I feel stuck, I am in hell, and I hate this....

[LiberatedMind]

I relapsed one month ago, after stopping for 7 months.  I knew I shouldn't have done it, but I did it anyways, because everything was boring.  I gave in to my cravings.  And now things are much worse.  I am in a lot of pain and now I hate myself.  Literally.

And I know the answer, but I feel like I am stuck.  

I am also getting fat on Adderall.  My body is losing tone, losing muscle.  Getting flabby.  No surprise there.  

Without Adderall, I have a strict diet and exercise regimen, that I adhere to 95% of the time.  Alcohol is a rarity.  Fitness IS my obsession!!!!!

Now not only am I skipping out on the gym, my diet has gone to shit, I drink alcohol much more often as well.  I spend money on shit that doesn't matter, and I waste time.  A lot of time.  My time is being wasted on Adderall.  And it is DESTROYING my goals that I have worked so hard on for the last 7 months!!!! FUCK THIS!!!!

Now here is the thing, I KNOW THE ANSWER is throw this shit away, and never look back.  Don't even consider it a possibility.  But I have the pills, and there is something that is stopping me from flushing them down the toilet.  I am hesitant because I am scared.  Because they do some things for me.

They give me benefit in the "here and now" in exchange for completely destroying my future.  I am 30 years old.  If I continue living like this, I will be like this at 40.  Why would anything change?

What about my dreams?  I have dreams I want to achieve.  And most of these dreams I have to work very hard on with absolutely no positive returns for a while (e.g. getting in shape, acting I very much like acting it makes me feel so healed inside even though it is scary).  

I am afraid of cravings, I am afraid of regretting my decision.  But I am afraid of losing my dreams.  I am in hell right now.  

Even without Adderall, I find it difficult to stick to things.  One thing I hate about myself.  I avoid pain, and I avoid things that "I just don't feel like doing".  That's why I constantly give up the moment my momentary motivation decreases, as it always invariably will.  No one stays motivated 24/7.  Discipline is where it's at.  But Adderall, that EVIL PIECE OF SHIT DRUG makes pain MORE painful, makes me weaker as a person and destroys my inner being.

I wake up sometimes in the middle of the night, focusing on everything I lost.  My past girlfriends, my personal goals, my life.  I wake up and feel wasted.  I go pee then go back to bed, looking at my messy room, my flabby body, and my wasted life.  

I WANT ADDERALL OUT OF MY LIFE!!!! But I don't want to experience the pain of quitting or the regret of throwing it away when craving it.  I want to enjoy things.  And Adderall helps me enjoy things, the only price I pay for that is that I HATE MYSELF!! 

I also need to learn to stick to things.  I can make that a personal goal.  I took upon myself to learn a specific course, health related.  18 chapters long, stopped at chapter 8.  Soon thereafter started Adderall again.  

Will things ever change?  Or am I constantly going to and from the same exact repeating patterns of behavior and loops that I always experienced?  HOW DO YOU BREAK THE CODE?!!!!!  THIS STUFF IS BAD!!!!!  MAYBE I JUST HATE MYSELF REGARDLESS I DON'T KNOW.  I am confused right now.  I also only slept two hours last night.

I want to eat and rest and sleep.  I need to heal.

[SeanW]

Your in a feed back loop. Just gotta break it. Gotta stop the adderall. Give it more time. Focus on your health. ACT! Acting is a lot like living. Everyone wants to see your character and if you act you can be whoever you want to be you just gotta do it everyday. Create a new character, a new self and act that shit out every day like your on a stage. Life is about the show. You mentioned it’s scary. Hell yeah it is. You gotta commit to a character and hope you’re believe able. If you commit and believe before you know it this happy new character becomes real. 

[SleepyStupid]

22 hours ago, LiberatedMind said:

They give me benefit in the "here and now" in exchange for completely destroying my future.  I am 30 years old.  If I continue living like this, I will be like this at 40.  Why would anything change?

ask yourself - what benefit is that exactly? i know what it is for me - i like getting high. that's about it, and i suspect it is for you too.

i'll be honest - i'm still "addicted" to immediate gratification (video games, binge eating, porn, etc.), but maybe i've always been. i still struggle greatly with goal planning and long term commitments.. but i'm functional, social (enough) and emotionally stable. those things alone are reason enough to stay off Adderall.

not sure i have the answer to the discipline problem (i'm the worst) but i know Adderall isn't it.

 

 

 

[SeanW]

7 hours ago, sleepystupid said:

ask yourself - what benefit is that exactly? i know what it is for me - i like getting high. that's about it, and i suspect it is for you too.

i'll be honest - i'm still "addicted" to immediate gratification (video games, binge eating, porn, etc.), but maybe i've always been. i still struggle greatly with goal planning and long term commitments.. but i'm functional, social (enough) and emotionally stable. those things alone are reason enough to stay off Adderall.

not sure i have the answer to the discipline problem (i'm the worst) but i know Adderall isn't it.

 

 

 

Reading this book from Jordan Anderson has me a little scared that I’m fucked. Like you I’ve always been into the instant serotonin high from things like video games, porn, sugar, alcohol, and most other drugs. What makes me scared is I’ve been doing this since I was like 11-12 years old. He talks about getting away from the instant gratification and eventually you find more lasting sense of happiness and reward. I’m trying to cut back on all that. As of right now I’m three weeks clean of alcohol and porn. Next month will be two years addy free and one month alcohol free. Luckily I haven’t been big on sugar in the last couple years. 

[LiberatedMind]

16 hours ago, SeanW said:

Reading this book from Jordan Anderson has me a little scared that I’m fucked. Like you I’ve always been into the instant serotonin high from things like video games, porn, sugar, alcohol, and most other drugs. What makes me scared is I’ve been doing this since I was like 11-12 years old. He talks about getting away from the instant gratification and eventually you find more lasting sense of happiness and reward. I’m trying to cut back on all that. As of right now I’m three weeks clean of alcohol and porn. Next month will be two years addy free and one month alcohol free. Luckily I haven’t been big on sugar in the last couple years. 

What book?  Is it the 12 rules one?  I read that one.  Which part are you referring to?

And wow congrats on being clean for such an extended period of time!!!!!  That is amazing!!

[Socially awkward]

I wish I had some advice to give. I’m only a month into quitting so I have very limited knowledge about what works and what doesn’t. My last attempt of quitting didn’t go well and I relapsed after 2 months. I wasn’t as committed back then as I am now that the ill physical health side effects have finally taken their toll on me.

It’s interesting you are more physically active off Adderrall. I found I became a gym junkie on the stims. It seems a waste to throw all your progress health wise now for the sake of Adderall. It will still be fairly easy to get back your gains if you stop now as a month off isn’t a huge amount of time. The AWS is going to suck but at least it’s only that first week or so. Get back into your health course as it will help with the motivation part.

are you working at the moment? The only other thing I could suggest that might help is a road trip or a break somewhere to remove yourself from all the triggers that make you want to use. The worst thing I find about stims is the depression that goes with it. Everything appears 1000 times worse than it actually is because of this shitty drug altering our perception. You haven’t wasted your life if you haven’t achieved your goals at 30. You can totally turn things around, it’s just the stims fucking with our happiness/reward system which makes us feel like everything is doom and gloom when infact it isn’t. 

 

[SeanW]

On 3/29/2019 at 0:58 PM, LiberatedMind said:

What book?  Is it the 12 rules one?  I read that one.  Which part are you referring to?

And wow congrats on being clean for such an extended period of time!!!!!  That is amazing!!

Yeah twelve rules. Towards the end of this first chapter around page 30ish he talks about instant gratification and the feed back loop it creates where we constantly search for that instant high then crash and that up and down causes stress and chaos and if you get away from that things steady out to be more of a flowing consistent sense of wel being

[alx1667]

@LiberatedMind I could not relate any more...honestly. It's been a couple of weeks since you posted now, how are you feeling about it now? I don't want to be counting on this stupid pill to get me through unpleasant times...but I also don't want to go through them--then I feel like I'm weak, etc...and it's just not a fun time. I know the answer too, and if you're anything like me, you just keep thinking that..sometime soon, that day will come when everything just falls into place, so you keep taking it--but then years have gone by..it's the most vicious cycle

Ugh. I'm really no help right now, ha. I just can truly relate to what you're thinking and going through right now.  

[LiberatedMind]

On 4/12/2019 at 11:15 PM, alx1667 said:

@LiberatedMind I could not relate any more...honestly. It's been a couple of weeks since you posted now, how are you feeling about it now? I don't want to be counting on this stupid pill to get me through unpleasant times...but I also don't want to go through them--then I feel like I'm weak, etc...and it's just not a fun time. I know the answer too, and if you're anything like me, you just keep thinking that..sometime soon, that day will come when everything just falls into place, so you keep taking it--but then years have gone by..it's the most vicious cycle

Ugh. I'm really no help right now, ha. I just can truly relate to what you're thinking and going through right now.  

I quit on April 8, relapsed on May 21.  Back to day 2 now.  I feel so much pain right now and I am disappointed in myself, but I am not going to make this mistake again. 

I understand you, my friend.  This is not an easy journey.  My best advice is to find within yourself a big dream or goal that will directly benefit from you NOT taking Adderall.  For me, it is physical fitness - as Adderall destroys my conditioning.  

Nothing is going to fall in place by itself.  Want proof?  Okay, here it is: has it happened yet?  Is today all that different than yesterday?  How about the day before that?  Or before that?  Or before THAT?  Will tomorrow (assuming nothing changes) be very different from today?  If your answer is "probably not", then the bitter truth is that nothing will change.  But YOU can make it change!!!!!!  Just take the first step, one day at a time.  Compartmentalize every day if you can.  Focus on the benefits of quitting, not the pain, as much as you can.

[SleepyStupid]

2 hours ago, LiberatedMind said:

My best advice is to find within yourself a big dream or goal that will directly benefit from you NOT taking Adderall.

^^^ this this this!!!

i think i commented on this in another post, but for those of us struggling with "finding our energy again", perhaps we're looking for the wrong thing. maybe it's that big dream or goal that we need to be searching for that will jumpstart our lives. (:

[LiberatedMind]

1 hour ago, sleepystupid said:

^^^ this this this!!!

i think i commented on this in another post, but for those of us struggling with "finding our energy again", perhaps we're looking for the wrong thing. maybe it's that big dream or goal that we need to be searching for that will jumpstart our lives. (:

For real.  There has to be something that can be worked on every day to lead to some major goal, something that will make you feel REALLY GOOD about yourself as whole.  I really do believe that focusing on the lack of Adderall makes the whole quitting process a ton harder than it needs to be.

Something that I do, is that I ALWAYS keep my dream alive in my head.  It makes foregoing Adderall a no-brainer.  Like it's not even an option to consider.  The cheap momentary thrills of speeding bear no weight when compared to feeling GOOD and ACHIEVED!!!!!! Imagine getting your dream body.  Imagine exploring a new area of the world you never been in, and have the most craziest conversations with someone you just met for the first time, because your mind is calm and FREE from its own prison, and you can go out exploring and get new experiences. 

Imagine the emotional and mental resilience you will have once you accustom yourself to being strong.  Adderall makes you weak, you cannot possibly achieve your potential with it destroying you from the inside out. 

As high the level of pain you can tolerate, the rewards will be at least of the same level.  And you will forget ALL the pain you feel now!!! It doesn't last!!  Fight for longlasting true pleasure. 

There is certain pain of quitting, this is very true.  It's the price you have to pay.  But you don't have to suffer.  Accept the minimal amount of pain that comes with making the change you have no choice about that, and fill in the rest of the vacant space of your personal dream life coming true and the longlasting hope that will put the force of life back within you.