quit-once

welcome @dave516. I remember getting to where you are at during my addiction experience. Somewhere between only using it on the weekends and requiring about 3-4 pills daily in order to function, with more on the weekends. I continued taking adderall another two years or so. I hope you are able to kick it sooner that I did - those last two years of adderall were hellish for me. Please don't loose it all, Dave. Quit while you have the good sense to make it happen.

@Zoe I find yoga to be a great recovery asset. I started practicing yoga about one year after quitting and five years later I am still a yogi-at least once a week. @Danquit Eighteen months already? Congrats and good to hear from you. @Cheeri0 Congratulations for 14 months of abstinence and recovery! Thanks for the update.

I bit my tongue and also my cheek a lot while I was using Adderall, sometimes really hard. I was also prone to choking on food. Much less after quitting.

I use a blood oxygen sensor thing that clips on my fingertip. My heart rate returned to 55-60 BPM within a year after quitting. It averaged about twice that rate when I was on adderall. Seriously, it was always 115-120 bpm and that was one if the factors that helped me to decide to quit for good. It's your heart, after all, and what more important organ keeps you going? Like running a car in second gear when fifth gear is available.....and motors that run higher RPM's have shorter lives with greater maintenance.

It affected my vision too - both blurred vision and impaired depth perception. Things improved after quitting. Our eyesight is the most important and precious sensory resource we have. Why take chances with it?

Adding to Greg's message above, you can also tell the doctor that Adderall has caused you to have adverse reactions or has quit agreeing with you if you don't feel comfortable disclosing your addiction to the doctor or anyone else. Just don't let them talk you into trying another stimulant in its place.

Taking two 1,000 mg pills sounds like a recipe for a headache. I liked the lower dose of 500 mg, once or twice per day. They made me feel happy and less depressed, and it worked right away. Are you still taking adderall?

Way to go! You got this, NaterS. It took me a few months to get rid of my pills too, but once I did, I never looked back.

@subtractadderall, I have heard of similar pursuits for adderall, although nothing like your leg vein failures. From reading members' posts on this site, I have heard of someone experiencing ischemic strokes due to adderall, quitting, then going back and experiencing another more severe stroke. Then there was the person who experienced seizures, quit, went back and had more seizures. And someone else who had cardiac issues And at least a couple of folks who experienced psychosis serious enough to spend time in a hospital mental ward....including my best friend who also went through multiple bouts of MRSA (probably adderall-related) before finally quitting. We've all read about the studies where monkeys or mice would choose cocaine over food until they died. Addiction is an insidious bitch that kills people every minute of every day. I am just glad that most the people who hang around here have learned that lesson and are getting on with their lives.

After using for almost nine years, I realized it was an UNSUSTAINABLE addiction. My future was becoming more and more uncertain. And the more I took, the harsher the side effects became. Adderall just quit working for me like it used to. After that realization, I did a lot of online research, made a plan to quit, set an absolute deadline, established some very substantial penalties for failure, and then followed through with it. I wanted to say it was easy, but no, it was the toughest thing I have ever done. It was also the best thing I have ever done for my health and my life. My life has returned to a "normal" status for the last five years.

I agree with Frank's approach when it comes to the mental outlook while quitting adderall. Treat it like a final divorce, like something or someone you will never have in your life again. I just couldn't entertain even the slightest possibility that I would go back to that awful addiction. And, like Frank said, quitting different drugs is different for different people. While I abhor the thought of ever taking another dose of speed, I view my relationship with nicotine differently. For some reason, I just can't absolutely say I will never smoke again so I have to take quitting nicotine one day at a time. I quit both substances about the same time six years ago. When I look at all the money I have saved by kicking those two daily addictions, it is in the tens of thousands of dollars by now.

Congratulations on your decision to quit. You've got this. You've had your essential "aha moment" . I suggest you write down those 1,000 other reasons for quitting and share a few of them with us. There is a thread somewhere around here about how adderall affected people's physical health and I listed all of those reasons for quitting and realized how it was slowly killing me. You only really need one good reason to quit but making a list will re-enforce and remind you how awful that addiction really was.

"I have a problem that keeps going on." "I'm done". These are the closest statements I read that says you might want to quit. The rest of your post either glamorizes using speed or laments running out. Do you really want to quit for good? Because you have to want to be free from this awful cycle worse that anything else you want or need in your life right now. I hope you can come to terms with your addiction, and if (when?) you do, we are here to support you.

@Depression, I had really good luck with L-Tyrosine and took it for about 3 years post quitting. It definitely curbed the depression. The downside? I think it caused muscle tremors (and headaches if I took too much of it).

I'm glad to hear you are doing OK. I started shedding the post quitting pounds after the first year of recovery, too. I just read your other post about the influences of Adderall on your life and your perspectives. It is good that you can recognize what Adderall did for you as well as to you. My addiction experience is a part of whom I am today, and I am a better and wiser person for having that experience behind me. Thanks for the update.

Six Years. Adderall-free is a great way to be!

Haha, my avitar picture on this forum was a SLOTH for the first year or so.

The first time I seriously tried the Adkins diet, I noticed the mental clarity improvements right away. During the initial phase of Adkins (Induction) the goal is to be in ketosis and all it takes is limiting your "net" carb intake to practically nothing - like 15 or 20 grams per day and that isn't much. I'm glad this way of eating is working for you. I still question how sustainable eating like this can be good for the long term. I have only gone back on Adkins about 2 or 3 times since I first tried it, and I not seen the weight loss response as good as the first time, although I am not really overweight. I really do like the mental clarity a ketogenic diet provides, especially compared to the early days of adderall recovery.

Hey hey, MFA! Welcome back. We've missed you around here. Sorry to hear of all the struggles since you left, but it sounds like you are in a better place now and back on track. The good thing for you, is that you really do know how to quit and stay off the shit for the long term and that is huge. It looks like your administrator rights have stood the test of time. We haven't been plagued by spam hardly at all since the IPS upgrade last fall. Looking forward to hearing from you again.

Thanks for the positive update on your recovery. I think those of us with long quitting term success all have total abstinence in common. For about the first three years of recovery, I noticed yearly improvement with time away from Adderall. After 3 years, it seems like the daily and seasonal ups and downs of regular life superseded my feelings of Adderall recovery. HC - did you notice a plateau in your recovery or has it just kept getting better and better the longer you are free from Adderall?

I lost my desire for alcohol while on Adderall. I just didn't like the combination of those two drugs.

Yes, they went away. I think that was from the lack of sleep and exhaustion that was all too easy to cure with another pill.

Start a new topic. Under the "topic details" header on top, there will be two tabs: the default tab is "content" and the tab next to it is "poll". Choose poll and design your question and answers. It is multiple choice. I think the results would be very interesting if enough people answered it.

I ,too, am shocked that addiction specialists would put you back on the class of drugs that you were addicted to. The above three quotes are from members with a combined clean time of well over ten years and their responses are sincere and true So, you have ADHD, and modern medicine says that drugs are 80% effective for treating it. The problem is, you have already eaten that cookie and all similar cookies still contain sugar or lets say flour and you are allergic to wheat. Since the allergic reaction is worse than your hunger for the cookie, you only have one option - and that is to abstain from cookies for the rest of your life. Cookies just can't be made without using flour / sugar. I know, this is a stupid analogy but my point is that you have simply exhausted the option of using ANY stimulant drugs for treating your disorder. There are other ways to cope and it will be up to YOU to solve that problem. Please be patient and allow yourself the time it takes to recover from this addiction while finding other ways to address your ADHD. I believe that stimulant abuse actually enhances ADHD so the longer you are away from the speed the better you will cope with life, no matter how chaotic it may seem.

The absolutely unsustainable addiction itself.