sboo

Congratulations. I'm on my 3rd year, but I still check back here every 6 months or so....kinda for nostalgic purposes.

The Yerba Mate energy shots have been the only energy drink to work with me.

Hi Inrecovery, I’m glad to know you were inspired by what I said. It was a slow and gradual process, so it’s difficult to say when I started feeling rebuilt. There were several other changes that took place when I stopped taking adderall. When I quit, I also graduated college, moved across the state and in with my boyfriend, and quit smoking cigarettes (yes, me too!). Times were tumultuous for quite a while after then. The first month was pretty much spent watching movies, eating, sleeping and having “boyfriend time.†I was on my feet and increasingly more active throughout months 2-7. I think I tried every kind of energy drink during this period. With me, nothing worked better than getting exercise. The time I consider myself rebuilt was when I whole-heartedly started looking for a job, around the 6th month. I no longer thought of adderall throughout the day….it had no purpose….it deserved no more attention. It was time to start only looking forward. Know that you’ll get sick of thinking about it too. I can relate to your concerns on this one. A one-year gap on your resume will be overlooked, especially these days with the economy in the shape it’s in. I’ve been to multiple interviews in recent months and no one has mentioned a thing about it. It’s easy to feel at a standstill when you aren’t working….really easy. But you’ll find your groove. Adderall just tricks a person into liking to perform mundane tasks. Just because you don’t have the burning desire to polish your furniture at 2:00am doesn’t mean that you can’t. If you are going to force yourself into doing something, why not force yourself to believe that your adderall days are over. “What if I just got another prescription…oh wait that’s right…I’ve been there and done that and it effed up my life in a million and one ways and it’s simply not an option anymore.†I started looking for work 6 months ago and it took me until just a couple weeks ago before getting hired. I scored an awesome job and I’m really excited about it, but it requires horrendous work hours. By horrendous I mean 80-100 hours per week with shifts that could last up to 20 hours. My first though was “this sounds like a job for Adderall!!†But I can never go back to that life. The job I’ll be doing isn’t intended for tweakers. It’ll be hard, but totally doable. And what if I did get back on adderall? It is a guarantee that I’d be distant from my coworkers, my priorities would consist of sneaking away at all given opportunities to smoke cigarettes, I’d call in sick once a month to get my prescription filled, if I couldn’t get it filled I would miss work, I would not be able to pass their random amphetamine drug tests, and I would be bumped down to the insurance plan for smokers. I think I’ll pass. I haven’t had too many headaches. Maybe it’s as simple as adjusting what you eat. Sleep deprivation and not enough water is enough to give you a headache. I certainly felt like crap during the first month and felt “withdrawal†feelings. The true chemical withdrawals only lasted 2-4 weeks. I had body aches throughout the first couple of months, but I attribute them to a shift into a more sedentary lifestyle (i.e., lying in bed or on the couch way more). Um, I actually saw two different doctors per month also, so we are even more alike than you previously thought. I wrote about it in a previous post. And I also relate to your smoking habit…..I was at a pack of American Spirits a day (expensive smokes). After after I quit adderall, I had absolutely zero desire to smoke…..crazy huh?!?!? Quitting smoking without the cravings was a major benefit in quitting adderall. I’m sure that it made for a more intensive healing process with me. The tobacco withdrawals were probably there, but just masked among the others. So it was more like $210 plus about $150 (the other script was for a lesser amount), and about $160 a month for smokes. And all the while I was a broke-ass student….so messed up…! So great to be free!

Hi, I read your story at the link you provided. I too spent much of my energy on just getting adderall and keeping the addiction going. It was a full-time job with crappy benefits. I was on high doses for years and quitting was difficult for me. It’s been a year now and I’m glad to say that I finally feel totally rebuilt. It sure seemed to take a long time to feel normal and functional again (or at least did with me). You mentioned having dreams about needing adderall. I started having reoccurring adderall dreams about 6 months after I quit. The crazy thing is that I still get them!? It’s always the same…in my dream I’m taking pills, I think that I’ve rebounded and then I wake up feeling all guilty. It just shows how deep adderall existed within my consciousness. Thanks so much for sharing your story. You have a great attitude and it sounds like you are doing really well. I too sometimes think of all the times my friends, family, and co-workers who looked at my adderall-induced behaviors suspiciously. But thinking about only helps in realizing how great it is to be off adderall. Keep up the good work and know that life just keeps getting better.

San Diego, CA

YES, you most certainly CAN get off adderall! I was taking a very high dose for 7-8 years without any breaks, and then stopped taking it cold turkey 9 months ago. I never thought I could and the thought of permanently quitting adderall was terrifying to me, but I did. Naturally it took some time for me to adapt to life off adderall. At first, the adjustment was very physical and I slept through most of the first couple weeks. Mental adjusting took place for about six months or so, but I was fully functional for work/social activities after just 3-4 weeks. Reading the material on this site was tremendously helpful:) I thought about adderall every day for the first few months. After I stopped thinking about it consciously, I had nightly dreams of relapsing on those orange pills. But then those stopped as well, and all my unhealthy obsessions over the drug are now gone. The only time I think about adderall now is in realizing how much worse I was at doing something when I was on it. Everything I do now happens more fluidly. When I was on adderall, my wheels would spin like crazy and it ended up limiting my productivity, not to mention my sleep cycle, social life, relationships, etc. Having insecurities and worrying about letting others down happens regardless of whether or not you take adderall. Of course you will still be "you" after you quit! In fact, you will be even more "you" than you are right now, and it will feel great to you and those around you. The only time I was scared was when I was still on adderall and thought about quitting. After I quit, I was just tired and relaxed. It is just a matter of regaining the balance that adderall offsets. You can do it!!

Quitting can be quite the ugly process but think of it as earning your freedom back. I never thought I'd say this, but I actually quit taking Adderall after years and years of being scared at the mere thought of living without it. The quitting process for me was hell and the suffering was not unlike what you described. But my dependency on Adderall was out of control and exhausting. My coping mechanism was to imagine that if I didn't succeed in quitting, I'd be Adderall's bitch again. It helped me to visualize that the agony felt from quitting was just the 'breaking of the chains,' and therefore a good kind of pain. So embrace it and know that the most difficult part is almost over.

Hello I just want to share my experience quitting adderall~ Although I had never before tried quitting adderall, I had been planning to quit for nearly 8 years. I had been waiting to finish college. For years I was on the same dose of 90, 15mg pills per month. It wasn't too long before my prescription started to run out weeks early. Instead of quitting at this point like I should have, I asked the doctor more. He rejected my request, like a good doctor should. So I made the bad yet simple move of getting another prescription from another doctor. The new doctor, not knowing I was already being treated, started me on 135, 15mg/month. Over the course of a year, I was able to swallow the combined prescriptions in one month. That equates to 100-120mg/day. Ouch. I hesitate in admitting this for fear that it would wrongfully inspire another adderall junky to do the same. But I believe honesty is important here, and I highly doubt it's a new idea to anyone. I don't recommend it, of course. I'll continue... I was two-timing them like this for nearly three years. I was careful for the first year or so, making sure not to fill the prescriptions at the same pharmacy. But one pharmacy charged half the price of the other and ah, what can I say... I'm cheap, daring and stupid. So this summer, with only two weeks before graduating college, I announced my decision to end treatment to both my doctors. They gave me my last prescription, a handshake, a congratulations and I was off to the pharmacy. A week later, I was in to get my other “last” prescription filled when sonofabitch........while sitting on the waiting bench, dicking around on facebook.....the pharmacist approaches me and says “we let your Dr.X know about your Dr.Y, and we can't fill your prescription until we hear back from him.” Inside me were sirens and red lights but I calmly stood up and casually said “Ok, just gimme a call when you find out what he says,” and then walked out with my tail tucked between my legs. :oops: I love the irony of this......the sequence of deciding to quit and then having my doctors notified of my dishonesty. To me it shouted “AND STAY OUT!” I quit taking adderall entirely 'cold turkey' after my first "last" script ran out 2.5 months ago. Since then, the embarrassment of having my doctors informed of my drug abuse and the fears of them taking legal action against me have subsided. I'll never take adderall or any other adderall-like drug again. Whether it be entirely on your own, through a rehab, or by fearing the law, it MUST be done. I am alive and well and strongly encourage anyone reading this to entirely quit as well. The ugliness is not in the withdrawal, but in the addiction itself. The addiction, my withdrawal experience, my life before and after....those are different stories but I'm happy however, to elaborate on these or to answer any questions. Please note that doctor shopping is a punishable crime and I discourage anyone from going to that extreme. Also please note that I love love love life without adderall in a multitude of ways! Sarah

You should start by knowing that you can instead of wondering if you can. Of course you can, silly. Embrace the withdrawals, it's just your body working its magic to get you back to normal. They'll go away. Staying on Adderall is what's scary. It made me similarly distraught and yet I managed to stay on it for 8 years. I abused the hell out of it to the point where it did nothing but make me feel like a tweeker in a bead shop. I quit 2 and a half months ago....withdrawals ended after four weeks...looking back they weren't bad... I think I slept most of the month. The worst is trying to convince yourself that you don't need Adderall to function in life....at all.....that has been the most difficult part of withdrawal for me.....the shit I went through on that stuff....it's good to be free

The Lord of the Rings my precious, duh! I just saw the movies for the first time. They were watched among all the other movies I've seen in my post-adderall month-long television marathon. Perhaps I wouldn't have seen any underlying parallels to drug addiction had I not recently quit taking adderall. The obsession and rapture Frodo has over the ring is not unlike my addiction with adderall. Me and Frodo are otherwise unalike, thankfully:) I'm not a D&D follower I swear, so my regrets if this ring/drug association is old news. Sarah