SleepyStupid

for people who are not actually suffering from ADD, adderall is just speed- nothing more, nothing less. in this sense, this kind of abuse will eventually produce the symptoms of ADD in that person: hyperactivity, inability to focus on one thing, delusions of grandeur, neglecting responsibilities.. and you know what? it will convince that person that they may have had ADD all along- i know because this happened to me. everyone around me saw all these side effects of what was basically amphetamine abuse, but bought into the belief that i was mega ADD. it reinforced my own beliefs, and it allowed me to get away with being obviously high all the time. i too had big creative ambitions, and for creative types it is difficult to convince them that they are a worse version of themselves because artists in our society are kind of expected to embrace conflict, pain and turn their sacrifice into something. to be fair, he probably feels much better about his weight now (even if it's unhealthy) and all those negative things you mentioned like alienating friends and family may not matter in his pursuit of success. the point about the professional bridge burning sounds like the thing that is going to be the linchpin of this entire wild ride. what i can say from personal experience is that he will find himself buried under ever increasing amounts of work, begin increasing his dosage, tolerance will kick in, the high will go away and suddenly he will be in a situation where he has built this massive vision of success but is unable to deliver it- i know because this happened to me. i was at the peak of my songwriting craft, actually landed that "foot in the door gig" as a songwriter for a small label, and you know what? i was too junked up to deliver. i missed deadlines, couldn't communicate effectively.. i fucked it all up. that all being said, here is my advice on approaching this: make him understand that even if he feels like he's on top of the world right now, there is a very real risk of bottoming out and losing everything he's worked for. perhaps even share my story with him. now is the time to do it before "irreversible" damage is done to his career and life, and agree to help him out with all that shit on his plate if he quits- that is how you manage the guilt and redeem yourself.

being able to enjoy television and movies (used to avoid going to the movies with friends cause i couldn't sit through it) EATING FOOD (: not having to worry about whether people know im high or not! lol

i tried keto for about a month and lost about 10 pounds, which was great! these days, im keto during the weekdays and let myself cheat on the weekends. its probably not as effective this way, but unlike some of my friends on the same diet, i do not experience the "keto flu" symptoms when coming in and out of ketosis (just a mild headache). it certainly is effective for weight loss, though i dont know whether i experienced any mental clarity or "buzz" from it.. the one barrier to my continued commitment is being too lazy to cook. i wished i enjoyed cooking, or even being able to tolerate it, but i still suffer from mild depression and getting myself to do basic things such as food shopping, cooking and cleaning is difficult (but thankfully not impossible like it was before).

first of all, congrats on 9 days- that's no easy feat for someone who has been using for so long! i've never tried hypnosis, and i have my own doubts about the science behind it, but regardless of whether it's placebo or not, this is the toughest fight you'll ever face so you should use everything in your arsenal to win (: if you don't mind sharing, what was the hypnosis experience like? is it expensive?

one of my biggest struggles with quitting adderall was the feeling that everything i had "worked" so hard at, all the sleepless nights geeking out and trying to achieve my dreams... all of that would be for nothing. it was like quitting adderall was giving up the fight for my dreams, and i hated myself for it. i will never forget what someone at another forum said to me: "Take care and be kind to yourself. You don't have to "win" anything, it is okay just to live " this comment probably saved my life. it's hard to truly love yourself, and most people don't- but you don't have to be hard on yourself for that. be kind to yourself, be goofy, eat a tub of ice cream, watch a million hours of Netflix.. do whatever you have to do to just live for a little while, the rest will come back in time (:

i definitely had some sleeping problems within the first few months, racing thoughts and those types of dreams where you're constantly trying to solve problems that don't make any sense. it was kind of on and off though. perhaps you're trying to go to bed too early? i remember early on in recovery i would be pretty exhausted by like 9PM and have no real desire or reason to stay awake, so id just go to bed but that's probably a bit early for healthy sleep every day. the other thing is that a lot of people (myself included) increase their caffeine intake after quitting adderall to stay with it during the day, but this is probably also pretty bad for sleep depending on how much you consume throughout the day.

oh lord- i had this EXACT experience, shaking so violently that i couldn't pick up food with utensils, spilling water on myself. id just avoid dining out with people altogether. thank you for sharing this powerful experience. regarding the shaking, this is pretty common. an imbalance or deficiency of dopamine is associated with loss of motor control (tremors, ticks, spasms), an extreme example being Parkinson's Disease. i had *really bad* shakes for a few months after quitting, and i remember so vividly a day 2 years ago where i had to do a presentation at a trade show in front of a LOT of people, and i could not for the life of me keep the laser pointer steady. it was horribly embarrassing, but i made it through. the tremors definitely go away, you just need to give your body some time to normalize. (:

it's because prolonged adderall use / abuse causes dopamine receptor desensitization. you can google for a more thorough understanding, but essentially what it means is that your receptors are not as sensitive to the neurotransmitter, so the regular level of dopamine your brain produces will not deliver the same sense of reward that it would have pre-adderall. in the first couple of months into recovery, you're actually at lower than baseline levels of dopamine in addition to being desensitized. once your body normalizes the levels of dopamine, you pass the stage of feeling constantly lethargic.. but the next stage of recovery is the most subjective and difficult because despite being able to pull yourself out of bed, you just don't seem to enjoy things as much as you used to. sometimes it will feel like you don't even enjoy things as much as you used to *pre-adderall*, and it may feel like you've permanently broken yourself. what people forget is that for many of us, our adderall abuse spanned most of the formative years in our young adulthood where you're challenged, your goals in life change and you mature into being an adult. your interests will change, you may drop hobbies, etc. the problem is, adderall masks all these changes in your life, so when you finally decide to quit you feel like you're a completely different person and the only thing you can attribute it to is the drug. i struggled a lot the first year with the fact that i no longer loved the things i used to do, and it was a depressive cycle of trying to force myself to write, to play piano and do these things i was so passionate about and not enjoy it. i finally realized, however, that this depression was self-inflicted. i had to let go of the past in order to move forward, forge new experiences that i wouldn't be comparing back to a past level of "happiness". here we are over 2 years later, and i can say that i definitely do enjoy many things in life again, just not all the same things i used to (:

i think my withdrawal symptoms were curbed quite a bit by wellbutrin. i was on wellbutrin and adderall at the same time, quit the adderall cold turkey and stayed on the wellbutrin for approximately 3 months after, then quit that as well. i think keeping the business is the absolute right decision- in fact, it will likely be the thing that keeps you on track. i think the difficulty many people have during the recovery phase is having something that is really meaningful to do that keeps you occupied. this is especially the case when you have some amount of external accountability (people are depending on you). after all, an idle mind is the devil's playground (:

i think long term anhedonia has a lot to do with expectations management. there is of course a period of time, perhaps the first few months, where there is a distinct, almost chemical, feeling of disinterest in nearly everything. this fades as you have experienced. when i got to this point (was about two months for me), i too tried to return to activities i used to very much enjoy- they did not give me the same level of excitement or pleasure as i remember having even before adderall. it was very disappointing and caused depression in and of itself. i think that when we decide to quit adderall, we naturally frame it as "i want to go back to being myself again". i kept trying to dig my past up and relive a past life- and it just wasnt working. so one day i decided to just let those things go- i used to be a musician, a writer, a gamer.. many things. i wont lie- this meant for a time all i was doing was going to work, coming home and watching hours of Netflix.. but it was guilt free in a way. i wasn't constantly worrying about not loving all the things i used to love. my expectations for recovery then changed. honestly it made me seek out novelty in my life, but as they say.. if you truly love something and let it go, it will come back? (:

im very sorry to hear that you're going through this. it must be frightening to see these changes in your son, because you know who he really is and how he was. the problem is.. he probably does not realize (or is in denial) about the extent to which Adderall has changed him. after being on the medication for a long enough time, your "normal" becomes the manic state and when you're off the Adderall you're in depressive state. you forget who you were before, now you're just high or not high. does the doctor prescribing him adderall know of the hospitalization and psychosis? if your son is abusing (which he likely is given the paranoia and insomnia), he will not risk jeopardizing his supply and being cut off by reporting this. i would certainly recommend talking to him first about your concerns, but reaching out to his doctor and alerting him/her of this might be necessary. i think it's a great idea to have him read some of the stories you've found here and elsewhere. as cliche as it may sound, he has to *want* to quit. in my experience, it took fearing for my physical health to finally quit but sometimes that can be too late. perhaps an intervention may be in order? even if it doesn't lead immediately to him quitting, at the least a seed will be planted.

i am also in NYC / NJ if there's ever another meet up (:

it absolutely gets better. so absolutely. i also agree with AlwaysAwesome- taper sounds more effective than it really is. its difficult enough making the commitment to quitting stimulants as is, much less having access to a supply and controlling your consumption. even with some external control over the supply (friend or loved one holding the pills), my experience with taking tapered dosages is that it can cause anxiety and irritability because you are not taking the effective dosage for "therapeutic" effect. particularly after tolerance has been built, you will be introducing these side effects and dragging those side effects out for a longer period of time. cold turkey will likely feel much worse but for a much shorter amount of time. the added plus is that the will power you execute in going cold turkey will offset the additional suckiness. get pumped up for this- it will be a MUCH shorter period of suffering, but will vastly improve your chances of getting past the initial hump and never suffering again. (:

6 months on April 10th (i think)! sorry havent been around much- and for the first time in a long time, my excuse isn't being obsessed and torn apart by fantasy and mania. i've just been living life.

its not weird. that's how happiness REALLY feels it's hard to remember after being on a medication that produces artificial happiness for years. just remember how you feel now, and that the adderall happy wasn't ever real.

I quit for a girl. adderall ruined my last relationship, mostly due to neglecting her and being obsessed with every random thing. fwiw, itried quitting once while iIwas with her. she stuck with me through it, but i relapsed and that's when it all went to hell. so i finally quit because I had met someone new and never want to lose love due to adderall again.

the important question here is whether you feel that you're abusing adderall or taking it therapeutically. once you answer that, the next question is why do you feel the need to quit? is it guilt because you don't think you really need it? is it fear of abuse or escalation to addiction? from your post it sounds like the reason you started up again was to perform at work.. idon't know what profession you're in but the hours and alternating shifts seems like adderall bait. all it takes is one night or day you can't sleep because of your shifts then you use adderall to make up for it. iIhave friends that have enough problems in their relationship due to night and day shifts without adderall being a factor. IMO the risks here outweigh the benefits. if she is moving across the country to be with you, don't sabotage this relationship with unecessary risk!

are you sleeping okay yet? the first month, i had days on end where i could not sleep more than a few hours at a time. id wake up at 4:00 AM then toss and turn for hours. then finally id be so tired one day that i'd get a full nights sleep, but feel even MORE tired than those days without sleeping. you'll be happy to know that it all evened out for me after a month.

^this was really powerful. thank you for sharing. im sorry that it did not work out with your wife, unfortunately as youve probably read here, many people don't make the commitment to quit until they bottom out which is what her situation really is. i hope she doesn't wait till her life is in danger to do something about it.

frustrated.

yes, this is exactly what i went through. just wanted to open with a recent example of this: we were at my friend's house playing magic the gathering (woot!), and he had bought a digital scale to weight stacks of cards rather than counting (it works). i started to tell this story to another friend there, and i literally could not retrieve the word "digital scale". i was under no anxiety or pressure or anything, i just blanked out. im aware that this can happen to anyone, but its the frequency of this that alarms me. its hard to remember back to undergrad, 10 years ago, but i remember myself being pretty outgoing and well spoken before adderall ever existed for me. this is also of course subject to recall bias (what we recall from our memories may not be accurate). 60 days out im not so bad in social situations, but unfortunately, we probably were all better speakers on adderall- im not sure whether its because of reduced social anxiety or what but i have recorded sales demonstrations of myself on adderall and im a smooth criminal. now i find myself stuttering, flubbering, saying awkward things during banter.. even though most of these things ive said a billion times as a part of an internal sales script. this in turn causes me great anxiety about any sales meetings that end up on my plate (cause our dedicated sales person got laid off). im sure that anxiety and fear is probably the cause of this issue, but it generates more anxiety itself.

59 days. I'm no longer sleeping 11 hour nights, almost every weekend my new gf keeps me active, THE WORK Day moves so quickly now! honestly I'm more productive now than most tweaked out days if past. still have a lot of anxiety about responsibilities involving presentations or sales but thankfully that's not my whole job. (:

im happy that you chose your life and health over obligations. you're lucky that you have understanding professors and the time to appreciate cats!! you should absolutely capitalize on these blessings and get yourself into a better state of mind. i do have to admit though, i would agree with BeHereNow: for many people attempting to quit adderall at the same time as critical life obligations is simply too much. one of the terrible results of this could be something like dropping out of school, then later on blaming your life problems on trying to quit. it will be easier to convince yourself that you *need* adderall to succeed. that being said, there is of course never a "perfect" time to quit, but it seems like you have a great opportunity and time to recoop so congratulations on your decision and hope to see you around here more (:

just got super natural tweek from updating my resume. I forgot to eat and everything! it's kind of awesome but also it still feels ansty and jittery.. I hope that goes away eventually

good luck!! day 1 won't be too bad, but day 2-14 are the worst IMO- this is the time period you need to be the strongest. i was kinda thinking about that saying "here goes nothing" also. i think it should be "here goes everything". you don't have "nothing to lose", in fact you should think of this attempt as "if i dont succeed, i could lose everything". (: