Clavicula

So I was trying to quit last year, around this same time, and was active on this forums. But because of a lot of life shit, I slipped deeper into addiction. Brief updates: best friend of eleven years and I fell madly in love, but he basically decided: "yeah, I like kissing you and cuddling naked, yeah I jack it to gay porn, but I just gotta end up with a woman so this was fun sorry bro!" . . . Well he put it a lot more eloquently than that, saying "our love is transcendent and indescribable, and we will certainly grow old together, but even though I will never love a woman like I love you, I just *have* to end up starting a family with a woman. . ." 'Transcendent' is a total cop-out lmao. So then, I left (I live in Tennessee now), started school but because of some beaurocratic complications, couldn't pay my tuition so I . . . wait for it: Started trading my body for methamphetamine. . . As you may know from my previous posts, I have schizophrenia. February 11th marked the anniversary of one full year out of mental institutions, the first full year since I was 13. I felt super proud of myself. But I was up for literally fucking weeks, off my meds, tweaking and losing my damn mind in Starbucks from opening to closing, and also heavily addicted to kratom, an atypical herbal opioid. And I felt like I was dying. My guts felt like they were twisting and burning. I am not sure how much of that was psychosomatic, but I am still feeling some gastrointestinal discomfort, but it's a lot better now. (Oral and sublingual was my route of administration for the meth, and meth has been occasionally known to cause bowel ischemia and assorted other issues due to vasoconstriction from activation of certain receptors in the gut.) So, February 12th, at 5:00 AM, I took an Uber to the ER. Had my t shirt tucked in, and a rosary wrapped around my hand (sorta ex-Catholic, was gonna be a priest), said: "People do really really stupid things; it's inexplicable, but it's all part of the mystery of the human experience, and I have been crushing inhalers and eating the cotton inside for their amphetamine for years, and I've also been on a meth binge for the last two weeks." Honestly had so much fun at the ER lol. It was actually terrifying, but the kindness from the staff made it so much better. Doc did some tests and said: "Your insides are not burning or rotting. You still have a bunch of methamphetamine in your system; you're just tweaking out kid. You feel like you're dying because you haven't slept or eaten in almost a week. . . Congrats on the year out of the hospital." And I strutted out of the ER with a cigarette in my hand, chugged like 3 cups of coffee from the machine in one minute, then told the receptionist: "Meth is SOOO bad for you!" She laughed. But anyway, I got kicked out of my house in Tennessee lol! Also can't come back to San Francisco house. Some background: my dad--who was also addicted to meth--beat me the fuck up every day from ages 11-13. I've had my nose and my jaw broken. Anyway, this past year, I made the mistake of believing he had """changed""" and that our conversations had """healed""" us or whatever. Well, he doesn't do meth anymore, but he is so damn dysfunctional due to his moods. Bipolar disorder. When he is depressed, he is ANGRY and VIOLENT. JUST like when I was a kid. So, when he read my text that I went to the ER, which by the way, he HAS NO IDEA WHY I even WENT to the ER, he lost his shit and screamed long loud "ffuuucckk"s down the block, I STILL hadn't slept, I fumbled with the lock, ran the fuck out, and just like that, I was only a scared little boy. And I realized. . . I have never moved past that. I am quite an immature person, in some ways. I have a breadth of intellectual maturity, but when it comes to tolerating negative (or just neutral) emotional states . . . I am just that scared little boy. Running away. Incessantly. Endlessly trapped in this pattern. This past. This ENORMOUS open and barren wasteland of memories. It haunts. It is infinite, and not in a Divine-like way. I'm currently staying at my neighbor's house. Slept for literally 20 hours. Now, 2 days sober. Haven't spent two days sober in a loooong time. (I also quit the kratom cold turkey.) And I have a job at Starbucks. But I am driving across country in March with my neighbor, back to the Bay, where I will go live in a transitional housing program in Palo Alto that I've been referred to. Withdrawal SUUUCKS. First day sober, I ate TWO WHOLE BOXES OF CHOCOLATE lol. Brain zaps. No drive. Nightmares. Does it still count as sober if I consume ~1.5 grams of caffeine a day? Haha. Anyway, this is. . . necessary. A highly unpleasant and explosive eruption into true maturity and adulthood. It's needed. Maybe I should have gotten sober last fucking year, BUT the lessons the Universe cannot be rushed. Hopelessness interpolates with hope. Despair leads to action. . . or the patience to wait. Hope is something imagined in mutuality. I continue pressing forward. . . Zigzagging toward the light. God is SUCH a femme fatale. (ALSO: my book of poetry is being published LATER THIS MONTH, so you guys should buy & read it!)

I got two poetry books published recently and had another publisher solicit me to write a third for them. I also wanted to start a novel. So I fell into the trap of thinking I needed stims to be productive and got a pack of inhalers from Walgreens. I have felt truly in hell these past few days. It doesn't help that I am weaning off my antipsychotic medication to live a chemical free life. Anxious, psychotic, manic, depressed, all at the same time. I need to do exactly what my previous plan that helped me be sober says, that I bailed on. It was: go to church and pray every day and do Jungian journalling. I don't want to do AA. It feels like a cult to me. Feel really shitty right now. But angels kept coming to me these past few days and told me to trust that I will have the resolve in time.

Glad to see someone else takes sarcosine. It is a naturally occuring amino acid, that acts as a glycine transporter inhibitor that increases the functioning of the NMDA receptors. It has a lot of research suggesting powerful effects on depression and particularly the "negative symptoms" (anhedonia, flat affect, low motivation) of schizophrenia. While amphetamine withdrawal is different than depression or schizophrenia, I have had near miraculous nootropic effects from sarcosine, and I think other people might benefit from it since it treats the same symptoms of amphetamine neurotoxicity. Anyone want to chime in with some research about how amphetamine could affect NMDA receptors? EDIT: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11861810 Found this, so now I'm pretty sure sarcosine can be helpful for people here.

I quit Adderall about a month ago, and tried to quit multiple times before that. The thing that has helped me actually quit, is JOURNALING. My routine is to do journaling every day. Every day I read a bit of Carl Jung and do an introspective journaling/meditation based on the writing that I read. This intense psychoanalysis of myself has helped me examine the reasons why I used in the first place. Then, I do a journal entry using evidence based cognitive behavioral therapy or dialectical behavioral therapy skills. This helps me put the deep unveiling of the psychodynamic journaling into a pragmatic practice for my daily life. I also use a separate journal to track and plan out my day to be productive. It's been incredibly helpful. I go to therapy, and the bulk of my therapy session is spent talking about the journal entries of that week. But journaling on its own is a great alternative to psychotherapy. Let's face it, addiction and mental illness are deeply intertwined. I refuse to believe anyone starts using these drugs unless they have a deep-seated psychological reason, a wound of the soul that they are trying to fill. I genuinely feel absolutely no cravings, and I'm feeling minimal withdrawal depression, because of this therapeutic journaling practice. Give it a shot.

Yeah, I'm not in denial about the addictive nature of the kratom. But I have found that limiting myself to a small dose once a day is very beneficial to my well-being. I have talked at length about kratom with my doctor, and her medical opinion is that I should keep taking it. In the past, I used multiple high doses of kratom a day and experienced depression when I stopped taking it, because I had no idea that it could be addictive. I didn't realize I would experience the withdrawal symptom of depression, because people on /r/kratom told me it was just a harmless herbal supplement. But now that I know that it can be addictive if you take it too much, I have learned to just limit my use, to reap the most positive, beneficial effects it has on my life without being physically dependent on the drug. On Tuesdays and Fridays, I don't take any kratom, because those are days of penance in the Catholic faith, since Catholics will pray the Sorrowful Mysteries (Jesus' Passion, and Mary's suffering at losing her Son) of the rosary, because Jesus died on a Friday. Those days provide a nice break to reset any tolerance, and prevent any addiction or withdrawal. On those days, I don't experience any withdrawal symptoms, but I do notice my daily walks are shorter, I think because kratom gives me more stamina. Thank you for your concern though. Like I said, I talk about the kratom use with my psychiatrist and she thinks my use of it is beneficial to my life. She said she has other patients who take kratom, and she says it has mood stabilizing and antipsychotic properties, which have been helpful for me.

That's amazing. I know I am going to accomplish three years eventually.

I have dreams about using too, guys. Usually they are nightmares which reinforce me to stay away from the drug, because in the dreams I go crazy and manic because of the drug's effect on my mental illness. It's terrible, but it sometimes stops me from using. Neveragain, every time you resist cravings you are reinforcing your sobriety in your brain. You can recover from this. You can. But it requires tremendous work, a total restructuring of your life and psyche in order that you may discover the reasons why you used, the reasons why you MUST continue to be sober, and the mental and pragmatic (i.e. practicing doing productive things without amphetamine) practices you need to undertake to live your life sober. I'm praying and rooting for you!

I want to update you guys since some of you messaged me asking how I was. One week ago, I relapsed on a stimulant. Not Adderall or my DOC, Benzedrex inhalers, but another inhaler that has levmethamphetamine, the non-euphoric isomer of methamphetamine that can be bought over the counter. I chose that because I didn't want to get high, I just wanted to alleviate the withdrawals. But it was a mistake because it turned me into a depressed, lifeless zombie even worse than Adderall and even worse than Adderall withdrawal. So after the drug wore off, I went to the monastery run by Catholic nuns, because I have been Catholic all my life, deepened my faith a couple years ago, but still did drugs because I was in denial. But one thing I noticed was that on the days I received or adored the Eucharist (the bread and wine that we believe physically turns into the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ) I actually had no cravings for Adderall. I consider myself a mystic because I have had three powerful visionary experiences in which the Virgin Mary commanded me to stop using drugs. This is my psychospiritual motivation for quitting, among other things. Three years ago, I started to discern the priesthood, but put that on hold when my mental illness and Adderall addiction took over my life in August of last year. Anyway, when I receive or sit in meditation with the Eucharist, I actually feel a high very similar to Adderall without the downsides. I feel euphoric, yet peaceful. For me, I have had psychedelic experiences of profound wisdom just from going to church and eating the bread and wine. This week, I have come to rely on God alone for peace and joy instead of drugs. This means that every day, I go to the chapel run by the nuns and pray to Christ in the Bread. After the drug wore off a week ago, I wrote a lengthy journal entry examining the psychospiritual reasons why I fall victim to my mental illness and also use drugs compulsively. I found through meditation and prayer and journaling continuously, that both my letting my bipolar/schizophrenia control me, and using drugs, are caused by a maladaptive coping mechanism in response to childhood trauma, a perverse quietism, a turning inward of external chaos, resulting in a catastrophic and disordered interior life, caused by my inability to sit still with my own unaltered thoughts. I realized that I have only ever felt true peace sitting in front of the bread and wine. My life has never known peace. When I was twelve, my father started using meth and beating me severely about every week or more frequently. I learned to run away from him when he was coming towards me, and I would fumble with the lock and if I opened the door in time, I would run into the street until he calmed down. If I failed to run away, he would beat me. This biological, physiological response to imminent danger, flight, has led to a psychological and spiritual maladaptive response, which causes me to re-enact the events of the abuse over and over again in every facet of my life. I run away from everything. I had very poor attendance at school because I would literally run away from school. I would run away from doctor's appointments. I would moreover avoid and run away from every challenging moment in my life, sensing a danger real or imagined, leading to disastrous consequences on the quality of my life. This is where the drug use comes in. I'm running away from the suffering and pain caused by my childhood trauma, and later my twin brother's drug addiction, and my mom's current alcoholism, all of which have caused severe dysfunction in my home, which my mom's alcoholism continues to do. I am able to forgive and move on. My dad has sincerely apologized to me, and moreover completely changed everything about his negative behavior, and I have a great relationship with him now. But my mom continues to drink and not acknowledge the pain she is causing me, which is why I will be moving in with my dad to see if my peace can be continued in a healthier home environment. Since quitting Adderall, I have felt true peace and happiness. Because of the intensive psychoanalytical journaling and meditation and prayer that I have been doing, I have been learning to sit with, tolerate, and accept the suffering of my own thoughts in such a way that I am absolutely certain I will never use drugs again. The only way to move past suffering, I have found, is to COMPLETELY embrace it. The Catholic Church has institutional and political problems, as we all know, but I have found so much wisdom in the writings of Catholic saints and thinkers. I think the various theologian nuns are incredibly wise. There are a lot of young women nuns who wrote amazing and powerful treatises on the meaning of life, suffering, beauty, and God, and I am finding great value in that. Since I quit Adderall about a month ago, I have been taking kratom. I know it can be addictive, but I am taking a very small amount per day, and my doctor is okay with it and I believe it helps me with the withdrawals. I have also been taking ginkgo biloba, and sarcosine, a very effective supplement for depression and the cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia. In schizophrenia, it treats very effectively the symptoms like inability to experience pleasure, lack of motivation, flat affect, et cetera. The biological mechanisms might be different, but it could help people here because Adderall withdrawal causes those same symptoms. It's an amino acid that is found in foods and in your body already. Almost immediately after quitting Adderall, I finally felt like I was ready to take the next step with my vocation to the priesthood. I found out from the priest at the church I go to, about a monastery of monks very close to home, and everything about them seems perfect to me. I sent them a letter, telling them about myself,my vocation, prayer life, and specifically about my bipolar disorder. After church, I had an interview with the head monk, and I was accepted despite my bipolar disorder! He was overall very impressed with my intelligence and knowledge of theology and contemplative prayer. He was also really impressed that I could play the pipe organ and he wants me to accompany the chanting of the Divine Office when I'm a monk. Theyare going to have me come in for a retreat after Easter. I told him that I am going to take a little longer to recover, spending time with my dad, doing a semester over the summer, before joining. When I join, probably in August, I will be attending the same college I was going to, while living at the monastery being a monk. Things are going well. I will never use drugs again, because for one thing I cant when I'm a monk, but also, I just have no desire or need to do it ever again. I have learned that peace is possible without drugs, and that in fact drugs deny us the peace we are searching for. I am done running away from challenge, commitment, and my own thoughts. I am learning to sit with the suffering.

I am heavily addicted to cigarettes (pack a day) and EXTREME amounts of caffeine daily (10 cups of coffee), but I really don't feel like I am too worried about it because it is helping me stay off Adderall/amphetamine. I have started to decrease the amount of cigarettes I smoke, my goal is to get down to two or maybe one per day, so that I can enjoy them long term (because honestly I love it so much and don't want to stop) without health problems. It seems like people who get lung diseases from cigarettes are smoking a pack a day for like several decades. I think I can avoid health problems because my goal is to only smoke one per day and I order pounds of unprocessed tobacco leaf with no additives (yes, pounds. It'll last me a year, and it's incredibly cheap), and I roll my own. But typically I don't use a filter and I feel like if I want to avoid health problems I should definitely buy some filters. Fun fact: 90% of schizophrenics smoke! Idk what that's about. But I'm schizophrenic so it makes sense.

Yeah I actually have a ton of cognitive problems from the schizophrenia, not ADHD, and Strattera seems to help. Honestly, I would give anything to kill the cravings and lift the depression, which is why I am taking it. I read that it doesn't actually increase dopamine. It simply prevents the reuptake of norepinephrine. It doesn't really have abuse potential. I am feeling okay with starting Strattera because I read on Wikipedia that you can stop it without having withdrawals. And I would love to share my writing with you. I'll PM you.

Hi guys. I am four days into my sobriety and don't get me wrong this withdrawal is fucking terrible, and I didn't even expect to get withdrawal because I only used Adderall every other day and spent a couple breaks of several months. Looking back, I can clearly see where stopping the Adderall lined up with my psychiatric symptoms such as depression and psychosis, which I had no idea were withdrawal from the Adderall. I didn't realize I could be addicted to it after just using it every OTHER day. I recall a couple of weeks after stopping the Adderall when I was abusing it heavily in 2016, I had a severe manic break when I went off all my antipsychotic meds. For several months after, I struggled with severe depression. I was crashing hard, and I even attended a special school designed as an outpatient program, which I hated, and I even got thirteen rounds of electroconvulsive therapy because literally no medication would help my depression. Anyway, now I have realized the terrible things I have been doing to my brain, and I'm four days sober. Before a relapse, I had three days of sobriety. Yesterday was incredibly rough, I physically felt like I had lost contact with my body (even though I was seeing and hearing fine) from depersonalization. I felt disconnected from everything, unable to experience even the slightest emotion or sense of happiness. I am empty. Today has been very much the same, but I feel a little different. I would hesitate to say I am getting better, but in a way I am choosing to be happy. I have to force myself to think about little things like the birds chirping in the morning that make me happy. I have no energy, but I am forcing myself to do projects anyway. Despite my mental illness and drug addiction, or perhaps BECAUSE of it, I am a published author beginning a promising career. My poetry and fiction has been featured in numerous literary journals, and I have a poetry book recently accepted for publication by a small press, about my experiences with drug addiction and mental illness. Right now, after I type this post, I am going to force myself to work through my next draft of the book because my editor wants me to make some edits. I kinda realize now that even though I feel like absolute crap, I just need to force myself through it. My doctor is going to prescribe me Strattera, which is a non-recreational medication to treat focus and depression. In the past, I was able to quit Adderall for several months with virtually no withdrawal symptoms because of this medication. I don't consider it a replacement drug or another way to get high, simply because it isn't recreational and not a traditional stimulant. I am wondering if my withdrawal period will be better and shorter than most people's on this site because I didn't use it every day, and because I had taken several month-long breaks. What do you guys think? Also have any of you tried Strattera or a related antidepressant like Wellbutrin?

Cravings passed. I didn't give in. Pulled out my trusty rosary!

Title literally says it all. The idea of having to wait years for withdrawal depression to pass is seriously physically painful. Fuck this I just want to use Adderall! Help?

Moving now won't be too stressful because I am moving in with my dad, his girlfriend, and my grandad in a really peaceful part of the country. I won't really have any responsibilities until summer when I'll take school, unless I choose to get a job. To clarify, my brother does not get ADHD medication anymore because he abused them too and got addicted to intraveinous heroin and meth. He's sober now. In the recent past, I would buy Adderall from people at my college and steal those vapor inhalers from Walgreens. Thanks for the advice everyone. I'm thinking of writing a letter to my Walgreens informing them of the abusive potential of these drugs to completely cut myself off and hopefully protect others.

Hi! I am two days sober. I had two intense cravings today, but I got through it simply by waiting. I don't even try to fight it and say: no, I won't use amphetamine, I simply wait fifteen minutes and see if I still want to use it. By then the cravings have completely passed. Some background about me. I am eighteen years old. I was diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (schizoaffective, bipolar type) when I was a freshman in high school and had a psychotic break. In sophomore year of high school I started stealing my brother's ADHD pills. I didn't even get high at first. I would take a pill, and then literally take a nap. But I started to become sensitized to the pills and extremely addicted to them. I would use them every day, multiple times a day. I was also recently prescribed an antidepressant and already having my first manic episode, so the amphetamine just made it much, much worse. I had a very very bad, traumatic, manic break a couple of weeks after stopping the Adderall pills along with all of my antipsychotic medication and my antidepressant. I'm talking, running down the street naked at one AM, covered in blood screaming at people about UFOs while cutting myself. I was tackled by the police, handcuffed to the gurney in the ambulance, and forcibly injected with tranquilizers then hospitalized. I have been on involuntary psychiatric holds probably about twenty or more times throughout my life, I have lost count. Since being diagnosed when I was fourteen, I haven't gone more than a couple months without some sort of psychiatric intervention. At first this was because I was delusional and refused to take my meds, and later it was because of suicidal thoughts and two attempts once I gained insight into how I was sick and how shitty my life was, and also because of the mood swings associated with my amphetamine addiction. My most recent hospitalization was a week ago, when I stuck my head in the oven like Sylvia Plath to kill myself because I was going through amphetamine withdrawal. Withdrawals have become dangerous for me in the past due to suicidal thoughts. I have two suicide attempts, the other was in April 2018 when I was withdrawing from kratom and Adderall and overdosed on a sedative and a bottle of liquor and locked myself in the bathroom and passed out. They had to pump my stomach. For me, the amphetamine abuse and the mental illness go hand in hand. Mania feels almost exactly like Adderall, and Adderall feels almost exactly like mania. When I am manic I want to take drugs to increase the feeling, and when I take drugs I just become more manic. I know for a fact that the two very simple things I have to do to stay out of the hospital, which I have not quite figured out how to do even after all these years, is SIMPLY: 1. Take my medication. 2. Stop taking drugs. I have got the medication down, I am compliant, but I have not figured out how to stop taking stimulant drugs. Recently, in the past year, my use has not been Adderall but an even stronger stimulant you can buy in a nasal spray I will not name over the counter at any pharmacy. This has been troublesome, because going to pick up my meds has been a trigger. I am two days sober. I relapsed on Thursday morning after three days sober. I have been to two AA meetings, and plan to go to the Dual Recovery meeting on Monday. I know now that I have to change, but damn it it's fucking hard! The withdrawals seriously suck. I didn't realize, since I only used every OTHER day, that I would experience withdrawals, but I guess after years of consistent use that I would. I relapsed on Thursday because I couldn't stand the depression and fatigue. This time, I got some supplements which have been helping me massively with energy levels during the withdrawals. I want to quit kratom when I move in two weeks, but I learned that it is too much to quit both Adderall and kratom at once right now. My kratom use is not extreme and I don't expect much withdrawals. I plan to get through these two weeks before I move to another state, and hopefully attend meetings as much as possible. The kratom will go eventually, but it's not the most major problem I have. I would just like to not be dependent on anything, even a mild herb. What has been working for me in terms of coping with cravings is simply praying the rosary whenever I experience a craving. The craving passes after I pray it. I am a very religious person and want to become an Episcopal priest after I learn to manage my mental illness and addiction better. I have actually been doing better with my mental illness. The psychosis is mostly gone, the mania is under control, I'm just still learning how to cope with depression occasionally. I know depression will be really bad in the first month. I have been having really bad nightmares and also really wonderful, pleasant vivid dreams at once. Any tips on anything? Thanks for reading.