quit-once

"Change the way you look at things.... and what you're looking at will change" That is an awsome quote.

You gotta do more than make your friends and roomies "question it a little". Time for some new house rules and since its your house - you have to make the rules. They need to know you are deadly serious about this quitting thing. Tell them they are jepardizing their own good living situations if they ever offer you another pill or leave their pills laying around. You have to tell them what you will tollerate and what you will not allow. If they can't support you with this most important effort to quit, are they really your friends or are they simply your adderall addiction enablers?

what the fuck is chelation?

that's pretty deep, Heather. Lots of wisdom from you here. How do you know when to step aside and just let destiny take its course? Is there some kind of internal trigger you have to learn how to manage? How can you recognize when your own devices start fucking things up, before the poor choices have been made? You seem to have done a good job of that, lately. I think you are doin' great. Enjoy each one of those small life pleasures ! "The only way way out is through" good wisdom from MFA

MFA- A new job....GOOD JOB!! You earned it...honestly....therefore you deserve it. I wish you good luck, happiness, and success. Thank you for sharing your life with this community.

Heather, I asked you a couple of questions at the end of this post I wrote yesterday. How about an answer? Can you find anything else to be greatful for?

I think it really depends on the person and what they want to get from taking it. For me, less is best. Even in early recovery, I didn't take over 2,000 mg in a day and I liked the 500 mg size better than the 1,000 mg pills. I took one pill about every four hours. I always feel the second pill of the day more than the first. I still take them, but only infrequently now. I dunno what the effects are of taking too much or when overdosage occurs. But, Jesus, TEN GRAMS? They are like no other supplement for me - a natural antidepressent and mood elevator all in one little package - and you can buy 'em at GNC.

Today I have been cleaning and purging old family files and documents. I found my Dad's army discharge papers from World War II dated Jan 6, 1946. There was a roster of 70 soldiers discharged from the Army Separation Center in Camp Beale, CA. The discharge list had their name, rank, serial number and discharge code. There were also these footnotes by some of the names and I had to go to the bottom of the list to see what the footnotes meant and I was shocked at what I found: A = air corp % = foreign service * = colored Out of the 70 names, there were four stars. I have been thinking all day " why did a soldier's race even matter?"

I just fixed that for ya!

Heather, Let's try to shift gears and focus on the good things of your life. I am going to make some assumptions so correct me where I go wrong. I want to get you started on a list of positives so here goes: You have a living parent, kids, and friends that love you and need you. a husband that loves you and he is not cheating and you know where he is a community of people on this web site and at AA who will support you a government with a social safety net, rule of law, justice, and the ability to enforce it to keep you safe You have a warm house with clean running water, lights, and an indoor toilet a closet full of cloths food in your refrigerator and cupboard a computer and/or phone and TV to keep in touch with the world You have a functional body with 4 limbs, eyes, ears, nose and a mouth that all work a sound mind and good judgement intelligence and life experience the ability to find a job and support yourself your liberty and freedom freedom from your drug addiction a future that is yours to make anything you want it to be My question to you is can you add things to this list? Can you accept these things that are good without saying "yea, but....." after each one?

I remember my mom used to use that nose gel all the time because her oxygen would dry out her sinuses. It was kind of hard to find.

Heather, We haven't heard much from you lately and, frankly, I have been worried about you. How is the job search going? Did you get your resume put together? Why the downturn in your attitude and reslove to stay quit, especially now? I wish I had more words of encouragement for you but I simply do not know all that is going on in your life right now. "Just a few to get things done" - - Really? Since you were taking them by the handfulls, I doubt "just a few" would be the solution you are looking for. I wish I could convince you to look at your own adderall addiction with the same disdain and disgust as you view your husband's heroin addiction.

Hi Corey, I suggest you visit your own profile page and click the "find content" button. It will bring up all the posts you have made in the last year. I just reviewed all of your posts so I could give you an informed response. Last April, you passed out in a hooka lounge after taking your dose of adderall and having hooka. you speculated it could have been from the adderall. Last October, your friend had an abonrmal EKG, likely because she took too much adderall. You experienced your own rapid heart beat issues toward the end of your adderall addiction, which gradually went away after quitting. You quit taking the shit last September, and your daily dose had worked up to 60 mg. But your reasons for quitting were not very clear. Corey, why did you feel the need to quit taking adderall? I realize it has been a rough six months for you since quitting. Join the quitting club; we all must go through this process to come out better, stronger and happier on the other side. You should start noticing some substantial improvement in how you feel and in your productivity about 9-12 months after quitting. Your art work will not be the same as it was when you were taking adderall. It can get much, much better if you stay quit. Or not. Adderall turns on different parts of our brains and personalities that we might never have known about without taking it. Over the long term, however, it really fucks with our mental performance and physical well-being, and the ability to simply get shit done. So that brings up this fork in your decision tree of life: to relapse or stay the course free from addiction. If you go back, please know that your daily effective dose will begin at 60 mg and go up from there with increasing tollerance. You might be able to take it for several more years before your consumption exceeds what a doctor is willing to prescribe, or depending on the doctor, you might already be there. When one doctor is not enough, than you will resort to illegal practices in order to sustain your addiction. Oh, yea - and that heartbeat thing WILL return and get worse for you. We have a very wise member named Cassie who's mantra is: quit for a year and if you still think you need it after a year, then you can go back to the adderall. Nearly all of life's big changes (i.e. new job, surviving a death, or quitting an addiction) take a year to adjust to. Please give yourself that chance.

About a year ago there was a post entitled "writing when on / off adderall". Very similar to this thread except it focused more on the quality of your writing. I really can't tell much difference in my quality of work whether I wrote it tweaked or after I quit. But, my god, the amount of time it took to get it "perfect" was incredible. I can crank out a one page article now in about two hours or so and it would take me at least a day on adderall. And I honestly cannot tell the difference in clarity or quality. I had a lot higher opinion of my own work when I was taking adderall.

I recognized my sugar addiction while I was bingeing and crashing from adderall. I would go on these horrific carb/sugar binges when I went off or dosed down the adderall. During the first nine months of my recovery period, I continued those sugar/carb binges. It all changed for me last summer when I adopted a "mindful eating" approach to food. I kept a food journal on scratch pads - and I wrote EVERYTHING down that went into my body from June thru Sep last year. I started counting calories. I realized it was hardest to control my food intake when I over-consumed the carbs. I looked at the sugar content on every single container of food. Processed sugars / sweetners was the first food that I strictly limited. I lost weight and felt better. Then last fall, I started relapsing and buying more high carb foods and eating fast food and going on food binges. So in December I started doing the Atkins diet and continued it for a couple of months. I gained more sustained energy with a more stable mood. Now. I am simply "carb-conscious". I don't count daily calories and I no longer count the carbs, but I still do avoid eating more than 25-30 grams of carbs all at once. I know that I have over-consumed if I get tired after eating, or experience a "cookie hangover" the next day. By strictly limiting the carbs consumed I can control and prevent the food cravings later on. I actually feel like I have won the battle against excessive food consumption, for now.

Thanks for posting this link on sugar. I am a disciple of Robert Lustig. There was a very good NYT article about two years ago entitled "Is Sugar Toxic?". It was based on the you-tube video clip (lecture) by Lustig. I was not aware of his new book "Fat Chance". I believe sugar IS toxic. I believe that all calories are not metabolized in the same way. I have been practicing eating like a diabetic even though I am not one. The glycemic index principle says not to consume more than 30 grams of carbs in two hours without consuming about 15 grams of protein at the same time. What it is getting at is the release of excessive insulin. I know if I have over-consumed the carbs if I get tired after eating. I believe insulin makes me sleepy and I responsibly use limited sugars as a natural sleep aid. I have found that I NEVER get tired during the day or evening if I don't over consume the carbs, whether it is rice, potatoes, or sugar. I don't eat bread or crackers anymore. And I don't drink my carbs, either. Well, maybe some occasional fruit juice or wine with a meal. Portion sizes do matter. And to your last point, Occasional, yes, I agree that sugar is addictive, but only if you over consume it (and any other carbs) and turn on the excessive insulin stream. Once the insulin has been released into your blood, it is hard to turn off those cravings for more and more carbs. I suggest to everybody that you try strictly limiting your carbs for just one day and see if you feel better, have a more stable mood, and have more energy. You might become aware of a sugar addiction you didn't even know you had!

Thanks for posting the link. It really wasn't what I thought it would be. It was more about marketing junk food - which interests me but likely does not have broad appeal. I proudly subscribe to the NYT. I think it is one of the few online newspapers worth reading regularly!

After watching Dr. Oz, my brother thought rasberry keytones would be the miracle pill to help him loose weight. But he said they dropped his blood pressure and made him dizzy - so he kindly gave 'em to his little brother. So I tried them. They made me feel hot. They made me feel like I was going to pass out if I got up too quick or ran up the stairs. And they gave me heart palpitations worse than adderall ever did. So, I trashed them. I just tried the mega men vitamins and I kinda liked them.

I probbably should not post this comment because I am ignorant of Dr. Oz and I have never watched even one of his shows. I heard that he is NOT a real doctor. It seems like he promotes these wierd fad drugs and supplements (i.e. rasberry ketones). I am skeptical that he has a vested interest in some of the stuff he promotes. Is it possible that this epispode was covertly influenced by a drug salesman from Adderall. Inc?

There is an interesting article on the front page of today's New York Times about the addictive qualities of junk food. It is really long and I just looked at the pictures so far but I plan on reading it when I have time later on today. I would post a link but I can't even remember the article title and I don't know how to post a link anyway.

I've had a bad memory day. Missed an appointment and failed to remember some other stuff I should have known. And all this in spite of writing a note to myself and taking my fish oils for the past couple of days. But this is about my working memory, not the random memories coming back at random.

What do you mean by a weak eye? Do you mean that one eyebrow droops more? Do you mean it has muscle twitches? Or do you mean it has weaker vision than the other eye?

This fits one of my very strong mantras for having inner peace living happily: If I died tomorrow, there is really nothing I would regret, leave unfinished or want to do over. My adderall addiction briefly got in the way of living that mantra.

Cool spider link! Those things are huge - good thing they are friendly.

I recommend finding a support system before you go back to taking adderall. i am not aware of anybody who has gone back on adderall with the intention of tapering down.....and had it work for them. Please read some of Sebastian's recent posts...he tried going back and then tapering again. At three weeks, you should be almost done with the awful physical withdrawl symptoms. Please don't create even more hell for yourself by going back to the adderall, only to have to do this again.