quit-once

How did I miss that one? One of the coolest links I have experienced.

You'll be amazed at how "normal" you can feel after being free and clean for a year!

But a journal can take many forms. It doesn't have to be a formal bound book with white parchment pages. It can be a spiral note book or even a legal pad. It can be a notebook with post-it notes affixed to the pages after they served their post it function. Keeping a journal is a great release. My latest journaling experience was keeping a food journal last summer. I recorded every calorie I consumed for about four months, with random thoughts and ideas interspersed with the food. All in a pocket sized spiral note pad. When I ran out of pages I quit journaling.

"what other people think of you is none of YOUR business"

Not Much. You think big tobacco had a powerful political lobby? Big Sugar is much more influential. Until society begins to view sugar like a drug and not just another food, not much will change. Here is my justification for considering sugar and high fructose corn syrup like a drug: Oh fuck it, I don't have the time to make this post and have it make any sense. Check out this website: www.fructosefree.com It has some good information but I don't know how accurate it is. Sugar IS toxic.

Heather you are fucking with us on the quote in a quote to see your quote and raise you...another quote! When are we goin to Vegas?

I choose #20: "When it comes to going after what you love in life, don't take no for an answer.'' And to share some wisdom from my mom, Naomi, when she was 90: "Do it! Do it now, and Do it while you still can!" This was her response to people saying they were "planning to....." or "thinking about....." ,,,,,,and her response to a fuck up: "Oh well, live and learn."

That post reads like a B-rated Sci-Fi flick. Who the fuck is Vice?

Look into "mindful eating". Really. It changed my whole approach to how I use food.

I hope your roller coaster turns into a smooth, cross-country train ride. Congrats and keep on goin' forward!

My guess is that it has something to do with chemistry. I think the amphetamine could leach some of the calcium or other minerals from teeth and bones, especially when taken in large quantities. I have a friend who did speed in the 70's and 80's. Said it rotted her teeth in a bad way. When she learned I was taking adderall, she warned me about it early on in my addiction. So I ALWAYS took a calcium supplement on most days during adderall. I also drank a lot of milk and I felt like I needed it. And I ate a lot of nuts for the other minerals. If you think about it, there are lots of things bad for your teeth that come from abusing adderall, like sugar binges before bedtime (or any time) poor hygeine habbits - like not brushing or flossing - and the most obvious one to me is teeth grinding.

While at the dentist today for my routine cleaning and checkup, I asked him about amalgam fillings. My dentist has done some research into it and was quite knowledgeable and open minded about it. As I said in an earlier post, I do have a mouthfull or mercury - in fact I have nine amalgam fillings. He said that mercury toxicity was a highly individual thing. Some people tolerate it well and others not so much. He said that every time you use your teeth, you are potentially releasing mercury from the amalgam fillings. And when you remove or repair an analgam filling you might release a shit ton of mercury - they even make mercury shields for use when the amalgams are fucked with. We never really discussed the symptoms of mercury toxicity. But he put it all in perspective when he said if you eat the wrong fish that swam in the wrong lake or ocean, maybe downstream or downwind from a coal fired power plant, you might eat hundreds or thousands of times the mercury that your amalgams expose you to in a year. It is all measurable, but does it really matter? For some people, I believe it does. For me, not so much. By the way, my teeth have completely recovered from my nine year stint of adderall abuse.

Like Ashley, I really don't have a lot of insight to offer on this. In fact, I was not going to post a response but then later on I thought of a dumb comment so here is my lame attempt at a response: Like the recovery process, quitting is a very indiviidualized thing. I think that one's vulnerability to relapse is dependent on how ready or willing to quit they were in the first place. In my case, I wanted to quit for over a year before I did. Life got in the way of quitting on my terms. During that period, and especially during the last few months of my addiction, I had already quit in my mind and I was sooo ready to be done with the burden of the addiction that I wanted my time to quit to come sooner and sooner. There were times I remember thinking: "I hope I can survive in one piece until I am able to quit" meaning I really feared permanant nerve damage, heart problems, daibetes, or a stroke. I am sure some of that thinking was due to mild psyshosis coming on. I also read a lot of these forums before I quit and saw that nearly everybody suffered a relapse and I saw the hell and strife that relapse created in peoples lives. I also had a lot of practice quitting smoking and I knew that the motivation to quit again after relapsing could take several years to come back. Furthermore I had also accepted that there was no such thing as a return to casual use because of my advanced addiction. I also knew that a relapse would not be a minor hiccup but a full blown return to that addiction which I had grown to loathe. The experience of my nicotine addiction and many attempts to quit cigs really helped me to accept that my adderall quit was indeed for good.

OK. I get what you mean by agro since I had a lot of practice quitting smoking. Sky, did you have a huge problem with weed addiction? The reason I mention it is because before I kicked the adderall, I couldn't smoke enough weed. Take addie, smoke weed, smoke cigs and repeat the cycle all day long. But after adderall, my weed consumption fell way off to only occasional usage. Sometimes to mellow out after a stressful day or PAWS, sometimes just to relax and recreate in my own fun way. Weed does not seem to be linked to adderall like the cigs were. Personally, if I have a choice between a natural substance where I can carefully regulate the dosage by how I smoke it; or a chemical pill, I'll go natural every time. Just sayin.....

Adderall hell is a tough place to live in. Each crash gets harder and harsher than the last one. So, it sounds like you have decided you need to quit and that is a huge first step. Where are you now in your cycle - about to run out or freshly refilled? I have a souple of suggestions. First, list all the awful things about your adderall hell. Next, list the things you still like about tweaking. Do the negatives outweigh the plusses? If so, then formulate a written plan to quit. Is there any reason you desire to continue using it indefinately? If so, you might not be ready to quit. Seriously quitting adderall usually begins with breaking the supply chain, in advance, of your next refill date. Good luck.

Hi Joe, Muscle and joint aches and pains are part of amphetamine withdrawl. And if you were/are taking benzos along with the adderall to help you sleep it is much much worse. Adderall made me feel like an old fuck. I moved slow and had pain in my joints. But I am an old fuck pushin' 50. For me, the joint pain lingered for another ten months after I quit. I had to cleanse/detox and start doing yoga before the aches and pains went away. Back to your issues....you should start feeling better with each passing day. Quitting adderall is a lot like having the flu for the first few days.

Heather. did you ever read an addie info insert? In denial, addicts usually want nothing to do with that kind of information. I rarely looked them. Sky: Agro = anger+aggrevation? new word to me

I liked your post too, Heather. It made me laugh more than once!

Emotional lability. It is one of the clinical symptoms of amphetamine withdrawl. I read it in the PDR or maybe one of the package inserts that comes with an adderall prescription. I experienced it too in early recovery. Hey Sky, glad you're back amongst us again!

Hey Blesbro- Thanks for the update. I never once doubted that you would make your quit happen and succeed at it. Good job getting through your first two months! You are about at the point I was at when I first joined this site and started posting. In my early posts I lamented the loss of energy and motivation, I remember bitching that it had been the most unproductive summer I ever had. Unfortunately, there is not much you can do to force more energy and motivation. Here is my perspective for helping you to accept your own lack of energy and motivation: When you first began taking recreational adderall, you joined the Addie Club. Most clubs collect their dues from members up front, in advance, but not the Addie Club. Nope, and it seems like a deal too good to be true in the beginning. In fact, you don't know there are any dues to pay until after you quit. Your dues are not paid in money, but in recovery time and frustration from the lack of ability to accomplish all you would like to do without taking a pill. Everyone's recovery time is different. I began to gain a little more energy without solely relying on coffee and redbull around the three month mark. Recovery is an up and down process; it is not linear. I felt a sustained improvement in how I felt about 9 months into the quit. Much better by a year. Now closing in on two years, and I am still getting more of my old inner drive and zest for life back. I have just recently began to experience true passion for some of the work I have been doing. You know, the kind of passion that keeps you up till 2AM goin' strong to finish that last task so you can say "mission accomplished". Sorry I don't have a solution for making recovery a smoother process - I am not sure there is a simple solution other than lots and lots of patience and self-acceptance and a belief in a better future - which you already have.

not me. It gives me the creeps. I have no problem taking stock of what I have externally, but listing my assets as a function of who I am....ewww.

Couple thoughts here from me. I will not discard a to do list until everything has been done. And oddly enough, there are always one or two things on that list that seem to never get done. Not always the same things, either. I have even tried to identify those things that won't get scratched off the list when the list gets made, but it doesn't seem to matter. It is interesting to come across an old list from several months ago or last year and still see that those incomplete items are still waiting to get done. As far as taking breaks, I force myself to keep working until it is time for the next meal, using the meal as a reward for completing one of my smallest acheivable units of a task or getting to a break point I am satisified with.

Great topic here. My method for getting stuff done is to break the project down into its Smallest Acheivable Unit (SAU). So if I have a big project, like cleaning out the garage, I try to visualize how I want my clean garage to look when I am done. But simple cleaning of the garage is way to big of a project to just get started on. So I look at the storage area and visualize how I want that to look. Then I look at the cluttered shelves and visualize what I want to use them for or move them after they have been de-cluttered. And finally I just pick one shelf and remove everything from it to get started. If the area to clean is really cluttered, it always helps me to dig my way into a corner or clean out a drawer or shelf so there are places to put the things that have been freshly sorted. This method applies to other things besides cleaning but I have a lot of cleaning to do since I let the clutter build up to high levels during adderall.

Are you living that saying today? Heather, you have a lot of a lot of really good human traits like forgiveness and kindness. Your little kid is lucky to have you as a mom. A mom who has put her addiction behind her.

I remember a few years ago they advertised these special foot sole pads that were supposed to absorb heavy metals. All you had to do was wear them while you slept and they turned black and....presto...you were detoxified. Is this a form of chelation? Interesting about the ALA test.