Subtracterall

Took adderall for over ten years. Been off for about four months now. I know it's still early but I have to wonder how long is this weighted down sloth like feeling going to last. Certainly I have times when I don't feel weighted down but other times, Like this afternoon, I feel like I have twenty extra pounds I am lugging around. It takes so much effort to get up and take a short walk. I've gained approx 10 lbs in four months but I don't think that's what is causing this weighted down feeling? I eat right and exercise almost everyday. Any long term ex users out there - does the weighted down sloth like feeling ever go away for good? How long does it take?

Welcome back Eric. If at first you don't succeed, try try again. I can hear the frustration in your post. Vent away - we are here with similar struggles. Kudos to you for recognizing that you need to stop and for continuing to give it the old college try. You can do this and you will be a successful quitter someday. Have a nice long restful weekend off addy and don't be so hard on yourself. Keep us posted.

You CAN BS your way through this and you WILL BS your way through this. I could have written this same post myself sans the part about the big assignment and I've only been off addy for 4 months. What Frank said when I made a similar post a while back really helps me and I think about it almost daily - thanks Frank. The flipping president of the U.S. can BS his way through the job...so I can too. Will some people suspect I don't know what I'm doing? Maybe, probably, but I won't admit it unless I get caught making a mistake, which does happen sometimes. After all we are human and so is that senior management team you are working with. Who knows maybe they are going through a similar crisis in their lives or maybe their son or daughter is. They may be so distracted by their own inner struggle that they may not even have the ability to notice anything is "off". Also I remind myself that although I work with a lot of very intelligent people, there are also a decent number of people who are not as smart as me. So that cuts the number of people that I need to impress in half. I hope you keep us posted on how things go. You may find that people like what you do when you are not on addy. Since I quit, I've turned in work that was not my best and been praised for it. I am going to ride this gravy train (job) until they kick my arse out lol. Fake it till you make it and don't give up. You can do it.

It boggles the mind that these doctors go to school for years only to push onto patients what ever makes big pharma the most money.

Your reasons for wanting to take adderall sound so much like mine. Adderall made me stop obsessing about food because it killed my appetite. On adderal I was finally free to think about non food related topics. Here is what I have found to be true from my experience with adderall. Adderall got me skinny in the short term but as you can see it is not a long term solution to staying thin. We can be slender off of adderall but we have to find out what works for our bodies and we won't find that on adderall. Adderall will cause you to postpone finding a sustainable solution to your obsessive relationship with food. IMO adderall plus an eating disorder is an extremely dangerous combination. I have an eating disorder and I suspect that is why I had such horrid health issues as a result of taking adderall - because I was not getting enough calories. Here is what I think you should do....Stay off adderall and get treatment for eating disorder. I apologize if that sounds harsh. I don't mean for it to sound harsh but I'm not very good with words. Also give yourself a break and congrats for being off for two months!

I took up pilates and gardening. I'm growing some sweet potatoes and plan to plant some peas and jalapenos this weekend. I also got a bike. I haven't had my own bike since college. Now I ride almost every weekend. Oh and chess. I started playing chess!

InneedofhelpBP, you are the first person I have heard mention vein pulsations. I think I have this and I've been clean almost three months but I still have the pulsations all through my body. Did yours go away? How did you know it was vein pulsations that caused your symptom? Did you see a doctor for this? I want the pulsing to stop and have no idea how to go about achieving that. Thank you for any info you can provide on this. it seems rare and I will appreciate any info you can share with me.

Hi Kim. I don't know how old you are but I'm 42 and took adderal for about 12 years as prescribed at low doses 20-40 mg per day. I never took more than that in a 24 hour period. I can tell you I am having hella health issues Which is what forced me to quit. I thought I was going into early menopause. i don't think that anymore since I quit because the hot flashes stopped since I quit but it took a while for that to stop. there is a hormonal component to this stuff. Like you I took for years and years and never read about long term health consequences bec I didn't want to know. Well now I'm finding out first hand what it can do to your body. My skin is so thin and veiny. Boo boos on my legs take forever to heal - like 6 months to heal a flipping ingrown hair. Since I quit I swear I am shrinking. My finger tips look waterlogged all the time. I dont know if this is from getting old or adderall but I think adderall because my husband is 8 years older than me and his finger tips don't look like mine.. I don't have time to post details of all of my health issues but here are some major ones so far: vericose veins that are not just ugly but painful and expensive to treat and painful to treat. I have some weird pulsing sensation in my head and all over my body really - I don't know what is causing it but I can tell you it's the adderal that did it to me because I remember when it started I had just taken adderall and horse chestnut which is a horrible combination and I didn't know that at the time but I know now after researching it. Please be careful and listen to your body. My experience is that low dose long term use is not safe.

Congrats in getting off this stuff. Welcome to the board. When I exercise first thing in the morning it makes a difference in my energy that lasts a day or two. For me, It's easiest to exercise when I first wake up because that's when I feel most rested. For a while I took liquid B vitamins every morning before working out but had to stop because my B12 level got too high. B12 gave me an immediate boost of energy to help me start the day. Other than that, sleep well, eat healthy and take your vitamins is the only advice I have. I think time will be the best medicine for the fatigue unfortunately. You're not alone in this. Hang in there.

Holy crap that sounds scary. I had to look that one up. I just got off the phone with my doctors office and my blood work and urine sample came back normal for everything they tested for including kidney and liver function. I wonder if I had a short stent of this like you did because I remember my pee looking kinda brownish right around the time I quit. Good lord this drug is bad.

I took adderall 20-40 mg for 12 years. Not once in that 12 year span did a single doctor tell me I had high blood pressure and in the span of 12 years I went to A LOT of doctor appointments. My blood pressure reading was always Normal, sometimes it was low. Since quitting (approx 3 months ago) my blood pressure has actually gone up from what it was while I was on adderall, but I'm still in the normal range. Most people I read about on here had high blood pressure on adderall and the blood pressure went down after quitting. Toward the end of my use I swear I felt like i had high blood pressure but my numbers don't correlate. Has anyone else had this happen? I'm confused by this and I'm having some health issues so wondering if this is part of it. Any insight is appreciated. Thanks.

Yay Frank! Glad to hear it!

It's difficult to say exactly when things got better for me because I had a relapse and I think I went into mild psychosis at the end (even tho I was on a low dose of approx 10-15 mg per day). When I finally quit I felt very confused and disoriented and it has taken a while to get my head back on straight. Still working on that a little lol. If you haven't read about PAWS be sure to. It helps explain some things. I'm not actually in a recovery program. I say I am in recovery because my body is still physically repairing itself. I think it will take months maybe years before I am fully back to "normal" physically. I'm older now than when i started adderall so sometimes it's difficult to know whether I feel lower energy because I'm older or if it's because I'm not fully recovered physically from adderall. It's probably a combination of the two so I'm keeping my expectations in check. When I first quit there were days where my body was so happy it was like being sober was the new high and I wanted to shout it to the world! That felt really good and helped offset the miserable days. Things that helped me get through working (i could not take any time off). I slept in my car during my lunch break. I had two little pillows and a blanket in my car and would nap from 12-1PM and then eat soup at my desk after my nap. Put lots of turmeric and cayenne pepper in my soup. Also what helped for work, I take a thermos of coffee with coconut oil and no sugar to get me going in the morning. I pack my food for the day when I go to work: fresh fruits and veggies, pumpkin seeds, walnuts, dried fruits (mainly cherries) and meats. I eat healthy food all day long so I'm never hungry or feeling like my tank is low. Drink water all day too. I lay low as much as possible now. I was late on some things and I disappointed my boss and co workers with my poor performance and I am working to make it up to them but I'm also working on my "I don't give a flip" attitude and that has helped me not worry so much about missing a deadline or two. After all, other people have sucked worse and i am a valuable employee who cares about doing the right thing (positive affirmations). I take a supplement from whole foods that I think has helped my brain get out of the fog. It has ginkgo and fish oil, velvet bean and some other things too. I took l-tyrosine at first and it did make me feel happier but it also seemed to cause muscle twitches so I am not taking it anymore but it def helped with my mood. I also take B12 when I get out of bed every morning. Sorry I'm skipping all over the place I'm not a very well organized writer. From what I have read though everyone is different so you gotta find out what works for you. You sound like you are going to do really well off this stuff. I bet your body is going to be very pleased with your decision.

Thank you for sharing your story. You and I took it for about the same amount of time. Your reasons for quitting sound very similar to my reasons. I know what you mean about being scared to stop. I felt the same way the whole time I took it. Like you, adderall stopped working for me those last few years and all that it seemed to do was make me feel sick but I still could not stop, until my body forced me to stop when the valves in my leg veins failed.. Looking back though, I should not have been scared which is why I wanted to reply to you. Even tho I'm still in recovery, I feel better physically now. And I have hope. I also feel real feelings again and have had several really hard belly laughs - you know when you laugh so hard that your tummy muscles get sore. That never happened on adderall. I guess my point is that you have so much enjoyable life ahead of you after you stop this poison. Don't get me wrong, the first few weeks are hell there is no denying that. It will be hell for you too I suspect but it's temporary and it will pass. The grass really is greener over here. I'm excited for your quit! I guess that's kinda weird but whatever. Welcome to the boards!

Just got back from the doctor. She prescribed me some steroid cream for the ankle rash and assured me its not kidney failure or heart failure or diabetes. She said I am suffering from severe anxiety. She didn't even want to run any tests as my results last time were a-ok. I did ask her to run some blood work and take a urine sample to be sure and she did so I will wait for results but she said I'm okay just have super bad anxiety. I'm so relieved. All you guys were right. It's all in my head. Dang this stuff is some crazy stuff to come off of. Thank you again everybody for your support.

Thanks Frank. I do work out but not at a gym. I've been reading about heart failure and I do have some of the symptoms. when I think that I may have done damage I get horrible anxiety - like right now. I feel like at 65 days I should not be this fatigued when I wake up in the morning. Are you still fatigued at all?

Thank you for your reply Duffman. I'm really worried about heart damage and I guess the only way to know what's going on is to see a heart doctor. I want to know and then again I don't want to know what damage I've done to my heart. I will kiss the ground if this rash on my ankle is nothing major and will heal.. If I can just have another chance at health I will be good. I keep saying that like God will hear me and grant me one more chance. I'm not religious but sometimes lately I feel maybe I should be because this is some difficult stuff to come to terms with. really appreciate your reply. Thank you. <3 BTW I'm out of the bathroom stall now. Face still puffy from crying and i can't help but think it's because I ruined my heart.

All of a sudden I am so depressed I feel like I would be better off if I could disappear. Not sure why I think posting here will do anything I guess I don't but I don't know where else to turn. I'm not taking any more flipping pharma drugs. How can I get back on track. I am at work crying in the bathroom stall. This is so hard. I am terrified of the damage I've done to my body. That's mainly where all this is coming from. Help me.

Hi Oswhid. That's great news about your hubs and I hope he continues on this path. I wanted to chime in because i also got cramps in my calves when walking like your husband and since I've had my incompetent veins shut down I've been working my way up little by little and now I can walk briskly for 50 mins and have no pain. It took time to work up to that tho and I'm still afraid to jog and may never jog again but at least I can walk. I also had some weird pulsing in my leg near the ankle and it was because I needed to stretch my leg muscles (mainly my hamstring). I know that should be common sense but took me a while to figure it out and the sensation was scaring the crap out of me. I guess my point is for your hubs to take it slow at first and work up to it and be sure to stretch.

Congrats on making it one year. Here's to many more adderall free years to come. I hope your PAWS goes away completely in this next year. Sounds like you've been through quite enough. I read someplace that we should expect PAWS to take two years.

This post is kinda old but I am also experiencing these visual delay issues at work and at home. Been off addy for about two months now and I have seen some improvement. I'm wondering how y'all are doing with this. I work in IT too and some days I feel like I'm going to be okay in this career and some days I feel like I better start preparing myself to change jobs completely. Have you seen even more improvement as time goes on without adderall or is this something you still struggle with?

"How can you know if you're an addict that needs professional help/therapy and not just a person that likes taking drugs?" Speeder, I had this same question/rationalization when I first started taking addy. I decided I wasn't an addict that I just liked taking drugs and that allowed me to convince myself that it was okay to continue to take addy for years and years. At some point I realized I was an addict and I quit for health reasons but wasted 12 years of my life on Addy first. You're definitely not hopeless. You're presence here is a bright beacon of hope. I have found a great deal of support here on this site. I think I read that you cut off your supply - way to go - you're headed in the right direction.

Rachel you can do this. You've worked so hard already to quit don't undo all your hard work. You don't want to have to start from scratch and go through this again. It will get better with time. I was on for 12 years and I can no longer take it because I it makes me physically ill now. I think we all eventually get to that point if we take it long enough. You want to quit this sh!t while you are young. It's harder to recover when you are older like me. I should have never went back on after having my son and maybe I would have avoided all the health problems I'm having now. Don't make the same mistake I made by going back on this stuff. Hang in there.

If you have kids, do you plan to warn them about prescription medications and adderall in particular? If so how and when? I know we all tell our kids to not do street drugs, that's not what I am asking here. I just read a kid on here saying he read about adderall and how bad it was and it only made him want to try it. And that's what scares me. I guess my question is - is it better to warn our kids about the dangers and risk that they will go out and get a script for it or not say anything and hope they never find out about it. This is something I am struggling with and wonder what everyone else on here plans to do.

For people who keep their addiction a secret, Do you think people in your life know you have a problem with Addy? I always thought my addiction was secret. But I was so underweight all the time and so socially awkward that I am beginning to wonder now that I'm off addy if people knew/know.