Hi everyone --
This is such a great site, and I'm very thankful that these forums are here for us to post and vent. I am close to 3 weeks off of Adderall after 6 years of taking 2x10 mg extended release blue devil pills per day (sometimes one or two more if I "needed" to stay up). This medication has cost me dearly, and hopefully I can convince others to get/stay off of it (or never start) by relaying a bit about my experiences while on it.
I began taking the drug at age 31, at a crossroads in my personal and professional life. I had gone back to school to get a Ph.D., and although I'd worked for several years fairly successfully in a challenging field, I found that all of my self-doubt and worry about whether I could hack it academically were waiting for me when I got to grad school. I found it really hard to focus, and I was afraid of the resurgence of an eating disorder that I'd had since my late teens -- achievement and school stress issues were big triggers for me. Also, I had been in a serious car accident many years ago in which I'd incurred a triple concussion, whatever that means, and I hadn't really had it investigated in terms of scans, etc.
So I took this bundle of contributing factors and concerns to a neuropsych, using my fabulous school-sponsored health insurance, and he ran a battery of tests on me, arranged for me to get head scans, etc. I mostly seemed normal from the tests, except I spectacularly failed at one test that should have been very easy and had to do with integrating variables into a pattern I could detect as the game moved along. I couldn't, and I was so frustrated I almost knocked the cards across the room. He thought I might have some attention issues. I trotted off to an M.D. and was prescribed Ritalin at first and then, eventually, Adderall. At that point I was so desperate not to get back into bulimic behaviors and flunk out of school that I was willing to consider, although I doubted it on some level, that there was a structural/biological issue in my brain that had "caused" my problems all along.
I had something like a honeymoon period on the drug, but I also thought the sensation was kind of unpleasant at first -- felt like someone put a vice grip on my skull. But I was up, maybe a bit ragey in heavy traffic but up and productive and eager to unleash my newfound energies on the world. My ability to write immediately suffered in terms of creativity (what I've come to think of as "lateral" thinking, the kind you can't do with Adderall tunnel vision), and ironically my grad school work stalled almost immediately and never really resumed at a proper pace, but I was able to take on a full-time job AND do school (except that I wasn't really "doing" school, just going through the motions and not writing or creating much) at the same time.
The #1 reason why I didn't quit Adderall all these years is that I was deathly afraid of the eating problem kicking back in, and the drug did offer me a respite from the seemingly relentless urge to overeat when stressed. I knew where that would lead, and like hell was I ever going back! So my inability to seek out other methods (although I had been since age 17, really, just hadn't hit on the right one yet) to help me kept me hooked. That, and I did like feeling productive, although I almost immediately fell into weird habits -- online shopping, fixating, all the stuff that others here have posted about. I also got into relationships and stayed in one that I'm not sure I would've even considered had I not been chemically altered. That's a big point of shame for me.
And shame -- the feeling that would return when I came down off of Adderall -- also kept me on it, or avoiding it did, more accurately. However, by staying on the pills I ended up doing much more, far more, to be ashamed of over time. I dropped the drug cold turkey a couple weeks ago after the pain of taking it and the consequences of my actions while on it became more intense than my fears of eating disorders and productivity plunges.
Bad, bad things happened while I was taking it. I drank too much and smoked like a chimney in reaction to the unpleasant feelings that came with even such a relatively low dose. I'd go on sprees for 3 or 4 days in which I'd get up, take a pill, take another in the afternoon, and by the evening I was so jacked that I would start drinking to take the "edge" off and then smoke because drinking while on the drug made me want to smoke for some reason. I'm not a smoker or a big drinker, actually, while not on it. I got into weird paranoid states of mind that have hurt my current relationship, I know -- I would be 100% convinced that my boyfriend was seeing someone behind my back, etc. I bought a bunch of crap I don't need and am now going to sell. I didn't actually stay away from eating problems altogether, and my teeth suffered.
My friendships suffered, and although I know that in this phase of life people can lose touch, I believe many people backed away slowly because of the intensity of my behavior on various occasions. I became really depressed in cycles while on the drug. And so on -- I can go on, but let's just say that this drug is SO not worth it, so destructive, and I think of it (for me anyway) as a "black" drug, as in the pharmaceutical equivalent of black magic. I had been on antidepressants before, and though I think some of those are less than effective, they aren't evil like this one is. In my opinion anyhow. The antidepressants made me open to the idea of stimulants, and for a while I rationalized my Adderall use as a kind of self-medication for depression and other issues. I never fully believed I had ADD, which made me ashamed of taking it in the back of my mind.
There's my story. The cost is way, way, way too high for me to even consider picking it up again -- I know I'm done. Hopefully I can recover some of who I was before it and make it up to myself somehow now. I'm still tired but clearly able to get words out, so maybe I'll finish my degree drug-free. Thanks for being here.
M
