Motivation_Follows_Action

Ok so it is completely off topic, but you guys are such smart people and I'm a big believer in the wisdom of collective intelligence (mostly, except if its a crowd of lemmings ha ha). Anyway I thought it would be cool to start a thread about shit we leaned today. Amazing the gems I've taken away from this site so why not capitalize on it? So... To get the ball rolling... I learned that there are over 20,000 people living per square mile in New York City. That's a hell of a lot of people! That's all. Who's next? !

Wow, 13 months clean and we hear about it buried in a reply to someone else's own story?!? Adderallornothing that's amazing! I really would love you to share your story.

Lea congrats on one month without adderall!

Keep myself deliberately cold. Interesting factoid: during the 600-person, 6-week-long, 10-hour-a-day training sessions I used to run throughout the summer for incoming interns and graduates at my old job, I would call the maintenance team and make sure the room was at least 5-10 degrees (Fahrenheit) lower than it should be. They all hated it, but it kept them awake!

uhm is this a young person's thing? I think the idea of an all nighter to me sounds horrific. I have found my passion, and it's sleep... I'm very good at it!

... so you're an addict. You've admitted it at least to yourself. That's a big step forward. But time is only running out if you're thinking like an addict. Time is a wonderful thing when you're not hamstrung by amphetamine addiction. It means you can look forward to your future with hope, something that in the latter part of adderall, I think it takes away. You're only 36. Honestly, if you were 40, you'd be thinking "if only I'd quit when I was 36". It's not too late. You ALWAYS have tomorrow, a new day, with no mistakes in it yet, as my mother used to say. Do you have a plan to quit? It sounds like you're pretty desperate to give up, and I'd really encourage you to before you totally hate yourself (sounds like you're getting there already)... You've proven that you can be successful without adderall. Now you just need to believe in yourself again. We're here and we believe in you! ... and it doesn't matter if you're the teacher, the doctor, the pscyhologist or the student or child. Addiction is the great leveler.

I like the fact that I'm not always late for everything now. It took a while for that to happen, but not getting distracted by absolutely everything all the time is a godsend when you're not on adderall.

Good luck underwears are the best. Much better than any pill.

Love it!

I keep running out of my "daily quota" of "like this" hits, dammit! But I like this, Cat!

That's great! And really motivational to me as well. And good on you for going to the gym!

I think you'd find a lot of people who would agree that this was their experience too. Add to that the pallid complexion, bloodshot weepy eyes, weird grinding jaw and shoulders in permanent disfigurement due to stress, oh what an ugly picture an adderall addict actually makes. We think we look sexy and sultry - we probably look anorexic and permanently miserable.

I've been wondering the same thing myself! I have a daylight alarm clock which I love, it's such a more gentle way of waking up in the morning and puts you in a much better mood for the day than getting startled in the dark by a clanging phone alarm. But I have wondered about those lights, I suffer a lot from SAD.

Schmoozing is a skill, definitely. Doing it on adderall is almost impossible, because you don't give a shit about anyone. And,if you're like me, you lose your short term memory so you end up asking the same questions over and over again.

Sounds like you're going in to a bit of withdrawal. Who knows what's going on in that brain of yours. All I know is that you will never really get over your addiction until you stop taking adderall altogether. I feel bad for you because you're almost drawing out the pain of recovery to much longer than it needs to be.

Hi, a few thoughts: Losing 80lbs is an amazing accomplishment. I hope you're not expecting that you will be doing anything quite as tough as that while you are recovering from adderall. Like Mike says on this site, focusing on just NOT TAKING ADDERALL is quite an accomplishment itself. I lost any semblance of any exercise regimen on adderall, for the reasons you mention. Just wasn't interested in it, didn't feel like I needed to do it so long as the scales were agreeing with my insane sense of what was a "healthy" weight (actually significantly underweight but whatever). And my heart would race too, and I had no strength, and get awful headaches working out. So I gave up. My first few weeks in recovery I didn't do much else but eat and sleep. And try to figure out what day of the week it was. And try to forgive myself for having ruined my own life (I was so horribly depressed, I never want to relive days like that). I remember the first week I ordered burgers and fries and donuts all the time, and then napped, and then ate some more and napped. I don't even know that I was hungry, but eating was the only thing that made me feel better. Now that I think back on it, my eating really was the ONLY thing that helped me during my most depressed times (and cuddles on the couch, and naps). Yes, food was a comfort. But that's ok. It was a season. Only now am I starting to get any kind of consistent motivation towards eating right and exercising. Albeit with MUCH lower standards than I have ranted about before on this site. I'm doing the couch to 5K running program and goal is just not to binge. Forget the scales. I wish I could have just absorbed everyone's advice a little better during my first couple of months. Everyone said, it'll get better, but I wanted it to be perfect right away. I wish I could have taken a cross-section of my brain and seen how little of it was working properly during the early recovery weeks so I could have been a bit more forgiving. My whole point is, please just forgive yourself for your thoughts, feelings and actions these next few weeks. You are so depressed right now, and I'm sure nothing makes sense. But it will, in time, you just need to heal. That's what we're here for...

Whether this guy quit because he went voluntarily cold turkey or he couldn't get a prescription, he obviously slipped in to a very deep depression after he quit. Many of us have felt that depression, some of us have been suicidal, some of us got the help we needed either by force or choice. If there is any takeaway for the psychiatric community from this I'd love for it to be this: if you're a prescribing doctor and you stop prescribing adderall to a patient, for gods sake keep an eye on them and warn them of the oncoming and inevitable depression that will follow. My doctor said to me precisely two things when I told him I had quit: one was that I would relapse, and the other was that I could go back on it if I needed to at any time. No support, until he entered me in to the psych ward when I attempted suicide. The entire time I was there he never checked on me, called my husband back, offered any kind of support. Terrible malpractice if you ask me.

Heather I'd be more than happy to help you out - pm me!

What a powerful realization, HAM. I'm genuinely inspired by this. Sometimes the best things come out of the worst scenarios. You've made a positive step forward already. You've begun the rest of your life from this moment forward on a positive note! That must be a good feeling. So when do you trash the stash?

I've been following the comments throughout the day, this one to me seems both pertinent and foreboding: ADHD medications are very tricky. I've been on one for three years. I tell myself I could stop any time I want, but I know I'm an addict that can't function without the drug because once you've taken it, even for a short time, stopping makes you confused and despondent. I'm 65 years old and smart enough to limit my dose. I found that I need only 1/8 of the recommended dose to function, but of course on that you miss out on the euphoria and intense concentration. Even at the lower dose I feel the drug is keeping me alive and killing me at the same time. I don't connect to people as well as I did and have fewer emotions. My psychopharmacologist writes me Rx's for so much that I could become a street vendor. When I tell her I think it's become a problem, she tells me I need it and writes another 90 days worth. Of course I fill the Rx to stockpile in case it gets hard to get, as it has at certain times. Those teens and 20's don't stand a chance.

Maybe you can make it zero by next week... what do you think?

I had exactly this experience too, even down to the numbers (~165 down to ~100). I am going to take it again in a couple of months (too scared to right now!).

You just made me think of something. I agree that bad press about the dangers of adderall is good press, because it raises awareness of the dangers of it when used to excess and abused so significantly. But is this at the risk of turning a blind or naive eye to the much more common and perhaps just as dangerous abuse that happens with people who take it at "relatively low" doses over a very long period of time? Many of us here fall in to that category, and we know just how much damage it can do at these levels, and it's so much more commonplace. It worries me how many people are thinking along the lines of rationalisation that says, "oh I knew someone who took cocaine every day of his life but wasn't addicted".

Anxiety is a horrible, pervasive and debilitating thing if you have it on a continual basis. Dealing with it is so exhausting, especially if you're in recovery from adderall addiction too and probably a bit depressed. Try to see if you can do yourself a favor by not complicating things in your life though; seems like your disordered eating and weed consumption are making it worse.... bit of a downward spiral, if you like. You's stuck with the quitting adderall for a while now and that should be a great relief, now you can focus on getting better. I hope you can be gentle with yourself....

Yes doesn't it feel great to accomplish "real" tasks when you're adderall free? I'm glad to hear it takes some time to "clean up the adderall clutter", that's a great way of putting it.