Cassie

I think it's natural to dwell on yourself and your flaws more when you're unemployed - I say that because I'm going through a job search right now, and the longer I'm unemployed the more anxious, fearful and unconfident I get. So, I think it's a normal reaction to life circumstances, and you would feel similarly if you were in the same position but had never taken Adderall because like you said, you had problems before the drug, too. It's just a case of having to feel your emotions rather than numbing them. Don't blame yourself for the decisions you've made. Especially the whole working too soon thing. Uh, you needed a job at the time, didn't you?! We all make decisions we regret, with or without drugs influencing us. In fact, most of the life decisions I regret happened either before or after Adderall. On Adderall I was kind of just stuck in life, stagnating. Now I have to move forward on my own volition and that's scary. I think it gives us character to go through this, and empathy as you said, so there are some positives to this whole clusterfuck. I feel lost too, and like I don't know where to go from here. I think just moving forward and doing anything is key. Better to refine your life as you move along rather than standing still, paralyzed, which is what I've been doing the past two months. I might start going to some more group meetings, just to be more social. A few months ago when I was contemplating quitting my job, I told a therapist that I was scared to work at a new job without Adderall because I felt like I never knew what I was doing when it came to my work life. He started laughing and said, "Cassie, none of us know what the fuck we're doing!" That made me feel better, like, oh yeah, everyone is just as fucked up as everyone else! Anyway, not sure if this makes any sense, but I think many of us share your feelings. And just so you know, I feel a shitload better now than I did at 9 months sober. I'd say I feel pretty much back to normal, just a few minor kinks to work out at this stage. BTW your picture is funny. What are you eating?

You sound like an addict to me, and an awfully naïve one at that. Tell your psychiatrist you took half your month's prescription in one day and see what he thinks.

HAM, I read in your original post that you'd been on Adderall for 10 years. All I can say is that it's going to take a lot longer than 8 months to feel normal again, unfortunately. I get not having any interests or hobbies at that stage. I felt like that too. It's really just a waiting game on that front. You can't force yourself to be interested in things that you're not. Just let time pass. Would you really want to go through this quitting hell again if you relapsed? I highly doubt it. The first year sober is the roughest. I used to work out way more on Adderall too. I would run 20 miles a week. Off Adderall? I fucking hate running and can't really do it, so I walk on the treadmill with an incline or ride a stationary bike, and walk my dogs outside. That's enough. Who is telling you that you need to run a half marathon? Exercise the way you can exercise now, not the way you did on speed, because you're not the same as you were on speed.

I'm not sure, never heard it. You should definitely read the book though. It's informative but also really hilarious. He also wrote The Men Who Stare at Goats.

I remember having lots of inner conflicts with myself around that time, too. I think that's normal. You just have to remember that it's the addiction telling you that you need the drug, it's not the truth. Looking back, I consider seven months to still be pretty early in my recovery process. You will feel much better in another few months, and then another few months, etc.. Sidenote: I just read "Anatomy of an Epidemic" by Robert Whitaker (awesome book), and he mentions a large scale study of ADD drugs that showed that by year three of kids taking stimulants, they started a cognitive decline. Year three was the average turning point when amphetamines started doing the opposite and making their ADD and academic performance worse...so just remember that you had to quit anyway, that the honeymoon phase of Adderall leads to diminishing returns. Drugs cause chemical imbalances, not the other way around, and that is why it's so hard on your brain when they're withdrawn, because your brain made changes to adapt to the chemical imbalance it was put through all those years.

You should read "The Psychopath Test" by Jon Ronson. It's an awesome book.

Good luck FW. You can do this! Maybe if you're feeling really saucy you can even pledge to call your doctor on day 30 and cut off your supplier, make it a done deal!

I don't know about 'practicing' confidence, unless you mean confidence in performing a specific skill, like a musical instrument, where the better you get at the instrument the more confident you are in your ability to play it. I think what most of us are struggling with in the aftermath of addiction is self-confidence, which for me is a natural byproduct of feeling comfortable and at ease with myself, not a metric based on how many tasks I've completed. Sometimes I miss my job too, but I think what I really miss is the routine and the stimulation of being around people all day, not the actual job itself which I found quite boring. It can be hard when you're at home and you don't have that routine to fall back on anymore. Try not to think about your old job - it's done, you can't go back, and you're probably only remembering the good parts of it. I think there will be better jobs in our futures - we just need to have faith.

That sucks you lost your job, but I totally get not being ready and taking on too much too soon. I stayed at my horrible job for 18 months after I quit Adderall because that's how long it took for me to feel like I had the confidence to look for something else and go on interviews again. Now, after two months unemployed, I'm starting to lose confidence again. I've been on lots of interviews but I haven't wanted any of the jobs and I don't want to settle. The more interviews I go on, the less I feel I have to offer anyone, if that makes sense. I've never liked a job before, I don't know what that's like - I'm trying to accept that I may never have a career purpose or whatever. Anyway, I'm sure you'll find something else when you're ready. And, it is really nice to not work for a while and just sit around and read, or work out, cook, etc. So, enjoy your time off!

Hey Sasquatch (that's what my husband says you call someone from Saskatchewan, he he), I'm sure your intuition will tell you whether the guy has good intentions or not. If I were the same person I was in high school, I'd be kind of a mean bitch who gave into peer pressure really easily and had raging mood swings, lol. Completely the opposite of the mellow, live and let live person I am as an adult. One of my best friends in college stopped talking to me 8 years ago for no reason, and he has recently reached out to me and apologized for the shutdown, said that he was addicted to painkillers and...wait for it... Adderall! and that he has felt terrible about our fallout. I thought it took a lot of balls for him to do that, especially since he knew I was pissed at him severing our friendship. Change is the essence of life, people grow and evolve, and if your friend has kids that can definitely soften you, too.

Funny that this thread came up again. A while back I read #3 on InRecovery's list: 3) More, Now and Again - Memoir of a Writer's Addiction to Ritalin... by Elizabeth Wurtzel and LOVED it. It is so, so good! (so is Prozac Nation, by the same author). A big part of the memoir is her talking about how during her addiction she was writing her second book, Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women. During this time, she was so fucked up she would sleep at her publisher's office and have bottles of Dexedrine FedEx'd to her there by her friends. She became this junkie writer hobo who basically lived at Simon and Shuster, or wherever, and wrote and did speed all day and night. So, I just checked out Bitch from the library yesterday and it is so unreadable - it's like this overly verbose, nonsensical collection of essays about women. The essays are so convoluted that they make so sense in the context of a whole book. Like, there's no overarching theme to tie her ramblings together. She just spitballs from one idea and reference to the next in this really frenetic, unreadable way. It was amazing to read that and recognize that the book was written on speed, and was horrible as a result.

I agree with the others - if you tell a loved one about an addiction they will be more supportive than you think. I was terrified to tell my then boyfriend (now husband) about it but he was cool and wasn't judgmental at all. I stressed out about telling him for months and then one day just blurted out "I'm addicted to prescription amphetamines!" during a phone call. So, if you need an opener, feel free to use that one . Seriously, just start the conversation out like that, get it over with and go from there.

When I told my doctor I was quitting Adderall (Vyvanse) because I was too addicted, she said, 'You're not addicted, you're just dependent.' Ha ha, snort. Okay lady, semantics. Granted, I never told her I abused it and I didn't look like a junkie, but the notion that you can't be addicted to an addictive substance you take every day, especially when you can dictate the dosages prescribed to you at will, is absurd. It's a joke how ignorant some doctors are. WE know how hard it is, and if you want people in person to relate to, talk to ex-meth addicts. They will absolutely understand all the nuances of quitting amphetamines, just like we do here.

Yeah, I still felt shitty after 4 months. Just hang in there. It took me over a year to feel normal again.

If you decide to quit Adderall, THIS is what you need to hang onto. Because if you succeeded before this addiction, you will again. I didn't take Adderall for school, but I took it for work after I been done with college for a few years. If you continue to take Adderall all through college, do you think you'll stop then? I predict you will continue to take it for your job after college, because you won't feel like you can succeed without it (or do anything requiring effort without it). Then you'll be even more afraid to quit because you'll be facing another kind of pressure. Instead of worrying about failing a class, you'll worry about getting fired and losing your income, not being able to pay your bills, and not being able to find another job. Personally, I'd rather worry about failing a class. Sorry, I don't have much advice for you regarding your classes. If you stop taking Adderall your GPA may very well go down - the price of taking performance enhancing drugs is that when you go off them, your performance declines. However, the longer you wait to quit, the more psychologically addicted you get and the self doubt just gets worse and worse, which reinforces the belief that you need amphetamines to learn and perform. So, I hope you are able to quit, especially since you have admitted to yourself that you are addicted and can't rely on your inner resources to deal with stress like you used to. Talking to a counselor may help - they usually have them through your school.

I don't think anyone drinks Labatt but my husband is Canadian and he loves Kokanee. He used to live in Prince George and it's what they all drank there. I think it tastes like cheap American beer.

Wow, that's awful. So sorry about your friend. Vyvanse and alcohol was my combo of choice too, and there were too many dark moments to count. I think it's not so much a low or crash (you would feel lower with just alcohol), but the paranoia and being out of touch with reality. Alcohol can be bad in itself but add speed, and well, now you're drunk and you have the motivation and energy to carry out acts you might not otherwise.

What do you normally drink and how many is moderate? Maybe it depends on what you're drinking. I am somewhat of a beer connoisseur (I'm even in a beer of the month club) and when I drink it is always a high quality microbrew. I typically will have one or two and feel fine. But, if I were to drink two cheap beers, like Bud Light or something, I might get a headache (same with low quality weed - headache central!) I very rarely drink hard liquor and the only hard liquor I can drink is vodka, and it's the same thing - it must be top shelf, like Greygoose or Ketel One. So, maybe stick to one or two high quality beers - no Kokanee or Labatt crap, lol.

I would, but I can't really stop taking my birth control pills.

I think they may have taken the Reiss Motivation Profile and modified it to sound more business-y. I read the Reiss book a while back (he's a psychology PhD who developed it) http://www.amazon.com/Desires-Motivate-Actions-Define-Personalities/dp/0425183408/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1378861297&sr=1-1&keywords=reiss+motivation+profile. In his theory things like wealth and achievement would be the byproduct of being motivated by 'power', etc. I quite enjoyed his theory and recommend the book. Acceptance, the desire to avoid failure and criticism. Curiosity, the desire for understanding. Eating, the desire for food. Expedience, the desire to act out of self-interest. Family, the desire to raise children and to spend time with siblings. Idealism, the desire for social justice. Interdependence, the desire to trust others to meet one's needs. Order, the desire to be organized and clean. Physical Activity, the desire for muscle exercise. Power, the desire for influence or leadership. Romance*, the desire for beauty and sex. Saving**, the desire to collect. Social Contact, the desire for peer companionship. Status, the desire for respect based on social standing. Tranquility, the desire to be free of anxiety and pain. Vengeance, the desire to confront those who offend.

Lunax, I strongly recommend you don't start out your marriage as an addict. I did, and it was a tumultuous first year. I was bitchy, paranoid, self-absorbed and argumentative all the time. My husband got pretty sick of my bullshit and had one foot out the door until I quit. He also gave me a lot of tough love during quitting and recovery, which I think sometimes addicts need (even though I hated it at the time). As an addict you're a fragile, selfish little baby and it helps to have someone give you doses of hard objective reality to make you realize you're not the center of the universe and the world won't end if you sober up. Recurring addictions are one of those things that lead to divorce pretty frequently because it's not something you can work on as a couple. Only the addict can stop using. Being a sane spouse and not getting divorced is a compelling reason to stay sober. Maybe you want to make it more clear to your fiancé the magnitude of your problem. If his dad was an alcoholic, he probably understands addiction. But as I said, you are the one that has to quit, regardless of your fiancé's comments. If you're waiting for him to give you the kind of support you want, you might be waiting forever and/or use that as an excuse never to quit. Perhaps going to NA meetings, getting some phone numbers you can call during your quit, will help you. Because those people get it for sure. You won't need to spell it out to anyone you meet in NA. You'll say your addicted to amphetamines and they'll nod and say Oh, with the knowingness that yeah, amphetamines are fucking addictive. I highly doubt your therapist would call your doctor. They're counselors, not the police, and they're confidential. Last point: your marriage is more important than your job. Say worst case scenario you quit speed and get fired from your job (which was a huge fear for me but never happened). You can always get another job. But ruining your relationship is much more serious. Is being a star at your job worth ruining your relationship(s) over?

This is a really great technique, Jon. Lately I've been lamenting my loss of confidence and work ethic, but if I stop to think about it, that confidence was cloaked in arrogance and a bitchy attitude, and while I had a terrific work ethic, I obsessed over unnecessary details/projects and lost foresight, because on Adderall you can't see the forest for the trees. It's funny how the 'Adderall perks' I reminisce about have changed throughout my recovery too. In the beginning, it was all about the loss of energy, how tired I was all the time. That's what always led me to relapse, the constant, unrelenting exhaustion during those first several months or so of quitting. Now, I don't even think of Adderall as an energy pill, because after almost two years sober, my energy is totally solid. Now it's the more insidious psychological aspects that creep into my brain, like the instant motivation, the false confidence, the giant importance of all things, etc.. So remembering the negatives that can't be separated from the positives is a very smart tool. Thanks for sharing that.

The meeting I went to was pretty full actually, but apparently Pills Anonymous was started in Phoenix, so maybe it's more popular here. I didn't dislike the meeting, I guess I was just hoping to meet other Adderallics. I got the feeling most of the people were dealing with opiates - there were many older people with injuries there - and many were alcoholics too so it was all about total sobriety. I guess I just feel like a hypocrite at 12 step meetings being that I'm a social drinker, like I have to keep that fact a secret or something. I don't have anything against 12 step programs in general.

The Machinist is one of my favorite movies. Christian Bale lost something like 60 pounds for the role by going on an extreme diet. His character in the movie hasn't slept for a year.

I went to a Pills Anonymous meeting last night because being unemployed and not having a daily routine is making me feel a little 'relapsey.' There happens to be one of these groups right by my house. I was a little disappointed to discover it was exactly the same as AA/NA. I feel out of place in those 12 step groups because 1) they feel cultish and 2) they preach total abstinence and I'm a social drinker-glass of wine with dinner-kind of person. I fail to see why I would abstain from something that simply isn't an issue for me. So, that's my review of PA. I had a better experience with smart recovery, it's a non-religious, non 12 step support group. Has anyone been to Crystal Meth Anonymous? Probably also 12 step but the using/recovery issues are probably the most similar, and meth people usually don't have problems with alcohol either.