SleepyStupid

@Letsdothis! that's awesome! congrats on your last pill. i especially love that you identified better "person" as one of your goals. it's great that you have employees and family to hold you accountable but ultimately you need to do this for yourself as well. gl and keep us updated on your progress (:

that's great! sounds like exactly what you need right now (: i can see it going both ways for some people. early on in my recovery, i actually needed to be out of the house. getting up and going to work forced me into a routine of normalcy, and being around others forced me to work on socializing. stay safe and stay sober everyone!

lol, i think you're on the wrong forum my friend. try Bluelight instead. good luck with your "wise regimen".

you're right in that a slip-up here or there doesn't reverse all your progress - in a biochemical way. as long as you are not flooding your brain with dopamine on a constant basis, you are still on the path to repairing any damage caused by the neurotoxicity. but even an isolated incident of taking a pill one night can open up the negative reward pathways that you've worked hard to shut down. and that's the thing about total abstinence - it's less about the biochemistry and more about containing addictive behavior. a sober you may be fully in control of your desires. but a drunk or high you might just "fuck it" and pop a pill. of course i'm not saying avoid those things - just keep it in moderation and more importantly understand how those substances affect you.

there's an even greater level of denial in that statement - taking it as prescribed isn't even that much better than abusing it! there are plenty of folks here who have taken it as prescribed for years and years. it's still a mega problem. the idea that taking it as prescribed is the ideal situation is perhaps the thing you should focus on changing. deep down you still feel like Adderall could be a good thing. but let's face it - Adderall is just speed.

i used to think this way as well. it was important for me to distinguish that it's more about ME being unable to control my temptation than them being adderally. in the early stages of recovery it was mostly about this and also a sense of inferiority. fast forward a year or so into my recovery, that feeling changed to that of pity and a bit of superiority (though i'd never say anything lol). we here all know that adderall doesn't last forever. it eventually stops working or your life will become a mess (whichever comes first). i started to view these friends through that lens - they simply have no idea what's coming for them. i have already gone through the rite of passage so to speak. so i guess what i'm saying is that we don't necessarily need to outgrow our friends, but once you're mentally ready yourself, we simply wait for them to catch up. (:

that justification around Pride is a real sneaky and interesting one! glad my inner addict didn't think of that lol. gl and keep us posted!

@Ready4Change , sorry to hear about your struggles - trust me i've been there. you probably already know that 10 months after 15 years is still in the fairly early stages, but that aside, here's something to consider: depression and anxiety are often cyclical in that they can cripple you from progressing, and the fact that you're not progressing makes you more anxious, leading to more crippling etc. at some point it's hard to tell whether the anxiety is even from PAWS anymore, though PAWS is very real and easy to blame. let's assume for argument sake that there's nothing you can do about PAWS, only time will heal that. is there something you can do about the progress? maybe all you need is a "win" no matter what it is? i was in a pretty depressed state last year, but my gf suggested i needed a change and forced me to get out there and try applying for a new job. i didn't end up landing a new position, but i got pretty far into the interviewing process, and you know what? just the process of studying for the interviews and getting a better sense of where i stand.. it instantly lifted the fog. even though i didn't get an offer, simply understanding my value and feeling like i was good enough to compete was all i needed. it was a small but decisive win. your win could be anything - completing a personal project, volunteering, starting a new hobby. the point is, those wins won't come to you, you need to actively pursue them. the biggest trap is waiting to feel better. all of this is of course easier said than done, but i found it to be true from experience. (:

oh God the sweating - i could barely walk around outside on a hot day without being drenched. it was the worst, lol.

^^^this. "can't see the forest through the trees." there's a reason that's such a popular saying! i think the main thing we all did was believing that we could get better. that is honestly the only thing you need to weather the storm that is time. once you truly believe that you can recover with enough time, there are certainly some strategies and general best practices (eating well, exercise, etc) but there is no magic bullet. even switching over to other medication like Wellbutrin will only soften the edges slightly.

@NurseAddy so sorry to hear about your dog no one needs to tell you this (because you already know), but you can't let the addict in you use these things to rationalize using again. taking Adderall again won't bring your dog back, nor will it make counselors reach back out to you. Adderall literally solves none of these problems! in fact, it will eventually just add to them. FWIW, i've always had a really hard time with the exercising part of recovery, but i do remember quite vividly a day that seemed absolutely unbearable. i somehow forced myself on a bike for a half hour and it was like magic - POOF - despair erased for at least the rest of the day! you've got a few days until the refill, you at least owe it to yourself to try everything before caving. *PS. don't cave though (:

hi @OWG_8 congrats on 5 months sober! i think if you were only using for 2 years, you'll feel a lot better around the 1 year mark. regarding the weight gain i must confess that most people have the opposite problem when coming off Adderall. if you are still losing weight after stopping then you may want to speak to a professional about this. in terms of gaining weight though, the formula is fairly straight forward: more calories consumed than burned. marijuana can increase your hunger.. (ahem) assuming you can get it prescribed or it's already legal in your state (:

i'm not sure about the derealization part, but if by retarded you mean the word soup effect, stuttering and stumbling through your speech - yes it does recover! this was something that worried me greatly early on, but it's well documented (on here) and goes away within the first year i'd say.

but you still must have a reason for quitting? maybe you don't believe it's good enough, but something brings you here. a big part of recovery is faith. some people place that faith in a higher power, but that's not for everyone. for me, the faith was simply believing that my life will be better than it was. it may not feel like it at first, even for a while, but i placed my faith in all the recovery stories here and just kept believing. and then it eventually happened (:

"without consequences"? no. but people taking it without becoming dependent? sure. i think a lot of this has to do with your mindset going into use, and of course a pre-disposition to addictive behavior. Mike has an article about it on the main website somewhere, but us Adderallics often have similar traits that lead us to dependence. i know for me it was a creative pursuit, and i knew and recognized all the dangers but didn't care. (fortunately?) some people can literally just use it to cram for a test or party one night.

hi @Had enough i'm sorry to hear that. it's good that he doesn't currently have access, but we all know how easy it is to get access. this is the most insidious thing about Adderall (and many drugs) - you can't unknow the feeling that it brings. even if he doesn't feel addicted again yet, what he's doing by "dabbling" is re-opening pathways for pleasure seeking. i think the strongest thing you can do in this situation is remind him why he quit in the first place. gl and stay strong (:

hi @Jessnj25 glad you finally decided to join the forums! feel free to DM me if you feel more comfortable with that (:

while i don't necessarily share the spirituality, anything that adds value to life and recovery process is awesome! that being said, i'm an advocate of Wellbutrin - just be careful of the dosage. normal adult dosage is ~300mg a day, but most people find that too stimulating and can cause anxiety. i'd start out at half that in SR form, try it for a month and see if it helps. (:

@DelaneyJuliette this right here. i can almost guarantee that those "idk what the fuck i was thinking" moments only occurred because you knew you had access to the drugs.

trying

@skylounger i love The Witcher! Adderall had the opposite effect on me where i had no interest in videogames, TV or movies at all. but for almost the first full year sober, i didn't have the energy for videogames. it will come back to you, i guarantee it (: by the way, there are a lot of quality of life mods for Witcher that may make the game more tolerable and less stressful. for example, i have no patience for inventory management so i got a mod for unlimited backpack weight. depending on the platform, you may have some other options available (i'm on PC). @dolssa don't feel silly about that - it's a HUGE deal and one of the first major victories. once you realize that it's not so bad, you'll have a fairly clean living space going forward which does WONDERS for your state of mind! my next big challenge is writing a full song without Adderall - it's tough but i've at least put in a routine of practicing piano and guitar!

hi @Lizzyc i think the struggle many people have with relapse is that they still view Adderall as a "medication" or a "tool" for improvement. what has worked for me during recovery is coming to terms with the fact that Adderall is just fucking speed. i took it because i liked getting high. in my 4 years clean, i did relapse briefly, but even then i had no belief that i could start back up on it, be able to control it this time, fix my life, etc etc. i knew i was relapsing cause i was bored and i wanted to get high. so ask yourself: do i want to go back to being a speed junkie? another question that helped me a lot: do i plan on taking this for the rest of my life? if the answer is no, then at some point in the future you will need to quit and it will be that much harder to do with another few years of use.

hi @A48781 first off, congrats on 35 days. you've definitely made the right choice! that's a hard question to answer because a lot of the recovery process is very subjective. doctors seem to be convinced that your neurochemistry should be balanced within a few weeks of discontinuation. they're not entirely wrong, but that's just physiological part of it. even once your dopamine levels are back to normal, you've basically spent the last 6 years putting reward before effort - that takes some time to un-learn so to speak. that being said, i think you still have plenty of "recovery upside" to gain. just keep in mind that it's not some magical boundary where one day you feel 20% better. you will feel more recovered the day that you accomplish something you didn't think you could without Adderall. so keep a look out for those challenges and step up (:

hi @DrewK15 sorry to hear about your struggles. job hunting can be really rough - i recently put a ton of effort into it, went through 4 rounds with a really cool company, felt SO confident about it.. and well it didn't work out. it was really disappointing, and honestly i'm not sure i have the energy to try again just yet. but i keep reminding myself that all the effort, research, rehearsing etc. isn't wasted. every interview is an opportunity to learn and refine your professional story. if you're not hurting for money, i would agree that going down the minimum wage route would be a waste. that time would be better spent keeping at the interview game and finding something that is more meaningful. what's your preferred field of work, if you don't mind me asking?

thanks for joining us and sharing your story (: glad to hear that you're managing without stimulants. have to admit that Wellbutrin was the key for me, and i still take it. that story about doing lines in the bathroom brought back some pretty shameful memories of myself lol, but glad we're all past that! congrats on 48 days - keep us posted!