden

Hi everyone, Thank you so much for this forum. It has helped me tremendously through this process, although I am at fault for not using it even more. I turned 27 on April 6th, 2012 and allowed myself one last weekend of Adderall with friends and parties and then spent Monday saying goodbye (aka chain smoking, drinking 40s, and snorting my last pills). The panic leading up to that point was crazy. I knew how big of a decision it was that I was making. It had been a wild ride since September 2008, a fast life with extraordinary highs and moments of being totally tuned in to life, followed by one longass fall down. Ruined friendships, unemployment, severe bouts with depression, alcohol/adderall unlimited binges, and the constant search for a greater high which seemed like a very distant memory. As I said, the months leading up to my decision were fraught with panic but I prepared as best I could. I started doing yoga and Pilates, enrolled in a massage program, and began to eat really healthy foods. But I was already mourning the loss of “my precious†and was drinking heavily. I felt really out of control and knew I was making the right decision. Since losing my job, my temporary insurance wouldn’t cover the visit to the psychiatrist that loved to dole out my pills, only a visit to the primary care physician who really hated them. Trying to rationalize my pill use to her is scary enough, I get all red in the face, feel like I’m being interrogated, I know I’m lying. Anyway, I’ve made it through now and this is the 28th day. I’ve been taking L-Tyrosine and all the right supplements, staying hydrated, sleeping lots, slowly exercising again. The adderall dreams are gone now. I no longer have a deathly pallor. I’m in college, however, and I definitely haven’t done anything in a month. I am so behind. It’s overwhelming even thinking about it. I don’t know how to get motivation anymore and a friend/classmate who I have given the “magic blue pill†to before urged me to think about getting more, not just for him, not to be a pusher, but because maybe that’s what I need to get through the doldrums of this last year of my 10 year bachelor degree. I wish he hadn’t planted that seed. Immediately I saw how rational that was! Just this year, bang it out, and then quit and deal with it then, when it’s not such an urgent juncture in my lie. But what am I really dealing with here? Really it’s myself and my issues…if it doesn’t stop now, it’s just going to get harder. What if I go to grad school? What if my very patient and loving husband and I have kids? What about at a new job, if I ever feel that I can work again? When will I not have an excuse to be an exquisitely confident, over achieving, high performing superwoman? Not that I was really any of those things, but it sure seemed like I was. I wanted to quit for some reason and I’m beginning to forget what that reason was. Maybe it was the mania, the urges to drink and smoke, the crazy sleep cycles, the procrastination, the feeling of slavery to the ups and downs of the pills. Seems pale in comparison to the image I have in my mind of the glorious clarity and efficiency, the ease of waking up to yet another successful and effortlessly driven day. I’m finally past the point of digging through my car and drawers to find a stray pill, not like I ever let a pill stray of course. But now I’m at the point of rationalizing that yeah, great, I took a month off. I don’t really need to quit right now. I can postpone it and now I really know what I’m dealing with. Just in time to bang out all the rest of the work required to finish this quarter successfully. This is sounding really good and now I don’t even know why I’m posting this because I should just call my doctor and blissfully relapse, deal with the guilt later, after all the papers and projects are caught up with. But I’m still going to post this, so I’m obviously looking from something from you guys, the only people that truly understand what this is I’m going through. All my biggest accomplishments in my teens and adulthood happened when I wasn’t on Adderall…why can’t I see that? Why is it all I think about whenever it’s time to clean, to write, to read, to do anything besides sit around and eat and sleep and watch TV. Please help.