"Day 0" of a little personal log

[in sterquiliniis invenitur]

Well, I might as well start a log. 

Day 0: I've been thinking recently: well, I love to portray the front of being diligent and constantly busy with intrinsically meaningful work. That was true before I discovered Adderall and when I started using it. 

But... the difference is... when I'm not taking it, the "reward system" in my brain is insufficient in terms of communicating to me, "Yeah man, you're making progress! You just did something useful! Keep going!"--and so I end up falling into long periods of just, I don't know, disparaging over my inability to reward myself for taking steps in some cohesive direction. 

Is it because of a lack of friends? A lack of competitive environments to keep me in check? Yeah, probably. Sometimes I feel like I should just ditch academia and join something like the military and spend less than 90 minutes a day doing stuff like reading/writing... so that I have all that epinephrine from doing intense physical activity gushing through me and it can be maintained just long enough to complete something more stationary like writing. 

I don't know, man. I always had this strange "complex" or dynamic with work (academic work or even artistic stuff like poetry) where I hate it for the fact that it feels too obscure... not masculine enough maybe (although I find that interpretation repulsive; probably because it's true but I don't want to believe it's true). I hate the idea of sitting behind several desks over the course of a day at school, doing work which benefits nobody but myself in some indirect and incongruous way.

I want to do meaningful work. Not "subjectively meaningful" work like taking stupid notes on stupid lectures and then going home to do 2 or 3 more hours of compiling and grappling with those notes. But like, carpentry maybe. I also like my job at Taco Bell which is intensely practical (I can see the direct benefits of my work by the smiling faces of little kids and the stress in neurotic and overworked adults melting a little when I hand them bags with their tacos or Mexican pizzas--melting just a little, but just enough to make their evening not horrible, a little less horrible, giving them a little more will to live). 

And I guess that if my life was filled with more frequent "practical work", it would (sorta, I guess) "justify" little bouts of time (like 90 minutes) where I could sit down and do "subjectively useful stuff" like (God I'm repulsed by the idea but) pursuing something artistic like writing fiction/poetry/drawing or... music like learning to play an instrument of some sort. 

Yeah, and those 90-minute sessions would be intense. They'd be focused and passionate and all that... but rooted on solid ground because I'd know that, "Well, when I finish this I don't have to feel guilty about doing something that seems useless on the surface."

And then maybe on top of that, I counterbalance the routine with something like school (college courses)... but not to a point where my schedule is just incongruously overwhelmed by this stupid human act of spending 2, 3, 4 years just sitting for like 10 hours a day and studying things. It's nauseating to think how our society is organized to stuff us into these fluorescent-light-filled buildings and shove us into these little wooden desks and then we're told, "Okay, so what you're gonna do is--and we're gonna excuse you from all civic and practical societal responsibility--but what your job is is to listen to this teacher and just write down what he says and then write essays and read all this extra stuff there and take tests. And do that for 16 years or so." 

Yeah I think that's just about right: Attention Deficit Disorder is a 'label' sorta ascribed to people in order to give them medication which quells their overwrought conscience (which screams at them to pursue something more meaningful) and as a result, convinces them to ascribe infinite value to work which should be like a 90-minute-a-day "cognitive exercise". 

Like yeah, sometimes lectures are interesting and sometimes writing an essay is an incredibly formative and transformative experience (with a ton of intrinsic value that you can transfer over to conversations and the way you make important decisions and the way you negotiate with people)... but to create a culture and lifestyle around doing that for 10-15 hours a day...?!

Well, okay. That's not particularly useful. Or at least, not a "foolproof" argument; because there's a little bit of individual responsibility that has to reside in counterbalancing yourself against something that seems corrupt. I don't want to force myself into a position (or make the claim) that "it's society's fault"... because yes, everything about society is always going to be implicitly corrupt. Society can never be perfect because trying to make it perfect means fitting into one set of beliefs and contradicting a whole set of other axioms and beliefs and etc -- which are sometimes useful/relevant. 

But, like... what did I learn by dumping my thoughts on here? -- Well, here's what I learned: 

A. I used adderall to care more about work that, implicitly in my conscience, I've always known to be "not the ultimate central point on which I should stake my entire life on". 
B. I have a very strange aversion to creative endeavor because of its lack of implicit meaning; and that's because I'm already spending 9 hours a day sitting under fluorescent lights writing down useless notes... and so I've already been using up the resources of my society to absorb knowledge that I won't be able to "spill out" onto society in the form of value for like 10 years... and so because I've already "wasted" so much time I feel even more averse to wasting even more time doing something "creative" which also lacks immediate practical implication to society. 
C. I have a very strange hidden affinity for the heavily discipline-oriented routines and heavily/constantly physical activities that characterize the military lifestyle. And I almost wish that I could orient my life in such a way that most of my day was spent on that intense physical rigor... and then I could have 3 hours somewhere in the day to dedicate to creative work. 
D. And as a slightly less extreme longing, I sorta wish I could at least spend most of my day on "practical" "in-the-trenches-type" work like being a door-to-door salesman or a cook at a restaurant or a guitar instructor or a math tutor ... and then unlock states of deep creative work in the late-night hours (or early-morning hours) -- where I can kinda get a natural rush of motivation from this almost-rebellious feeling that I'm doing this frenzied creative work while most of the population is asleep. There's something deeply empowering about that--and then I can "snap back" to helping other people in a directly noticeable way in the usual working hours. 

This helped. This really helped. I'm glad I did this journaling and.. I hope I don't stop doing it. 'Cause what it lets you do is it lets you "parse out" yourself from your actions so as to reflect on them and then generate the micro-personalities that engage in those actions... more sensibly and carefully and consistently. 

Because that's my favorite way of thinking about it: we (as individuals) are sorta this amalgamation of all our behavioral traits and memories -- and using that "database" we get to choose what to expose ourselves to. And when we're in those situations, it's not like we're always the "same person"; on one level we are, but what we do is we generate a different "goal-directed personality" to engage in any new activity. 

Which makes ya think: adderall basically induces a sort of "context-independent sympathetic arousal" (I talked about this in my first post, from yesterday January 24)--which sorta activates a goal-directed personality which doesn't have a direct context to apply itself to. Basically, that stress arousal is a natural state induced by situations that demand it; in those situations, you get to activate that new personality to reach a goal, and then you can reflect on it and integrate your pattern of action into articulated knowledge and thus, broaden your understanding of who you are. 

But what happens if mundane schoolwork/corporate work... over a period of 1 year or even 5 or 10 years... gets perpetually tagged as stress-inducing? Then you build your personality around the notion that "the only goal-directed micropersonality I have to generate is the one that--in a feverish frenzy--churns through essays and generates notes and reads books while making endless annotations; I get constantly rewarded for getting all that work done through that micropersonality... so ..." So your brain strengthens the pathway that reinforces that goal-directed personality... and that one personality sorta festers and starts to envelop your psyche. More and more of your "psychic real estate" is claimed by this one component--and I think that's what Mike meant when he talked about (in his 2009-2011 articles) reclaiming your "true self": basically, your entire identity has been shrouded in this over-reinforced micropersonality and so... all your other unique temperamental traits (which are latent inside your psyche) have been lost, or just remain in latent form. 

It's like, I knew the Russian language and learned it until I was 6 years old. I'm 17 years old now and... yesterday... I started a new class where I'm supposed to tutor Russian-speaking students who just came to America (teaching them to speak English). And within 25 seconds of speaking to two of them, it's like a levee or dam bursting open, allowing that stored repressed water to gush out and flood me with all sorts of intuitive knowledge about the language. 

Man, I think it's the same with leaving adderall behind: you burst open a bunch of dams containing locked-up parts of your psyche (your temperamental traits). 

And that just makes you a much more complete, genuine human being. Instead of someone being puppeted by an arrogant, overfed subpersonality, you gain access to the "center" of your psyche... the center of your individuality... and have control over the goal-directed personalities you generate. So that when you're sitting in front of your passion project, you can activate the subpersonality that's a frenzied creative perfectionistic artist... and then when having dinner with your family, you can activate the subpersonality that's a silly, relaxed weirdo with a stupid but addictive sense of humor. 

I think Carl Jung called this "individuation" and I heard it being compared to a solar system--where the sun exerts a gravitational pull on a multifaceted variety of unique planets. 

6:23 PM. I'd better go have dinner. Goodnight guys. 

[in sterquiliniis invenitur]

(Early morning of, Day 2)

My spirits are fluctuating wildly and in impulsive compulsions of both thought and conscious recognition of depleted energy level (which generates more emotionally-charged thought). Lo and behold, it's an assignment right in front of me that I know I'm intellectually capable of doing... yet feels a hundred billion miles away from touching the "sea of passion chemicals" which are withheld by a massive dam in the back of my psyche. 

Yesterday I actually managed to scrounge myself up and lug my numb and bleeding consciousness through 6 hours of classes and then played the facade of sitting in a cafe for 3 hours pretending to do homework (when all I did was take notes where I found a succession of a million different ways to complain about my fatigue). I also went for a 2-hour walk; my head was pointing straight down and I couldn't help but assume a slouched defeated posture as I trudged monotonously through a beautiful little park/neighborhood. I then came home and got the sudden urge to watch pornography as a way to regress into another pathetic habit to cover up my withdrawal agonies from this one; spent 1 hour in an "abstinence battle" and by scrounging up the final ounces of willpower I had, and "won" the battle (virtually against all odds). I then asleep for about an hour... and upon waking, promptly began to clean my room. 

Lustful thoughts and also wild compulsions to take the adderall set in about 20 seconds after I opened my closet to reveal a hoard of monstrous mess--60 or 70 old shirts and pants laying around clumsily in a tiny closet. God, the fact that I abstained is unfathomable to me! But I did! I set a 5-minute timer and spent all 5 minutes folding some socks. Then another 5 minute timer. Then 17 minutes passed and I acted completely sane at dinner-time and... ended up having an engaging and thought-provoking little conversation with my family for upwards of 25 minutes. I then chugged a 5-hour energy shot (may I mention: my 4th one that day) and used it to go for a 5.7-mile run and then lift weights for 25 minutes at the gym (I'm quite used to working out so... it was infinitely easier to do this with depleted energy than to do anything remotely cognitively demanding). 

Well, then, I came home and fell asleep and... now... I'm faced with this assignment. It's 5:20 AM or so... and... school starts at 8:30 so... I have absolutely no reason in hell to not finish it. If I just pop a pill right now I'll be able to use the willpower and excitement of anticipation to start the easier parts of it right now and... 40 minutes later... I'll be grinding it out full-throttle and.... after 95 minutes I'll still have enough time to stuff some cheese and meat and an apple down my throat and get to school and then... have a productive and invigorating day of passionate ecstatic focus in all 5 of my classes. And then I'd go to work and maybe lock myself in a long dance with a dense book that's playing in audio form while I assemble food items and take out the trash and conduct all those other little activities. 

Damn you! Stupid worthless rationalizations! Hilarious, hilarious that my psyche sees this as a sin. My wet dream is to be a productive and studious citizen... not to get satiated... not to waste away on a couch or mellow out or induce a psychedelic experience... but simply to be able to cut through the impetuous fog that sits in front of me and enter a state of engaged and robust work. I want dopamine to gush through my brain and revivify the divergent thinking pathways... I want acetylcholine to intensify the memory and potentiate my studying.... I want epinephrine to calmly trickle through every cell in my body and keep me in a state of calm alertness, ready for everything, doing just one thing forthrightly and competently... never looking back... never sulking, never being a fetal ball of wrought-out insecurity, trembling at the sight of a single ounce of cognitive performance. 

Jesus help! What will I do? The meds are RIGHT THERE! Idiot! Idiot! Idiot! It doesn't matter how smart I might be or how much "potential" is locked away somewhere if I can't bring it out to the surface. Is the only way forward really to abdicate what I feel is the most safe and effective crutch in my vicinity?

Man, damn me;  in sterquiliniis invenitur is literally the username I made for myself. In filth it shall be found. You have to dig through all the shit... the most horrid, wretched, decrepit shit.... in order to find the thing you need most right now. 

[Krae19]

Sounds like you are doing pretty well for day 2.  The thing is when every cell in your body doesn’t want to do the assignment you have to force yourself.  That’s how you retrain your brain and gain a little confidence.  Get rid of the pills… drop them off at one of those pharmacy drop off locations. I would never be able to quit if I had a bottle sitting around.  Congratulations on day 2!  Onwards and upwards.

[ALA]

You are a brilliant writer. Get rid of your pills. Seriously, get rid of your pills. You are only making life a billion times harder by demanding your entire willpower during a time when you have none. Once you do that you can move forward. You got this! 

[Jon B]

If I could go back to my college days when I first started taking this drug, I would tell myself to stop immediately. You have so much time ahead of you to do great things without it. 

[ALA]

How are you doing @in sterquiliniis invenitur?

I'm struggling at the 2 week mark. 

[Nicky_B]

Sometimes especially the first few days throw the pills away immediately!!!

It's better to take baby steps and make it through each hour and distract yourself with massive doses of Netflix and other distractions that you can find other than going back on and amphetamine.

if someone in your household is taking the drug, make sure they hate it or lock it in a safe, so you have no access to it nor are you seeing people use the drug.

You all can do it...but this is a marathon, not a sprint, so be patient with yourself and focus on the single thought of not taking Adderall again....everything else is optional.

 

~Nicky B.

 

[in sterquiliniis invenitur]

Day 6: I've relapsed since the time of starting this thread but... I put myself back on the "track". Even though it really doesn't feel like a track or any sort of goal-directed framework at all; I feel like I not only limited my ability to do work... but the framework/value system evaporated from under my feet and nothing related to academics matters one bit anymore. I've been having random bouts of incapacitating sense of meaninglessness shrouding my activities; I see no intrinsic meaning at all in my homework and, every time I sit in front of it to do it, it's not like I'm just "unable to do it"-- I'm unable to conceptualize a value structure sufficient enough to justify my miserable existence. My favorite passtime now is daydreaming vividly, long enough to forget who the hell I am when I snap back into reality. 

I don't know if I was treating ADD with Adderall or something far worse. But I'm not the same person right now than who I was just a few days ago. Let's see where this is going.

[GettingOffOfIt]

11 hours ago, in sterquiliniis invenitur said:

Day 6: I've relapsed since the time of starting this thread but... I put myself back on the "track". Even though it really doesn't feel like a track or any sort of goal-directed framework at all; I feel like I not only limited my ability to do work... but the framework/value system evaporated from under my feet and nothing related to academics matters one bit anymore. I've been having random bouts of incapacitating sense of meaninglessness shrouding my activities; I see no intrinsic meaning at all in my homework and, every time I sit in front of it to do it, it's not like I'm just "unable to do it"-- I'm unable to conceptualize a value structure sufficient enough to justify my miserable existence. My favorite passtime now is daydreaming vividly, long enough to forget who the hell I am when I snap back into reality. 

I don't know if I was treating ADD with Adderall or something far worse. But I'm not the same person right now than who I was just a few days ago. Let's see where this is going.

I would recommend that you wait a few weeks before you try to make sense of how you feel.  Just know that it will pass and force yourself to do things that matter like homework, even though you don't feel like you care.  You will.  Your brain is like a sponge and it takes some time to dry out and work properly without the drug again.  Trust the process and try to keep yourself busy doing whatever you find that can stimulate your brain during withdrawal.  It will make you feel better.  Movies and video games worked for me. Whatever can distract you from thinking about how you feel will help.  Also think about the person you want to be when you come out on the other side.  Write that down and read it everyday.  Get a mental picture of that person so you can see yourself.  Know that you are on a journey to get there. You can also take a selfie every day and watch yourself improve over time.  I wish I had done that.  

 

Also, you can also set timers to help you with your homework.  You really just need help getting started, your brain is still there and will work if you can get it going.  Put a timer on for 10 minutes and force yourself to focus on one particular task and only that task for the entire 10 minutes.  Then take 5 minute break.  Then repeat the process until all tasks for an assignment are done.  Bump up to 15 or 20 minutes when you think you can handle it.  It helped me get through a lot and maybe it can help you too.  Good luck.  

[in sterquiliniis invenitur]

11 hours ago, GettingOffOfIt said:

I would recommend that you wait a few weeks before you try to make sense of how you feel.  Just know that it will pass and force yourself to do things that matter like homework, even though you don't feel like you care.  You will.  Your brain is like a sponge and it takes some time to dry out and work properly without the drug again.  Trust the process and try to keep yourself busy doing whatever you find that can stimulate your brain during withdrawal.  It will make you feel better.  Movies and video games worked for me. Whatever can distract you from thinking about how you feel will help.  Also think about the person you want to be when you come out on the other side.  Write that down and read it everyday.  Get a mental picture of that person so you can see yourself.  Know that you are on a journey to get there. You can also take a selfie every day and watch yourself improve over time.  I wish I had done that.  

 

Also, you can also set timers to help you with your homework.  You really just need help getting started, your brain is still there and will work if you can get it going.  Put a timer on for 10 minutes and force yourself to focus on one particular task and only that task for the entire 10 minutes.  Then take 5 minute break.  Then repeat the process until all tasks for an assignment are done.  Bump up to 15 or 20 minutes when you think you can handle it.  It helped me get through a lot and maybe it can help you too.  Good luck.  

You're right. I made this decision 'cause I realized the way I'm going through school is: to morph myself into the label of an "obedient student". 

I started Adderall, fundamentally, to quell the loud blaring alarm in my psyche telling me that school (which is perfectly designed to make learning how to think critically, write, and otherwise master the skill of articulation.... virtually impossible, even to teachers who make a conscious effort to promote those skills) is structured to inevitably lead people to the conclusion that it's a waste of time... or a hurdle to ignorantly and passively jump over (at the expense of 13 years of critical cognitive development). 

So basically, it granted me the ability to meet the low-end demands of my teachers without internally crying as I question the flawed fortitude of the entire game I was playing. 

Maybe that's not the case if you use this drug for 1 day or 1 week; in those cases, you get to exploit the little "honeymoon period" for maximum returns of productive bliss. 

And if there's a single soul out there with a temperament that can enjoy that honeymoon and then indifferently/inconsequentially withdraw, I commend you. 

But for the rest of us, we (or a lot of us, I suspect) have used Adderall to tranquilize our conscience (which is giving us good advice: pay attention; you might be playing a meaningless game) and instead, gain access to an expedited and disproportionately heightened alertness/passion... shrouding our higher-order reasoning in a sorta veil of sympathetic arousal. 

I think it'd be a hell of a lot better if, instead of shaping my identity around this notion of being an obedient lap-dog for teachers... perpetually agreeing with their ideas and only making comments that embellish them... and then doing assignments just "to get the grade".... I (instead) stepped back from the burning and "corrupt" machine and made my own plan to justify going to school. And then built my studying around a personal vision for the future... not in terms of what salary I'd earn but... in the context of how to productively contribute to my family, community, society and so forth. 

So then, instead of being locked in this constraining and putrefying box of corrupt justifications ("You have to take this class to get your grade so you can get a diploma") I actually have a profound moral reason (extending to other people) for sitting in front of my desk at home and pulling out my homework. 

Maybe I can turn this game around, so that I don't feel literal shame for "wasting my life" in front of a desk. And I think that's where Adderall loses its "grip" of temptation: the drug triggers sympathetic nervous system arousal... which is (in the most fundamental sense) survival-related instincts packaged into a physiological and psychological toolkit. 

So, of course you're gonna turn to it if your life is full of "uncontrollable" superordinate corruption and malice and insufficient justifications for your miserable life.

But if you actually have a vision for why the hell you trudge in and out of classrooms...  that is, if your day-to-day responsibilities are connected with superordinate values... it's not that Adderall becomes useless but... the basic impression that, "I need it to give me an excuse to not kill myself or sulk perpetually in a blithe coma"... stops manifesting itself. 

So while I'm technically wrestling, today, with a basic short-term problem (angry parents, disappointed teachers, dumbfounded by my sudden lack of drive), I'm also wrestling with the "archetypal spirit of long-term drug dependence" and that thing, man... it scales exponentially; if I hadn't decided to fight these mini-battles, who knows how quickly the problem would have increased in size tenfold... or a hundred-fold.

Okay, it's 6:24 AM. Of Day 7. I'm going to start (or resume) my day and drink lots of coffee and enjoy a lot of ice-cold showers (which sorta forces the adrenal glands to gush out epinephrine--a natural way to emulate one of the effects of Adderall). Thanks for the support..! I can't express my utmost gratitude yet 'cause... I still have no idea how much it'll mean to me 1 year from now. 

[quit-once]

1 hour ago, in sterquiliniis invenitur said:

So while I'm technically wrestling, today, with a basic short-term problem (angry parents, disappointed teachers, dumbfounded by my sudden lack of drive), I'm also wrestling with the "archetypal spirit of long-term drug dependence" and that thing, man... it scales exponentially; if I hadn't decided to fight these mini-battles, who knows how quickly the problem would have increased in size tenfold... or a hundred-fold.

You got that right!  Just imagine spending a decade on adderall.  Your recovery period will likely be measured in months, not years.  Keep fighting these daily mini-battles!  

[in sterquiliniis invenitur]

Start of Day 9: Yesterday I got up about an hour late (7 AM), convulsed randomly on my bed in guilt to shake off the intrusive/anxiety-provoking thoughts, stepped into a cold shower (a very very long hot shower... before scrounging up the will to spend 5 minutes under ice-cold water), chugged a couple giant cups of black bitter coffee and got to school. I showed up 30 minutes early (I have a lot of "routine crutches", so screwing up one part doesn't destroy the whole routine), hid somewhere in the back of my campus and did some meditation... coupled with a Wim Hoff breathing exercise. That gave me about enough energy to hobble into my first period and get a (checking now) 80.5% score on the exam. 

After that I hobbled down to my next class which, because of its rigor and my general interest in its topics, was a rollicking time; we did a bunch of writing exercises and class discussions and it helped me lose track of time for a little while. 

But then third period (guitar) came along which is just the most atrocious group of people you can imagine. They're not malevolent or egocentric or destructive... just... the entire class seems clinically depressed, and unwilling to lift a single finger to change it. The teacher doesn't want to conduct the class; the students sit around asleep or on their phones; all I do in that class is try and do some "independent practice" for 2 minutes at a time... then look around me... quietly but irritatingly chuckle to myself in rage... and walk out of the classroom to walk around the campus for 10 minutes. I did this cycle like 3 times yesterday. 

At least I decide to withdraw from situations that are futile and despondent; and withdraw to do something mildly productive like walking... which restabilizes the breathing and helps me watch my thoughts come and go. 

In the next class I decided to spend 45 minutes in my journal writing a detailed analysis of everything I did wrong while taking Adderall for long stretches of time. In the sense that: this drug increases sympathetic nervous system arousal and the dopaminergic reward/punishment system. That means (as I see it) it increases the amount of positive emotion felt when you make progress toward some goal... but... it also increases the amount of negative emotion felt when any inconvenience obstructs you from a goal. That seems to be why this drug is so damn popular to take overnight; not just because it gives you untrammeled work time... but because you get to avoid the horrifying anxiety-ridden state that happens when you're doing homework in an ecstatic frenzy and then your dentist calls you and tells you that you have an appointment (this happened to me and--GOD--I do NOT recommend ever having to experience such a wretched 2 hours). 

Anyway, my point is: you dance along a very thin line when you're using this substance. And I can't say that Adderall is 100% pure evil... to a point where you can't learn anything from surfing that line. I decided to spend time figuring out... using 11+ months of "data"...: what were the most common mistakes I made while using Adderall... which limited or rectified my output of productive work?
 

1. Trying to "holistically integrate" my Adderall-fueled subpersonality into a normal life. 110% impossible. It's going to feel like hell. You guys ever read "Crime and Punishment"? I read that damn thing while on 50mg of Adderall and (shit!) the neurotic/impulsive feeling induced by the drug perfectly mirrored the plot. Anyway, point is: if you try to use Adderall for anything other than solo cognitively-demanding work, you're going to suffer incessantly... and it's going to feel almost like you've murdered somebody and you're just trying to put on a facade of a "calm sane person". Everywhere you go... to your family dinner, to your friends, to the grocery store, to the gym, to your fast-food job.... you'll feel like an otherworldly surge of stress gushing out of you every time you try to "act normal". ("Ha! Stupid parents! They don't know I'm a productive beast ripping through work at blazing speed. Oh, oh shit, wait, I don't want to be arrogant. Don't make me arrogant. I don't want to live. I want to die. I want to leave. Leave me, don't leave me. Are they catching on? No they're not, idiot! We're having some delicious... what is this meal? Pizza! Homemade pizza. It looks like this homemade pizza has... wow, what an assortment of delicious toppings! Oh God, what if I start showing signs of nausea while I start eating it? Shit! I'd better chew it really slowly.") My favorite recent memory was the one of being asked to take chips from a giant bag and put them into small bags at my fast-food job... for 2 hours on end. I developed a technique for unfolding those little bags, perfectly balancing them on the yellow containers in which they were placed to maximize the used surface area, determined the exact number of chips I could place with one handful into a small bag which would maximize the available surface area of the bag and provide the most satisfying customer experience... and when all of that was done, I started to conceptualize an implicit moral framework through which I could construe myself and my role as the "chips bagger" in relation to the sheer tremendous volume of people that I was going to indirectly help... by pretty much feeding them these chips. I realized I was going to indirectly help the lives of about 760 people through that 2 hours' effort.... and then proceeded to conceptualize miniature narratives of some of those people and how that bag of chips will permeate into their lives and help them sort out their personal problems (indirectly). And I did all that while absolutely terrified of myself. 
   
   I've gotten quite successful at concealing the "external signs" of this inner battle... but... you can't conceal anything from yourself. 
    
2. Having no tangible incentive for doing the homework I set out to do... while on Adderall. This is just the classic hyperfocus/hyperfixation problem on steroids. Even without Adderall, I can recall long stretches of time (especially on the weekends, often of 9+ hours) of untrammeled absorption in some creative activity that I did simply to have a rollicking time. And it wasn't just something "implicitly enjoyable" like video games; it was often very cognitively demanding work like writing advertisements or studying computer programming or learning to use a design tool like Adobe Illustrator. 
   
   Adderall does not quell this problem; if you are low in industriousness (basically the #1 predictor of an ADD diagnosis), that "gravitation" toward playful absorption in random tasks doesn't vaporize when you're on Adderall. In fact, since it increases the amount of dopamine gushing through your system, it just gives you obscene amounts of motivation to "hyperfixate" on stuff you're intrinsically passionate about. 
   
   You have to develop an environment full of failsafes to get you through an Adderall cycle; in the final days of my Adderall experience (9-15 days ago) I liked to do a Wim Hoff breathing exercise and, immediately afterward, open a journal and spend 15 minutes articulating to myself... why I NEED to get THIS work [and not all this OTHER work] done during my upcoming Adderall cycle. And it boosted my productive output by (probably) like 1,000% if you tried to quantify it. 
    
3. Developing a "Superman Complex" while using Adderall.  "I'm going to study for 3 upcoming assessments... and then I'm going to write these 2 large papers... and then I'm going to start working on this passion project that I've been throwing on the back burner for 4 years... and then I'm going to contact clients and establish a firm network of relationships with people who can get me going on this other passion project... and I know I probably won't have time for all of this so I'm going to go to the gym for 2 hours and I'll just 'feel my way around' all these ambitious goals before I determine which ones are the most viable to spend the next 8 hours on."
   
   My point is: it's very easy to, while on Adderall, mistake planning for work. You have so much motivational goop gushing out of you that just thinking about doing something produces a firework display in your prefrontal cortex so spectacular that you start to think you're doing the thing you're thinking about doing just by thinking about it. 
   
   Then 2 hours pass and you were just journaling out your plans about doing this cool thing. 
   
   And this problem tends to intersect with the problem of long-term abuse: "I'm going to use this little pill just today"... turns into "well I had a learning experience today; I realized that I'm a shitty goal-setter. I can think this through and fix myself up and do it again tomorrow"... turns into "That was a little better... but I want to have this access to a hidden undercurrent of alert focus every day for every project so that nobody sees me as an incompetent snob anymore. It's not like I can just jump off of this cloud after getting on it; it's not like I can integrate what I learned from this heightened state of awareness into my regular sober life; not yet... not now... not like this. I want to have a longer 'learning experience'. At least 7 days." And then "At least 1 month." And then "At least a year. A year is a valid window of time to be a competent citizen and diligent contributor to my family/company/friend circle/broader community right? All I want is a year within which all of that seems easy; I'll learn from it, I swear. I'll learn from it and then come back to reality and just enact what I learned."
   
   So anyway, if you're going to use Adderall, you have to put up failsafes that stop you from falling down any of these "pits of self-aggrandizing rationalization". The truth is that, if you actually use Adderall like a tool and not sit in front of the tool and put it on a pedestal and pray to it, you find out that the tool is its own monster that you have to tame and get under your control. And then after that, it inevitable leaves you and leaves a bunch of residue behind that you have to clean up... and you have to factor that cleanup into your "budget" of emotional resources. 

 

Anyway,  unfortunately I'm out of time to keep this hyper-focused rant going. I'm going to confront the coming day's responsibilities with as much vivacity as I can muster. 

Final note, though: After that school day yesterday, I went for a 2-hour walk, then walked randomly into an office supplies stores, bought $100 worth of fancy (useful formatting; intuitive design) notebooks and a really nice ($25) pen, and then I walked back home and (fueled only by a tall "cold brew" coffee) went for an 8.383 mile run. 

Movement (even simple physical movement like walking) will always beat wallowing in self-pity. No matter how hard it seems to get started, get started on something. It'll kill the subpersonality inside you that wants to sulk... and empower/reinforce the habits that'll sculpt you into a genuinely disciplined person. I'll cya guys. 

 

[sirod9]

OMG -  I could barely get out of bed on day 9, let alone do what you say you did in one day, then write about it in detail. Keep it up, because continued adderall abuse will just create further damage.

[Krae19]

I don’t think I could write something like that even on adderal so I say you are ahead of the game.

[in sterquiliniis invenitur]

I spiraled right back to Day 0. But it's not like I really lost anything; I took a detour and it can be part of the broader "success story". 

But yesterday before I took it I actually decided to journal about what the compulsion was coming from. 

But after doing so for a while, I think I figured out something pretty useful, and it's this: I think that what I've been trying to treat with ADD is a brain calibrated for obtaining success through an obsession. 

On the Big 5 Personality Model (which assesses personality pretty predictably; and it doesn't shift all that much, if at all, when using stimulant medications) I'm very high in openness, intellect, but like 3rd percentile (extremely low) on industriousness.... the dimension that determines your biological predisposition to "hard work". 

And that creates a conundrum for me where, like, I feel like I have a lot of "potential" to do anything I put my mind to but... I never really feel like doing anything besides goal-directed work which meets a very strict set of criteria. I mean, I love to exercise regardless of the context, but for any sort of "mental exertion", I always gravitate toward writing... mostly on deeply meaningful topics... and when I get that balance just right I could spend 12 hours a day on that. 

It envelops me in something like the brain circuit responsible for pretend play in young kids; I really feel like I'm playing something for the sake of the game (and not for the sake of an extrinsic result)... and that circuit can keep running in my head until I'm forced to stop and do something else. 

Which really sucks when I'm at school... 'cause it means I only want to do the things that meet these criteria, and everything else is like... has too few parameters to creatively manipulate for long stretches of time... so I'm stuck with a paradox wherein the lack of complexity is what repels me from the work. 

And as anyone with ADD would know, this repulsion is a discernible visceral sensation. It's horrifically real. That work, for all your "primordial brain" is concerned, is a predatory animal... and the only way to fight it (as it seems in the heat of the moment) is with Adderall (which buttresses the desire to fight).

Or... worse, if you don't decide to fight it when you're on Adderall, I think what happens is your dopamine system starts to generate a disproportionate boatload of consummatory reward. 

Consummatory reward is like the, "I got away from the predator! I can sit back and relax and calm down!" -- it's satiating. 

Whereas incentive reward is the, "I completed this [one part of the goal]! Now I'm motivated to go on to the next part." -- it's motivating. 

Either one (or both at different times) can be stimulated to a disproportionately high degree when you take Adderall, but...

I think the consummatory reward system gets overstimulated -- creating the "Adderall Zombie" effect -- if you decide to deviate from your main goal while you're on Adderall (especially in the first 3 hours).  'Cause for all your brain is concerned, that assignment is a predator you were fighting... and you somehow managed to get away from it. 

Anyway, my goal today is: let me describe it this way: Adderall withdrawal and ADD in and of itself is unmotivating. But a lack of motivation can either be "nobly" pushed through or, it can turn into cynicism, resent and dread. And I think that the reduction of fatigue/resistance to work... scales linearly as you start pushing forward... but if you turn the other way... the cynicism/resent/dread scales exponentially. 

Point is, if you slack off and brood in resent for 7 days after Adderall withdrawal, maybe the chemical basis of your fatigue/depression is gone... but you also built a dragon of resent/brooding into your brain which scaled exponentially in size/psychological control. So then, in retrospect, you look at the "uphill linear battle" of motivation and there's no way in hell you'll take it on. 

I've got to go. Goodluck to all of you guys. 

[in sterquiliniis invenitur]

Zap! Woah, it's been over a month since I last posted. 

And... Adderall really screws with your time-perception. I swear to god... Just pop a pill, enter that ecstatic daze of focused bliss, repeat 15 times... and whap! You "wake up" from your quasi-comatose daze and your room is stuffed with 3x5 flashcards (hundreds of them, everywhere)... and notebooks with pages and pages of rich, dense analysis... and the only problem is you put this elaborate labyrinth of knowledge together for nobody. Nobody but yourself... and an advantage in a couple classes that you really don't give a shit about (if you contextualize them in a bigger picture). 

That said... today's been a pretty decent "Day 1" of withdrawal. Got up at 6 AM and, until 12 PM, I did not stop walking, running or lifting weights. Constant light to moderate exercise, either at the gym or around my neighborhood or whatever. And whenever I took a break, it would be paired with deep, rapid breathing. Keeping the oxygen and blood circulating through the system is a viciously efficient defense against the usual depression/anger/"dissociative" suicidal contemplations and ramifications that start sputtering out of a million different memories/amygdala-activating associations. But that's just thanks to the fact that... I have a day off from school today. Let's see how far I get before... inevitably... I fall apart again.

[in sterquiliniis invenitur]

Took 10 milligrams at 3 PM (it's 9:30 PM now). It's not 40mg but... I'm still a tad bit disappointed. I'm typing this little message and it somehow feels disingenuous because I know that, once again, I'm cheating. Once again, there is some part of its "essence" which will now be compromised because the faculties I'm using to abstract and generate new words/concepts/ideas... has been hijacked by a drug that makes me just a little too interested in things that I would otherwise dismiss... thus obscuring whatever you might call authenticity and replacing it with... with frills. And thus, the truth is hidden inside of a mist of distortions... like one of those carnival mirror places. 

I recall late July/early August of 2022... when I went cold turkey off Adderall (and coffee) and stayed that way for 15 days(!); I decided to stick with the truth but only with the shallowest "logical support"... ideas that were intuitively true ("going through this will make me stronger")... but had no accompanying platform of stable, cohesive goals that would allow me to take the next step after the flood. 

And so... the flood came... and cleansed my weary, egomaniacal, neurotic, overwrought soul... and by the end of the most wretched physical pains, I was left with nothing but a silent brooding... a cancerous sickness of the spirit associated with the fact that: I still had no friends; I had no job; I had only 2 interesting classes... and that interest is inextricably chained to a monstrous workload. 

The complexity of the broader world walloped my stupid, lofty house of cards.

What's my point? I think it's this: the whole business of quitting can't be justified by anything like an "ideology", at least not for me. Here's a thought: periods like the Renaissance/Enlightenment were chock-full of scientists and artists whose careers were led by an "embodied" vision of the future. And to "feel" that ambition that they felt... all you have to do is look at some of the overwhelming beauty in the art or architecture from that era. 

I guess anybody's goals--to have a shot at success--have to possess that "transcendent" subtlety to them; it has to strike you as something so meaningful that... no matter how far you are from the long-term goal... you're awestruck and grateful and overwhelmed by the fact that you have the resources and life to pursue it. 

[SleepyStupid]

On 3/21/2023 at 12:38 AM, in sterquiliniis invenitur said:

What's my point? I think it's this: the whole business of quitting can't be justified by anything like an "ideology", at least not for me.

it's not so much an ideology as it is a belief that your life can and WILL be better when you're off the drugs. at the end of the day, if amphetamines didn't have side effects, or didn't stop working, why would anyone quit? you're here and on this journey for a reason - the addict is trying to make it seem like there has to be some grander or greater purpose than simply your life and health.

i remember struggling with this idea of "losing" the race if I stopped taking Adderall. what was the point of living if I was just going to fail? one of the most powerful pieces of advice given to me at that time was simply: "you don't have to win anything. its okay to just live." that got me through a lot of my early recovery, but long term recovery is about truly believing that there is a person on the other side that you would rather be than the addict. the secret is that it's true for everyone - you just need enough time away from the drug to realize it.

On 3/21/2023 at 12:38 AM, in sterquiliniis invenitur said:

has been hijacked by a drug that makes me just a little too interested in things that I would otherwise dismiss... thus obscuring whatever you might call authenticity and replacing it with... with frills.

I think the authenticity you speak of is a result of "just living". i think you should give it a serious shot (:

gl and keep us posted!

[Nicky_B]

I completely agree with Sleepy's assessment in that there is a person on the other side of Adderall that you will become that will make you proud and empowered.

"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change the change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."

Sometimes it's just accepting things in life and coming to peace on those things that are out of your control.

I am praying for you brother. Please hang in there and fight for yourself, since you are worth it!!!

Invenitur  --> You are such an amazing writer. I am thinking that your experience quitting Adderall would make an excellent book.

-Nicky Button

 

[Jon B]

7 hours ago, SleepyStupid said:

 you're here and on this journey for a reason - the addict is trying to make it seem like there has to be some grander or greater purpose than simply your life and health.

what was the point of living if I was just going to fail? one of the most powerful pieces of advice given to me at that time was simply: "you don't have to win anything. its okay to just live." that got me through a lot of my early recovery, but long term recovery is about truly believing that there is a person on the other side that you would rather be than the addict. the secret is that it's true for everyone - you just need enough time away from the drug to realize it.

These parts really stood out to me. I've been putting a lot of pressure on myself as I approach day 60. Thinking there is some amazing purpose for my life. Not saying there isn't but, . Why not just focus on  just being a normal sober human being and enjoy being alive? - Everything else from here will fall into place. 

[in sterquiliniis invenitur]

@Jon B @Nicky_B @SleepyStupid thanks for the recent comments and… for keeping a continuity to this thread so I don’t get discouraged/disintegrate instantly into a self loathing stupor. 
 

Unfortunately (and in some ways quite obviously), I fell right back into the cycle; I sent that last post on Monday, stayed in a withdrawn comatose daze on Tuesday, and took 40mg come Wednesday in a rebellious, cathartic compulsion to redeem myself of all my pathetic weak self-denigrating habits which not only kept me weak but also hurt my family in a roundabout second hand way. 
 

And so that’s what I did on Wednesday and it was ecstatic productive bliss… with a fair share of genuine challenges which can’t be dismissed as purely “bad”. I mean, it was a beautifully rich day of wrestling with all sorts of complicated ideas in my classwork/homework. 
 

From there I decided to taper down to 37.5mg; pathetic but the point is that I decided to pay attention to the prospect of stepping down. Attention is our greatest and most readily yielding ability; as long as we direct it properly, if we don’t deviate too far or too stupidly, it’ll inevitably thrust us into action when the right times come. 
 

So whatever. Thursday, 37.5 mg + a boatload of caffeine to render the net “productive bliss” higher than it was the day before. And today I took 30… and managed to weasel out that morally contemptible, pathetic, half-assed devilish feeling of brooding pride associated with an ‘A’ on a big exam. 
 

Plus… a heap of finished assignments; I mean, god, it’s overwhelming but I also can’t help but feel a veil distancing me from the appreciation of my efforts. 
 

Why? — Well, are you (I’m asking myself) are you satisfied with the fact that you weren’t able to pull anything back down to earth out of that cloud of ecstasy? — No. 

 

What could have made you proud? — If I had taken those meds inside of a context where the work had a life or death type of valence. 
 

So, you’re saying that: your proclivity to use Adderall is associated with the desire to engage in work which is bound to a goal framework that has adrenaline-rattling risk associated with it. 
 

Yeah, ultimately (even though that’s long winded) that’s about right. 
 

But if you wanted to simplify your desire into an axiom of sorts, what would that axiom be? — I want my miserable, boring, scrawny pathetic life to be less like a solitary cell and more like… a broad range of risk-taking activity which, well, it’s not “risk taking” in the adrenaline junkie sense… but in the sense of being expected and forced to push and break through the borders of your limitations… maximally.. so that you don’t have a split second of free time to be thinking “oh, I wish I could make my life more stimulating with Adderall”. 

A storm is on the horizon and… it’s gonna knock me off. These “ideas” are just ideas. I’m going to try to make it the next 2 days without this horrid devil in my system but… I have only a vague subset of hunches as to what I might do to stave off the proclivity to dramatically “surprise” the people in my family with erratic, horrifying and otherwise-disorienting behaviors  

What are they? — I guess I could (as I’ve done before) wake up and immediately plunge into a cold shower. Then, breathe intensely and deeply while sitting still for some x number of minutes, maybe 5-10. Then, go for a walk while some relatively interesting podcast anchors me into a “sane” topic of thinking… creating like a thin sheet of ice on top of the propensity to start brooding in cynicism. 
 

And from there, as long as I perpetually keep myself anchored into “conservative-type” environments (that is to say, for example, a desk where I have a set of clear, cohesively organized materials laid out; or a gym — even if all I’m doing is walking on a treadmill), then I can conceivably see myself being able to perform actions which are “sane” and, however slowly-evolving, lead to marked progress in relation to some goal. 
 

Even if all I do on that desk is battle that monstrous hedonic compulsion to fall asleep… if I can just keep my damn spine erect and keep breathing at a slightly deeper and faster pace than normal… I can probably at least manage a routine where I hand-copy, word for word, sentences in a textbook onto a notebook… for 10 minutes at a time… followed by a 2-minute break with eyes closed, doing a mindfulness type activity. 
 

I swear to god and perhaps on my mother’s life that… so long as there is still air on earth to breathe tomorrow… I’m going to follow this routine and enforce it with an iron fist. 

[in sterquiliniis invenitur]

Good-morning! I'm going to spam the living daylights out of this thread while I try to overcome these first couple days of withdrawal pains. I want to share something on here; it's a really naive, pathetic little "dialogue" I wrote up while suffering a light fever in early November 2022. This was after about 5 conscientious, "pedal-to-the-metal" days on a prescription 20mg Adderall dose. For all I cared, I was a generally "virtuous" person; note that I'm 17--which means (in part) that I haven't had much time to explore the idea of virtue... and the degree to which people can and do deviate from it appallingly with tremendous consequences. 

And so... being extremely naive (even moreso than now)... I saw the prospect of taking 40 miligrams as an outright sin... as something to view with nauseating contempt... because the compulsion for me to do so was terrifying to my brittle belief systems. So here's what I wrote (censored all uses of my name--for reasons I don't fully know)...

If I had those pills, I would studiously sit down and approach my unfinished work with a candor and diligence which would overcompensate for the brief hiccup in health consequences that it would cause.) 

But what then?

(Now, now, []! Don’t be so hasty! You’d like to see me act this out, wouldn’t you? It wouldn’t cost you much. I mean, it will cost you your conscience… but not your entire faculty of moral understanding. 

Come on! Do you really want to (it’s trying to deceive me here) do this [] assignment? The two or three [] assignments? The [] Assignment?… All with your limited mental faculties!? You have intellect but… you don’t have grace. You don’t have dynamism. You have the machinations of intellect but no lubricant to make the machine operate flawlessly… unerringly… with no delays or… Heaven forbid… self-consciousness!

Oh, Dear God, [], your self-consciousness! Isn’t it a sore! Doesn’t it terrify you! I don’t want to take it away… I just want to make it… work correctly. 

You know what I mean, []! You’ve explored these ideas yourself! You know that Western society carries on its shoulders this erroneous notion that everyone should be neurotically concerned with enslaving their individuality. To build a picket fence with electrical wiring around it… and to put the self on a pedestal right in the middle… and signs all around the fencing saying

[Full Name]! The Great Intellectual Hero 

(Claims he can Change the Fabric of Being! 
Discovered the Secrets of Spiritual Enlightenment (Learn all About It!) 
Listen To His Story! His Story of “how I sat in one spot for 7,500 hours over a period of 2 years!” (And... what he learned!)

Dear God, self-consciousness is only useful because it lets you ground yourself in reality. It helps you see yourself in the shoes of different roles—and to cooperate with other people who have roles that align with yours—so that you can work together to keep this world turning. 

But how have you used it, []?! How have we used it? — We’ve used it to torture ourselves out of Freedom—out of the Garden of Eden. We are fallen men. Our righteous place in the paradisal state has been taken from us—

)

But maybe the point isn’t to go back into those walls and to live like a clueless bunch of blind infants! 

(Do you really have the fucking time to establish such an erroneous argument, []?)

This isn’t just about the game I have to play tomorrow and on Friday. It’s about the game I will play for much of my life. 

(Oh, Dear God, Great Good God [], I’m not your enemy! I’m not trying to tell you to do this forever! Just do it to show yourself who you could become if you oriented yourself properly—and while you catch that fleeting short-term glimpse, maybe you can take care of the dozen things you’ve neglected.)

 

Etc., etc. Look, I hope you get the point. And the point is this: the problems I wrestled with (in my psyche) back then... are the exact same nascent, unresolved, partly-unconscious conflicts I'm wrestling in a chaotic loop. Ouroboros... the ancient symbol depicting a dragon eating its own tail. 

But... what else? Well, if I can fish out some sense... and reel myself into rationality... by recognizing the timeframe across which this problem stabbed me, burned me, drowned me, left me reborn in a hedonistic stasis, then re-tempted me into cowardly workaholicism... then maybe, (what?) then maybe I can tolerate myself a little more--because I can realize that I'm not actually a clueless infant washing up on a primordial shore when I wake up the first morning to withdrawal pains. 

Why is that useful? -- Because if I'm not an infant, I'm not limited to the reaction of wailing, kicking, sleeping, and blithe/slow exploratory behavior. (What do you mean by that last part? -- I mean, I'm not limited to waking up and standing up and just kinda "going through the motions" and "feeling my way" through the pains, only to regress into my other 3 infant-like states: falling asleep or starting to scream when the exploration [sensory stimulation through coffee, or long walks, or complaining in a long and pointless and guilt-inducing rant to a close friend] gets too tiring.)

Okay, so if you're not limited to "wailing, kicking, sleeping, and blithe/slow exploratory behavior"... what has the past conceivably taught you which you can use to make this withdrawal experience different in a positive (transformative) way? --  I can avoid hedonic money-spending (which I've done a LOT while withdrawing in the past)... which means I won't have to be confronted by angry people indirectly affected by that spending. (What else?) -- I can avoid slouching in a chair and ruminating on the past in a coma... as if to "pass the time" while simultaneously creating the grounds for severe and logarithmically worsening depression. (What else?) -- I can avoid walking for too long; strange as it seems, my habit of walking for like 4 hours a day while suffering withdrawal agonies (a) exhausts me, and (b) translates that exhaustion into an increased unwillingness to perform anything else, and (c) which is further reinforced by the guilt trip that happens when I start to ruminate on/rationalize this notion: "I spent the whole day walking and ruminating and brooding... so why should I come home for 2 hours to do homework only to feel the compulsive urge to just keep walking afterward?" (what do you mean? -- I mean: I have a tendency (possibly moreso than other people) to... only feel willing to do any given piece of work... if... my routine prior to that activity and after that activity... is filled with other responsibilities... so as to feel proud in an overarching sense of the work I had done. And... what's the downside of that? -- The downside is I hate weekends where I have 1 hour of homework surrounded by 23 hours of precosmogonic goop... chaos in its highest order resolution... walloping me with the agonies of having to exist without a game to play (that is, a piece of work to complete... whether it be working out or homework or a rote fast food job or even hanging out [through some meaningful medium, like a board game or a movie with challenging/nuanced moral themes] with my family). 

Okay, what else can you avoid? -- Well, I covered the whole spectrum. So, what can I add into the category of "positive things I've done while simultaneously suffering from withdrawal pains?"

Or, first of all, what is already in that category? -- Reformulate the question. Make the question worth answering as a standalone thing. 

What falls into the category of "positive things you've done while simultaneously suffering from withdrawal pains"? -- I've worked at my "rote" kitchen job. (Why was this "positive"? -- It was playful; it was repetitive but I did it with a childlike playfulness and a synergistic aspect to it which outsourced the problem of existential dread to a goal-directed frame that constrained the degree to which I had the time and the extra willingness to deviate from the fun and engagement offered by the job... to transfer energy into rumination.

What else? -- I watched a movie, but learned from it and paid attention to it and it wasn't a damn sitcom or something satiating. 

What else? -- I put in "genuine moral striving" at the gym--really revving up my capacity to push through fatigue in a very visceral way. 

What else? Or, perhaps, What is something positive (something with rewarding valence) that you did in relation to homework... which justified your withdrawal-related suffering...by proving to you that you were capable of doing challenging, stationary, cognitively-demanding work without Adderall...shortly after coming off it...while suffering those withdrawal pains?  -- Advertising. I wrote that ad (hand-copied it) and studied it (took some notes) for 4 hours. Why? Cause it was an intrinsically interesting thing to do. I don't know where the hell those notes are, 9 months later (or 7, whenever it was August...)... and they don't help me with anything in any direct way... but the memory of doing that on day 12 of withdrawal fills me with efficacy I guess. 

Even on day 1 of that withdrawal cycle, I went for like a 8 mile run, worked for 1.5 hours on studying info for some "mock sales letter" (for a portfolio-type thing)... and I even (in a daze of obsession) decided to go for another 4.5 mile run... and lift some weights for maybe 30 minutes... and in between, I spent time poring over sales/copywriting notes and... occasionally... doing some fiction reading for fun (but it was stimulating fun)... and I took naps a couple times but those naps didn't interfere with the overarching continuity of the industrious routine! 

What can I learn from that? -- That life starts with volition and attention. Or maybe attention is a precursor (or even inextricable partner) of volition... and the action that follows varies based on what kind of a load you're bearing (like the load of withdrawal) but... BUT... who gives a shit!?? As long as it's genuine moral striving, you are... bound to make progress. Stupid and miserable and weak and incapacitated as you are... you aren't dead. And Goddamnit... if you aren't dead you shouldn't succumb to those stimuli/compulsions to move towards it.. like dodging responsibility, sleeping extraneously, etc.

What do you mean? -- I mean, go do something... and as long as there is power in you to do it... look the damn monstrously-sized goal dead in the eyes and then scale it down to the smallest step forward you can take... and then take that... and then let the next goal present itself to you as a consequence of reaching the first one. But reach the first damn goal first! 

(Stop 8:43 AM)

[Nicky_B]

Ivenitur - I tried to taper and it didn't work for me because I always came up with excuses on why I needed another pill. I instead concentrated on one simple thought, "For the next 24 hours (or 2 hours or 30 minutes or 10 minutes) if I can resist taking adderall I am victorious even if all other parts of my life are falling apart, and the only thing I do is just simply exist - (but all other parts of my life got much better over time)".

I have kept this Zen like focus for over 2.5 years (up to today) and I will keep this focus for the rest of my life. Because I know as soon as I lose this focus and I take adderall that my life will quickly devolve into the mess that it was for years.

A friend (who is an alcoholic) of mine gave me a very valuable motto, which was "one is too many and 1000 is not enough"..

I am cheering for you friend!!!

-Nicky Button

[in sterquiliniis invenitur]

3 hours ago, Nicky_B said:

Ivenitur - I tried to taper and it didn't work for me because I always came up with excuses on why I needed another pill. I instead concentrated on one simple thought, "For the next 24 hours (or 2 hours or 30 minutes or 10 minutes) if I can resist taking adderall I am victorious even if all other parts of my life are falling apart, and the only thing I do is just simply exist - (but all other parts of my life got much better over time)".

I have kept this Zen like focus for over 2.5 years (up to today) and I will keep this focus for the rest of my life. Because I know as soon as I lose this focus and I take adderall that my life will quickly devolve into the mess that it was for years.

A friend (who is an alcoholic) of mine gave me a very valuable motto, which was "one is too many and 1000 is not enough"..

I am cheering for you friend!!!

-Nicky Button

Yeah that sounds incredibly useful. I guess you’re (in essence) trying to use a mental crutch which forces you to not even initiate that cycle of rationalization which accompanies ruminating/envisioning all the possible ways you might screw up/relapse in the future. And by not initiating it, you sorta play a game with the compulsion to do so; you catch the parasitic thought dead in its tracks and find a sneaky way to redirect your thinking. 

[in sterquiliniis invenitur]

Stupid computer. Stupid desk. Stupid blithe, distraction-less environment. You know, I really do feel this raging guilt pulsating through my veins if I spend even a split-second "procrastinating" in any traditional manner... so I know how to make a room look dull enough to be completely free of things to divert your attention to. And I don't open social media, ever, when I set out to complete something. I just keep myself locked in a fixed gaze on the task at hand... so that even if I don't accomplish shit I can tolerate my miserable self for knowing I tortured off all the extraneous compulsions to do anything but keep my attention in a locked, hyper-targeted gaze. Aim the arrow... the shot will come eventually. Just keep aiming with an incessant obsessiveness that burns off the deadwood that clouds your vision. 

Eventually, it'll become a little more fun and a little less like hell. And eventually, the cataract will break and shatter and out I will gain clear sight... clear sight of the world around me and of what I can do... of what's worth doing. 

Meaning (real meaning) is a biologically-orchestrated feeling and it's real in that sense; it's not to be found in a goddamn stationary, punctual, symmetrical, fluorescent-light-laden prison... it's to be found in the world out among people... out among exposure to reality, and a careful awareness and acceptance of that reality... not in digging your own grave to run from reality... to bury yourself in a delusion and close your eyes and scream. Or, worse yet, to think you're not worthy of screaming... of doing an activity that expresses your utmost discontent with the degree of lies you've been force-feeding yourself... to appear sane in a world of satiated, blithe, comatose people... I digress. 

It's counterproductive to scream cynically into oblivion. It's also counterproductive to hold the belief that I can't finish this stupid essay...; maybe biologically or "neurophysiologically" I just don't have the juice to fire up brain cells to operate rapidly at a level of abstraction high enough to cohesively interpolate thoughts about a boring, personally meaningless topic... but... God knows, maybe it's just because I'm in a room that expedites/keys up hunger, anger, loneliness and tiredness... the trio (or "quatro") that makes any cynical belief system buttressed/reinforced through proof of its reality (as suggested by the immediacy of your stupid, baseless pain). 

But I guess maybe what I'm trying to do by sitting here and letting these thoughts/physiological/psychological states brew is... I'm trying to desensitize myself to their influence... until all that's left is a realization of the intrinsic value of completing that assignment. That's what I did in 2020 and 2021... for 16 months... for 10 or 14 hours a day... and it got me Straight As! It also killed me... but it left the part that was capable of subjecting itself to quiet brooding misery until--layers and layer of numbing later--a still, unwavering core of awareness was found to be awake. 

You know, that reminds me of a lot of funny memories: I recall this one time (sometime in 2020, here in this very same miserable room, before I even touched Adderall)... when I... well, no I actually left this room and went outside and spent 5 or 6 hours daydreaming about being a completely different person. When I "snapped out" of it I got so sick of and embarrassed by my own behavior that I actually had the urge to vomit. It wasn't a pleasant daydream; what disgusted me about it is I tried to simulate a normal, challenge-infused life into a character conceptualized in a dreamscape... which I used as some sort of sick mechanism to escape reality. 

And yet I kept doing it! In my room, in my bed, in the big blank quiet office room with the giant chandelier and the enormous wooden desk with the nice grayish office chair with special cushioning... where I would curl up my body into a fetal ball, close my eyes, and seep into these daydreams until like 2 AM. Viktor... no Victor Frankenstein did that right? In the (towards the) very end of the novel, when he was chasing his creature right up to the North Pole... he tried to find a solemn reprieve from the misery of his obsessive frenzied pursuit... by daydreaming that his family was still alive... and sorta frollicking around in sceneries of aggrandized childish beauty. 

What was my point? I don't know, man. I just know it helps to think out all the vomit-thoughts before they take root in the "shadow" and start to grow into inexplicable emotional states of vicious, uncontrollable anger.