starting the 19th day clean

[in sterquiliniis invenitur]

man oh man. How did i get to this point.?

 

Easy: I was caught in a crossfire of external forces (shortages and back orders and constant delays of those back orders) and so I was forced to stop.

 

A set of strangely well-sequenced positive events (starting college and buying my first car) has kept my general outlook high. I also somehow seem to be occupying myself with random social interactions and long periods of aimless walking each day. 

 

I also run--still about 7-miles "per day" but often (2-3x a week) much less. 

 

2 days ago as well as yesterday I experienced the hardest wave of inexplicable withdrawal symptoms: I was possessed completely by brain fog to a point where my memory of the fatigue and agony has now been strangely repressed or shrouded by sleep. Last night I ended up taking 600+mg of caffeine and then driving around some local cities with a friend until boredom and sporadic (as well as deeply unsatosfying) caffeine stimulation forced me to find a quiet space and spend 4-hours doing a couple of destructively boring (and almost insultingly simpleminded) homework. 

 

Nonetheless I managed to weasel my way to a striking F+ on a little online virtual quiz for one of my classes. I went to bed with a painfully shallow excitement about this fact. 

 

OK well, it looks to be the case that I'm heading downhill for a while. I will resume exercising and eating more or less properly, but I need to stop clinging to arbitrary idealistic notions about college and see it as the damn prison my withdrawal will make it into. That way theres no cognitive dissonance. 

 

Thank you to anyone who -- in the last 6 or 8 months -- sent me some sorta comment or encouragement. Even if i didnt reply I read everything and visited every link provided. 

[quit-once]

On 9/7/2023 at 7:01 AM, in sterquiliniis invenitur said:

I was caught in a crossfire of external forces (shortages and back orders and constant delays of those back orders) and so I was forced to stop.

Is this your long-term intention, to completely stop taking adderall?  Or, are you just riding out the shortage drama and hoping your next refill will happen sooner than later?

Why do you want to quit?

You are at a unique place in your life ...starting college sans amphetamines.   If you choose to use them again, especially to enhance your academic performance in college, quitting will be exponentially tougher.  Major life changes are some of the best opportunities to kick an addiction.  Things like new jobs, relationships, death of a loved one, surviving a serious illness, and starting college are all major changes that can begin new chapters in life's journey.  Don't blow this rare opportunity.

[in sterquiliniis invenitur]

On 9/8/2023 at 9:41 AM, quit-once said:

Is this your long-term intention, to completely stop taking adderall?  Or, are you just riding out the shortage drama and hoping your next refill will happen sooner than later?

Why do you want to quit?

You are at a unique place in your life ...starting college sans amphetamines.   If you choose to use them again, especially to enhance your academic performance in college, quitting will be exponentially tougher.  Major life changes are some of the best opportunities to kick an addiction.  Things like new jobs, relationships, death of a loved one, surviving a serious illness, and starting college are all major changes that can begin new chapters in life's journey.  Don't blow this rare opportunity.

Man, you should have seen me!! After I wrote this post on September 7th, I made it a few more days and I think the final score was "24 days". I then relapsed for 2 weeks and made it 22 days "sober" afterward. And then about... Jesus, it's been only a week ago... I "relapsed" again and here I am sitting here in my bed-room... on 30-milligrams... in a shallow "haze" of "satisfaction" which isn't really satisfaction at all. 

The most I used this past week was about... I dunno, it was multiple pills across a 40-hour time span (during which I did not sleep at all). In fact, for several hours as a form of a "break" I spent about 4 hours meditating but... it felt like it was maybe an incomparably long and short amount of time. "Timeless"-- a sort of altered state of consciousness where all I did was analyze myself, my perceptions, my past, my future, my present state of being. Then I snapped out of it and went right back to formulas and equations and whatever B.S. I was studying. 

God, I really am pathetic aren't I? Or, correction: I am FAR too self-critical. I would really say something... after a rant to some free therapist on campus or to some random person who studies the Bible and preaches it... something like "I really do hate myself" and I'd have tears forming in my eyes and... all they'd do is express a terribly unstoppable form of "sympathy" which does not have any rational or constructive feedback attached to it. The conversation would just end a few minutes later... as if some law of nature forces the other person to let me engage in my suffering alone. 

Why? God knows! Maybe it's because I really do need to suffer alone to learn from it. I mean look at the way my entire last... jeez, I guess the last year... has looked like: 

Adderall --> Productive and effective work --> Self-gratifying happiness associated with sight of the productive and effective work --> More Adderall --> More work --> Realize it ain't "effective" anymore but at least I'm doing a lot of things. I can just hide in things. --> Either a psychotic episode or a "nervous breakdown". 

And so it repeats... and the end of that "long story" has a little chain to connect the end to the next start and it's something like... two to four weeks of repentance, self-improvement, temperance, and on, and on. (DAMN IT! I got friggin' interrupted somewhere at this point and... my whole idea was... I'm enslaving myself in these withdrawal periods. I put myself into a self-enslaving pattern... of... deceiving myself  into... believing I'm some kind of a saint for my withdrawal commitment.)

I don't really know what to do. I am weak in character. I am a timid coward with no naturally occurring self-respect. I have the conscience of a slave whose every action is overseen by some tyrant... or maybe, the conscience of someone who's acutely aware of the pathology of the 1984 society yet... consciously commits to making tiny exercises of free will against it. 

And ironically enough, my "mini narrative" there--the abuse cycle and all the (damn-near "deterministic") cognitive and behavioral factors therein--ends the same way that story ended: I go from industrious... and intelligent... and competent... and rebellious in a secretive and constructive way... to emasculated, timid, lazy and... my only form of work is "some old nonsense somewhere". 

My intellect really is a virus! It can go on forever ranting like this and then becoming proud of its own ranting as if there's anything to it. But there isn't! There isn't a trophy I get for articulating my problems! I'm sick of people praising me for something I can't control! I'm sick of being praised when... free from Adderall and withdrawing... or even having "recovered" from the physiological symptoms... I get "praise" for something I did which was not really all that effortful but rather just a manifestation of my intellect at the right place at the right time. 

Who am I? Am I doomed to this deterministic pattern? Is every word I am putting on here tonight a "procedural vomiting"--part of the same cycle I have been and will be in forever? 

Well, I don't think so. Or rather, I think that... after you exhaust your reserve of "effective effort" for a given day... you regress into "procedural" action--the kind that's simple for you (whatever that might be for any given person). "The night cometh when no man can work" -- is... a natural law with few outliers. I am not a "super-human". I do not need to prove myself to anyone -- including "to myself" -- by instantiating a form of slavery unto myself. 

I think... and this really is something I started to think about when I was withdrawing in late-August-early-September and still think about often... that I have to... start thinking about things through the lens of Christianity. Even though the bedrock "rules" for being Christian are these easy-to-state, easy-to-disbelieve claims... the entire rest of it is so madly effective at problem-solving and self-improvement and... so on... that I can't help but crave to, every day, find a form of rest in an intense pursuit of those ideas. 

It's different from the "punching bag" rest of rabid ranting. It's different from the... "rest" of an unconscious state of "procedural, Adderall-fueled" studying. And if anything... 

Whatever. It is time for me to do a little bit of prayer, I think, because... there are just too many distractions pulling me away from taking this seriously.