Regaining your confidence

[Cassie]

This question is for the long timers: How did you get your confidence back after Adderall? I've been sober a year and a half now, and I still have very little confidence in myself and my abilities. It's not a matter of "accomplish things and self-confidence will follow" because if that were the case I would have confidence. Instead, my confidence/self-esteem level isn't much different than it was say, a year ago. So, it's something deeper. This hang up is really bothering me because there is just something missing internally, something that was there before Adderall and hasn't yet returned. Can anyone relate?

[Greg]

Hey Cassie, I wanted to respond to this before but I hadn't fleshed out my thoughts. I still haven't and kind of want to get people's feedback too about the psychological part of the adderall addiction. Ok, the physical chemical addiction with the neurotransmitters in our brain and all that is an entirely separate beast and just as bad, worse and goes hand in hand with the paychological addiction but I'm just referring here to the psychological part of the addiction.

It seems to me adderall, concerta, vyvanese, ritalin artificially prop us up and makes us feel like we can tackle stuff and master stuff rather than avoid it..job, academic, our ability to make friends, self esteem, intelligence, the ability to clean the house, or workout with intensity, mental health, weight image ..whatever.. But there is an AWFUL consequence to this and what it is doing to our self concept..for one thing we begin to see those things as outside our control and in the control of our pills. when we don't have adderall we begin to more and more think we will fail, and when we succeed we think its because we took it.,and we start to lose sight of our own skills and our self esteem and our perception of ourselves. How many of us have said we didn't know who we are after we quit adderall???

We lost our perception of ourselves from this drug. Like for us addicts if we failed at something we would likely attribute it to failing because we had run out of adderall that day or something...but when someone who is not hooked on adderall, they will attribute it to the difficulty of the task. So it fucks up our self concept. When you tie it in with how it rewards our dopamine pathways, and makes us want to repeat certain behaviors again and again because it activates the pleasure centers in our brain...then it becomes even more fucked up to me. It's kind of like we were getting less and less competent, but we didn't realize it was making us less competent because the drug Was making us feel more competent. It's like a competence illusion.

It may make us feel invincible when we are on it, but in the bigger scheme of thing were 'evolving' into people who actually instead felt they had low abilities and so tasks and other stuff probably became harder than they would be for someone else. Personally, in the beginning of my quit I felt discouraged and wanted to give up before I even started things and not just stuff like applying for internships or school but social interactions,.everything. What I became very confidant in was the feeling I would fail. Basically what I'm trying to say is that it can screw up your self concept and part of the rebuilding process is regaining it and regaining a sense of who we are.

[Greg]

By the way. One way I am working to rebuild my confidence is i have the number 3.5 tacked up on my wall so i can see it everyday...haha It's funny, i was going to take a picture of it and post it on our boards. Only a recovering adderall addict would think to do something like that.

[Krax]

my lack of confidence manifests itself in procrastination. I find that I procrastinate not because of laziness, but because of lack of confidence that I will successfully complete the task at hand, so I tend to put it off hoping the confidence will come to me. That is my big struggle right now.

[Cassie]

Thanks for the replies. Today I finally had the courage to put in my notice at work! My last day is in a month. I have been afraid to quit a job I hate because it's easy and I can slack off. I have been nervous to get a new job and perform off Adderall. But I can't stand an easy job with no structure anymore. I want to be busier and more challenged. So, I'm making some progress here.

[Greg]

Thanks for the replies. Today I finally had the courage to put in my notice at work! My last day is in a month. I have been afraid to quit a job I hate because it's easy and I can slack off. I have been nervous to get a new job and perform off Adderall. But I can't stand an easy job with no structure anymore. I want to be busier and more challenged. So, I'm making some progress here.

Cassie, I think you made the right decision. Im glad you are finally leaving, You have been miserable for a long time there and finally you will be moving on. I would do research on all different kinds of careers and find one that looks interesting and go for it. I was watching a news piece on people who worked at Bon appetite magazine and basically every day they came in and sampled the most incredible tasting food and then styled the food so it looked incredible and then wrote stuff about the food. I couldn't believe they got paid to do that. They were getting paid to on a typical day, for example, find the hands down best tasting recipe for Mac and cheese, by tasting different ones. i think you should find something cool and try and break into that industry. Just my opinion. But there are tons of careers out there and now you can spend some time researching different things and find something that sparks an interest in you. But you will no longer be stuck in a job you can't stand.

[tessa0412]

Damn really hit home to me on the stuff u said inrecovery. I'm fighting all this madness of trying to deal with tasks and emotions while not on adds . I recently realized my triggers or one of them is emotions dealing with them. Because when I go through something emotionally I ushually use the next day or so * I lack confidence In myself like I can't handle it or I'm doing it wrong and mainly just fkin taking the damn pills . I don nessarily say "fuck this I'm weak give me a pill" I just ignore deny and use

Interesting on psychological stuff and dopamine ECt .

Helps me remember I'm. Not crazy and it's just my brain or my chemical brain dependency crap

[Zerokewl]

I can really relate. I used to be such a big deal in my former life. I was really competitive and adderall just through octane on the fire that drove me. I really struggle with what motivates me know, in the past I was motivated by greed, low-self esteem and ego.  I want to be more motivated by ego, positive self and greed now.  Been listening to Eminem's album Recovery thinking how hard it was to go back to the studio write new material and deal with a lot of criticism. 

[Motivation_Follows_Action]

Cassie, I think you made the right decision. Im glad you are finally leaving, You have been miserable for a long time there and finally you will be moving on. I would do research on all different kinds of careers and find one that looks interesting and go for it. I was watching a news piece on people who worked at Bon appetite magazine and basically every day they came in and sampled the most incredible tasting food and then styled the food so it looked incredible and then wrote stuff about the food. I couldn't believe they got paid to do that. They were getting paid to on a typical day, for example, find the hands down best tasting recipe for Mac and cheese, by tasting different ones. i think you should find something cool and try and break into that industry. Just my opinion. But there are tons of careers out there and now you can spend some time researching different things and find something that sparks an interest in you. But you will no longer be stuck in a job you can't stand.

Congrats, Cassie!  And you're so right, IR.  You know the adage:  do what you love and you will never work a day in your life.  

 

One thing that helped me during my job search was to think to myself, "would I do this job if I had to do it for free?".  That told me what my passion really was.  And whether I should persue it or not.