in sterquiliniis invenitur Posted January 27 Report Share Posted January 27 This is such a pathetic, miserable, self-sabotaging path I'm on. I've poured my entire being out in front of various different Christian "disciples" about this over the last 8 months, only to run away from them in a sort of vengeful fear. I turn back to adderall for about a week every month. Then withdraw. Then repent. Then suffer. Then face temptation and give in. The relapses get more and more beautiful each month.. I find godforsaken isolated liminal spaces miles and miles away from home to hide in while I scribble away ideas on note cards and note books. I mark them and make inter-associations and drown in intellectual excitement. Then I crash. And burn. And emerge as an inferior, defeated fool. Where am I? Why am I forgiven each time? Why do I lose all memory of my accomplishments after each rabid session? Why do I throw away all those dozens of pages of notes out of a sort of shame? It's gonna take divine intervention to get me out of here. I'm trapped in the middle class. Comfort kills the soul and Adderall adequarely challenges me enough to help me delude myself into thinking I'm not trapped in this middle class purgatory. Lord, Hear me. All of you guys, please hear me. Help me. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
quit-once Posted January 27 Report Share Posted January 27 "God helps them who help themselves" -a quote from somewhere in the bible. It really is up to you to take the first big step. Tell your doctor you cannot responsibly use stimulants and tell them how bad you abuse it. Every time. Do you have the balls to do that? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
in sterquiliniis invenitur Posted January 27 Author Report Share Posted January 27 14 minutes ago, quit-once said: "God helps them who help themselves" -a quote from somewhere in the bible. It really is up to you to take the first big step. Tell your doctor you cannot responsibly use stimulants and tell them how bad you abuse it. Every time. Do you have the balls to do that? Yeah, that is the only feasible next step. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
quit-once Posted January 27 Report Share Posted January 27 3 minutes ago, in sterquiliniis invenitur said: Yeah, that is the only feasible next step. Even that might not be enough. Depending on how determined you are to continue your pursuit of this addiction, future steps could include finding a drug dealer to purchase pills from or turning to a harsher and stronger stimulant - like METH. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
in sterquiliniis invenitur Posted January 27 Author Report Share Posted January 27 27 minutes ago, quit-once said: Even that might not be enough. Depending on how determined you are to continue your pursuit of this addiction, future steps could include finding a drug dealer to purchase pills from or turning to a harsher and stronger stimulant - like METH. Oh yea, I've already started trying to find a dealer like that. It's extremely inefficient though. Again, I live in a suburban city and suburbs are the absolute worst, most dry, most hyper-comfortable hell-holes that the American collective consciousness has come up with. It is impossible to find Adderall here because nobody even dares to raise their eyes above the mundane and try to conceive of an ideal self. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LILTEX41 Posted February 7 Report Share Posted February 7 Hi S.I., I have been away from this site for a long time, and I hope my story might be of help to you. I have battled this addiction on and off since 2005. I got off adderall for good on November 12th, 2010, and my life was extraordinary after escaping this drug. However, my demon tricked me back in May 2021 and contemplated a loop hole to go back to it by begging my doctor to put me on Concerta instead since I didn't abuse it when I initially took it for 6 months prior to switching to adderall. Long story short, I got a prescription and the same story repeated itself. I blew my new career out of the water. I received a promotion, was the star in our Sales Kickoff event in Las Vegas of Feb 2023, but then I took so many concerta that week and never slept due to stress of a million different things and fell into a drug induced psychosis which landed me in a psych ward. I drank on my job and completely destroyed my new career which I had worked so hard to achieve and they fired me. It is now a year later and I am just now getting back on my feet. I have a low minimum wage job and I am lucky to have it. Do not let this drug destroy your life the way it has done to be 3 times now. It will destroy you at some point sooner or later if your addiction is anything like mine. As far as how to escape this since you asked for help. Start using affirmations that describe what you want to move towards rather than the cycle you keep repeating. You are banging on the drum of self defeat. Instead of repeating this self sabotaging language and calling in your epic downfall, repeat the words to yourself, "I am free. I am clean. I love being free of this habit and taking my life back. I have so much energy without it. I am healthy. I can achieve anything I set my mind to. I am unstoppable. I am already free. It's already done. I am so excited about my future and everything I have to look forward to by breaking this addiction, etc." Keep repeating language like this to yourself and stay positive towards your freedom from the adderall slavery you've been accustomed to for all this time. You can do this. You will do this. Godspeed my friend, LilTex 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LILTEX41 Posted February 8 Report Share Posted February 8 I felt great the moment I started exercising. When I first quit, I lived in The Woodlands, TX. I used to ride my bike out on the trails in nature all over the beautiful city. I would run, bike, swim, do yoga, and lift weights. I joined a bunch of fitness groups. I felt the positive energy of the other people in the group consume me. We would train outside in nature and had a blast in the comradery of doing physical activity that was challenging together. It gave me a boost of energy and runners high. This is what saves me every time I've gotten clean and sober. I signed up for an Ironman and the challenge of the race took my mind off the addiction. It was something so big and incredibly exhilarating to look forward to I became JOYFUL with anticipation of the challenge ahead. All the exercise seemed to reverse my addiction quickly. Along with physical activity and nature my other favorite way to heal and get excited about the future is the creation of vision boards. Here is the one I just made this morning and my return to my nonprofit I created a few years back right before I relapsed called, Zero Proof Inc. My original goal was to create a recovery program as an alternative to AA as I was a Smart Recovery member, but there was not a place to connect with my fellow people in recovery. I wanted to build an empire where we could all come together and rebuild our lives doing amazingly fun things and take up hobbies as Smart Recovery taught me as the basic underlying way to rebuild your life. We have to create a life which we will enjoy and get excited about so that is what I am here to do now. Maybe you want to help me launch a chapter in your area? It is my dream to end the slavery of the stigma to addiction. For all of us who have been discriminated against due to our substance abuse disorder I hope to change the world view and give hope to those suffering that they can come out to the world and no longer need to hide it. This is where we've been, and I am doing my best to get well and help others along the way. I do not have to hide it in the dark anymore because the world no longer discriminates against me for my disability. Hope this helps brighten your day! And remember this.... you have been clean for 18 months!! You've already WON! Now go find some things to do that make you enjoy life and look forward to your future! And if you can help some others get well in the process then you will spread good vibes, karma, and positive energy into the universe as they will help others as well. All love given returns. Have a fabulous day and be happy! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LILTEX41 Posted February 8 Report Share Posted February 8 P.s. How funny is this?! I just clicked on Facebook and saw a post that today is... Happy National Girls and Women in Sports Day The Universe answers that fast! (oops, guess it was yesterday... but still exactly on time!) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
in sterquiliniis invenitur Posted February 10 Author Report Share Posted February 10 On 2/7/2024 at 11:08 AM, LILTEX41 said: Hi S.I., I have been away from this site for a long time, and I hope my story might be of help to you. I have battled this addiction on and off since 2005. I got off adderall for good on November 12th, 2010, and my life was extraordinary after escaping this drug. However, my demon tricked me back in May 2021 and contemplated a loop hole to go back to it by begging my doctor to put me on Concerta instead since I didn't abuse it when I initially took it for 6 months prior to switching to adderall. Long story short, I got a prescription and the same story repeated itself. I blew my new career out of the water. I received a promotion, was the star in our Sales Kickoff event in Las Vegas of Feb 2023, but then I took so many concerta that week and never slept due to stress of a million different things and fell into a drug induced psychosis which landed me in a psych ward. I drank on my job and completely destroyed my new career which I had worked so hard to achieve and they fired me. It is now a year later and I am just now getting back on my feet. I have a low minimum wage job and I am lucky to have it. Do not let this drug destroy your life the way it has done to be 3 times now. It will destroy you at some point sooner or later if your addiction is anything like mine. As far as how to escape this since you asked for help. Start using affirmations that describe what you want to move towards rather than the cycle you keep repeating. You are banging on the drum of self defeat. Instead of repeating this self sabotaging language and calling in your epic downfall, repeat the words to yourself, "I am free. I am clean. I love being free of this habit and taking my life back. I have so much energy without it. I am healthy. I can achieve anything I set my mind to. I am unstoppable. I am already free. It's already done. I am so excited about my future and everything I have to look forward to by breaking this addiction, etc." Keep repeating language like this to yourself and stay positive towards your freedom from the adderall slavery you've been accustomed to for all this time. You can do this. You will do this. Godspeed my friend, LilTex Hey thanks for that detailed reply. This forum really deserves more people like you. It's been dead for the entire year (or year and a half) that I kept coming back to it with my morbid rants about my self-loathing condition. (Except.. the few people who, amazingly, seemed to offer valuable nuggets of sanity to dilute my insanity and help me move forward). Anyway, my addiction does not have the "catalysts" your had. Your environment involved a job where the amount of work you're "allowed to" do is very high. I just work in a kitchen and go to college and the rigor level of my courses is laughably low. I have a very isolated and limited social life.. out of a sort of subconscious cynicism. I distract myself with a lot of physical exercise (which I maintain regardless of whether I have the drug or not) and with these "creative frenzies" I have with the drug where I stumble through my meaningless coursework but I do that extremely well. Look, this might sound amusing to more hard core addicts but my idea of an addictive dose is 40-50mg. Maybe a few times I took 90 XR's over the course of 20-hours to maintain a steady "haze of attentive awareness". It's sick. And yet even right now I'm on a relatively low 32-35mg and all it's doing is keeping me mildly more energized and alert and critically-thinking while in my (kitchen) workplace, so I can enjoy a vivid review of concepts from class while doing rote-procedural stuff with my hands. I'm trying to say that: the line between insane frenzied abuse and sane efficiency is blurry. I'm all alone in the world 60 or 70% of the week and just the fact of that isolation makes even 10mg have a profoundly horrid effect on me. I start deep breathing and critically imagining BS in my head relating to what I'm studying and take frenzied notes but it's all in a vacuum. And then, when I'm not on the drug the withdrawal isn't bad! I sweat it out in exercise on Day 1 and maybe have some bit of lethargy till Day 5. What's terrifying is that I'm often subject to a horrifying devil that pops out of my own psyche with a bunch of irrational, emotion-laden ideas about why I'm useless, and why I'm doomed to be useless because I'm trapped in the comfortable middle class. It's OK though. I am hyper-involved in affirmations and I only use this negative language as a sort of "give the devil his due" type of exercise. I approach Satan with all the well-learned politesse I've accrued from my mad suffering. My lunch break is over. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LILTEX41 Posted February 10 Report Share Posted February 10 Hi, thanks for the feedback. Sorry to hear it's been dead around the forum. Hope it picks up again soon. Don't get me wrong. I had plenty of days where I only took another 10 mgs or just barely went over the prescribed amount. There were days I'd take more if it was a hard day at work or I had a lot of things to do. It comes and goes depending on whatever was in front of me. What I heard you say in one post is that you were desperate for help to quit, but then in this rant you seem to be rationalizing it that it's not so bad because the withdrawal is only 1 day. To me, you sound like you are stuck in the cycle and I appreciate your honesty in coming to the forum to try and figure it out. It was the most insanely difficult habit for me to break and the only times I stayed off were the times I took too many and went into a psychosis. I wish I had a better solution for you or words of wisdom to help you break free without it taking some sort of rock bottoming out. Unfortunately, that is not my experience. However, I can share with you a quote I love in hopes it may be helpful. “You will only hit rock bottom when you stop digging.” — Unknown 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
in sterquiliniis invenitur Posted February 20 Author Report Share Posted February 20 On 2/10/2024 at 1:32 PM, LILTEX41 said: Hi, thanks for the feedback. Sorry to hear it's been dead around the forum. Hope it picks up again soon. Don't get me wrong. I had plenty of days where I only took another 10 mgs or just barely went over the prescribed amount. There were days I'd take more if it was a hard day at work or I had a lot of things to do. It comes and goes depending on whatever was in front of me. What I heard you say in one post is that you were desperate for help to quit, but then in this rant you seem to be rationalizing it that it's not so bad because the withdrawal is only 1 day. To me, you sound like you are stuck in the cycle and I appreciate your honesty in coming to the forum to try and figure it out. It was the most insanely difficult habit for me to break and the only times I stayed off were the times I took too many and went into a psychosis. I wish I had a better solution for you or words of wisdom to help you break free without it taking some sort of rock bottoming out. Unfortunately, that is not my experience. However, I can share with you a quote I love in hopes it may be helpful. “You will only hit rock bottom when you stop digging.” — Unknown Good morning. I'm now 4-days sober again and I have to admit: it is awfully easy to suffer the physical aspects of withdrawal. I don't think I even had any past maybe the first day when I had some general fatigue and irritability. It's the brain that becomes the major share-holder of rationalizations, chemicals and other such tools to entice me to abuse my next month's prescription. And it's coming.. like clockwork, in 3-weeks or so I'm going to start getting occupied by thoughts of getting a refill and getting entangled with the drug. I respect your effort and getting on here to reply to my rambling and my blind stumbling. I'm a chaotic mess and somehow, I'm figuring things out as I go. I complain a lot and complain about the wrong things--my middle-class privege, my lack of general interest in the classes I take, lack of a meaningful social circle and so on. I've trapped myself in an airtight vacuum of complaining that can cycle perpetually--especially in a progressive utopia like California, utterly dissociated from any deep and abiding systems of belief and integrated narrative. (But that too, is cynical.) I have to stand outside myself and start observing my thoughts and trying to consciously denote cynical ones. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
in sterquiliniis invenitur Posted February 25 Author Report Share Posted February 25 I'm now a whopping 9-days "sober" from Adderall. Have I taken any steps to diverge from the usual withdrawal narrative? Kind of. I'm, at the very least, always chaining myself to very conservative routines and habits like exercise or school or the kitchen where I work.. even attending some social events. Again, I don't even think I'm experiencing any sorta physical withdrawal symptoms at all that are different from the general symptoms of adhd. We'll see. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LILTEX41 Posted February 25 Report Share Posted February 25 Congrats!! So happy to hear this! 9 days is a game changer! Just don't give up! I have to share my exciting news. I just got back from Arizona this afternoon. I won 1st place Female Masters Division at the Saguaro Half Marathon. This was the hardest half marathon I've ever done as it was 7 miles on the road (uphill in the mountains) and then 6 miles in the Saguaro Desert. It was insane! I wiped out 3 times on the rocks and managed to roll right out of it back on my feet. This took place 1 day after my 1 year anniversary of quitting Concerta. It was the best reward for staying clean I could've ever dreamed of. Good things happen when you're clean & "sober"... at least for me they do! Hope this brings you fuel for today to keep going. Cheers! 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nlz104 Posted February 28 Report Share Posted February 28 Well I'll be back starting tomorrow made it almost 8 months. It's crazy to me how it fucks with my confidence, self esteem, my everything. I lose all strength and wallow in shame. Ppl don't understand wat it does to some ppl, it rips all my hard work out from under me and crushes my mind with negative thoughts and suspicious feelings, things that aren't me. My eyes dried out, mouth clenched, chest heavy, dint want to eat or drink, socially isolated, obsessing over things thatd usually never bother me. I can do this 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LILTEX41 Posted February 28 Report Share Posted February 28 4 hours ago, nlz104 said: Well I'll be back starting tomorrow made it almost 8 months. It's crazy to me how it fucks with my confidence, self esteem, my everything. I lose all strength and wallow in shame. Ppl don't understand wat it does to some ppl, it rips all my hard work out from under me and crushes my mind with negative thoughts and suspicious feelings, things that aren't me. My eyes dried out, mouth clenched, chest heavy, dint want to eat or drink, socially isolated, obsessing over things thatd usually never bother me. I can do this You CAN DO THIS! Don't give up!!! 8 months is amazing! Just get back on the horse and keep going! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LILTEX41 Posted February 28 Report Share Posted February 28 Updated Vision Board - I Have a Dream Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nlz104 Posted February 28 Report Share Posted February 28 Day one, 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nlz104 Posted February 29 Report Share Posted February 29 Day 1 over, fatigue hasn't reached me yet but the tears have been flooding all day, had stressful news today which didn't help but maybe I'm being tested. I relapsed on this prescription after 10months but have been clean from alcohol almost 3 years and haven't touched opiates in probably 8-9years. This doesn't throw away all of my growth but it does show thst I need to have a stronger foundation. Prayers plz 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LILTEX41 Posted February 29 Report Share Posted February 29 Sending prayers your way! I love that you mentioned it doesn't throw away all of your growth. Think of the slip like a flat tire. You are back on the highway now and right back on track. Keep going! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hopefulily Posted March 2 Report Share Posted March 2 On 2/25/2024 at 5:57 PM, LILTEX41 said: Congrats!! So happy to hear this! 9 days is a game changer! Just don't give up! I have to share my exciting news. I just got back from Arizona this afternoon. I won 1st place Female Masters Division at the Saguaro Half Marathon. This was the hardest half marathon I've ever done as it was 7 miles on the road (uphill in the mountains) and then 6 miles in the Saguaro Desert. It was insane! I wiped out 3 times on the rocks and managed to roll right out of it back on my feet. This took place 1 day after my 1 year anniversary of quitting Concerta. It was the best reward for staying clean I could've ever dreamed of. Good things happen when you're clean & "sober"... at least for me they do! Hope this brings you fuel for today to keep going. Cheers! Beyond impressed!!! You should be so proud!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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