olivia115

I felt I needed it to be happy too. I remember I had a movie day with my friends one hungover day and I remember running back and forth to my room to pop a pill every now and then and as I was doing it I was thinking, what am i doing?! We're JUST watching a movie, it requires zero input or creativity from me! But I was so psychologically addicted that even the idea of just being in my own skin at the time was uncomfortable and I felt I needed to be medicated just to enjoy this time with friends. For me one of my favorite things has been just sitting in my living room with my roomates and enjoying being in their presence, watching tv or a movie, laughing, shooting the shit, being weird... It feels good, especially when non-medicated because I know I dont need something ELSE to enjoy the moment. I can just enjoy now without the anxiety of, when will it be over and I need to pop another pill?

I'm in such a similar situation with nursing school. We have clinicals and lectures. The clinicals are a lot better in my opinion because you're working with patients and you can sort of snap back into reality a lot easier...it's easier to see the big picture there... Where as when I'm in lecture I have a very hard time focusing, but when I DO focus I do JUST fine on tests. When I used to be a tweaked-out-know-it-all, it was a lot harder to make friends to study with. No one wanted to study with me, and I dont blame them, I was probably obnoxious! Now I find people are a lot more receptive to me when I can honestly admit, " Ughh, what did we just talk about the past hour in lecture, I was totally lost." People love to help other people, and they are more likely to help you out if you can ask for it and admit you're not perfect. WHAT A CONCEPT, haha, it makes me laugh now seeing how simple it is, but I've found that support from my peers helps keep me productive, they sort of keep me in check.... Maybe someday I'll be able to do that all on my own again, but for now, I'll take all the help and support I can get! Keep smiling!!

I was taking around that much too, towards the end of my use. I would lose count of how many pills I took and my script bottle would run out faster and faster each month. I would feel anxiety the FIRST day of getting a new script filled because I would feel like I was already running out of pills, even though I hadnt taken a single pill yet! I just knew in the back of my head I had lost the ability to control myself and would end up taking WAY too much. I dont want that anxiety back ever! Rationing pills, running out, hiding them, forgetting them when i left the house, thinking i had one extra pill in my purse and the panic when i couldnt find it there...my brain was so fried I felt like a hamster stuck on the hamster wheel, spinning and spinning and getting NOWHERE...yeah there are definitely times I miss them, but then again I'm only 3 months in. Everyday is a new day and everyday I get further away from that volatile time in my life and that's a good feeling, even if Im not feeling good that day, and ALL I want is to take the pills again; you have to have faith that you're making the right decision...even if you don't believe it yet. You will come to believe it, but it comes with time.

I went through the same cycle every month. It came down to handing my pills and scripts over to my boyfriend because I had lost control. I could NOT hold myself accountable anymore. Is there anyone in your life that knows what youre going through that you can trust? I found this the most effective way for me to quit because I had someone else to hold me accountable which is what I needed.

Ashley the same thing just happened to me too! I hate the dentist, it's probably the only thing I'm terrified of, and I just had to have an emergency root canal too. I know I used to chew the pills too, which makes me cringe for my poor teeth now! Gotta make sure I always have that dental insurance

It will get better. You will come back to life, you just gotta reboot first. If you can embrace this phase it will be a lot easier. Reboot, eat, rest, sleep, cry, sleep some more, watch tv, eat, sleeeeep and nap, caffeinate when you HAVE to be somewhere, but when you're done go home and crawl back into that safe bed and sleep some more...sleep until you dont want to sleep anymore...youll feel pretty crummy during this time and for me it was honestly a lot easier to sleep through a lot of what i was going through emotionally and physically...your body is WIPED OUT, you brains neurochemistry is pretty messed up and it cant go back to normal overnight but the sleeping helps. after you've done this you can take the next steps. you WILL start to feel things again.

I cried a lot too. I still cry sometimes. That's perfectly okay. When I first quit there were some days that I would get up to go to the fridge and back to bed and I would sleep all day. I was in the middle of my semester at the time and even after about 4 days of staying in bed I didn't care about missing class. I knew i should have, but i also knew my health was more important and that ultimately i was sick, and a sick body/mind isnt going to work like one would like or expect it to. Getting out of bed was the biggest struggle for me. Even just working up the energy to shower. (I did find if i took the time to shower and put myself together (even if it took FOREVER) i felt a little better) i didnt see the point. i did ALOT of nothing in those first weeks. I recommend netflix. Be lazy. Your body needs it, try and give it the time it needs to recouperate, Your emotions will catch up a little later. Keep listening to that voice inside telling you to walk on. It will get stronger and more confident in the weeks to come!

Wow, thanks for all the positive words here! I agree, the days when it's easy to be around people I remember that I'm pretty funny and that people like to be around me. I don't know why I forget that so easily sometimes. I think when i was taking dexedrine I lived my life so compartmentalized I would get lost in enjoying the moment. I would always be focused on my next move, I could never enjoy what was in front of me. It's something that I need to focus on everyday. I am very good at laughing, despite feeling a heaviness on my shoulders sometimes. As the weeks go by I am counting on that helping me out a lot. I might feel some lows, not too many highs, but overall things have stabilized. I dont have those nights where I'm balling my eyes out screaming at my boyfriend anymore. Where I am now is so much better than that, and I know things can only get better. My doc does not know I quit. I havent been back yet since the end of last october and i havent made a new appointment yet. I think I might end up looking for someone closer to my home ( my last doc was an hour away) that I can just be straightforward and honest with. The longest conversation I ever had with this past doc was my first visit and every time i went to see him afterwards it was just to refill my rx. It would be nice to see someone I could feel more open with and not like I had held back so much from. The whole concept of not being responsible for one's addiction but being responsible for one's recovery strikes very true with me and gets me through the tougher days.

I remember the first time I took a blue Adderall, it was my friends who I had convinced I wanted to try to finish a paper. From that day forward I thought about Adderall every single day. I came home from school and the first thing I did was set up a psychiatrist appointment so I could get my own rx. I was in love. I lost weight. I was funnier. I felt more beautiful (a combination of the weight loss and the extra energy I could devote to making myself up each morning) I knew from the start this drug could be bad for me. I started off on focalin and developed a horrible rash on the trunk of my body. The docs were convinced it wasn’t the focalin but I was, but I still took it…eventually I got switched over to dexedrine spansules 10mg twice a day and I fell in love all over again. I would chew the little beads, even though the bottle said not to. I would take more than I needed. I had a roommate who was also on add meds and I would try some of her meds like vyvanse and I loved that because I couldn’t find a way to abuse it so much, but unfortunately my insurance didn’t cover it so I continued my roller coaster ride with dexedrine. I was in organic chemistry at the time and if you’ve ever taken that class you know how much being organized can help…unfortunately I would read the textbook word for word and pour over my meticulously color coded notes into the wee hours of the morning then sleep for about an hour, wake up get ready, somehow manage to look like a rockstar, pop another pill and skip to class like I had everything under control…I remember coming home from class after lab on these days and looking at my hands, they would be all ruddy looking and my eyes would be bloodshot but I still felt like I could run a marathon… I was also working as a waitress at this time and doing a lot of partying. I felt like I was having the time of my life. I would start taking more pills and would start to have to learn how to ration them so I would have enough to study for a test, or make it through an early morning shift…pretty much whatever I had to do to make it until my next prescription or my next psychiatrist appt. I remember going to 5 or more CVSs until I could find one that had my medicine in stock. I couldn’t just wait until a few days later when a new shipment would come in, I had to find one that had it. I would call places, drive 20 miles, whatever it took. I remember the smile and heart pounding joy I would feel when I’d call a pharmacy and they’d say, yeah we have that in stock, do you have a prescription. I would hand up the phone and dance. Looking back now, it’s so sad…. I remember going to my psychiatrist too. Whenever I was in his office I had been off my meds for at least a few days since I had stopped taking it as prescribed and ALWAYS ran out early. It was such a struggle to put myself together and make myself look presentable for these early am appts but I always kept them early so that after the appt I could go fill my script and have that immediate gratification I yearned for. He always asked the same questions. How are you? How is the medication working? Any side effects? Any drugs or alcohol? I always lied. I wasn’t going to tell him my heart was pounding and I felt like he knew I was lying. I wasn’t going to tell him about my hands that were always shaking, the dry mouth, the teeth I never stopped grinding, the heart that I felt you could see pounding outside of my clothes, my increased blood pressure, the lack of sleep, the lack of eating, the mood swings and so on.,..if I told him that he might take away my superwoman pills! I couldn’t have that now! So I just sat there and acted sweet and demure and got my prescriptions and went straight to cvs after every visit. I started running out of pills quicker and quicker each month. I stopped being productive. I would stress about doing things so id pop a pill thinkning I could get more done but instead it had an idiosyncratic effect and I just did less. I would clean my room, my bathroom, my kitchen anything but what I needed to do. I mean I didn’t really have to do it right then, I could do it later, I had pills, I could do anything. For me, the turning point came around when I had not slept for a long time. Im in nursing school and I was in my mental health rotation. I remember I had gotten in a fight with my boyfriend and I had had a bunch of things going on so I had taken way too many pills. I hadn’t slept in over 2 days and I was tweaking out on Adderall. I remember being in a small room with another classmate and our clinical instructor feeling like the room was closing in on me. Like I was watching the scene from outside my body. Whenever I spoke, the words that came out of my mouth made no sense and I was having trouble diverting attention away from myself. I could feel the anxiety building. I was moving every limb of my body non stop…I couldn’t sit still no matter how hard I tried. Every little noise terrified me and startled me…I thought I was starting to hear voices and I remember thinking I belonged in this mental health facility but I just had to keep it together enough until I could make it home… Luckily my boyfriend was incredibly supportive. He has some process addiction problems himself so we talked early one morning and came clean about all our shit. I handed over my pills to him and my 2 remaining scripts. I asked him for a few pills over the next week and by the end of the week I told him I wanted to flush everything. So we did. I was lucky this was at the beginning of my new bottle because it gave me no way of getting my hands on any pills for about 3 months. Ive never gotten them illegally and don’t have the gall to do so, so it wasn’t a concern to me. I made it through these first 3 months. I don’t want to go see my doc, I got a call from them about 3 weeks before my next appt saying they would have to reschedule because he was going to be out of the office which I looked at as a blessing. I never rescheduled my appt and they haven’t called me back…I know ill have to see someone new, but for now in this acute phase I just needed to stay away from any access to dexedrine that I could. I didn’t trust myself going to this appt and going through the same act as I had before saying everything was fine. So here I am now, 85 days clean. It’s been incredibly hard. The past 4 years of my life seem like a blurry dream. I did a lot of incredibly careless things. I almost forget who I was before dexedrine and it’s hard to learn to cope with things I haven’t had to deal with in years. I'm in the middle of a competitive nursing program right now and I quit using about halfway through it, and no one knows this..So what I struggle with now is differentiating between these two sides of me..The medicated superwoman who was to be honest, quite crazy and volatile but energetic...and the real me who is still adjusting to the nonmedicated version of me, and I almost forget what she's like. I could read a weeks worth of reading in a few hours...but would i retain it? Nope. Now i can barely open a book to study and i wonder is it because i dont care or because I just need to relearn how to focus? I’m getting As and Bs so Im not dumb, which ive always known. Ive gained some weight which has been a pretty big struggle for me and really bothers me. I have trouble in social situations still which is hard. I feel less outgoing but once im in a group im confortable with im good, I just have a hard time thinking other people want to hang out with me because I know deep down I have some baggage. It's a lot to deal with at once but I'm doing it...I just need to learn to accept that perfection is not only a crazy standard to set for myself, but that it's OKAY to set goals that don't include perfection in it! Sounds stupid when I type it out...but I've been setting myself up for failure for a long time by only accepting perfection from myself. I know it’s still early and I know that I cant expect to be better already but when did you guys start noticing life became a little easier than it did when you first quit? When did you guys start feeling the biggest milestones of getting better? 6 months? Longer? Anyway, that’s the short and sweet of it, I wish everyone the strength to keep at it one day at a time. Our healthier future selves will be so proud of us! I love reading everyone’s stories on here and I am so glad I found this site.

"I will never forget the wired feeling of desperation that led to the big flush." Sometimes I start to miss feeling adderalled out...but then I read a simple sentence like the one above and I remember just how horrible and out of control it got.