Mike

Nice! I'm going to add it to the movies list then.

@Joanne, Yeah I'm totally not used to seeing myself on TV yet so I'm kind of embarrassed to post that. But glad you thought it was OK! @Erin, I like the sobriety calculator idea! I could build that easy. I could even make it store a cookie so it remembers you when you come back, and maybe whenever you visit the site you would see a big "145 Days!" number or whatever....maybe I'd have to add a little link beside the day counter that that says "Reset count. :-(" It's just a question of where to put it. I think once I finish with the site organization tweaks I'll be able to find a good place for it. Thanks for the suggestion!

Matt, Two points... 1. End that relationship Keep reading. Don't start thinking of reasons why you can't. Hear me now if you hear nothing else on this site: YOU ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR HER LIFE. To keep her slightly off the edge at the expense of your physical health, your self-esteem, your happiness, and your future is not noble and altruistic...it is tragically naive. It's completely unrealistic and not at all right on any moral scale. I mean, what if you went the other way? What if you said "OK, I want to stay, but you need to leave your husband and your life for me." I'd bet you anything that she would suddenly change her tune...she would start to try to explain why she can't do that, why you just have to understand her situation. She would not make the same sacrifice that she is expecting you to make. The only hold on you that she has is your own virtue. She is effectively using your good-naturedness against you. If you weren't a good person who cares about people, you wouldn't be vulnerable to her crazy-fit manipulations. A famous writer, Ayn Rand, called this "white blackmail" --- the tactic of using somebody's own goodness to manipulate them. It is a sickeningly evil thing. You must break that hold. You have to realize that even if she did kill herself because you left...you would have no right to feel guilty about it. I promise you that you have already gone and beyond what anyone else would have done in your situation. She's leaning on top of you now with all of her twisted, misdirected emotional weight, like the world on top of Atlas. So shrug, Atlas. Let that stressful world roll off your shoulders. Save yourself and never look back. Find some single gal --- divorced and older if that's your thing --- fall in a love in a more healthy way, have a great marriage of your own, and look back on that crazy chick and say "Man, am I glad I got out of that one!" 2. Never ever let yourself take a pill to escape. If need to get work done, fine take a pill. If you need to stay awake and cram, fine take a pill. But when you go through emotional stress and your brain says "Hey, we could just pop a pill and numb this pain a little." stop it. Endure the pain. It's much better than the alternative of hardwiring your brain to crave a drug whenever you encounter stress or sadness. That's how real addiction starts. The kind of people that never get over it, that never break free, that will be addicts their whole life: those are the people who've formed a link in their mind between emotional stress and escape. When they get stressed, they crave their addiction. And they have that craving because they created it years ago by making a simple decision: to escape instead of facing the pain. You cannot let yourself make that same choice too many times, or the link will become permanent. Catch this as early as you can, and break off that link in your mind as quickly and brutally as possible. So that's first step: Just work on not taking it for emotional escape, and only taking it for work. Also, pay closer attention to your dosage. Set a fixed daily maximum, even if it's higher than what you're prescribed at first (because step 1 is owning and freezing your current dose, step 2 is lowering it). Buy one of those little pill containers where you put some pills in the slot for each day of the week and stick to it. If you finish all of your pills for the day, tough shit. Weather the storm until the next day. Do not allow yourself any excuse to take more than what's in that daily slot, or else boundary decay kicks in and you're on a slippery slope to fucked. 3. Once this poisonous relationship is gone from your life and you've got your Vyvanse dose a little more under control (at least so you're not taking it to escape any more, even if you're still taking it for other things), then we can talk about getting you weaned back down to prescribed dose level or maybe a little below. Hang in there. You're 19. I cannot begin to express how much time you have to change, grow, and attain happinesses you never thought possible.

I know aren't they awesome?! Way to use it. Best. Spoiler. Ever.

You can buy a pretty buff laptop for $800. My only advice would be: In addition to the normal stuff like RAM and CPU and screen size, pay attention to the screen resolution. The bigger the better. Web development isn't very processor-heavy (even in Photoshop a website layout is a much smaller file than say a printed poster layout). And hell, HTML/Javascript/CSS is just text. No processor needed there. But you're going to want lots of room (screen-wise) to work, especially since this laptop will be your primary workstation. A big screen is meaningless if it doesn't have the pixel resolution to take advantage of it, because the resolution is the number of pixels on the screen...resolution, not screen-size, defines how much stuff you can have on the screen at once. So if you have an 34" HD LCD at 1024 X 768 resolution, and a 17" laptop with 1280 X 1024, you'll actually be able to fit more menus and Photoshop pallets on the laptop screen. Try not to settle for less than 1280 X 1024 (SXGA), and definitely get higher if you can. My personal favorite resolution is 1600 X 1200 (UXGA), because if you're designing a website for 800 X 600 you can fit two full layouts side-by-side in Photoshop (800px times 2 = 1600). But that's for desktop screens. For a laptop just get 1280 wide or higher and you'll be good. This also matters with video editing. How many frames of your timeline do you want to be able to see without scrolling? Answer: As many as I possibly can. Sorry, I'm a total resolution geek. It takes me a month to pick out a new monitor. But I also never feel cramped when working on stuff, so that's something. Check with Sony for the specs. If all else fails, I know fullsize (15.4"+) Dell laptops will usually go up to 1600 X 1200.

That made me laugh several times. I remember that box of condiments! I remember thinking "Why is it labeled condiments?" Now it makes adorable sense. You too? Wow I totally thought that sugarlust thing was just me having a sweet tooth. I wonder if the rest of us have this... To me, this is no small accomplishment...this is the Mt. Everest of self improvements....a peak I fear I will never reach. If you figure out how to do this, tell me. I swear that half of my mental disorders and stress would dissipate if I could just start every day like a man and get up with the alarm, rather than rationalizing a few more minutes and waking up stressed and feeling like a shameful failure from minute one of my day. Anyhow, good luck!

Jess, Think about what you just said: You miss your productivity. Think about what type of person actually misses being productive so much that it pains them. I'll spoil the ending for you: A person that is capable of being a very serious contributor to society. What you're going through right now in these first months isn't the loss of productivity, it's the loss of your old productivity. Over the course of the next months and years, if you choose to stay the course, your definition of what is productive will change (as you regain your ability to see the forest for the trees). It takes a while to re-seat your grounding and your priorities, but once you do you will be able to start working on being observably productive again. In the end, you can attain an all-new kind of productivity: one that is more brutal, faster, more you, and is wrought in the service of your greatest dreams (vs. in service to the Adderall high). You will be working harder in many respects than you ever were on Adderall, and you will love it so much more (if you focus on pointing your life towards goals you care about). It's the difference between completing 10 trivial tasks per day, and completing 4 trivial and 2 very meaningful tasks per day. Which would you rather? Hang in there. Month 4 is no fun. Well, few months are fun. But the sooner you can find something that you can love doing even without pills, the better off you'll be.

Hey thanks, Ashlee! Look, if you want to fly out here, I'll certainly do lunch, dinner, and whatever else you want. In the mean time though, you should check out the other two people in Texas (jp4revolt in Dallas and liltexan79 in Houston). You guys should all get together. liltexan79 is also Erin from the comment threads on the blog --- my first-ever commenter and the most senior member of this site. You should definitely meet somebody face-to-face if you get the chance. I've met a couple people from this site over the years and it's obscenely therapeutic just hanging out with somebody who shares that part of you (because that part implies so many other commonalities). We are all much more kindred than I ever expected. It's probably the same instant kinship that people in NA and AA feel, except the things we have in common are good things instead of destructive things.

That has to be true. After it comes out I'm going see if I can find some interviews with the writer and see if he makes any allusions.

Hi Katie, Congrats on the half-marathon! That had to be been fun! For me, depression was a major issue after quitting Adderall. In time I learned to just sort of roll with the depression spells and push through them when I could. I was always convinced though that my depression was reactionary depression. Like, I always felt that there were specific reasons for it and if I could conquer those reasons I could lift the depression. Turns out, I was half right. I haven't had a depressive spell in a while now, and for this I credit two things: 1. I made enough positive changes in my life and eliminated a lot of the issues that were causing me to get depressed. 2. I've been taking a high-dose of top-grade Omega 3 and DHA supplements every day for the last 3 months. I'm very skeptical of supplements having any noticeable affect, but I keep doing the math and it keeps seeming like the Omega 3 is doing what it claims to...balancing out my mood in a very subtle and gradual way. In your case, if you're going to try sticking it out off Adderall for a little while longer, a little depression here and there is to be expected...it should pass. And I would definitely wait until your baby gets back, and see if that helps. Because a key part of dealing with depression is recognizing reactionary depression (depression that has a tangible source) so you can work to reduce it by eliminating the events (or the attitudes) that cause the depression. If after eliminating all of the depression triggers that you can you still have cyclic depression spells (you don't have a reason to be depressed, but you are anyway every so often) then you have to work at that in kind of a different way. At least, that's my 2 cents. Good luck!

Good luck, Scott! Quitting on spring break will give you a week head start, for sure. The first week is all crash anyway. Like you said: better to get that out of the way when you have as few obligations as possible. Just remember: the hard part starts when you actually have to face your work environment again. Be ready for that, and come to terms with it as you're relaxing on break. Again, good luck! You can do it! Also: That's a great "When I'm on addy" list. Now you've got a baseline. When you've quit for a while, make that list again and see how it compares. My guess is that nearly every point on the list will reverse to some degree.

Hi Joanne! That's a great suggestion. Thanks for posting it. And an even bigger thanks for actually taking the time to list out those names. That gives me a great place to start. It is super-hard to find doctors who don't just evade the notion of a problem.

Dude totally! Everytime I see that trailer I think "Oh man...this is going on the blog at some point."

Hi All, As I mentioned in my last announcement, part of the reason I've been absent from the comments and posts lately is because I'm working on tying up the loose ends in my life so I can focus on redesigning the main Quitting Adderall website (which will include fancy new forum software EDIT: New forum software integrated! You're looking at it.). The traffic to this site just hit an all-time high yesterday, and it keeps going up. I think it's time for this website to grow up from a little blog into a real, purposefully-organized website. So if you have an idea on how to improve the site and QuittingAdderall.com to the next level, please post it! Now is the time to get your suggestions for the website heard, while I'm still in the "sketching stuff on notebook paper during class" phase. I'll start things off with CosmiKitten's excellent suggestions... 1. Add a banner for the forums on the main website, so we get more active users. 2. Set up a chat room for people to get instant help and support What else would you like to see on the new site? UPDATES: Things I've added so far... 1. Fancy new form software, with the main QuittingAdderll.com site template integrated with the forum so the main navigation stays at the top while you're on the forums. 2. New drop-down nav items for How to Quit Adderall, Fun Stuff, and General Adderall Info 3. Full category organization on the articles page.

Hi Everybody, Forgive my lack of responses and updates over the last couple of weeks. Two things are going on... 1. Calculus. It's been almost 10 years since I took a math class, and now I'm having to take one that assumes I know stuff that I have long forgotten. 2. I am working on QuittingAdderall v3. It's time for this site to graduate from the blog format to grown-up website with all the trimmings (like easier article browsing, more clear organization, a home page etc). After three years, there is a ton of great content on this site between the comments and articles, and it's high time I reined it in and made it organized. Lots of plans but they're going to take me a month or more to execute, especially with my school schedule. Incidentally, traffic has been climbing steadily for almost two years now, especially over the last 6 months. This month is on track to be the biggest traffic month ever. So we have that going for us...which is nice. I'm trying to post when I can, but I'm pretty slammed right now. Please know that I read almost everything that comes in, and that cool new things are coming to QuittingAdderall.com in 2011. Including, not least of all, better forum software. UPDATES (4/12/2011): *New forum software installed (you're looking at it, enjoy!) *Added drop-down menu navigation *Sorted ALL articles into categories *Added category navigation to sidebar *Still working with a designer on the mockup for the new home page. So hang in there and PM me if you need me.

Hi dpaul6626, As far as the gym and exercise is concerned: There is no such thing as too soon. The sooner you do that, and the harder you push yourself, the better you will be. At 5 days out, you're still very much in the throws of physical withdraws. You're not out of those woods until week 5, not day 5. Exercise will only help, and more exercise will only help more. Also (and this advice is probably for later when the chem withdraws are done) make sure you have an appropriate definition of fatigue. To an Adderallic, not feeling crazy-amped can be felt as "fatigued" when most normal people would call it "how I always feel". You have to set lower expectations for your energy levels. You are not invincible anymore. You are mortal now. You need lots of rest, exercise, coffee....just like the normies. :-) Again though, get to the gym or the running park as soon as you can...even if you don't feel like. Nobody ever feels like going to the gym, but everybody loves the feeling they have when they get back. In terms of your recovery: The sooner you can start an exercise habit, the better. Good luck!

Yay! Glad it's going well. Keep at it!

Hey crackFREE, You probably already know this if you ever played little league baseball, but when baseball players are warming up to step into the batter's box, many of them will slip a donut-shaped weight over the bat, making the bat much heavier. With this weight attached to the bat, they will practice swinging as hard as they can against the resistance of the weight. When they are ready to step up to the plate, they will take the weight off. Now by contrast the bat feels much lighter than it did before the weight exercise, and they tend to swing it harder and faster (because they've mini-habitualized their body to put more strength into it). Quitting Adderall is like that weighted bat exercise, except the weight goes on your willpower and you never take it off. Instead, you have to make your mind strong enough to swing fast and powerfully even with the weight on. Congrats on 4 days, and Godspeed building up your swinging muscles again.

I tried carrying cleansing wipes with me last time (didn't help, but they were harsher than Cetaphil), but I definitely wouldn't have every thought of the potassium thing. I'm going to try that this weekend, and if it works, I'm going to flip. The only thing that's ever remotely helped so far is isolaz laser treatment and Bactrim, but you can only get isolaz so often and you build a tolerance to Bactrim after a while. The only thing that stops the breakouts completely is not sweating. But I hope to hell I can find a better solution that allows me to run again. Fingers crossed for the banana! Let me know when if you ever get that blog up and I'll add it to the site's sidebar.

Hey Jonny5, First off, LOVE your username. Number five is alive! Ahh...good times. Too bad they're going to butcher the memory with a remake. Congrats on 8 days! Not a bad idea about the article on relapses. I may attempt one at some point, but I never did relapse on Adderall. I've relapsed on other things, but only when my dedication to quitting the thing was shaky. The damage that a relapse does depends on the length of the relapse. A short relapse can be recoverable if you're feeling guilty and thinking about quitting the whole time, because even though you relapsed you never really stepped off your quitting track in your brain. This is the relapse when you say "I'll just take one", then give in, feel guilty afterwards, and feel all the stronger about quitting two days later. The solution to this is to ignore the short relapse as a fluke and go one with your quitting with extra commitment. The dangerous relapse is the one where you give up on quitting temporarily, then quit again, the give up on quitting...all within a short time period. If you're fickle about it. If you do it for more than a few days, then quit again, then relapse again a few days later...it's going to weaken your ability to quit on the whole because you are effectively letting your boundary decay and then building it back up weakly, then letting it decay again. The cure for this to go longer than you ever have without a pill to make a stronger mental boundary against quitting. Every day off strengthens your boundary, and makes it harder to relapse. And extremely long relapse is actually not as damaging to your quitting boundary as the shot-term quit, relapse, quit, relapse cycle. It's damaging in the sense that being on the drug has it's own kind of damage, but the next time you quit, you will be propelled by this additional damage to stick with it to a greater degree this time, and hopefully you will quit for longer and relapse for shorter each time. This is extremely unpleasant though, and is the path most lifetime addicts are on. Stay off it if you can. Of course, the temptation to relapse never really goes away as long as you're unhappy with your life. So focus on doing the things that will produce happiness, and then you won't crave a relapse so much. Above all, your best bet is not to give in. Stay the course. Day 1 sucks. And those are my thoughts on relapsing. If you've got more to add about relapsing specific to Dexedrine, please add it!

Good luck, oxyman79. And prepare for far more than 2 weeks. 2 weeks will be the worse, but if you've been medicated since age 8, you may well have to find out who you are all over again. That takes time.

Sounds like you're prime to write a post like "Top 10 ADD-fighting Meal Recipes". Hint, hint. I know I'd read it. I want to eat better, and I don't mind putting the effort in to cooking, but I have no idea what to make. Usually when I cook I end up making Spaghetti. Or steak and potatoes. Every other meal I go out for. Glad you found a way through without relapsing though. Interesting you mentioned an Acne problem. I've been fighting that battle for two years now. It was like I turned 26 and suddenly my skin was 16 again. I was like "wtf? My favorite part of being old was not having to deal with this bullshit anymore!" But two months ago, I finally won. I finally stopped all the breakouts. But the solution in my case was a personal tragedy: In order to keep my face clear, I can't exercise. :cry: Did your acne get better when you changed your diet? Did you eventually beat it? How? Because I tried a better diet, but not the extreme you're talking about. And I'd totally do it if it meant I could run again without turning into Quasimodo.

Hooray for the Varsity and stupid amounts of traffic on 285 and 75! If anybody's near Atlanta and wants to meetup, just reply to this thread or send me a PM. I'd love to meet you!

Re: Your first response I know exactly what you're talking about. It's like you hook your interest into something and then binge on it until you've gone super-overboard, then fizzle and move on to the next obsession, leaving the often-expensive artifacts of your last obsession in a corner somewhere to collect dust. As you guessed, Adderall absolutely makes this a info-binge/obsessiveness personality quirk a thousand times more natural feeling and harder to resist. Adderall reduces your natural willpower and your ability to zoom out and see the forest for the trees --- both qualities essential in developing a balanced life. You may be naturally obsessive (which, as you said, isn't always a bad thing), sure. But I'd be willing to bet that Adderall is catapulting that obsessiveness much higher than it would be naturally. The good news is that you don't have to work on moderation in all areas of your life. That would be an impossible task anyway. To try to moderate yourself in each individual area would be a recipe for unearned guilt and shame and stress. You only have to concentrate on moderating yourself on one thing: Adderall dose. If you can summon the will power to keep just that one thing in line, everything else will fall into place as a result. Tell me: When you're not on Adderall, does your obsessiveness cause you problems? Or do you feel more abstracted and relaxed most of the time? On Adderall, you are consumed by your work, and try to make time for the other things (wife, kids, relaxation, emotionality) mostly by guilting your self into doing so. Off Adderall, the equation reverses. All of a sudden all you want to do is feel and relax, and work is the thing you have to force yourself to make time for. Speaking as somebody who's also been on both ends of this, if your goal is balance...that is much more easily achieved with less Adderall than with more. Even taking a small enough dose to make work mildly unpleasant for a while...you're still going to find time to use that obsessiveness to your gain and enjoyment. That doesn't go away, Addderall or no. But you are more its master than it yours. Re: P.S. Oh yeah, exercise and Addderall do not mix at all. The best you can usually do in terms of running is not take Adderall on the weekends, recover on Saturday, and run on Sunday. But then, you never feel like running much when you're on the pills all the time. And like you said, doing healthy things makes you want keep doing healthy things. Pop pills all day and just stare at a screen...might as well eat like crap to. When you get out and run, you start wanting to eat & drink better too so you don't have your 3 o'clock coke burping back up after a mile. I don't think I lifted a single weight in the last 5 years that I was on Adderall. Within two years of quitting I had put on 15 pounds of muscle and was doing a sprint triathlon. I don't know man, with the goals you've vocalized (life balance, refocus on the wife and emotion, exercise)...sounds like you're a prime candidate to try a low dose or no dose. Because you will definitely get those things back, at the expense of some work performance. But what are you working for, anyway?

I think this is an awesome idea. If we can get more people willing to meet up in different cities, I'll create a section on the main site for cities where people have voiced interest in meeting up. I'll throw Atlanta into the pot, since that's where I am. Anybody near Atlanta that wants to get together, post a thread or PM me. I am totally down. I'm planning a site redesign in March. I think it makes sense for there to be some focus on arranging support meetups IRL. It doesn't even have to be a big group. Finding even one kindred spirit can do a lot of good. Anything you want me to do on the site to help, CosmiKitten, let me know. I think for starters I'm going to create a forum just for people to declare where they are located... EDIT: Done