Greg

That is a really great list. I actually eat exactly like that, too. Except, I have a sweet tooth so I incorporate low calorie sweets. And I was able to lose and keep off all my post adderall weight gain (about 27 lbs). I actually ended up losing more weight then when I was taking adderall with my new eating habits. 1. I drink one or two cups of coffee or a Red Bull and plenty diet sodas. No Sugary soft drinks. Zero calorie orange soda, mountain dew and pepsi..Since these are zero calorie, I drink them unlimited. I also sweeten my coffee with sugar free creamer and low calorie sugar. 2. I also take L-Tyrosine and L-Phenylalanine, which is another dopamine amino acid. 3. I am addicted to the 100 calorie bags of popcorn. I try to eat just half a bag a day, and then I toss away the other half. 4. I eat plenty of fruits and vegetables. Fruits 3x a day and salads. I also like the assorted frozen vegetable packages they sell from Green Giant. And I usually make salads from fresh romaine hearts with, cherry tomatoes fat free wishbone italian dressing. Basically, as a habit, I try to eat vegetables along with lunch and dinner. 5.I eat plenty of protein snacks about 2x a day (about 200 calories worth). Here are some great choices for low calorie protein. - The Oscar Meyer thin sliced turkey in the deli section (90 calories for twelve slices!!) - Mozarella string cheeses or Laughing Cow Light swiss cheeses (they are 50 calories a pop) - Greek Yogurt (I like Dannon's strawberry Oikos, about 110 calories a cup) - I also like Egg Beaters (which are basically just egg whites) - Canadian bacon (about 50 calories a slice) - Morningstar sausage crumbles are also a really good choice. (you can get them in the frozen food section) - Purdue has these precooked chicken strips which are really good and about 90 calories a serving... - Oscar Meyer has 40 calorie hotdogs! so when I have these I usually eat two at a time 6. I also eat low calorie carbohydrate snacks about 2x a day (about 200 calories worth) - Weight Watchers multigrain bread (40 calories a slice, much less then most breads) - Vitatop muffins which are just the muffin tops (these are 100 calories each and so good) - other carbs I eat include corn tortillas for variety (about 40 calories a slice) - Fat Free waffles are a good choice, also Aunt Jemima has these confetti pancakes which are a good bargain. 7. I eat low calorie sweets about 2x a day (about 150 calories each) - Weight Watchers has a good selection of desserts (brownies, chocolate cake) - also there are frozen fudgsicles which and ice pops from Good Humour that are really low cal (about 20-60 calories a pop) 8. I try not to eat out either. Check out the nutritional info for restaurants. Did you know that most dishes at the Olive Garden have 900-1200 calories per dish. And some of their desserts have 1300 calories per serving? That's almost enough for the entire day! 9. In addition to all these things, I eat the three Nutrisystem meals I get from them. Each meal is about 170-220 calories. It's equivalent to like getting the Smart Choice frozen food meals at the grocery store... 10. Occasionally, I will indulge, especially holidays time, but I always try to get right back on schedule as soon as I can... You know, I never used to worry about eating when I was on adderall. If I needed to lose weight, if my pants were getting tighter, I would just 'stop eating'..it was really easy, lol. I had to learn all this stuff after I quit. It feels good now too, not cheating, you know? Basically, I am eating constantly throughout the day, but in low calorie form, so I don't get too hungry. The toughest part for me was incorporating more veggies into my diet. I was never a big veggie fan, but now I have learned to like salads and other veggies a lot more .

Whittering, I was never able to get a doctor to prescribe me that high so I was getting 2x30mgs a day from two different doctors each month. I've heard of instances where they give out up to 30mgs x4 a day, but i think generally 2x30mgs is the standard highest possible dosage. This is definitely a tough one. Maybe you could try talking to him when the medication is wearing off and he's in withdrawal and he can see more clearly how crappy this drug is. I think you should try to get him out of denial first. Make him realize if he can't live comfortably without it, and he feels like he needs it and he's gaining tolerance or running out of pills early so he needs to go to a doctor to get on a bigger dosage...it's all the classic symptoms of addiction. Maybe get him to realize, if he's not addicted, then quitting adderall shouldn't be a big deal for him one way or the other, right? Denial is definitely a symptom of dependence. I know this sounds obvious, but with those crazy hours, his job is likely pushing him further into it...You mentioned that he wants to start his own business. It seems like that option is where he'll be his own boss and happiest... Sigh. I can't stand adderall. At first, Adderall makes you feel like you can do anything but eventually it seems without it, you can't do anything... It's such a bad deal...

I'm not sure if I'm the right person to answer this one because I did gain a lot of weight after adderall... but I think you can definitely soften the blow now that you know that weight gain is common after quitting...if you plan for it, and eat properly, you could even gain nothing....It will be tough but it's definitely, definitely do-able!

To answer the mental sharpness question, It definitely can be foggy in the beginning but it gradually comes back...definitely by a year it will be a whole lot better... Also, I felt a huge difference between one month and one year. Huge. Huge. Night and Day. All I can say is that if you're not feeling too great one month in, it gets so much better. By the way, this site has been so key in my recovery process and I am so grateful because of it... You know, I used to be convinced that adderall made me mentally sharper, but seriously, I was completely blinded by my addiction. Really, it made me so overstimulated, stressed and anxious all the time that I wasn't really focused. Of course I didn't realize any of this until after I got off the meds and the power the pills had over me started to weaken. I also didn't realize it too much at the time, but when I was abusing adderall, I was always living inside my head, always thinking about what was on my plate, never in the moment...now I'm so much more present in my interactions with other people. I'm more relaxed and able to have more fun, able to joke around more. Also, If you got to the point where you couldn't live comfortably without adderall, your mental focus probably took a huge hit. So while you may seem foggy in the beginning of your recovery, as time passes, you should definitely become sharper than you ever were when you were taking adderall. Anyway, Keep staying off of it and it's really going to pay off...

Hi Quit Once, I was going back and forth on that specific point, actually so I don't really want to debate it... But, I just want to add that one big severe penalty though for relapsing is that the addiction gets more and more severe each time... By the way, I found the link to the list of Benefits of Quitting Adderall article. Thanks for the heads up!

Welcome to the forums! Congratulations on deciding to quit. Quitting is a good way to start off the new year. Even in the very beginning, you should still be able to function, you just may feel lousy or just nervous while you are functioning, unfortunately... A lot of people seem to feel some combination of depression, fatigue and lack of motivation...also hunger and anxiety... For me, personally, I was attacked with serious depression at first. The effexor I was on, really helped me in the initial days. I was just terrified of letting the adderall go. I want to emphasize though it got a lot better. The severity of your comedown will probably be determined by how severely you were addicted. Some people just need some extra coffee to get through the day, and some don't even want to leave their bed. I was at 250 mgs a day...and I was doing that every single day for a long time...so I unfortunately fell in the 'don't want to leave bed' category... Just keep in mind that no matter what, you'll be able to go through the motions even if you don't feel like doing anything... and just keep reminding yourself everything gets better as time passes. Keep reminding yourself that you have to go through this in order to be free from it... Now is a great time to surround yourself with comfort. I read another adderall addict talking about how Family Guy episodes were a great distraction for the horrible days after his quitting adderall in which he was still hearing voices from adderall induced psychosis. For me, it was episodes of 24. Just hang in there, keep up your motivation to quit, and keep going through the motions and it'll get better. And remember, don't let any thoughts of going back on adderall creep into your head. You can do this.. Anyway, those are my two cents... Please keep posting and keeping us up to date!

Yeah depression is normal (I had it really, really bad), it should gradually begin to lift as time passes.I found taking Effexor to be an effective anti-depressant for post adderall. I hear people having success with Wellbutrin, but I haven't gone that route so I can't vouch for it. Effexor has been fine for me. I take 75 mgs twice a day. Before that I was on 50 mgs once a day for about ten months. One more thing about the depression. You are used to being 'sped up' on adderall. So even when you get back to feeling 'normal' again, it still may seem a little like depression because it's not what you are used to feeling all the time which is 'speedy'. If you're anything like me, your "new" normal may feel like depression but it's not. It just takes some getting used to. No sure if that made any sense!!

HI Freedom, I don't know if this helps, but when I attended NA meetings, we learned to just pick up from any relapses and try again, without being too hard on ourselves. Like a baby learning to walk, if you keep trying, you'll eventually get there. I also agree with what quit once mentioned in another post, that for people who've already hit adderall dependence, it only takes one pill to reignite the whole thing all over again. It also sounds like you could benefit by working on revving up your motivation to quit and stay that way. To overcome the cravings of withdrawal, I find I need to keep my motivation to quit very high at all times. A high motivation to quit keeps me on guard from the moments when withdrawal or cravings try to weaken my willpower. What I found to work great for me is to keep a list of negatives from adderall use... My list goes something like this: I no longer get heavily involved in tasks that later seem stupid... I no longer have terrible crashes I no longer spend hours on the internet like I'm stuck I no longer feel panicky, jittery anxious or tense, especially in my neck and jaw... I no longer have moments where I have difficulty unwinding from being over stimulated... My day is no longer disrupted with cravings.. I no longer obsess with running out of pills... I no longer get paranoid... I spend less.. My list goes on and on...and it all adds up to a lot of annoying or seriously debilitating things... and I keep looking at this list, at least once a day, and the list helps reinforce the message of 'why was I taking adderall in the first place???'I always come up with a few things to add to the list every day. It's so long now, I can't even read it all at once. In fact, I just thought of another one - "I'm no longer chemically altering my brain every day"... There was a forum post on people's lists of benefits of quitting adderall...which I cannot seem to find or I would link to it...but I know it's there somewhere. I would sit down and write out your own list and keep it with you all the time. I think of adderall dependence as something that weakens our decision making process and tricks our rational brain into thinking we need it all the time. So I think constantly reminding ourselves why we need to stay off of it helps us to think more rationally. Hope that helps!

Think about it this way. Your recovery is SO MUCH more important than working right now. Kicking this is going to get you through the rest of your LIFE. If you need to put off working for a little bit, so you can stay home and deal with your recovery - DO THAT. I just want to note that some people like Quit-Once do go back to work right away and it's not a problem. But if you seem to be on the border of re-entering your addiction, and it's starting to look like you won't be able to work without popping adderall again, I recommend you just wait a little bit. That job will be there when you're ready. Not being able to deal with the terrible withdrawal is probably the biggest reason we go back to adderall, even if we are not trying to get that jazzed up high feeling again. One pill is all it takes to letting the addiction control our lives again. The last time I relapsed, I convinced myself it was all because I felt I needed to go back to work right away. Not only did I felt ants-y to get started, I couldn't bear the thought of doing nothing at home except attend rehab meetings and feel cravings. Going back to work turned out to be a fancy excuse to somewhat legitimately justify taking adderall again because I was so miserable from withdrawal and cravings - and it turned out to be a big mistake. I somehow let my addiction sneak in and hijack my brain again. To deal with work, I called up my doctors, got back on two prescriptions, and was popping adderall to get me through the day all over again. I swore I would take it "responsibly" this time around. Just like that, I blew another five years of my life (5 years I WISH I could get back) stuck in my addiction rut. I got nowhere, except progressively worse in my addiction. I ended up in the same exact place - and had to quit all over again. Why hadn't I just quit the first time around? Just tell yourself that right now the number one most important thing in your life should be staying off the pills. Everything else should come second for you. This is so key. At this stage in your recovery, if you let anything else move to the top of the list, you'll be tempted to say "well, you know... I need adderall to do it"...It's too risky... Think about what a huge accomplishment it will be to finally BEAT this. Think of a life where your pill bottle never factors into anything you need to do, or any decision you need to make. I got to my thirteen months of clean time by almost obsessively putting recovery at the top of my to-do list every single day. I just want to say that for a lot of people, work may be the best decision in their recovery right now. I believe 100% that getting back to work without relying on the crutch of adderall is crucial to recovery. But having read your situation, it seems that at this stage, for you, it could end up pushing you over the edge. You are doing so well right now, why mess that up? Just a little bit more time could be really undeniably worth it for you. It could make the difference between staying clean for the rest of your life.

Congratz on getting off of it. I've been off for thirteen months. This really will be a process of getting to know yourself, and you will find that you are a completely different and better person off it. In time, trust me, you'll be asking yourself 'what was I ever thinking?'... If you've experienced amphetamine pyschosis several times and gone into rehab for a month, then you know very well that at a certain point the drug really begins to wreck your focus, your judgement, and disrupts your life... with your biggest priority always being preoccupied with sustaining your pill supply... When hitting psychosis, it makes us paranoid and do all kinds of crazy stuff. When we toy with our dosages in higher and higher amounts, we start experiencing episodes of mania where we feel happy but have an absurd amount of impulsive energy and scattered enthusiasm that's hard to channel productively. And yet, we keep going back for more to keep away the withdrawal, the onset of fatigue. the powerful cravings... At first, I had no idea who I was off of adderall, and that was a weird feeling. Actual, being on the drug after twelve years then suddenly stopping felt weird... then not knowing who I was made everything even weirder. Getting to know your new self is a really eye opening and exciting period. It took a while for me to begin seeing the differences. But every day I discover new things about the way I am now and then I write it all down. I keep a list that grows every day. I read it every day, several times a day, and I think - wow, this is who I am now. I'm so different than before. And much better. For one thing, my days are no longer disrupted with intense cravings for my adderall...and my days are no longer constantly interrupted from the misery of the adderall wearing off...Because of that, I would say my focus has already improved 100 percent. And that's just the beginning... Keep up the good work. You're rewiring your brain for the better now, and it just takes time and soon enough you'll be stronger then you ever were when you relied on pills to make it through the day.

Hi Whittering, Welcome to the community! Adderall certainly changes your brain chemistry and it will take time to recover. Here's how I understand it - Adderall causes your brain to retain more of the neurotransmitter dopamine between the synapses or nerve endings in your brain. This artificial surplus of dopamine is what causes you to feel more motivated and euphoric as well. The reason why adderall can be so addictive is because when the brain starts getting flooded with an artificial surplus of dopamine consistently, it stops regulating dopamine on it's own properly. Your body begins to adapt to the repeated dosing of a central nervous system stimulant, causing dependence, until eventually life seems much worse without adderall. From what I understand is that over time, as your natural dopamine reuptake process is consistently disrupted, the body produces less and less dopamine. If the adderall is then withdrawn, the body has neither its own dopamine nor an artificial surplus of dopamine between the the brain receptors - thus the horror of withdrawal. By the way, when taking adderall, that disruption of the uptake process of dopamine also involves the disruption of another neurotransmitter called norepinepherine which like dopamine stimulates alertness and energy. While of course everyone's body reacts differently, it seems that the majority of people here are experiencing or recovering from adderall dependence. I was addicted to the point where I was taking it mainly just to stave off withdrawal symptoms. One of the reasons I think it's so abused is because there's a presumed element of safety that doesn't exist with other drugs out there except maybe anti-axiety meds. Aside from the physical addiction, I believe there is a psychological component to the addiction, that makes adderall such a crutch in our lives. I personally needed to feel on adderall particularly during times I was tired from not having slept enough or if I had to concentrate for a long period of time or was facing some kind of pressure in my life. In my recovery, I've been working hard to overcome this deeply ingrained psychological dependency I have toward adderall, by challenging all my old assumptions about what the drug did for me, in addition to waiting out the side effects of withdrawal. Depending on how badly addicted you are to adderall, you're going to have to spend time allowing your brain recover. I hope that made sense!

Yes. I absolutely - absolutely - understand why the GTD mentality is terrible when you are taking adderall. I used to to the GTD system on adderall and was completely overwhelmed with tasks and my head was filled with so many ideas I needed to get out onto my lists!! I DO think GTD made me take even more adderall. I don't recommend doing GTD while taking adderall. You are beginning the GTD system from a place where you are already hyper motivated when you are doing GTD and its just overwhelming. That being said, GTD is totally different when you are not taking adderall. Self help books have a totally different impact when you are not on adderall. Life in general "feels" a lot different when you aren't doped up on adderall. You gotta try it to understand. I felt really unproductive when I stopped taking adderall. Trying the GTD system off of adderall, it actually started to fill a void within me. When you read motivational books on adderall, you are reading from the mindset of someone who is ALREADY pumped up. You really have to try reading them off of adderall, which is how most people read them. I read them from a completely different perspective than before. They make a lot more sense!! I really know where you are at right now. REALLY. I know exactly where you're at. You're not sure if you really "need" to stop. You may even genuinely think it's not such a big deal. You may think you need to accomplish something big and then you'll finallly stop. Trust me, from someone having been in the same exact spot - you are blinded by what it's ultimately doing to you - it's denial and fear of facing the uncomfortable facts about your relationship with adderall - quitting is the best decision you can make for your life right now. By the way, I've tried several times to read "7 Habits"...I cannot seem to get into it. Even though I've heard great things. It's such a classic. I think I might give it another try.

I completely understand what that feels like when you say that debilitating sense of guilt and self loathing that comes with stopping the adderall and nosediving in personal committments. I knew it was coming and I hated that. It's probably the worst part about quitting. Think of it like a rite of passage for everyone who quits adderall. We ALL go from feeling in control of the world to out of our element... It sounds like you understand though that quitting is a total investment into your future. Your life foundation cannot be built on a pill, on a band-aid remedy. Eventually it will collapse. You can't swallow a pill to get motivation, energy and confidence for the rest of your life. Think of the millions of people every day who don't need to do that but are still motivated, energetic and confidant. When you quit for good, you start laying down the foundation for a more productive you. In hindsite, it's worth that short term unproductivity to build a solid foundation for a more productive future. Confidence and productivity cannot come in the form of a pill. I think after you quit, it's a gradual process to regaining your productivity. Right now I've decided that the most important thing for me to do, in terms of getting me to my next step in life, is going to back to school, to business school specifically. So I try to spend each day preparing for my entrance exam. Technically, I should be going to the library from say 10-6pm each day, but it's tough to do this. And I get distracted with television or reading magazine articles, but that's life now. While I'd prefer other-wise, I've accepted that I'm going slack off more now, and that's fine with me. If I want to seriously recover, I cannot wish that I can be glued to projects and tasks with laser like focus and no desire for breaks anymore. When I was abusing adderall, my main habit, was anytime I felt like doing something I didn't want to do, I would pop adderall and chug some coffee or energy drinks, take a deep breath and plough through the task. All day long, I was chugging energy drinks, popping adderall, smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee, more adderall, more coffee, cigarettes, adderall, adderall. The adderall made me feel like I could move forward on anything for infinite amounts of time. Pretty soon, everything I did, no matter how trivial, required a burst of willpower and more adderall to get it done - even reading a novel. My habit started out with studying for exams, writing papers and by the end I was popping adderall to get through a session of hanging out with my friends or even just going to a movie! A great analogy was like I was train steamrolling forward through life and constantly shoveling coal into the fire to keep it moving, except the coal was adderall. Without it, the train that was me couldn't barrel forward. After quitting, I felt really, really, really weird without anything in my system. My body was too used to feeling "revved up" all the time. I am still grappling with this relaxed feeling and how my brain works now. Mike's article offered a lot of clarity. I'm still trying to develop new healthy habits. I can tell you that on a day to day, I feel a lot less anxious, and I think cognitively I'm sharper, too. Feeling cognitively sharper off adderall is major motivation. In fact, that really threw me for a loop. To become cognitively sharper, is the reason I had originally taken stimulants twelve years ago. In the beginning, definitely celebrate all your little successes that you accomplish off adderall (ie: taking out the trash) Here are some suggestions on maintaining your feelings of productivity after the "nosedive"...(I didn't start doing these things until later into my recovery) 1) In terms of my day to day, I keep everything in a PDA. I have one of those new kindles which works great. I have lists of the errands I need to run (x-mas shopping, get car registered ), calls I need to make (bank, dentist appt), things I need to do (organize computer files, fixing an old gadget), list of things I try to do every day (keep a daily journal..) I have longer term projects (visiting sis overseas, preparing b-school application), long term goals (software to learn, toss old papers and magazines) I have lists of books I want to read and lists of personal affirmations. I also have a list of future options that i'm contemplating but I seem to have narrowed down on going back to school and finding a better job...Keeping all this in an organizational system helps me to feel more productive. Like I have some kind of life going. Anytime I think of something, I can add to these lists, I have a place for it.. 2) I find myself needing to learn a lot of fundamental life skill sets that I had formally relied on adderall for. That would be motivation, productivity, and confidence. I have found motivational books have really helped on this front. A couple titles I recommend are "Eat That Frog" and "Getting Things Done".... These books somehow helped lessen the miserable withdrawals I was feeling from no adderall. They helped motivate me to move forward from here on my own without relying on a pill to do it for me. 3) I work on my recovery every single day... Whether it's reading an addiction/recovery book, writing in a journal, reading articles on this site, communicating with members on this forum, learning new supplements. I try to keep recovery at the top of my to do list, and maintain that urgency to stay off the pills, because I never want to go back to that place where I was in again. I am still grappling with rebuilding myself everyday. But I think to myself that the time I spend rebuilding myself is really nothing in terms of time in the big scheme of life. Also, each month that passes gives me a psychological boost. I saw 'wow, it's been 13 months, and I've taken absoultely nothing'... Unfortuately, ugh, I still have days of feeling chemical withdrawal but it's much less now than ever before. I still feel weird but I'm much more used to it. I definitely don't feel I'm in the clear yet, but these are some of the tools that have helped me take big steps forward from that horrible "nosedive" position after quitting. I feel like I'm a plotting for my come back in life, and it will be more sustaining this time around. I know if you or rather I should say - we - keep working on our recovery, we will be back on our feet soon - adderall free.

Hi there! Thanks for sharing, and welcome to the community! I have to say that your post made me chuckle to myself because it reminded me of myself a lot. Before I quit for the final time, 13 months ago, I used to analyze and then justify my adderall use and ritalin use in many different ways, from infinitely various different angles and came up with incredibly convincing arguments about why it was perfectly fine to take it, whether it was just a little bit or a lot. You're argument was pretty convincing and it sounded like something I might have said back in the day. In the final year of my addiction, which turned out to be worst year on adderall -- and this is no joke -- I was 100 percent convinced that I wasn't addicted and I didn't have a problem. I had completely rationalized this in my mind and I told everyone who knew about my adderall usage that I was not addicted. No joke. When a person is dependent on something, the mind plays tricks to justify using again and again. In the past years, I was never able to just take a little bit and then just stop. My use always escalated back up to severe levels. I could keep up a lower dosage for a little while and then it would escalate. I made a really bad mistake about five years ago. There was a time I got off ritalin for a few months successfully and then decided that it would be okay to get back on stimulants for a little while. It ended up in five more years of addiction before finally collapsing on the floor in tears and being hospitalized again. I guess what I'm trying to say is that, when you are out of the woods or close to being out of the woods, adderall shouldn't really have any kind of impact on your thinking anymore. You will no longer consider it having been "helpful" anymore. You'll start to realize that addiction was a bait and switch game because eventually, you needed adderall just to feel like you did before you became addicted. You needed it just to feel normal. You needed a "crutch" just to feel average. Right now, I think it might be your physical addiction influencing your rational brain, and making you think it's okay to take it to help you get off of it. I would try to think of it this way - taking it again is a relapse. Don't allow yourself to relapse. If you relapse you could trigger the whole process all over again. If you really think adderall is just like drinking coffee, then just drink coffee instead of taking adderall! By the way, I thought your writing was really good! Definitely not a rambling mess!

Hey Matilda, I was on and off Wellbutrin for years while simultaneously abusing adderall and ritalin. I definitely understand the concern. Ultimately, I think it's okay to be on some kind of anti-depressent after quitting adderall. i can say that because I was on Effexor ever since I quit adderall and it didn't have any negative impact on me during my 13 months off adderall. I've even gone up on my Effexor dosage. From what I understand, effexor and wellbutrin are similar in how they act on the brain. And the effexor didn't in anyway trigger a desire for more adderall. So I think it should be okay to be on Wellbutrin. I doubt that wellbutrin would reset your addiction. I think that would only happen with another stimulant like ritalin, dexedrine, concerta, vyvanese even, maybe strattera. Anyway, those are my two cents!

Hi Lee, Hang in there. You can do this. It may be horrible and exhausting at first, but it gets a whole lot better to the point where you are no longer craving the pills anymore. (Just imagine how awesome that is) Also, once you quit, you'll NEVER experience paranoid psychosis again and you'll NEVER have to worry about running out of pills again. You won't be hyper manic anymore and the depression will eventually lift. You'll get to a point where you're emotionally stable all the time, where you're not cycling between a depressed state and a manic state. You got to let your body adjust to being off the adderall and begin to produce dopamine the natural way. This comes with time. And you have to readjust your thinking patterns and learn to motivate yourself and feel confident without relying on something else to provide that for you. I face that challenge every day, but each day I get stronger. My confidence is now coming from within and not from a pill. Just allow yourself to quit and take it easy so you can kick this thing once and for all. It's really worth the effort, and before long, many months will have passed. If you don't stop adderall now, the dependency on those pills is only going to get worse from this point onward. More psychosis, more instability and more dependence on that pill, even despite the detrimental psychosis it brings on. Think of your quitting as an exciting opportunity to just totally reinvent yourself as a more successful person than you ever were before. And know that other people have done it and you can too.

Hey Iheartme, Congratulations on quitting and getting past the first 16 days. Life is definitely going to get better as you get adjusted to this new adderall feeling. Adderall is a band-aid remedy and band-aid remedies never last!! So it's really good you decided to stop it. I certainly remember when I would fill up notebooks with ideas and ideas. I thought I was so creative and I was so excited about this and that. But you know what? I never followed up on most of those ideas, because I would get so overwhelmed with even more creative ideas on top of the other ideas, so they were all a waste anyway. Off of adderall, your head will not spin with thousands of ideas anymore. You might have to even get suggestions for ideas from books or other people to prompt you for ideas (I know! It's really weird) But you'll come to see that this way is so much better. It's a more calm way of thinking, less erratic. Before I was great at coming up with ideas, but poor on executing them. Every time I tried to follow through on an idea, I would be attacked by ten more ideas and get all distracted and eventually overwhelmed, paralyzed and anxious. I still get ideas now, but they just don't come in rapid fire succession at random hours of the day with so much passion behind them and I - seriously - like it better this way. It's just so much more "normal" this way. I understand what you mean by being on the computer and doing GOD KNOWS WHAT. Looking back, I now realize what I was doing. I was doing lots of low priority tasks that got me nowhere, mixed in with lots of surfing the net for interesting websites and keeping VERY, VERY updated with the latest news among other things. I still procrastinated on doing the important things that i didn't feel like doing. Adderall makes you feel busy, and feel productive but I'm not sure if it makes a person productive. It certainly made me super focus on lots of low priority things and I certainly focused on the distractions that I FELT like doing. It helped focus on slacking off projects on my to do lists! Now I have one big important project I am working on that I know will move me toward my future goal. It's one thing, but it's the most important thing. And I am no longer attacked by urges to fill notebooks with different ideas. (Many of them low priority) But when I do think of things I need to do, I put them in my planner and I don't get overwhelmed by them. I go back and focus on the one important thing, and I don't get sidetracked by all these tangents. You mentioned that resisting cravings is empowering. I defintiely agree with that. I want to add that having a dependency on adderall for a long time is like walking with a crutch for a long time. Now you have to throw away the crutches and walk on your own. It can be scary, but you know as long you face the fear (and you'll have to do this over and over again), you will eventually begin to walk again. What has been critical for my recovery (aside from letting time heal) is doing things that I would normally rely on adderall to do, and doing them successfully. THis has been slowly and steadily changing my thinking process of believing "adderall is the solution to everything in my life" to believing in "my inner will as the solution to everything". Changing my mentality, building a more solid inner foundation, is also having a very postive effect on how the adderall withdrawal symptoms are affecting me - they are becoming less severe. I think the psychological dependency and the physical dependency of adderall go hand in hand. I believe that breaking the psychological dependency on adderall (changing the way you think) is just as important as breaking the physical dependency on adderall (allowing time to pass and letting your brain produce dopamine naturally again). Glad to have you as part of the community! Be sure to read everything Mike writes too! He is really an incredible success coach masked in a computer programmer's body. Mike, the website, quit once and everyone who is sharing and supporting have helped me so much, I could never thank them rnough.

Hilarious! I was thinking a lot of the same things when I visited my doctor. She wanted me to come back for a follow up three months later and I kept insisting it wasn't necessary (now that adderall was out of the picture)... Ever since Mike's brilliant article, I have entered a growth period in my recovery. I've been spending time trying to break all these old psychological habits, assumptions, and brain associations created by the adderall and create new healthy habits in my new brain. I know it has taken a while for me to adjust, but I think I'm finally beginning to regain my productivity levels (I really want to emphasize the word "beginning"...). That is really major for me. I have to wait and see how it pans out... Mike's article helped me begin to recognize where I was going wrong. Couldn't deal with it when I hadn't even recognized it. Since then, Its been taking a lot of work to change the way I think. I understand now in what ways the brain works differently then during those adderall infested days. In the beginning of my recovery process, I was sitting and waiting around for motivation to come back to me, so I could getting working again just like before. Now I understand that is just not how it's going to work anymore. I can still be motivated, efficient and productive but I have to work at it. It's just that motivation occurs to me entirely different now. I no longer will feel inspired to do something (which had pretty much everything) and then go forward and do it with passion. I no longer have a million ideas and do exciting things on a whim. I have to think about what I need to do and plan out what I'm going to do, then force myself to do something about it, even if it feels uncomfortable, causes tension, fear or anxiety or whatever and then I start to feel motivated once I get into it. Learning to self start without a crutch is crucial for me in recovering. Since I'd been on high dosages of stimulants almost every single day for so many years. I'd pretty much forgotten how the normal brain is supposed to work. I feel in touch once again with how normal people feel on a day to day basis. I cannot go non-stop on anything that requires concentration for hours and hours and then pop a pill and continue onwards for more hours. I need to take periodic breaks and then start again. As Mike had mentioned, I need to continuously recreate motivation. I believe I can still do the things one would considered productive, like taking up new hobbies or cleaning out the basement, or setting up a filing system or learning some new software like photoshop, etc...I can still try to live a productive life...just everything will have to happen in a different way from now on. I don't know if that makes any sense. I'm still trying to figure this all out. Also, I'm obsessed with better understanding and breaking the whole psychological dependency component of taking adderall from all those years, relying on it as a crutch. Aside from being physically addicted, Was I taking it because I doubted myself all the time, and it made me feel confident? Perhaps that's what I need to be dealing with. Also, my attitude toward my withdrawal discomfort is totally different now. I still experience the tension and discomfort but I try to just totally ignore. It's just something in the background that I experience. I try not to allow it to affect my emotional state. Letting it get to me, will not help any. By the way, I just wanted to note I've been taking two supplements which (I think) have been helping. Both are amino acids that help generate dopamine in the brain. You can get them in the vitamin shoppe. 1) DL-Phenylalanine and 2) L-Tyrosine (which I recall both of us were taking in the beginning when we quit) The DL-Phenylalanine was something I hadn't known about, but my mom had discovered it. I'm also taking Vitamin B Complex which I read also helps with dopamine among other things.

Allie, Are you sure you want to stay on it? If you already feel like you can't function without ritalin (and god knows, I truly, truly know what that feels like...) It will only get worse as the years progress...and you'll eventually get to the needing to quit point whether its now or later on...

Quit-Once, I agree with you about my prescribing doctor being a little off the wall. I was thinking to myself "uh didn't you hear me? I just told you I was addicted to adderall and still suffering withdrawal pain one year after quitting...And you uh want to give me something just as addictive as adderall?" It's funny you say that you don't know me very well. Because I also don't know me very well! In fact, my whole existence for the past twelve years was pretty much summed up in my recent posts. My world truly revolved around those adderall pills! And not much else! I have to tell you though, I feel like I am starting to understand myself a whole lot better now, though. I read Mike's new article - 9 Adderall Work Habits That you Must Learn to Overcome .It was a complete eye opener for me. I read it several times and I printed a copy of it and put it on my nightstand. It made me realize that my brain was completely wired with bad adderall habits (I believe those bad habits were some of the main driving forces behind my psychological dependency on adderall). And even though I stopped taking adderall, those habits, those ways of thinking have stayed with me until now. Like the expectations of waiting around for enthusiasm and a drive to work to come to me (formerly in the form of an adderall pill). His article made me realize that my brain will not work like that anymore. That I have to learn to START projects/working on my own without waiting for a pill to kick in, put me in the mood to get the job done. That it's time to work on building my new "willpower muscle" and form new neural connections in my brain toward prductivity and let the old neural pathways, bad work habits created by the adderall brain atrophy. As the withdrawal symptoms begin to "weaken" (which these days comes in the form of a dull, sometimes sharp pain just above the crook of my neck - funny how my withdrawal symptoms are always changing and evolving in how it manifests itself), I guess I'm now moving toward a new stage of recovery, of trying to become a more productive person again.While it's going to be tough, I think unlearning the old brain associations created by years and years the adderall habit and forming new healthy brain associations, repeating them and stengthening them until they become easier and easier to initiate will be essential to me for fully recovering. And if Mike is reading this post, I want to thank him again for that great, eye opening article...I think everybody who is quitting adderall needs to read that article to help themselves break the psychological habits formed over time from taking adderall while working simultaneously. And for a clarity of understanding on how their new non-adderall brains work in their post-adderall life. I thought the article really addressed a fundamental issue specific to adderall addicts that is not really addressed at other addiction support groups like N/A or detox centers and outpatient programs that I've been in. For example, most N/A addicts used drugs recreationally, while the adderall addict usually uses as a performance enhancer. Mike's article made me realize that the adderall addict has a whole additional set of psychological parameters or habits that he or she needs to identify, address and deal with in order to heal themselves during the recovery process. The fact that they are being addressed here is in part what makes this support group so awesome.

Krislov, I gained thirty pounds after I quit adderall. I agree with you when you say that you think our metabolism slows down when we get off adderall. The weight gain was so fast for me, a couple pounds a day! It seemed abnormal and it just spiraled out of control. The only way I could justify it was a slowed down metabolism. In hindsight, I also think it was that without a appetite suppresant, my hunger came back in full force, and in the immediate aftermath of quitting I was scarfing down everything in sight. (I remember eating lots of chocolate chip cookies, and a lot of apple pies in the aftermath, and I'm not talking individual slices of pie, but entire pies!) I managed to lose the thirty pounds after I quit through a strict 1500 - 1700 calorie a day regime. I didn't do any exercise either. It took three months in which I lost about 8-10 lbs a month or 2-3 lbs a week. During that time, my appetite came back to normal and I think my metabolism readjusted. I really would consider getting on a 1500 calorie a day diet. Even though counting calories is a pain in the neck, it definitely works. 1500 calories is the least amount of calories you can consume without putting your body into an unhealthy starvation mode. I think a large part of the post adderall weight gain is due to the fact that we become so used to adderall suppressing our appetite, that when we are no longer taking adderall, we overeat. When I got off adderall, my portion sizes were way out of control. On adderall, I was so used to eating whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted and not having to deal with weight gain. Off adderall, I had to relearn how to control my portions sizes and cut back on calories without that pill. I might consider joining Weight Watchers online and using their point system. I also mentioned this in another post, but Nutrisystem really worked for me. It provides breakfast/lunch/dinner for you in calorie portioned sizes. It also provides a food journal every month to keep track of what you eat, and also counseling support which I used a lot. Okay...now I'm sounding like a commercial for Nutrisystem, so i'll stop. But I definitely, definitely suggest tracking calories as a sure-fire way to get back to your old weight. You can definitely do it!