Motivation_Follows_Action

That's an awesome app by the way - I just downloaded it

Vat is very very cwever! Don't know why but I read this with the voice of "the count" from the muppets in my head...

We all do! But as we can see from the success of the "old timers", I choose to believe this will not fuck us up indefinitely. Hope is more powerful than any drug.

I hope you are able to revisit these posts in the coming days and weeks, Legatus. You sound like you're up and down a lot, I was like that at the beginning and your post about wanting to end it all make me panic a bit... please make sure you tell your girlfriend about that so she can be fully aware of the strength of your emotions. You sound like you need each other right now. Stay strong.

Day 9. I was on day 84 before I relapsed

By the way with the loss of blood to the fingers, I hear that finger exercises help. I heard it from these guys: http://www.birthdayexpress.com/Dog-Finger-Puppets/80333/PartyItemDetail.aspx?REF=SCE-PlusBox&gclid=CKuC7Oj6ibUCFYLd4AodEDIA5w

...as do we all... you're taking the first step. You may not be happy or feel good for a long time yet, (sorry that is cold comfort right now), but I can tell you one thing: you absolutely will not feel happy or good if you keep on the adderall shit. And I know you know that. Did you get a calendar? Get ready to document that shit. Every day is a marathon but every day counts, as I learned through this ridiculous journey.

Thanks guys. Teamwork in action here - it's amazing how much writing from random anonymous people can make you feel so much better. I did go to the gym. Tomorrow I have yet another huge interview for a job I'm waaaaay underqualified for (didn't hear back about that previous job by the way, so I'm assuming no news is bad news in that case), I'm hoping I don't wake up feeling the same as I did today. sky - you ALWAYS make me laugh. I get it, it will get better eventually. It better fucking do so. Ashley - knowing the 90 day period is rough is comforting, believe it or not. InRecovery - yeah, you're right. I did have some pretty strong cravings today. Thank goodness I flushed the rest :-) Occasional1 - your words mean a lot, especially coming from someone smart like you. You think I'm all those things? Jeez, I'm either really good at lying or I you're a born motivator, because those things you said are super nice. Really. I will visit them often Cjw - thanks, dude. Known you for a short time but I think you are way stronger than you give yourself credit for. Cassie - just read your add. Thanks and yeah, I know I focus on the "outside" things more than I should. It's just frightening to be a grown up sometimes you know. I've been watching a Law & Order marathon tonight, having taken all the cushions off the couch and made a makeshift bed on the floor (does anyone else do this?). I bought cooking chocolate to bake cookies for my husband to take to his work tomorrow for someone's birthday, but I'm eating all the chocolate chips - fuck it. I read somewhere once that highly successful, powerful women eat more chocolate on average than other women. Correlation = causation, right?! You people make me feel all warm and fuzzy on the inside. How's that for acerbic vocabulary? :-)

When the fuck will I start feeling better on a consistent basis? Just so exhausted and unmotivated. Spent today fighting with my husband over money, I'm teary and depressed and have a bloody awful headache that's been lingering since last night. Supposed to go workout in a moment and I'm so pissed off at the world and all I want to do is go back go bed and cry. sorry everyone i dno't mean to take it out I'm just really sad today. fucking adderall and how it's ruined my life. I am turning 40 in less than a month and have NOTHING to show for it - no house, no kids, no job. I feel like a failure as a human being.

InRecovery, I really love the fact that you are both strong and vulnerable here with us. You celebrate with us the wins in your life, and you are self aware enough about your insecurities to write about them here. When you have a bad thought or a moment of doubt, you let us know. And then when you have a win you let us know. I really believe that keeps us all hanging in there, because we can see the humanity in all of us. None of us is perfect, and all we can be is honest and keep picking ourselves up when we fall. I'm not sure if we fall less hard over time, or we get used to it, but it does get easier over time. LIke everyone's said, thanks for sharing.

Hi ld, And you will be a much happier person without it again, eventually, once the withdrawal stuff has lost its grip. I'm glad you came back and just would love to hear about when it is you find yourself loving and laughing again. For me, it was about 2 weeks in and I said something that my husband laughed at. Something quick-witted and self-deprecating, like my old self. He looked at me and said, "holy shit, did you just crack a joke?". It was a really nice moment. There are lots of nice moments to come, if you listen for them. Sleep, despite the guilt you will feel for how much of it you need, will be nice. That deadly comatose sleep is some of the most pleasurable sleep I've ever had, once I allowed myself to recognize that I needed it and I wasn't in fact being lazy. So tomorrow is day one, and when is day 90? I know it seems like an eon away but if you focus on one day at a time it will be gone before you know it. Stay strong! You can do it. And keep coming back here and letting us know how you're doing.

Only an amphetamine addict can understand this scene (this is a redubbed version so only the first minute and a bit is relevant, then it's a loop). I was sitting there watching it and thought wow, that's exactly what my mind was like sometimes during the times when I'd taken over 80 mg in a short period of time. Focused to a fault on something completely fucking irrelevant. SPOILER ALERT this is from Season 4....

How's this for off topic. Happy Australia Day! Even though it's fucking freezing here and my family are all at bbqs and the beach and stuff, I will be getting a meat pie and a beer... ha ha ha... http://www.dubpies.com/index.php

Actually I think it does make a bit of difference. But I'm not a good test dummy because I also take it with a bunch of other supplements. And I've only been taking it for a couple of weeks, a v low dose. I have it in the pill form and the droplet form, which tastes REPULSIVE!!!

inRecovery, your post makes me feel better about my level of fitness or lack thereof. I am really struggling with developing and keeping a fitness regime. I've tried and failed so many times. It seems like everyone around me just finds it so effortless to go to the gym every day, eat healthy, blah blah. Me? I just had pinkberry and a diet coke for lunch.

I agree with you Cassie and I think amphetamines in some form other have gone through their boom n bust cycles for decades, it just happens that ritalin and adderall is fashionable today. I realized this after posting the article that actually, if the FDA curbed adderall distribution it would just go underground. Maybe they realize that they'd rather have an adderall epidemic on their hands than an even bigger meth one (assuming that adderall may be a gateway to meth, which is feasible).

I was thinking about what QO said about caring for elderly parents. I think if anything that is more of a suffer in silence kind of thing, because no one gives a shit about old people. It's not like when I run in to friends, they ask me "oh you haven't put any pics of Nelda on Facebook recently?! I miss seeing her, she's so adorable!". Nope, old people are just old. And they are needy and sad and time consuming, but without the joy because you know they're going to die soon. Sorry to be all Debbie downer this morning! I'm kind of in a shitty mood.

.. that was the lowest point for you in terms of your addiction, too, wasn't it? Family pressures are so shitty sometimes.

I totally agree with you. The kinds of raw comments that these amazing moms make are not the things I would ever hear from my friends with kids, even though I see every day the exhaustion on their faces and the depression they feel. There is a HUGE social stigma being able to be honest about how shitty childraising can be, like it makes you a bad parent to be honest about the challenges of it. I wish more women would feel comfortable talking like this in public. So many moms suffer in silence, childrearing can be really lonely and painful for moms.

I didn't hear the suicide bit, but I do think this boss did and said the right things - he clearly experienced a lot of the negative impacts of drug use on him and his business and family. I think it's unfair and selfish the way some addicts expect to be helped, when it's them who got themselves in to this situation. He's a tough guy, sure. But I think the way he handled this situation is correct. What else will get through to this drugged up guy? I'm not normally a tough love supporter. But this drug abuser needed to have a mirror up to his face that this is his rock bottom and he needs to get help. The boss can't be held responsible for his suicide, if that's indeed what he did (and don't get me wrong I sincerely hope he didn't), the guy needed to realize he can't continue to operate as a functional human being while being in a headlock with pills.

Just keep posting here. I felt bad at the beginning how much I posted and now I look back on it kind of like an online journal. You'll be fine. Just one day at a time, and stay strong! There are some great suggestions on the other parts of the site on dealing with the ADD parts of our brains.

I feel so left out - I've never had a single relapse or adderall dream ever! Not even when I was on it. I did, however, dream the other night that I was in an interview and the interviewer said, "hey have you seen this site? it's some crazy website for addicts of adderall, like adderall's some problem or something ha ha"... and then they turned their screen towards me and my profile page was RIGHT THERE!!!

You know I honestly believe that when we give up, we go through a grieving process. It's compounded by the necessary depression we have to go through (because our brains are depleted of so much bloody dopamine), so it's hard to parse out, but there is a definite SARAH (shock, anger, rejection, acceptance, healing) that accompanies the beginning stages of recovery. You sound like you're processing a lot of what happened to you through your late stages of addiction. It is very confusing, I know. The memory loss thing and the confusion for me were some of the most terrifying side effects of the late stages of the addiction. And it got WORSE instead of better during the first month in recovery. I couldn't remember the beginning of sentences I'd started; names of basic objects; even my own address once when I got in a taxi. And then for some reason entirely WRONG words would come out of my mouth, even though I was thinking of the right word... I called the bed a dog, the windows I called the curtains, it was word salads all day for a few days (yes it sounds hilarious, but I was terrified). I thought I had permanent brain damage. But everyone here said don't worry, you will heal, it just takes time. And look! Now I can form complete sentences without hardly stopping! I don't make nearly as many spelling mistakes! My grasp of the english language is slowly coming back and yesterday, just for the hell of it, I did the 9x table in my head forwards and backwards just for practice. I have started playing words with friends again, because heck I enjoy thinking of words and it's not just a stupid exhausting game. Your brain will come back is what I'm trying to say. Your memories will come back. Your body will return. Just be kind to it and it will be kind to you. How is your wife dealing with you through your recovery (apart from lending you her bra )? It takes its toll on our significant others, definitely.

I'm really glad you said this because apart from a few short months at the beginning, adderall didn't do anything for me academically either. I would get really stressed because I would think if I had to do a paper I would have to read 4, 5, 6 entire text books and absorb every word in order to be able to digest and churn out a brilliant piece of work. It just confused the heck out of me. I remember once I was doing a proposal for a client and I had the brief in front of me on an email, and I was so focused on getting it perfect that I highlighted each noun and verb of the spec in a different color highlighter pen, somehow thinking in my adderalled brain that this would help me summarize and deduce my proposal. I did all nighters and then bring in my work the next day and not be able to explain it at all to those around me... just pages and pages of drivel. And I had thought at the time it was such brilliance! Ugh.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/26/health/fda-vote-on-restricting-hydrocodone-products-vicodin.html