quit-once

I recently finished up a home improvement project and had some leftover materials to take back to the hardware store for a refund. I started searching for the receipt in the usual places like the sugar bowl and the checkbook to no avail. I needed to buy some lawn fertilizer and wanted to return the hardware in the same trip. But I could not locate the receipts anywhere they should have been after searching for 10 minutes or so. Went to Home Depot and did my shopping, and when I dug out my project card from its slot in my wallet, there was the receipt for the hardware, It was then that I remembered that only last week, I had folded it up and put it where I would "have it handy". Of course, I did not have the items to return with me, so I will need to make another trip to that store, just for the returns and refunds. This is a pretty typiclal story of the memory challenges I face almost weekly. I call it my working memory deficit, and I blame my past amphetamine abuse and addiction. My memory really has not been the same since I used and abused adderall for nine years. Could it be age-related too? after all I am almost 50 years old. And maybe I have smoked a lot of weed at certain times in my life. Maybe I got too drunk in college and killed brain cells? But I can't help but feel that the lingering memory issues are a direct result of my adderall addiction, I am closing in on two full years of adderall abstinence and addiction recovery, yet I still have these deficits in my working memory. I take my fish oils, multivitamins and tryosine almost daily, and I believe they help somewhat. But I do find it discouraging that my working memory seems to be permanantly impaired from abusing that stupid fucking drug adderall. Does anybody else have lingering memory problems after quitting?

As a matter of fact, he did finally quit after experiencing the adderall-induced psychosis. He will be celebrating a full year of freedom from adderall sometime this week. Your dream could be the plot and/or storyline of a very good hollywood sci-fi movie, while my dream could be an episode of Breaking Bad. Dreams are very entertaining, if you let them be that way. I don't get too hung up on the interpretation and deeper meanings of dreams. Rather, I consider myself fortunate to have had the dream experience AND remember it the next day. If I don't write it down the next day, the dream memory fades quickly and then it gets lost to time, and that's OK too, most of the time. Who needs Netflix when your own mind can provide that kind of entertainment, with YOU as the lead actor?

No it didn't.

Crathur, Sounds like you really need to quit. When and how do you plan to quit using adderall? You have my support and encouragement. Good Luck!

Last night I went to bed feeling guilty. I engaged in a sugar bender consisting of my three forbiden "C" foods: cookies, crackers and candy. I found a tin of homemade christmas goodies that I hid from myself right after I got them as a gift. Not a huge binge, just a few of each kind of goodie. Enough to leave that awful sugar taste in my mouth before retiring. Way more sugar and flour than I normally eat in any one day. Enough to cause mild guilt. Enough sugar to cause GERD and heartburn. In my dream I was meeting my best friend for lunch, in somebody's home. But instead of lunch, he pulled out a bottle of pills and said "look what I scored today. Let's snort them." I was torn and confused, but I finally said " no, I can't do it. It is part of my core values not to use speed ever again" Then I left the room. Told him he could snort while I found some lunch. But I changed my mind and went back in the room and he was snorting a crushed pill. He was already fucked up acting high on speed. He gave me the straw and I tried to snort but it was like sipping through a broken straw where you just cant draw up the liquid into your mouth. At that point I said "fuck it", quit trying to snort.... and then I woke up. But those pills.....they looked like a silver/grey multivitamin with large pink amphetamine speckles mixed in to each pill. They were in a big glass bottle and they came from the hospital. I was never really in to snorting pills, especially not those bitter-sweet adderall pills. What an entertaining and interesting dream that was.

I had the same experience with my mail, Cassie. I'm not sure if I stacked it up for an entire year but I know there were several times I would have a pile of 6-9 months worth of bullshit mail that I just didn't want to deal with. I remember the "mail triage" where I would set aside the bills and everything else went into the pile on my kitchen counter. For months and months. You know what else always piled up? The dishes. All I had to do was put the dirties in the dishwasher but I couldn't be bothered with that menial task. I would fill up the sink and kitchen counter with dirty dishes until there were no more clean ones to use. Then, it would seem like an epic achievement to clean up the kitchen! Laundry was the same way. But since quitting, I have never really struggled with either one of those basic household chores. I sure don't miss all those adderall-induced handicaps.

I am currently going through the process of refinancing my home. I have lived in the same place for about 15 years and I have refinanced three times now. Can't afford not to when interest rates keep dropping and dropping. The first time I refinanced (about ten years ago) it didn't seem like that big of a deal. This was before adderall entered my life. The second time I refinanced, about 2.5 years ago, it was awful. Every step of the process was stressful. I just couldn't seem to pull it all together at the same time. Things dragged on and on. Interest rates went up about a half point while I floundered. The entire process took well over two months and in the end I wasn't even sure I had done the right thing. I couldn't even get my shit toghether enough to clean up my home for the appraisal. This took place in the later stages of adderall addiction. It left such a nasty taste that I really had no appetite for ever doing it again. Today I had the appraisal done for the current refinance effort. My place wasn't spotless, but it was at least clean and the major things were put away. I worked on cleaning up until after midnight yesterday, but I only spent one evening on it, and a couple of hours this morning. I kept thinking "do it fast and do a shitty job; just don't get hung up on the silly things" And when my time limit was up, that was it and it had to be good enough. Every other step of the current process has been totally painless and not stressful at all. I would like to credit the banker, but they have all treated me about the same in each refinancing effort. I believe it is the lack of drugs in my system that has simplified every aspect of just living my life. My point is this: The only time refinancing was incredibly stressful was when I was on adderall. It makes me wonder how many other things were needlessly more complicated and stressful and depressing while going through life under the influence of that stupid drug. All the time thinking my "tool" was "helping" me. Oh well, live & learn.

LilTex, this was one of your early posts that helped to inspire me when I was quitting. It is similar in content to searchingsoul's one small step.

which came first: the chicken adhd or the egg adderall????

I see a trend here..... fuels tech.......adderall abuser......you like things that provide and use ENERGY! Ever thought about a career in alternative energy generation i.e. solar, wind, coffee etc?

hahaha welding in your living room? sounds like something a meth head would do.

Congratulations! What color is your new Corvette?

Here is another NYT article about adderall use and recovery. It is my first attempt to post a link so lets hope it works: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/04/the-last-all-nighter/?smid=pl-share

congratulations! sometimes we need a little nudge to take the first big steps forward. Freedom from addiction; freedom from enlistment......your future just got a lot brighter.

Is that like being temporarily laid off or more like being fired? You'll do just fine either way.

OXTAIL STEW Today I am cooking up a large kettlle of oxtail stew. Used an entire ox's tail - it has been simmering all day. A food dish from my Irish heritige, my Dad would make it almost every Saturday during the winter months. I haven't cooked this dish for several years.

Rick, Thanks for your honesty about your relapse experiences. I think that if you keep hanging around here you will come to realize that adderall is a bullshit drug. But it is a hard thing to let go of. Please keep working on that list of pros and cons about adderall for your own situation. I hope you can determine that the bad always outweighs the good when it comes to taking adderall, without hitting a rock bottom that is hard to recover from. Look at the long term perspective rather than the short-term fix.

I have that book by Oliver Sacks! And I have never read it or even cracked the cover! I bought it because I read a review that it has a chapter or two about the condition I suffer from, which is face blindness. I bought it while I was still taking adderall and I kinda forgot that I even had it till now. Now that I can concentrate long enough to actually read and remember a book, cover to cover, I am going to dig it out of the bookcase and read it. Thanks, MFA.

This was in my top five list of reasons for quitting adderall. I could not live with myself if I knew I had caused a disease like Parkinsons from an addiction. The good news is with time away from the drug, the shaking gradually diminishes, at least in my experiences. Adolph Hitler had severe amphetamine-induced Parkinsons disease.

Rick, Were your relapse experiences mostly negative, neutral or positive? Why did you take it again since quitting last year?

Absloutely true about going back to the doctor to tell them you quit. It is bad for their business if you quit so you will be encouraged to get right back on it and they will extend an open invitation for adderall-on-demand. My doctor told me the exact same thing. And that office is full of triggers. Congratulations for three weeks! By the way that last post sounded, YOU GOT THIS! You now own your quit and are fully engaged in the journey of recovery from this awful addiction. There will be ups and downs and curves in the road, but as long as you keep moving forward in recovery you will conquer this addiction for good.

First off, Congratulations to you, Lil Tex for getting that new job. I wanted to respond to your post here along with MFA's good news about her new job last week. Dumping a job after five years is a huge life change and I am so proud of you for bettering yourself and your carreer. Second, I was interested by your comment about the uniqueness of adderall recovery. Other than nicotine, I have not experienced addiction and recovery other than from adderall. Even the recovery from nicotine is mild compared to this shit. I have always wondered where kicking an adderall addiction and its recovery fits into the bigger spectrum of all substances that cause addiction. Is adderall recovery tougher than alcohol recovery? How about benzos or painkillers? Is adderall easier to recover from than a meth addiction? Does it depend on the individual and how addicted they were to their drug(s) of choice? I dunno, is this worth discussing?

Jesus. What a disturbing story. Ever heard of co-dependency? It sounds like he is using you for your money and a place to crash. What are you getting from this relationship for your own good? Sounds like a heartache to me. You are walking on eggshells. How do you maintain your self-esteem? Why do you continue to tolerate his abusive behavior? YOU ARE NOT SAFE! I suggest you round up your dogs and find a safe place to stay until he levels out from his current crash. Maybe that will wake him up that he is about to loose what you believe matters most to him.....YOU. He still needs to find the depths of his own adderall hell before he is ready to quit, and that could be well into the future. Please take care of yourself and your dogs now. You could be hurt or killed by his violent behavior reslulting from his adderall bingeing and withdrawl. The violent episodes will only continue to worsen until he quits for good. TODAY would be a good time to start looking after yourself FIRST.

Exactly one month from yesterday will be April Fools Day. Is that when you quit?? April Fools Day is one of my favorite spring holidays. So, this year you can tell everybody you recently relapsed for/as an April Fools Joke?

And (I've heard) some crabs are sooo tiny they can fit on the head of a pin