BeHereNow

I think you're right and I'm sure they will try to shut us down. That's part of why it's so key that we keep sharing on here and helping new people who want to quit. <3

Well said. And something I've been thinking for a long time. I'm sure there are many reasons for this, including increased diagnosis, but the percentage of people coping with "mental illnesses" (scare quotes because if things are so deeply wrong, socially politically and economically, are we really ill??) -- "mental illnesses" like anxiety/depression/adhd or whatever it might be.... Violent tendencies... group thinking... violence, hatred.... show us that there is something seriously, pathologically wrong with everyone and our culture. Like you said, just turn on the news. I believe recovering addicts are the ones with the most strength and resilience and self-awareness. Few things in this life are harder than recovering from a serious addiction. And in some ways I am thankful that I am a recovering addict, because it has been a shortcut to very deep awareness, sobriety, and true success.

Duffman, even before you posted this I was starting to notice a change in the way you write/articulate yourself. You seem to be healing at an amazing pace. Congrats!!! 5.5 months is a HUGE deal! The anxiety seems pretty normal. I'd suggest working head-on for techniques on this... whenever you're ready. David Carbonelle's Panic Attack workbook has done wonders for me. I've always had anxiety and panic, and those worsened by a lot with/after adderall. But I'm working into acutal (non medication) strategies for long term success, and it's helping a LOT. It sounds like the most important parts of you are returning. That's what matters the most. Keep it up my friend. I can see even as an internet 'stranger' that you're doing really really well!!! Trust me... It keeps getting better! P.S. I am so happy for you that your girlfriend has stayed true to you and is willing to stick by you through your recovery. That means the world and shows the strength of your relationship. She's a keeper!!

I think routine is key. I have to learn it, but it's going to help a lot. Routine is my new goal. I've never been into it, but I'm realizing I have to be. Not just for productivity's sake, but also for sleep, health, and general well-being On top of work: Just 20 minutes a day of cleaning works wonders! The improvement to your life quality is worth money, but you're paying yourself! Also, I like to go walking too, when I have no motivation to do any other physical activity at least it's easy to go for a hike or short walk!! Anything that involves moving your body. "Not zero" is the key. Once I get moving it keeps going. Once I get going I get into whatever I'm doing and exceed my goals, but I need to trick myself into getting moving. Because like you (and others) have said: motivation follows action!!!

Like many of my generation, I was raised with D.A.R.E. and Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" campaign. The ad where they compare a frying egg to your brain on drugs. Super scary anti-drug propaganda. This all makes it sound like if you use (illegal) drugs, you'll be permanently ruined and brain damaged, with no hope for the future. I don't agree with this, and I think drug education needs to be more informative and encompassing of all types of drugs. Still, Do any of you think having taken adderall has had permanent effects on you, even after quitting? Many people I've met say that just trying a drug once, or for a short time, has permanently changed how they think and view the world. Anything from antidepressants to hallucinogens seems to alter us. There are certain experiences that you can't return from. Has adderall changed how your brain operates? How you think and experience the world?

TRUTH! I know what you mean Frank, those thoughts creep in after awhile. When the bad memories have faded, it's easier to romanticize the drug. The addict voice has an easier time messing with us when that happens. This happens to me with other substances too, like alcohol. I mean I'm not gonna lie, those thoughts still go through my head occasionally, even 3.5 years clean. I have to manage for them. Because the truth is that I literally can't be that person again. It's not a possibility. Not with any drug, not even if I wanted it to. You know this too, you said it yourself. I can sometimes force myself to crank out massive amounts of work in short periods of time, and I need to learn to do that more often. But I'll never be as productive as I was during that romance phase of adderall again. In the end, adderall took that away forever and I have to be okay with that. Thankfully I don't want to live that life again. I only want the 'good' parts of it, but those parts can't be sifted out. Thank you for sharing this Frank.

Hey positivethoughts, You've gotten a lot of good advice here, and I just want to echo the fact that quitting is an emotional roller coaster. There are so many ups and downs, especially in the first year, and you can't predict them all. Your life circumstances sound rough for anyone, and you're doing this while quitting on top of that. Be kind to yourself and take good care of yourself. The body builds dopamine reserves through food, sleep, and exercise, and TIME. I know the long distance thing is ridiculously hard, especially if you're used to living near someone. The thing that's helped me most through being away from a partner is to try to focus on myself and my "alone time." And I have to agree that proposing right now sounds wrong. You'll know when it's right.

Congrats Slick on this decision. I wish I had known that I needed to quit much sooner than I did. You've started the phase where the "benefits" have worn off and the drug is turning on you. As much as it helped you at first, it will now hurt you if you continue. And the longer you continue, the worse you'll feel next time. It sounds like you're doing okay right now. If you've already gotten it out of your system, I'd say keep going. Every time you try to quit a substance, it's harder and worse than the previous time. Don't tempt yourself to re-awaken that sleeping dragon. Flush that crap and cut yourself off for good!

My sleep is similar. It goes in phases. I hate it. I take medication sometimes, but I'd love to stop. It only helps in the moment, but makes it worse in the long run. I want to go to a sleep boot camp! How come some people are able to sleep so well, but not others? What does it mean to reset your circadian rhythm? Sometimes I think I just need to completely exhaust myself if I want to sleep. I worry that the only cure for my insomnia is to start training for marathons and work 16 hour days. Maybe I'll give it a try.

Heather thank you for sharing your story and your struggles. I think a lot of people here have the same underlying issue of needing to let go of all addictions and face themselves. Searching for something through these addictions, whether it's pills, people, or alcohol. It sounds like you have made a lot of progress moving forward, and you've learned a lot from these experiences. Try to think of all of this as a gift, and focus on gratitude. You've fast forwarded your learning process in ways that you wouldn't have if you hadn't gone through all of this. Congrats on 3 years, and keep your head up!

http://countercurrentnews.com/2015/11/big-pharmas-adderall-is-basically/

Once again I have our quitting crew to thanks for saving me from this catastrophe Y'all rock!

I finally did it. I flushed it.

Thanks friends for your responses. I'm hanging in there and haven't taken it. I don't want it. But I haven't thrown it away either. QO, it's definitely a nightmare. Since lack of access is part of what's kept me clean, having access is a problem. It's funny that you burned your last pill and still hang onto it. I can imagine I would have tried to lick the rock repeatedly by now. LilTex-- Thank you for playing the tape forward for me. I know what you mean about how helping other people helps us and it's comforting to know others struggle too. Sorry to hear you're craving alcohol, but glad to know that sharing my struggle helped you too Okay, I'm going to play my own tape forward: Take the pill. 20 mg xr. My heart starts racing even before it kicks in. I feel blood and adrenaline pumping through my body at high speed. I'm so sweaty and scared and excited. Start drinking tons of water. Feel the euphoria kick in, slightly. Feel excited and invincible and smart. Tell myself I'm cleansing my body by 'fasting' on adderall. Anticipate the euphoria coming up even higher, but it's very slight. Immediately feel dissatisfied: I want to feel more euphoric, but I don't. I want to do more, clean more, read more, exercise more, but everything makes me feel dissatisfied. Why doesn't adderall feel the way it used to for me? My heart is racing. Am I dying of a heart attack? What if I die here alone and nobody finds me? Panic attack ensues. I go for a walk but immediately feel agoraphobic. Try to calm down. Take a couple of klonopin. Feel hollow and regret losing all the time I've put into my recovery. Start beating myself up.Then I start thinking about how I can get a prescription. Might as well, since I already reset my recovery. Look it up online, spend 2 hours on the internet reading forums about how to convince my dr I need adderall. Go back to compulsively cleaning, or working, or whatever I've lost myself in doing. Think about how badly I want to take another pill but don't have one. Can't stop thinking about adderall, more adderall. How can I get more adderall? Think about how unproductive and lazy I am without it, how much better my life would be if I went back on it. Feel extremely dissatisfied with myself, my work, and the fact that the euphoria is gone after an hour. Frantically I drink pot after pot of coffee in an attempt to bring back what little scraps of euphoria I had. The day is already almost gone. I feel empty inside. Although I've read 500 pages I can't remember, or dusted and vacuumed my whole house, I still don't think I've done enough today. Start craving alcohol. Find an excuse to buy a couple bottles of wine-- it's my adderall day, I need/deserve this. On my way there, I get annoyed with every car on the road. While there, I get annoyed with everyone at the store. Have some drinks and throw away 2+ months of sobriety, the longest I've ever gone since I started drinking as a teenager. Get trashed from a couple drinks on an empty stomach. Send some drunken/adderall texts. Keep drinking to calm down, finish both bottles of wine, watch movies, pass out at 3 am. Wake up 3 hours later with a pounding head, nauseous, dehydrated, bad taste in my mouth, regretful, heart is sore, back is sore. Have another panic attack. Vomit. Still feel tweaked out but can't function. Too panicky to go anywhere. Spend all day in bed, manage to get some food in my stomach, take some headache pills, watch hours of movies, beat myself up. Repeat for 2-3 more days. Eventually forgive myself for messing up and start my recovery all over. I feel better already. Thanks Liltex for the idea!

I have no idea what my blood pressure was while I was using. I was way too scared to test it. Though I'm very curious now about how high it went. One time I went to a doctor's appointment on adderall, years ago, and they yelled at me about my blood pressure being through the roof. After that, I stopped measuring it, but I know it was high. I could feel it. About 6 months after quitting, I had it measured and I now have my blood pressure checked once a month. It's always on the low end. As low as 100/60 sometimes, usually closer to 110/70. It was also about 6 months into quitting that I started running, and I think that helped too. Food is powerful medicine. It's very possible that your dietary changes have affected your bp. Quitting undoubtedly affects it too-- there's a reason for all those black box warnings. Most likely, this is a sign of further recovery for you. So, congratulations! Your body will adapt; just make sure you're getting enough calories and water in order to avoid lightheadedness.

Hey all, This is a vigilance post to help me avoid relapsing. I found an old pill while I was cleaning out my house the other day, and instead of getting rid of it, I set it aside in a safe place. I actually contemplated taking it. I still cannot bring myself to flush it. I am not worried about making it a habit again, because I don't have access, and because I don't want that life. I'm scared to take it. But I can't bring myself to get rid of it. I miss being self-absorbed and emotionally numb and overly productive sometimes. I miss not caring about things that now break my heart. What scares me is what it could do to my brain after I've worked so hard to recover and rebuild those neural connections. 3.5 years clean, I'm scared that taking it could make my depression and anxiety go off the charts. I'm scared it would deplete my dopamine. I'm scared my brain would remember my former dependence, and stop producing dopamine for awhile. I'm not trying to worry anyone, but I am writing this out here in order to help myself get rid of it and remember why I quit in the first place. As strong as I am against adderall, finding a pill still tempt/ed me. A good reminder that addiction sticks with us, and that I am always only one pill away from falling back into it.

I think it is possible. It's different for everyone and with every relationship, but adderall numbs you emotionally. It numbed me to love and destroyed relationships. I have experienced some of the most intense experiences with love post-adderall. Some of my biggest heartbreaks, too. Quitting re-opened me to experience connections to other people, and to value my relationships more. Quitting, I could actually feel love and emotions again. Sorry to hear you're in this situation. Keep your head up and know that you might meet someone any day. And now that you're quit, you'll be more open to that person than you were before.

Maybe this slip was the proof you needed to realize that adderall just doesn't do anything good for you anymore. Maybe you learned or gained something from this experience. I wouldn't dwell on the negative, I would just focus on moving forward. So glad you're here! Xoxo

Hey msb, Unfortunately, the roller coaster is very normal coming off of adderall. For me the mood swings were most intense for the first 4-6 months, and really started smoothing out at 8-12 months. I think someone on here once said it's known as "emotional lability," and is normal for people quitting a substance like this. Just know that this is NOT you and this is not permanent. Your brain is recovering from a powerful drug, and the ups and downs will be intense. Hang on for the ride! Here's a skill I just started learning in therapy within the past few months. I wish I had known about this in early recovery. It's called "Opposite Action" in Dialectical Behavior Therapy. Basically, when you're experiencing an extreme mood swing that can be hurtful to others or you, you act in the opposite way of how you feel. If you're feeling lethargic, it means you get up and do something productive. And then if you're really not feeling it, you can always stop. Here's are some links: http://www.mindfulnessmuse.com/dialectical-behavior-therapy/10-practical-examples-of-opposite-action-part-one https://marcimentalhealthmore.com/2015/06/09/dbt-opposite-action/ I think this is a really useful technique because it involves awareness of negative emotions. Plus, acting in the opposite way can help you feel better because the action itself feels great and is often just what you need. In the case of feeling lethargic and doing something anyway, most people feel more energized afterwards. In other words, emotions follow actions.

Congrats on 5 years QO! That's a huge accomplishment worth celebrating!

"Honestly, I'm not ready to go cold turkey. I think that is setting myself up for failure, because I can't throw the bottle away with the looming prospect of my work. Since I can't do that, I think it may be pointless to say I'm going cold turkey. Today I was able to take my prescribed amount, which I haven't done in a while. I think weaning myself off (40 this week, 30 next week, 20 next etc...) is an approach that is more likely to yield success, and also won't make me feel like a failure. I hope this isn't the "easy way out" and by not flushing my pills I'm still locking myself in denial. But I don't think I am- because for the first time I've admitted to myself, this IS a problem and long term I do not want this. Anyways, sorry that this has become the epilogue to my novel, but thanks again and best of luck to everyone. :)" I think it's great that you're being honest with yourself about this Nancy! It will help you be a lot more successful in the long run. I'm so glad your sister is there to help support you. Don't worry about writing too much. Visit often and post away! If you read through the "tell your story section" (which I definitely recommend!), you'll see that writing novels on this forum is not all that uncommon Your plan to go back to your prescribed dose might or might not help you. I don't think it's the cowardly way out as you suggested; I think it's actually a harder way. And it doesn't work for everyone. I tried that route many times but couldn't do it. The stress of always trying to keep it under control eventually outweighed the stress of going cold-turkey. It kept me locked into the addiction longer. A lot of doctors think it's better to taper, but once you've crossed into addiction territory it's a different story. Let us know how it goes.

Wow I haven't had one of those dreams in awhile, but in my first year of quitting I was having tons of them. I would always wake up feeling dirty. What's interesting is that my adderall dreams always include(d) a very intense visual component, where I could SEE the orange or blue pills brightly and vividly. It was never so much about being productive or feeling the adderall "high," but mostly visual dreams with visions of taking adderall, accompanied with feeling guilty or dirty. I'm quitting drinking right now, and I've had about 2 alcohol dreams in the past 2 months where I drank and felt horrified and regretful. I think you're right that this is our subconscious keeping us strong and helping us understand that a substance is no longer an option.

Hey Nancy, Welcome to the site. I'm glad you're here. It sounds like you're starting to see the negative effects of adderall. They tend to start outweighing the good that you found in the beginning, and the bad gets stronger as you see fewer and fewer positive effects from taking it. Things that it used to help with (like losing weight) are exactly the things that it starts to take away (now you're seeing that you're gaining weight and caught in an unhealthy binge/fast pasttern.) After awhile, it starts to take away your focus and drive too. A lot of adderallics are "type A" personalities, perfectionists, overachievers. Quitting means we have to face the aspects of ourselves that we fear the most: the part of us that wants to sleep and eat and conserve energy for meaningful projects, not expend everything on useless tasks. These are just components of being a living mammal in this world. Adderall throws us out of balance, and it's unsustainable. So when you quit, you can expect your body to need some time to catch up. You're going to be unmotivated, lazy, etc. as you've seen. But none of these extremes are the real you. This is a long winded way of saying that the journey of quitting adderall isn't just about removing the substance. It's about changing our whole approach to life. You're going to need to let go of some of your "type A" tendencies go if you're going to be successful. You're going to need to start looking at yourself as more than just an "ivy league girl," as "crushing" life, as the leader of your social circle. Quitting adderall in the long term means we have to let go of the self-image associated with it, and also the self-image that originally led us to take that horrible drug in the first place. Who else are you besides an "ivy league girl?" You sound really interesting. Let go of the perfect grades and the ivy league image: who are you apart from all this? What about your health, the people in your life, your personality? The things that really matter? Are you happy with that person? Or are there parts of you that you've been neglecting in your search for perfection? Quitting is going to mean letting those parts of you grow. It's a painful journey but it's so worth it.

Hey Knonymous, I have to agree with Doge that there is nothing to be ashamed of. Addiction is biological and chemical. It's not like you're a bad person. You got hooked on something. And we live in a world where most people seem to be addicted to something. But now you're seeing the consequences. You keep taking it, and these feelings you're describing (the emptiness, paranoia, anxiety, etc.) are probably going to keep getting worse if you keep taking it. Addiction is progressive. People tend to keep bottoming out at lower and lower points-- but you can always go lower. How low do you want to go? You can stop this here, or you can keep letting it get worse. Do you want to wait for life to send you a major wake-up call (like health, work, or relationship problems caused by addiction?) Stick around and post away! I'd suggest reading through some of the "tell your story" forum. There is a lot of wisdom on this site.

The lunar cycles definitely affect me. Each lunar cycle brings its own unique ebb and flow of energy that I move with and through, but some are stronger than others. The new moon is usually a calm, quieter time. Supposedly it's a good time to begin new things. Some full moons, I have crazy insomnia and will be lying awake all night with unstoppable thoughts and reflections that lead me to deeper insight into my life. Sometimes I have intense dreams around the full moon, and often these dreams help me understand my life more fully. Sometimes my energy levels rise as the full moon approaches, then there's a kind of letting go that happens after it peaks. And then I'll go through phases where I don't notice or pay as much attention and it doesn't affect me as strongly. A lot of people I know have reported having insomnia, and being affected in other ways by lunar cycles. I think it's real. The ocean and other bodies of water are very heavily influenced by the moon's cycles, so why wouldn't we?