Greg

I'm sold!

On the left, an image of cinderalla and prince charming on the right, a photo from the royal wedding.

I just finished Inferno by Dan brown. Currently reading Merry Christmas, Alex Cross by James Patterson (I know it's not christmas but I got it a while ago and hadn't gotten around to reading it yet)

Sadly I am pretty familiar with adhd symptoms BECAUSE i had to convince many doctors i had it..and i wasnt really lying to my doctors because for many years i did believe i had ADHD... but i have a question for you.. .When I think of someone who has ADD I think of someone who has high energy, creative, extroverted, trouble sitting still, is all over the place and kind of disorganized but probably has a system within their disorganization.none of that is considered bad in our society, Also TONS of people are like that and they don't have ADHD. But they can all fit into the definition of ADD. So.... What is the difference between ADHD and a person who has a certain kind of personality? , I just sincerely don't 'get it' this diagnosis. ADHD doesn't make too much sense to me anymore. Another thing about ADHD is that if a person thinks they have it, it boxes them into a set of certain characteristics. And maybe only a couple of them applied to them before but now all of the traits under the ADHD umbrella apply to them...which I find inauthentic. What is everyone in the community's thoughts on this?

Lol...just applying some positive peer pressure! Of course it is easy to apply positive peer pressure when I am done with my 12, kicking back and watching from the sidelines,

12!! I forced myself out to the track at 6am and ran for 5 miles. You can do it! You got ALL day today and tomorrow! (and if you have fallen behind by some chance, I know you are good at running long stretches)

Cassie, I think you made the right decision. Im glad you are finally leaving, You have been miserable for a long time there and finally you will be moving on. I would do research on all different kinds of careers and find one that looks interesting and go for it. I was watching a news piece on people who worked at Bon appetite magazine and basically every day they came in and sampled the most incredible tasting food and then styled the food so it looked incredible and then wrote stuff about the food. I couldn't believe they got paid to do that. They were getting paid to on a typical day, for example, find the hands down best tasting recipe for Mac and cheese, by tasting different ones. i think you should find something cool and try and break into that industry. Just my opinion. But there are tons of careers out there and now you can spend some time researching different things and find something that sparks an interest in you. But you will no longer be stuck in a job you can't stand.

By the way. One way I am working to rebuild my confidence is i have the number 3.5 tacked up on my wall so i can see it everyday...haha It's funny, i was going to take a picture of it and post it on our boards. Only a recovering adderall addict would think to do something like that.

Hey Cassie, I wanted to respond to this before but I hadn't fleshed out my thoughts. I still haven't and kind of want to get people's feedback too about the psychological part of the adderall addiction. Ok, the physical chemical addiction with the neurotransmitters in our brain and all that is an entirely separate beast and just as bad, worse and goes hand in hand with the paychological addiction but I'm just referring here to the psychological part of the addiction. It seems to me adderall, concerta, vyvanese, ritalin artificially prop us up and makes us feel like we can tackle stuff and master stuff rather than avoid it..job, academic, our ability to make friends, self esteem, intelligence, the ability to clean the house, or workout with intensity, mental health, weight image ..whatever.. But there is an AWFUL consequence to this and what it is doing to our self concept..for one thing we begin to see those things as outside our control and in the control of our pills. when we don't have adderall we begin to more and more think we will fail, and when we succeed we think its because we took it.,and we start to lose sight of our own skills and our self esteem and our perception of ourselves. How many of us have said we didn't know who we are after we quit adderall??? We lost our perception of ourselves from this drug. Like for us addicts if we failed at something we would likely attribute it to failing because we had run out of adderall that day or something...but when someone who is not hooked on adderall, they will attribute it to the difficulty of the task. So it fucks up our self concept. When you tie it in with how it rewards our dopamine pathways, and makes us want to repeat certain behaviors again and again because it activates the pleasure centers in our brain...then it becomes even more fucked up to me. It's kind of like we were getting less and less competent, but we didn't realize it was making us less competent because the drug Was making us feel more competent. It's like a competence illusion. It may make us feel invincible when we are on it, but in the bigger scheme of thing were 'evolving' into people who actually instead felt they had low abilities and so tasks and other stuff probably became harder than they would be for someone else. Personally, in the beginning of my quit I felt discouraged and wanted to give up before I even started things and not just stuff like applying for internships or school but social interactions,.everything. What I became very confidant in was the feeling I would fail. Basically what I'm trying to say is that it can screw up your self concept and part of the rebuilding process is regaining it and regaining a sense of who we are.

You are right. I certainly need to recap, when I get a chance ill be sure to do that. Adderall, ritalin and concerta left me essentially a paranoid schizophrenic for a very long time drifting in and out of pharmacies, rehab, counseling. As my ritalin/concerta/adderall addiction escalated, I could not distinguish between what was real and what was not. I could not write sentences because my thoughts were so fragmented. So to be able to now pass exams, write papers, give presentations, while holding a job shows how plastic the brain really is. My advice to newbies is recovery is possible but it requires a shitload of personal effort, a tremendous amount of self commitment, and realistically a tremendous amount of time to make it through a 'long term' recovery.

THANKS GUYS!! I'm so lucky I have you all who can identify with what it's been like. No one around me knows what its like to lose your confidence to a pill and then try to work your way back without the pill. but you all do know what that is like and have understood my anxiety, and have thankfully helped me through this. For me, my whole addiction started in an academic setting (and progressed to work setting and every other possible scenerio under the sun) , but it began in an academic setting, and being able to perform academically without it is an incredible feeling... somehow it ties back to the beginning of the whole thing for me...and is therapeutic.

it's no longer free. sorry!

I got a 3.5 GPA (two As and two Bs) The way it works out, i believe, That means Im set with the tuition scholarship for the rest of my time here. Yeee haww... Since Im big into smileys, ill illustrate the week with smileys.... This was me all week I was a nervous wreck today. While I was waiting for my grades to come back (my non adderall tainted grades), I didnt know what to do with myself so i started frantically cleaning, scrubbing the floors, and everything in sight, and then running ( like every 5 minutes) to my computer to check and see if my grades came in, pushing F5 to check, nothing, and then cleaning, pushing F5 to see if grades came in - nothing, and then cleaning...finally at 1pm i was granted an answer, when my final grades came in.. I'm happy with my grades and also my surrounding are sparkling clean! Thanks all for supporting me through this semester.

I saw they were giving this away free on amazon (the kindle version) and I immediately thought of everyone on this site. It's the number 9 bestselling book in self help under "personal transformations" ha. Called 100 Ways to Develop Your Mind. http://www.amazon.co...69070274&sr=8-1 If you don't have a kindle, you should be able to download the kindle app on your PC and read it that way... http://www.amazon.co...ocId=1000426311

FW I think it's great you have managed to stay clean, and yeah developing a support system is definitely important for the recovery effort. and You know what steps you have to take with your doc for a long term recovery. Keep us posted.

Good job!

I didn't make it to 12 either ashley... But I did three this morning to start of the week. There is something so tranquil about running at 6 in the morning, the way the sky looks and everything. I actually ran into a friend of mine also running at 6am. 6am on Sunday. I really thought id be the only one!

I wonder about this too. But I still drink because part of me thinks the alcohol and adderall are such opposite feelings and I'm just not addicted to the alcohol feeling. I am much more concerned about the over the counter stimulants than alcohol. I still drink when I want to drink. I don't feel it's a big deal. I do feel more guilty about the red bulls and pre workout stuff...in my mind I have always justified it as the adderall addict is a little different than the NA or AA addict, and so alcohol is okay for me. But yeah, I understand why the concern, it is a very hard set, non negotiable rule in NA that if I remember correctly is reinforced in every meeting.

I found this Interesting. I just read about a mythological reference, an age old battle between mind and heart that is being used in AA meetings to describe the alcoholic who stares at a glass of alcohol, his brain knowing it will harm him, but his heart craving the comfort it will provide. The message apparently was - dont feel alone, even the gods were conflicted. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollonian_and_Dionysian Their famous quarrel between the god of the sun, reason and the god of wine, intoxication has been said to represent our higher cortex and limbic brains at odds.

Yeah, I have thought about this....See, This is espcially why my scholarship is so important. because If i end being one of the statistics of MBAs who is unable to get a job after completing a costly MBA program... well, then at least I didn't throw away too much money in the process.

Well.. I made it to the track. But my legs were so sore today, I couldnt run. I tried. So im going to give them another days rest. However, I did walk about a mile a day for the last three days to an area Walmart...so that puts me at 9 miles. So if i run 3 tomorrow i can still make 12. updates?

Survivor 26 Spoiler alert*** i think she was in a damned if you damned if you dont situation. If she kept the family reward, they would have ganged up against for keeping it, i think. She shouldve thrown the challenge. My suspician is that a lot of them 'threw the family challenge' because they knew they would be in that situation, from previous seasons. BUT her biggest mistake was letting Dawn win the challenge. Dawn surprised me in this game at how evil she was, hahahaha but i dont think the eventual winner was such a big underdog like they made him out to be. Clearly he was the "biggest strategy player" in the whole game. Something interesting i learned about survivor is that the players get paid more the longer they stay in the game. So that gives them incentive to keep staying in the game even if they know they wont make it to the end anway.

Logged my 3 miles today. Less rusty and getting back into the groove. Getting back into the groove. Less rusty than yesterday. I'm at 6 now. Halfway to 12...stretching real quick right before I find makes running a lot easier.

Ahhhhh...sorry!!,!!!,!M