quit-once

I second that!!

Just for the Hell of it, I would like to try out a pill cleanse for the next three weeks or so, until the first of October. I plan to abstain from all substances and supplements that come in the form of a pill, tablet, capsule, or powder. Anybody want to join me?

It took me until a year after quitting to start cutting foods and food groups. Liquid milk does not agree with me anymore either. Cheese, cream, sour cream and yogurt are just fine, but not milk. Now I drink almond milk for the calcium.

Jon, that takes a lot of balz to do what you are planning next tues. I hope it goes well for you. Please keep in mind it is in your doctors best interest to have you on adderall. I hope he is a doctor who puts his patients interests before his own. When I told my doctor I had quit, he shrugged and said "well, you can always go back on them if you want". Not exactly the kind of response I was looking for. Haven't seen him since then.

Even though this post was made a few months ago it is still very relevant to me. As a follow-up note, I have not seen these friends since that incident. I have ignored a few of their phone calls. I was determined that my quitting would not cost me any friends, and so far this is true. I believe in time I will want to hang out with them if I set limits on their behavior that I will tollerate. That experience was traumatic for me - like witnessing an accident or something. It took some time to heal from it and I am not in a hurry to be around anybody (especially friends) who are tweaking.

Does all food cause you to have heartburn? Why not see what foods cause you to have GERD or heartburn and change your diet? that is what I did because I refused to take a pill for something my body is trying to reject. Even tums or alka seltzer. The proton pump inhibitors (prylosec?) are especially unhealthy in the long term. After I cut the processed foods, especially the sugar containing food and drinks, my stomach began to heal. Now I can eat very small servings of bread or pasta ONCE during the day without a bad reaction. I still do wonder if I caused some kind of permanant damage to my stomach too. Hope not. I really believe that taking a pill to treat the side effects of another pill is not the sustainable answer

Good decision to stay at arms length from such an addictive drug. Referring to the "eight stages of amphetamine addiction" article in the announcements forum, it sounds as if you are in stage four, or the "tool stage" of your relationship with Xanax. Although each addiction is its own unique animal, I do believe the "eight stages" can be loosely applied to most other addictions as well. I maintained my tool stage with adderall for about seven years by using for 3-4 days and then withdrawing for 3-4 days every week. Attivan was also in that mix for me. I did not want to believe how hard on my body that lifestyle actually was. I would wake up in the middle of the night with excruciating pain in my middle and lower back. I purchased new mattresses to no avail. I could not accept that my muscle and joint pains were actually due to attivan and adderall withdrawls, and this went on for several years. When you find yourself moving beyond the tool stage with your xanax relationship, it may be time to find another more natural remedy for your anxiety, unless you want to stay on them for the rest of your life or experience another crippling addiction

I agree with the Nonameguy, HOWEVER: Greg I remember a similar post you made at the beginning of the year when you found an old bottle of xanax with a few pills and you were worried about abusing them and you rationed tham and said you would not get it refilled. Apparently you refilled it. Dude, those pills are fucking BENZOS and they are highly addictive!! From what I have learned around here, a benzo addiction is even harder to kick than adderall. That said, my mom took attivan (another benzo) in her old age for relief of anxiety and it was the only thing that seemed to help her. I do understand how crippling anxiety can be, althouth I am lucky enough not to be afflicted with it. One time a doctor told my mom to breathe into a paper bag for as long as it took to calm down when she was experiencing anxiety and it did seem to help her. I still have a bottle of her lorazapam (attivan) and use it only when travelling if I experience insomnia in a hotel room. BE CAREFUL with the benzos. It sounds like you are already in the early stages of a xanax addiction.

Welcome to the forums and congrats for five months. Eight years is a long time to spend in an addiction - I did it for nine years myself. I felt more vulnerable to a relapse at five months than about any other time in my recovery. I am glad your life is getting better, without those stupid pills. I love your optomistic outlook! Good luck.

I have no doubt you will succeed with your Quit. You have owned your addiction and acknowledged your mistakes. You ARE in the process of moving on with your life. I think it is great you are from Canada. I was beginning to wonder if adderall was uniquely an American problem. After all, we are on the Internet but almost everyone who posts anything on this site is an American. Great three month post, zerokewl. Congratulations on your recovery progress and thanks for sharing your thoughts with us.

Wow. this is a great thread with so many posts I want to respone to. Ashley- Your "friend" will be just fine. SHe will quit in her own way when she is ready. I know how tough it is to be around friends who are tweaking. I think that exposure to the substances (and their people) you have problems with is the best way to overcome their temptations. The more times you say "no thank you" the better your chances of beating your addiction, for good. It ain't easy but it is an important step in your recovery. LilTex: I was a shell of a person, too. Occaisonal: I didn't remember your story but I sure needed to hear it. We are all only one little pill away from a full blown relapse. Thanks for that reminder. Zerokewl: Your friend is either a ticking time bomb or he will just maintain his current status for a long time to come. Either way, not the best role model for you at the present time. Let him know your would be really pissed if he ever offered you an adderall, ever again.

Krax, I just wanna chime in because my experiences are so different from yours in all respects. At nine months, I felt the beginning of releif from the ho-hums. It was very noticible and exciting to enter a new phase of recovery. Some people start feeling better around eight months, while others may take up to a year, but the good news is that feeling much better is just around the corner for you. Regarding the supps, I have been experimenting with 5 HTP for about a month now. I take one pill about an hour before bed time and it puts me to sleep and keeps me there better than tha benzos ever did. I do feel groggy in the mornings from it and sometimes it is hard to get rolling without a lot of coffee. Not sure I want to keep taking it so I just use it when I need better sleep. Lions Mane (Host Defense brand; 1500 mg/day) has given me my mind and memory back. Also better focus and mental clarity. Tyrosine is a great mood elevator but I rarely need it in the summer. But when I am having a bad day, tyrosine usually makes it better. I also use fish oil daily, a good multivitamin and vitamins C and D whenever I think I need them. Hang in there.

I have found drinking coffee to be absolutely essential to my energy level and general well-being. I dunno how you can get by without it, but if you can, more power to you! On adderall, I would drink coffee throughout the day and night. Now, I just drink it in the morning. Now, I drink about a half pot of good coffee in the morning, maybe tea or red bull in the afternoon. How have you been feeling since you quit the coffee, Jon?

At one year post quit, I considered myself recovered because I had learned to cope. I was OK with that because I felt so much better that I did while using or even better that six months out. At two years, I consider myself recovered because I have improved mentally, physically and emotionally. I now realize that I really was not fully recovered last year, even though I thought I was doing OK. I still lacked motivation. But not now. My memory and cognition are still returning too - so in that respect I am still recovering. And my motivation is still not the 100% I would like it to be.

Hey InRecovery- I thought your name change might have been due to the fact you felt recovered and just wanted to move on with a new identity. It's funny, but I thought I was recovered a year ago but I feel so much better now that I realize I was still in recovery myself last summer. I have so much more motivation and inner drive now it is hard to put into words. I wish I could help you with the mechanics if this web site but that is simply not my thing. I struggle with technology. I am resisting a smart phone in the worst way. One thing I have learned is that if something does not want to post right away, use the copy and paste buttons to save your post and then go back and re-post it. I hate to loose things I have written because they can never be re-created exactly. Glad you are back on the boards, Greg.

Great idea, and how about a "got 'er done" club too? where members could just post the important and meaningful things they started or finished that day?

Hey Blesbro- It just occured to me why we didn't experience adderall cravings. You and I chose the same approach to quitting - that was to quit once and be done with the shit forever. We avoided the cycle of quitting and relapses. Maybe that is why quitting smoking was so difficult for me - because I was a pro at quitting but I would always relapse eventually - sometimes even years or months later. I quit the addiction of adderall in my mind several months before I quit taking the pills because i knew that the only way to beat any addiction was lifetime abstinence.

Actually, I found quitting smoking and adderall to be entirely different things to quit. I quit both about the same time two years ago. I NEVER have the desire to take adderall, but i still crave a smoke every once in a while. In some respects, I have to be stronger for longer when it comes to kicking the cigs. With adderall, when I was done, I was indeed done with it forever. I still have to take the cig addiction one day at a time.

That last paragraph made my current project (and process) much easier to get through. thanks for posting a great quote, zerokewl.

You just answered your own question. While you may feel high for only a few hours, the drug rewires your brain rather quickly and for a long time after you quit. It takes many. many months to unhook your brain from the adderall mindset, even with total abstinance from the adderall. that is why it is so hard to quit and stay quit.

LDMcNeil, Just curious, did your losing your job have anything to do with your anti-adderall facebook page? I remember you worked in a doctors office and you have some very good insight into the evils of the medical profession and drug industry as it relates to prescribing harmful, addictive drugs and the creation of artificial "disorders" to be treated with these awful drugs. Once upon a time, we had a constitution that guaranteed our free speech (#1) and freedom from searches and seizures (#4) among other things. Those days are behind us now.

Sebastians best quotes: "I think there's a point where you have to pull the plug with adderall and say goodbye. I dunno. Thats just my 2cents. Honestly, if the world's best doctor told me i could go back on adderall and stay on it the rest of my life...i would. but again, i just dont think you can stay on adderall long term. im trying to battle through this withdrawal. LilTEX and cassie give me a lot of hope. I just hope quitting and all this suffering that came with quitting is worth this suffering. CHIME IN EVERYONE." You have made some good points here, Sebastian. I framed my adderall addiction and quitting like knowing somebody who has died. Those years and times are forever behind me. Even though adderall will always be available, my relationship with that drug died when I quit taking the pills two years ago. And just like surviving the death of somebody you love, time has a way of making it less painful. I said goodbye and good riddance because I can look forward to a better life without a stupid drug to prop me up. Like Cassie said, It is a crutch. I know of nobody who would rather live the rest of their life on crutches when they could just throw away the crutches and get better. A lifetime on adderall results in Parkinsons disease and psychosis, among other ailments. Stick with your Quit, Sebastian. Time heals everything.

I say quit NOW and don't buy your wedding dress until just before getting married. You will gain weight. Do you really want to take the baggage of your adderall addiction into your marriage? Quit now and begin your new life early.

If I take too much tyrosine, I get a headache. I like the 500 mg dose - GNC Brand - about 2-3 times per day. I feel the effects of tyrosine right away, like within an hour of taking it. Tyrosine is the one supplement that got me through recovery. I still take it, sometimes, when I am in a pissy mood, or when I just want to feel better. It is the best non-drug mood elevator I know of. It works even better with B complex vitamins and you MUST take it on an empty stomach - one hour before eating or at least two hours after. Take it with a redbull for an extra bonus of the feelgoods.

I did. I dug a few holes with a backhoe just for the hell of it. And I moved a few 500 lb rocks with no backhoe for no good reason. Looking back at my tweaking moments, I did some really stupid things that were sooo goddamn important at the time.