how to get past the guilt?

[adderallornothing]

i've been totally free of adderall for almost 16 months now and in terms of my physical health I'm doing great. but there's this nagging underlying depression that i'm feeling really severely right now.

i haven't been able to get rid of the guilt for everything stupid i did while addicted, for every person i let down, every time i was hours late or a no-show, every time i unintentionally slept through a job interview or a meeting for something that i really thought was important to me ... before the worst part of my addiction i was trying to find myself and what direction i wanted to go in life, in terms of job and career. at the beginning adderall really helped me open up lots of doors that i would normally be too shy to go for, and then when i was totally addicted i basically burned every single one of those bridges and opportunities by flaking out.

now that i'm clean, i feel totally lost again and have no idea who i am. when i think about things that i "think" i'm interested in, i feel a knot in my stomach because that interest is inevitably connected to some instance where i let myself down. it's really hard for me to be happy about something without immediately feeling ashamed for the way i behaved while addicted.

any advice on 1) how to separate/get past this guilt? and/or 2) how to figure out what you're interested in again aside from just searching the internet??

[Cassie]

I can relate to you very much. I have also been sober for 16 months and feel lost a lot of the time. I keep putting off quitting my job that I hate because I don't know how to begin looking for a new one. I mean, a job search is overwhelming when you don't even know what you're looking for. I have had a few different careers and none of them have held my interest for long. Whenever I ask friends or family what they think I should do with my life, the answer is always some variation of, "You're good at everything, so you can do whatever you want!" Uh, thanks, but that doesn't help on the decision-making front. It's hard when you don't feel drawn to anything in particular, and you love learning but aren't interested in mastery or being a specialist of some sort.

As for advice, I think the best thing you can do for both guilt and self disccovery is to learn to meditate, and do it every day. You can't change what happened in the past, but you can change how you relate to it, and that's where meditation helps. You can learn to dis-identify will some of those negative thoughts. For self-discovery, I think meditation helps with clarity, looking inward instead of out (i.e. Internet) to get in touch with yourself. The more we think about our interests or read self help books, the more confused we tend to get. Having said that, there is a 'diamond in the rough' book I read recently that I thought was interesting for self discovery purposes, called 'Who am I? The 16 Basic Desires that Motivate our Actions and Define our Personalities": http://www.amazon.co...ywords=who am i. It's by this psychologist who developed a test called the Reiss test to evaluate motivation. I found it way more helpful than the (overrated) Myers-Briggs personality test, because it goes deeper. You should check it out.

Cheers to 16 months!

[BeHereNow]

First of all, HI and congrats on 16 months-- that's amazing!

In terms of the guilt thing..... We adderallics tend to be really hard on ourselves. Especially after the fact. Its easy to look back and overanalyze and see only the bad, not the good, and get involved in self deprecating and/or anxious thoughts.

(I've done this a lot, both on and off adderall. Everyone in my life yells at me for being too hard on myself. )

So, here's what I'm working on, and the only thing that seems to help: Let it go. Just let it go. Those things in the past don't matter now. Those times you were late don't matter in the long run....and are actually pretty common. It's not like you were violent or anything, right? You just messed up some smaller things, and you were a different person back then. Everyone makes mistakes. Trial and error. Regret isn't productive unless it's a tool to create a better future. Apart from that its a waste of time.

[lea]

Good advice Cassie and Occaisional. I find his thread very relevant b/c I too am plagued by guilt about so many of the things I did - or didn't do - while addicted. Like showing up. I think this bothers me a lot more than my psyche would like to admit and for this reason I will start meditating TODAY. I'm almost 4 months clean and sure don't want to see guilt getting the best of me.

[ldmcniel]

I feel the same way. I turned into this emotionless zombie. I couldn't even interact with my own children. I would try and hide from everyone. I still struggle with guilt. The thing that gets me through is when my children and husband tell e how much they love me, even after I wasn't emotionally there for them for 2 years. Do you have any support group in your area? That might be a start.