Cassie
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Posts posted by Cassie
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I did this whole obsessive research thing too when I was in my early recovery stages, and it was pretty pointless. Even if there are long term studies on this, they are 1) most likely funded by big pharma, thus subject to bias in sample and methodology and 2) going to be so small and few that the evidence will be far from conclusive. When you can't find any conclusive research in the scientific literature, you will move on to random, unscientific Internet sites and alternate between freaking yourself out with horror stories and placating yourself with positive anecdotes from pro-Adderall users and doctors. But this aside, I think the more important question is, since you are on a cocktail of mind altering meds, how do you know which one is affecting your memory?
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If you feel manic, cut it in half and just take 50mgs. I used to do that with 100 Sr bupropio when I took it for depression. 100mgs was too much for me, so I only took half once a day. It doesn't break the time release and you can cut them, unlike the xl version. Better to take less if it's making you feel like crap.
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Do you want a natural recovery or do you want to be on a drug? If you want your brain to recover on its own and have faith in its ability to do so, then why take anything that might compromise that process? I think the answer is, no one knows the answer to your question because there are no long term studies on the effects of these drugs. I think it's fine to take if it keeps you from relapsing. But since we don't know much about the long term effects or even know much about brain chemistry in general at this point, the safest thing would be to take the lowest dose you can for the shortest amount of time possible. And if you have any specific questions about a med, your best source is a pharmacist. They are far more knowledgeable about the medications than doctors.
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Ha ha sky, that was hilarious. I am still struggling with some of that social anxiety/self-consciousness post adderall and it's been a year for me. I think it was around 9 months when I started feeling like my intuition was returning. It's one of those things that comes in waves, like your energy level. I'm sure you rocked the interview, you're just paranoid because you feel off.
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My hair was thin and limp on adderall. It's much more lustrous now, for sure. I don't think I actually lost hair, rather it was so dry from the adderall that each strand lacked moisture and appeared thinner. I'm sure it will grow back. Wellbutrin can cause hair thinning too.
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Is it just me, or are the names of these drugs getting more and more ridiculous?
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I take l-tyrosine and 5-htp occasionally. They don't interact. When I take them, I take the l-tyrosine in the morning and 5-htp at night. I wouldn't take any supplement every day for more than a couple months unless it's fish oil or a multivitamin.
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I believe it exists, but only in a very tiny percentage of the population. Google the article "why French kids don't have adhd" from psychology today (cant post link from phone). It talks about how less than .5% of kids in France have adhd, compared to over 5% of American kids, yet these are both similar western countries. It's not like a kid's biology is different in France.
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I think you're going to have to accept that you're gonna gain weight in the beginning. I don't know anyone who hasn't. I didn't even eat much differently from Adderall to non-Adderall and I still gained ten pounds over three months. I started losing it around month 3 or 4. I wasn't skinny on Adderall though, it didn't really suppress my appetite that much. I've also never had an eating disorder or an unhealthy relationship with food so I can't really speak to those issues. Just try to eat the junk food in moderation, as a treat - if you try to deprive yourself totally you will go crazy!
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This is a book that's on my to-read list. It's about the broken system of medical research within the drug companies and academia. The author is a psychiatrist and author of another book called Bad Science. This one is more focused on the pharmaceutical companies.
Here is his Ted Talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/ben_goldacre_what_doctors_don_t_know_about_the_drugs_they_prescribe.html
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Some doctors are idiots, just like there are idiots in every profession. A college education certainly doesn't guarantee intelligence. My doctor wasn't stupid or evil though. She prescribed me SSRIs and Wellbutrin for at least a year before Adderall. Adderall was only offered up after many things were first tried for my general complaints of fatigue and lack of focus and I reported that none of them worked. And it's not like I ever gave her any indication of my addiction along the way - I just told her they were working so that I could continue to get them filled every month. I believe she was genuinely trying to help, and I didn't have a history of addiction or anything.
WTF, you paid $600/month for a doctor's appointment? Mine was a psychiatric nurse practitioner. She charged $50 for an appointment every three months, $20 with insurance. My scripts were always written for three months at a time (I couldn't refill more than a few days early at the pharmacy). I think most doctors are just ignorant of the addictiveness of amphetamines, because the drug reps tout their safety, when used in small doses for the short term. There are virtually no long-term evidence based studies for amphetamines or any other psychotropic prescription drugs. FDA approval only requires two 8-week positive trials proving drug effectiveness compared to placebo. They can go through as many negative trials as they want until they get two positive ones, and no regulatory body has to know about the negative trials that didn't work. Once the drug is approved, there is no financial incentive for a drug company to perform a costly long term study. Every psychiatric drug you ever take, it's been tested for 8 weeks of use in adults. (If you really want to talk about guinea pigs, look at the kids who take this shit. Children aren't part of drug trials). So, much of the ignorance in the medical profession stems from the lack of evidence based studies on these meds. The evidence is anecdotal, but holy shit there are a lot of anecdotes, aren't there?
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Meditation/yoga is good but don't do any 'cleanses' or crazy fad diets. You need to eat for energy, eat good, healthy food. I know I'm stating the obvious but your brain needs food as fuel to function. After I quit I got a juicer and started juicing in the mornings - but this was not a subsitute for food, it was an addition. High protein snacks help a lot in the beginning, like nuts and hard boiled eggs. This is going to sound weird but I like the Gerber Chicken Sticks baby food jars. It's like Vienna sausages for toddlers, but tastes way better than Vienna sausages and doesn't have any additives. Just be sensible, and realize that any supplement you take or special fad diet you do is going to be so slight compared to the way Adderall made you feel. Nothing is going to 'feel' like an amphetamine, ever again. Good luck to you
P.S. I think cold turkey is the way to go.
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I agree with all the comments about cutting off your supplier.
Doesn't sound like your supplier is also your therapist, but for me as soon as I realized the enabling my doctor had done for my addiction, there was no way I was going to trust this guy with my problems. Hell, I had TOLD my doc about my addictive personality and he prescribed me way more adderall than he ever should have, then added xanax and klonopin to the mix, without ever once warning me of the side effects of any of these drugs.
Hear, hear. I mentioned this in another post, but when I told my doctor I was addicted to Adderall, she suggested that I merely had a 'dependency', like some people are dependent on coffee or blood pressure medication. That's effing hilarious, eh? I mean, I literally said, "I'm an addict." How much clearer could that be? My point is, you don't have to tell your doctor you're an addict - he might not even believe you! You just need to tell him you don't want it anymore. If he asks why, you just rattle off some side effects. It's not that hard. Hell yeah, your doctor is just as dangerous as a dealer. Your doctor thinks this addictive medication is perfectly safe, and doesn't want to lose this cash cow.
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I don't see the harm in trying it and seeing if it helps you. I'd never heard of it before so I looked it up. It looks like it's marketed as a non-addictive alternative to benzos and causes drowsiness, so I'm guessing you would take this in place of the klonopin. What is the root of your anxiety? Have you tried yoga? Meditation? Breathing exercises? Acupuncture? Not just once or twice, but over the long term? Do you avoid caffeine?
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Hey Thisisit,
I can relate to your story because I also started Adderall in my mid-20s, due to what amounted to being bored and unfulfilled in my job. And I also quit for two months and then relapsed because I saw no improvement in my physical and emotional state. I feel for you because I know the state that you're in. The second time I planned my quit better: started it around a vacation time, told my doctor I was quitting, gave myself permission to be a sloth, resigned myself to not care if I got fired from my job because I hated my job anyway, and in general just tried as much as possible to minimize any stress and obligations. It still sucked of course, but the planning made it feel more final and took the edge off a bit.
The good news is that the next time you quit it will be easier because you've had some practice already and your brain will appreciate the heads up! The lengthy withdrawal process won't be as much as a shock. The bad news is that recovery is an extremely long and slow process, much of which will be frustratingly beyond your control (your energy, mood swings, depression, confusion, rigid thinking, obsessive Adderall thoughts, to name a few). It will last for more than two months, you will feel frustrated and impatient, and you will see improvement on some days and regression on others. Your addiction will try to convince you month after month that hey, maybe I really do have ADD, maybe I really do need this drug to function. Should I call my doctor? Yeah, let's call my doctor, let's put an end to this misery. It will be different this time, I'll take is as directed and never take any more than I need. Do any of these thoughts sound familiar? It's much easier to convince yourself you need Adderall than say, cocaine or meth, and that is where much of the danger lies - it's social benignancy. What beats those thoughts is remembering that you did not need Adderall to function before. It is your addiction talking, an addiction to an extremely addictive drug that you do not need. Think of it as more dangerous than a street drug because it is pure and unadultered by being cut. In fact, think of it as meth. After all, it's just one molecule away, and meth is lab-produced as an ADD drug too, called Desoxyn.
How can I make myself have more discipline? How can I move forward, be productive and positive about quitting if I know how bad the following months will be after I quit, since I have already tried it before?
You can't make yourself disciplined or motivated or productive in the beginning. These things will be shot for awhile and trying to force them will lead to stress, which is what you want to avoid in recovery. Have very low expectiations for yourself in the beginning months. Read about PAWS (post acute withdrawal syndrome). What helped me stay quit is making a promise to myself that I would stay off Adderall for one year, and if after one year I still felt hopeless and horrible, I would go back on it. Trust me, after a year you will have a completely different thought process, a completely different outlook, a completely different brain. You will be thinking so much more rationally. You will think it's absolutely insane how addicted you once were to this shit, how pathetic it was that your life revolved around a pill. But it might take you a year to feel these realizations and to feel, well, normal again. It will be the toughest year of your life, but it is so, so worth it to be free of addiction and so freeing to get YOU back, however slowly it may resurface. Are you ready for the challenge?
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I started taking only what I though was an appropriate dosage before work and leaving the rest at home so I wouldn't be able to give into myself for more later. Kid you not, I would dip out of work after 2 hours to take an "early lunch" and drive home to take more.
I used to do this too. At my last job, I used to go home every day for lunch just to take a little bit more, pouring varying levels of powder out of the Vyvanse capsule into a glass of water and drinking the bitter liquid. I loved experimenting with my dosages. At my current job, I lived too far from work to go home for lunch so I would bring the extras to work, 'just in case' I needed them. And I always needed them, of course.
Today, I gave the bottle to my brother and i've instructed him to give me 15 mg a day when really I should flush it.
Bad idea. As soon as your brother leaves, you are going to tear the house apart until you find those pills.
Tomorrow I am going to tell him to just hold on to it. Perhaps knowing it's there will satisfy my addiction enough.
Thinking about your pills will satisfy your addiction? That's like being ravenously hungry and thinking that visualizing a steak will sate your appetite. Be honest with yourself and admit that you have no control over this substance. None of these little tricks are going to work. I could have never have quit with pills around because I would have obsessed about them every second and would have always found a way to take more. Give them up completely and cut off your dealer/doctor.
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I'm a librarian at a university. Why, do I sound 'doctorly'? lol. Adjusting to work has been so difficult for me, and I worked for years just fine before it, so Inrecovery, I feel your pain. It must be that much harder starting from scratch essentially.
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I'm glad you bring this up, because I suck at work without adderall. I'm super lazy and unmotivated and I just don't care about my job. I feel like just working isn't enough now, like I need to find a job I care about, but I don't know what that would be because I'm anhedonic and can't figure out what to do with my life. I take stressing out about career uncertainty to an unhealthy level.
On the plus side, I'm not angry and on edge all the time, and I don't waste time on meaningless work projects. I've basically traded doing meaningless work projects for slacking off and surfing the internet. Like I said, I just don't care about work like I did before and on adderall.
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You'll get all your mental faculties back eventually - you haven't done any permanent damage. The brain takes a long time to recover and you're really early in your recovery, just the beginning stages. My cognitive abilities and memory began improving in month four, but the intuition issues took longer to resolve, maybe nine months or so. I know what you mean, you can't read situations properly and pick up on social cues like you could before Adderall.
I remember a couple years ago I was taking a graduate class at night, and I was always way tweaked out because I went to the class straight from work and took lots of Adderall to get me through these long days. One night, we were routinely discussing a book and I thought of something witty to say to contribute to the discussion. But before I raised my hand to say it, I had this massive internal dialogue, like, "Is this comment actually funny or is it dumb? Is it too racy for the people in this class? What if someone is offended? What if I say this thing and no one laughs and everyone just stares at me?" After this lengthy mental debate I finally raised my hand and said my comment, and some people laughed. But I know I looked and sounded awkward and serious. The delivery of the joke was completely unnatural. I was completely unnatural.
All social situations eventually eroded like this while on Adderall - no intrinsic judgement whatsoever. You become all thought and no feelings, and when you quit Adderall all you have is a million strange feelings and no thoughts to bridge the correct ones together. That is the source of the frustration, made even more frustrating by the fact that you can't think your way into a solution because excessive thought is what brought you into this mess in the first place. To quote Alan Watts, "it's like trying to bite your own teeth." So, all you can really do is try to relax and not push yourself and take comfort in the fact that one day, your brain will do this amazing thing and regenerate all these connections and neurotransmitters that you're lacking right now.
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What's funny is, I used to take caffeine pills (NoDoz) to pull all nighters in college. I didn't even know what Adderall was until I was 25 and tried it from a workplace friend. I guess all my friends in college were potheads/drinkers because no one ever talked about speed, nor did I know anyone who had any. Don't worry, I never pulled a Jessie Spano.
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I think we all remember the dangers of caffeine pills from Saved by the Bell...
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Ironically, I drink way less coffee now. When I was on Adderall, I would drink a cup or two in the morning and then feel an Adderall crash in the afternoon so I would go to Starbucks and get a huge latte or maybe one of the ready made frappucinos from the grocery store. It seemed like I always needed caffeine with Adderall, much as many of you needed cigarettes with Adderall. Even right after I quit, I only had the urge to drink one cup of coffee a day in the morning. More just didn't do anything for me.
I think if you're worried about ingesting any substance, you should ask yourself the question, "Has this ruined anyone's life?" And the answer is no, no one's life has ever been ruined by coffee. So you shouldn't feel guilty about drinking it. But more than 3 or 4 cups in a day probably isn't good - like everything there's a point at which more isn't beneficial anymore. More than two cups a coffee makes my stomach hurt and is counterproductive, so I stick to one to two cups a day.
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What is scary is that I didn't recognize the difference in my process until about a year or so after the fact, but I began taking more and more time doing things that weren't important at work, but what I had convinced myself were. Not messing around on the internet or anything like that, but doing these overly-elaborate spreadsheets to track clients...
P.S. This reminds me of a time at work when I spent hours poring over the online manual for our sales management software, figured out how to program it, and meticulously color coded all my leads and clients according to time zones, interest level, and potential dollar amount. Talk about unnecessary! Yet I thought this was incredibly important at the time...
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I can relate to your story. I was 26 when I started taking Adderall and 31 when I quit. I never 'needed' it either, just wanted a boost and loved how it kept me interested in everything. At the time I started, I worked in sales for a financial firm developing new business, so like you, I had to talk to clients all day. I can relate to all of it: the false bravado, the arrogance, the hyperfocusing on meaningless tasks (I could spend upwards of an hour composing an email, making sure the wording made sense because I couldn't tell in my manic state). Acting erratic and/or distant toward my coworkers.
I think we're lucky that we started taking Adderall after college and a few years in the workplace, because we can remember that we were able to succeed without it. I've been off Adderall almost a year now, and I still struggle with work every day. Maybe it's the nature of my job. I work in a different field now and it's much slower paced. I also don't really have any supervision or deadlines. I am the boss, so I don't even have any fear-based motivation to get me going during the day. I still struggle with self-confidence, motivation and willpower. Just at work though. I have epic willpower in other areas, like diet and exercise. It's a really long struggle, but since I never had any trouble being a normal employee before Adderall I'm confident I will get there someday. You are definitely not alone!
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Sorry to go on and on about the memory loss thing but...
in General Discussion
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I didn't mean to offend you, that certainly wasn't my intention. I just didn't want you to psych yourself out reading about medical side effects on the Internet all day, because I definitely had those days (months?) where I freaked myself out and thought, 'Oh, my god, I've permanently fucked up my brain!' My point about the drug 'combo' is that you can't assess the true effects of a drug unless you take it on its own, otherwise it could be the drug or it could be its interaction with the other drug...you know what I mean. And I agree with Ashley that the Ambien might be more worrisome than the Adderall for memory issues.The truth is, we are all guinea pigs for these meds because there's not enough long term research and we don't know enough about the inner workings of the brain, but we do know that the brain is plastic, so have faith in your memory to come back because it will (and you don't need to waste your money on a billion supplements for that to happen either)