Hi everyone, I- I'm 25 and have been taking adderall for about three years now. In the beginning it gave me a type of profoundness and depth of consciousness that I hadn't known before. I have always had very bad ADHD, to a point where I couldn't even keep my focus on things I felt excited about. So like I said - in the beginning what excited me was the thrill of being able to feel passion for things, in the moment of the peak effects of the drug. I can't say that it was particularly harmful, at that time - but it certainly was a good friend to me when I didn't feel like I had many.
I'm about to finish college, and I have been through a lot with adderall. However lately, I've started to realize just how much I've been using it as a mask. I cannot describe the extreme guilt and shame that runs through me after I have done a good deed, or said something deep - that has only been triggered by the adderall. It makes me feel like a fake, a phony, and someone not worthy enough to even be on this planet. What's worse, is that the drug doesn't seem to have ever improved my ADD, but only brought me up from what seems like a constant mellowness of mood in my life. It's not worth it anymore. I want to feel human again, and most of all I want to know my emotions aren't plastic and induced by pills.
Lately I've been taking a few days to test the waters to prepare myself for the withdrawal. I can only describe the experience as having snake venom run through all my veins. My body feels tense and in pain, my head feels like it weighs twenty pounds. Any annoyance like the crunching of someone eating chips, is enough to fill me with rage and hate. What hurts me, is that there are times when I think "is this what I am really like without the adderall?" but then I remember that I had never been this dark of a person. Beyond the physical pain, I feel a very real difficulty of even staying awake while off of it. My body wants to sleep, and not just sleep - literally sleep for entire 24 hour periods. It scares me so much - I still have much research to do on the topic of weaning myself off, but I'm scared of the person I will meet once I'm off of it. I'm scared of that person being empty, emotionless, numb, and apathetic.
If anyone can relate to this, or just provide me with some comforting words it would mean the world to me - Im sick of facing this alone, and I'm tired of feeling like I'm living a lie, each time I'm in a good mood. Thank you for reading.