Wife and Adderal

[JohnIreland]

Hi everyone. I’m new here.  I stumbled across this forum when searching for answers online about my wife’s issues with Adderal. Our marriage is practically over in my mind but we have 3 young kids together so I am really desperate to find answers. 

My wife has suffered with anxiety and depression for many years. When we met, she was on clonzepam for panic attack’s. Over the years, her psychiatrist has added more and more meds and now she is up to 5, including Adderal.  As many of you can probably attest, I now refer to Adderal as “the devil”.

My wife isn’t even a functioning adult at this point. She is a stay at home mom to our 3 kids, but she can’t even get out of the bed in the morning. I have to handle pretty much all of the household chores along with working a full time job. My 3 and 5 year old aren’t in school. They typically are not supervised while I’m at work and play together in my wife’s bedroom while she is comatose in bed.  My wife is always “so sick”. She makes up emergencies all day long to try to get me to come home from work. She tells me the kids are vomiting, they have fevers, anything. I always show up at home and find everything to be fine, except my wife is passed out in bed.

When she does get out of bed, she takes her meds and runs through the house stripping all of the beds and throwing the sheets in the basement. She washes all of the sheets and blankets in the house in HOT water every single day. She washes all of the laundry in hot water because she says the clothes and sheets are infected with germs. Our clothes are all faded and ruined. She always has made up ailments, skin rashes, etc. She picks at the skin on her face and arms until she is bleeding from the sores.

My wife is always sick. She always has a migraine or the flu. I don’t think she’s gone a single day in the past year without being “SOOOO SICK”.  She is 33 years old and takes ibuprophen 4 times per day.

She also has this strange behavior where she throws everything in the garbage, no matter what it is. She has thrown away checks, gift cards, etc. I recently applied for a new passport and it never showed up. I called the passport office and they said it had been delivered the week prior. I knew she had likely thrown it away. I dug through the garbage and found it. She had taken the stack of mail out of the mailbox and thrown it directly into the garbage. The mail hadn’t even been unwrapped from the ads. A few days later and threw away a birthday card from my mom that had a gift card inside. Often I’ll find that small appliances are gone. I’ve lost so many crock pots, etc. She just tosses everything in the garbage in a blind “cleaning” rage. 

She also has crazy impulses with online shopping in the middle of the night. She will spend hundreds online in a single night. I finally added it all up and she had spent $10,000 on Amazon in 6 months. This completely depleated our savings and we were broke. I started falling behind on the mortgage and had to borrow money from my mom (Borrowing money from my mom when I make $130k per year). Finally I had to separate her from my finances to protect my home and my family. I transfer money to her account when she tells me she needs it. However, this has led to her making up reasons why she needs money almost everyday. She gets angry and blocks my phone number if I question her. She has turned into a complete compulsive liar.

Over the summer, I would wake up in the middle of the night and she would be gone. She would be gone until 3, 4, or 5 AM. This happened several times per week. I eventually got a call from her sister telling me that some guy in our subdivision contacted her on Facebook. He had been having sex with my wife but he was tired of her showing up at his house in the middle of the night banging on his door. He also told her sister that my wife told him that I beat her up and abuse her, etc. He reached out because she was coming to his house incoherent and he didn’t want her showing up anymore.  He said he was going to call the police on her. 

I kept this info to myself for a few weeks but it was really eating at me. After I confronted her, she admitted it and basically turned it around somehow to say it was my fault because I was so mean to her. She wasn’t even sorry!!

The pharmacy allows her to fill her 30 day Adderal supply after 27 days and she never ever makes her supply last. She’s always angry at the pharmacy calling them idiots and saying they can’t count the days correctly. Each month, she goes through about 3 or 4 days of withdrawal. The first day she doesn’t get out of bed at all.  She will spend 20 hours in bed. Day 2 is the worst. She will sleep most of the day but wake up angry and yelling. She will then start sobbing, morning, and saying she wants to die. Day 3 is like day 2 but a bit milder. On the day the prescription can be filled, I have to run out to the pharmacy first thing in the morning to get it.

My wife is a complete hermit. She won’t go out in public and only showers about twice a week. She is a beautiful woman and completely turns heads when she is dressed nicely.  However most of the time she looks like she’s homeless. 

This new pickup and delivery thing they do at stores has completely sent her into a tailspin. She won’t go into a store to get necessities. She orders it online for pickup and sits in the car waiting for it to be ready. We have needed urgent items for my son’s school day and she will leave the house to go to the store and sit in the parking lot and not be able to bring herself to walk inside.

Her birthday was last Saturday so I took the kids out early in the morning to buy flowers, cake, balloons, etc. It just so happens my birthday was Sunday and she slept all day. My kids wanted to go buy presents for me but she wouldn’t go. My mom called me and talked to the kids about singing me happy birthday. It never happened. No cake, nothing. I’m not typically someone who worries too badly about something like birthday gifts but it’s just another indicator of how she treats me. 

Her family knows about these meds and they know she needs help.  Occasionally they are in my corner but then she will tell them stories about how awful I am and turn them on me.  Her mom won’t even come to the house anymore if I’m there.  Of course they bury their heads in the sand when it comes to helping their own daughter.  They’ve pretty much washed their hands of it  

I really don’t know what I can do besides go scorched earth on her: call and talk to her psychiatrist about what she’s doing, call the police the next time she threatens to kill her self. If it weren’t for my kids, I likely wouldn’t still be here with her. That may sound cruel but the woman I fell in love with has been gone for a long time. I’m trying to make it through the holidays and then will probably hire a lawyer in January. My main concern is the kids at this point. 

Thanks and I would appreciate your input. 

[DrewK15]

Hi John and welcome. It doesn’t sound like the cocktail of psychiatric medications your wife is on are working very well. The only thing that will lead to any healing is your wife admitting she has a problem. She needs to know her life is completely unmanageable and be willing to do something about it. It takes different consequences for different people to get to that point. Divorce, arrests, unemployment, etc.. You can’t enable her to live this way anymore, it sounds like you know that.

 

If you haven’t already I’d lay out all of your concerns and what you plan to do. There are options for seeking help when she is ready. I think a new psychiatrist would make sense. Maybe rehab. I’m sorry you are going through this, I hope things get better for you on the other side. 

[nic123]

Sorry to hear about what is going on with your wife. It sounds pretty bad. Sounds like the mixture of everything is not agreeing with her. I agree that Adderall is the devil drug. I watched this drug completely change my STBX husband; almost a compete 180. This drug robs them of who they are, and turns them into something almost unrecognizable. I hope finding this site will give you some answers into your wife's behavior. Reading everyone's stories here has helped me realized what this drug does to a person. I unfortunately found this site too late, but this site has really helped me in the healing process and understanding. Everyones stories are so similar. From what I read, at first everything is great and this drug is a life saver, but then it becomes, in a way, a life taker. It takes who they are. You had mentioned talking to her doctor, I think you really should. And if she mentions hurting herself again, you should call the police, I wished I did. Gather what ever you need to prove she has an issue, this way you can support your claim ( so know one thinks your crazy ) and she can't talk her way out of it. She may hate you for doing it until she is gets sober, but you maybe saving her life and your marriage and your children. 

[quit-once]

Wow.  that's really fucked up.  Perhaps her problems are deeper than just adderall?  I wish you the best.  

[Lachesis Atropos]

In my case, my wife's adderall abuse had an opposite affect, she ended up in the bed of at least 4 other men, two of which were married. You should consider another doctor, one that does not promote a poly-pharmacy of medications. In my case, the woman I married was permanently changed psychologically, not even her own family recognizes her or tolerates her. Unfortunately, there is no recourse for either of us. 

[Angry husband]

Very sorry to hear your situation. I'm curious how this turned out for you. I have lost the man I love and he is still telling me Adderall isn't the problem, i am. We've been together 13 years. I miss him so much. We've been separated now for a month. Any hope?

[NurseAddy]

My fiancé is one of the main pushes that finally made me want to quit. Sadly, while I was on Adderall, I knew I loved him, but I wanted nothing to do with him or anyone else for that matter. In the earlier stages when I wasn’t blowing through 150mg daily, it actually enhanced our sex life. Then as we all do, I upped and upped and upped the dose until I didn’t have an ounce of feeling and didn’t give two shits about it. My libido went with it and I’m still searching and hoping it returns.
 

It’s hard to explain but that little pill turns a person into the most selfish being as all we want is to ride the high. Scarier is we don’t care while we’re on it, thanks to that pill. I even chose to stay in bed while my fiancé took my 15 year old dog (whom was honestly my entire life) to the vet for renal failure problems. It sickens me to this day and never would I have let that happen had I not been on Adderall. It blows my mind how Adderall is the only thing I wanted in my life while I was on it. I still want it, but thankfully I finally realized I didn’t want my life to be a pill. 
 

I hope she wakes up and decides to choose you and the kids over it. Once Adderall is abused, you can’t have both. Best of luck to you. 

[DelaneyJuliette]

I was just commenting yesterday the irony of my adderall induced frenzy was making it more important to me to spend hours perfecting the kids summer camp schedule so much that when the kids got home I was annoyed by them and literally didn't spend my regular Tuesday night date with my daughter.  Like... wtf?!  My kids are my world!!  In that moment the spreadsheet took priority.

I also have zero libido or even the slightest interest in sex.  Maybe one day lol.  But right now I'm just grateful for today.  I'm making it up to my daughter tonight.  Tomorrow will be Day 2.  I can do this!!