[32 months clean but still don’t feel my best]

7 hours ago, sirod9 said:

So, I had to go back and read your story before I replied. First off, congratulations on getting so much time under your belt. That is huge! I took very high doses too, and went cold turkey, it is not an easy route. You are young, and have your whole life ahead of you, but I bet you feel so low that you can't see that. Okay, from reading your story, it seems like you have had some pretty big realizations about how you handled day to day life. Such as the addictions to video games, porn, escapism through social media. Being able to recognize this is a positive thing and a huge opportunity. I feel like our society doesn't give young folks, or older folks, any emotional support. We have to find support ourselves.

I don't think your situation is post acute withdrawal. Possibly unearthing the reasons behind your addictive behavior can be like shadow work, and if we don't have the tools to make changes and get proper support, we are left with the thing we were trying to escape this whole time, ourselves, the moment, some deep seated sense of unworthiness. Which is all the stuff we need to heal in ourselves. the "thing" that pushed us to using, which we are often unconscious of.

In short, I think you are "in between" a realization that you have always escaped through various means (including adderall), and truly understanding the reasons why you escaped and healing those parts of you. This stuff does not happen over night and you should seek out support. Proper counseling (finding a good counselor that doesn't just want to push prescriptions on you). Something like psychotherapy. Also, if you have ever had interest in amazon plant medicines, or have been called in any way to these modes of healing, you should look into that. Ayahuasca helped me immensely. But if not, there are other ways.

Either way, I think quitting drinking and smoking, continuing to get proper nutrition and exercise, and getting proper assistance to help you heal your emotional world will be what ultimately serves you having a good life. Also, be really kind to yourself, because the relationship you have with yourself, is the most important relationship you will every have.

Wishing you peace.

All of that makes so much sense! I appreciate the reply.

[32 months]

I am 32 months clean from adderall, still feel depressed and not feeling like my old self before taking adderall. Can Paws last longer 3 years? I drank alcohol during my recovery, I’m thinking that has hindered my brain from fully recovering. I have quit all substances besides caffeine, and I also have found out I have mild sleep apnea. So that could be why I don't feel my best. I also been through a lot weight changes and diet changes from abusing drugs to not, so I believe my hormones and a little all over the place. Im trying to find the right amount to eat and  best diet. I think I may have a eating disorder that was caused from adderall, I try to maintain a weight that isn't right for me but looks good. I have had good days but it has been a long time. I switch my forms of caffeine sometimes. Coffee makes me feel strung out and on edge but gets me through the day. I try to just drink vitamin caffeine drinks like Zipfiz or Celsius but I don't feel the energy like i get from coffee. Caffeine is honestly the only thing that is getting me through my days. Im still in college but graduate in Fall. I hope I can figure all of this stuff out, its been rough but i know how it feels to be back to yourself. I quit back in 2018 for a year and felt like I returned to normal and felt amazing but ending up feeling so good that I got back on them and abused them for 2 more years heavily. I abused adderall, benzos and alcohol all at the same time, for a while I speedballing them all, so thats why I think it's taking so long for me to get back to normal. I will not loose hope or faith. I know it will happen. Things do get better and Ive experienced it, at a time I honestly felt better sober than I did when I abusing adderall. Once you've been away from it for a while you see how disgusting it is and the cycle that you get stuck in. I cant stand that it is just a temporary state of being and it goes away, that is just so depressing when you think about it. It is not really you. You return to a state that is lower than you were before from when you took it. It also is not hard to tell when someone is strung out. Please don't take this stuff it only leads to dependance and addiction.

[32 months clean but still don’t feel my best]

On 2/17/2023 at 1:57 PM, sirod9 said:

Do you always feel this way, or do you just have "slumps" short periods of time where you feel like crap.

For the most part all the time. I have had good days but it has been a long time. I have changed up my diet from time to time and have found out I have mild sleep apnea so those could be factors. 

[Wellbutrin after adderall abuse]

On 2/10/2023 at 11:40 AM, speedracer said:

I started taking Wellbutrin around month 18 of recovery. I am now at 3.5 years.I was depressed, and it brought me back to baseline. I also take a natural supplement called DL-Phenylalanine or DLPA from Pure Encapsulations. I order that online. I am so grateful because I feel 100% recovered from long term Adderall use.  My wife has been so happy with it she thinks I should never stop taking it. But I want to wean off of it and see how goes one day soon. 

Did you take any other substances during your recovery? Like alcohol

 

[32 months clean but still don’t feel my best]

I am 32 months clean from adderall, still feel depressed and not feeling like my old self before taking adderall. Can Paws last longer 3 years? I drank alcohol during my recovery, I’m thinking that has hindered my brain from fully recovering. I have quit all substances besides caffeine, and I also have found out I have mild sleep apnea. So that could be why I don't feel my best. I have had good days but it has been a long time. I switch my forms of caffeine sometimes. Coffee makes me feel strung out and on edge but gets me through the day. I try to just drink vitamin caffeine drinks like Zipfiz or Celsius but I don't feel the energy like i get from coffee. Caffeine is honestly the only thing that is getting me through my days. Im still in college but graduate in Fall. I hope I can figure all of this stuff out, its been rough but i know how it feels to be back to yourself. I quit back in 2018 for a year and felt like I returned to normal and felt amazing but ending up feeling so good that I got back on them and abused them for 2 more years heavily. I will not loose hope or faith. I know it will happen. 

[My story with abuse and recovery.]

My whole life i have been addicted to highly stimulating activities whether that being video games or spending countless hours on social media. There was a time when i was around 13 when I would wake up in the morning and hop on Xbox and literally spend the whole entire day playing games (7am-12 at midnight). The video game phase ended around 14 and I needed something else to replace it so I would spend all of my free time watching YouTube, being on Snapchat and watching porn the second I got home from school or football.  So of course all of this lead me to have symptoms of adhd and not have motivation to do in well in high school. So at 16 I decided to go to a psychiatrist and get on adderall I tested very high on the charts for ADD and ADHD. Just like anything else that's stimulating I fell in love with it it gave me that instant dopamine and it'd last a few hours. My addiction with it started slow and really kicked off around 17 as i started experimenting with taking double my dose which was 2 10mg instant releases at the same time. The high i got from it was amazing. My usage kept ramping up as I kept chasing the high I got from it. i loved how confident and careless it made me, I felt like I could do anything I wanted. My senior I year I was taking up to 80 mg of instant release a day and would take xanax sometimes to help with the comedowns. At around 19 I realized I had bad problem, I was in a relationship at the time and It forced me to quit adderall. I would literally pull all nighters and became paranoid cause of how geeked I was she thought i was insane. But for about 2 years I was abusing up to 100mg a day of adderall and a lot of nicotine. When I quit I wanted a fast recovery it was like my body and mind already knew what it needed to do to recovery from all this abuse. I quit adderall, nicotine, social media, alcohol, porn and caffeine.  Only thing I really would consume that was stimulating was caffeine again around 5 months of abstinence from everything. Around the 7 month mark I really noticed some big changes. I had so much energy and motivation it felt great. I would literally want to do homework or clean things. I never had the urge to do any of those things before. Around the 8 month mark was when I really noticed positive things. I was literally high on life. I felt better than I did when I was adderall, eating foods felt amazing and just doing normal tasks would give me a little high everytime. It was like i was a kid again. Socializing used to be very boring for me but now it was very fun and I wanted to talk to everyone. But around the 10 month mark I was feeling so good that I felt like taking adderall again. For 1 year I was taking up to 120mg again everyday with alcohol on the come down. I was running out of adderall so fast that I knew I had to quit because i knew i couldn't maintain that high everyday. I knew I was destroying my brain. So I decided to stop cold turkey around June 2020. Up till now I haven't had any adderall, so im 2 years clean. I have drank alcohol a lot during my recovery though and nicotine and have been addicted to social media such as TikTok and YouTube. I believe that those things are holding me back to a full recovery so I have cut out social media and limited my alcohol intake. But I truly believe that complete abstinence is the key to feeling great sober and being productive and to have a good recovery from the abuse done. It is very hard though to limit the things that are stimulating its literally everywhere. Im 22 now and am thinking about starting wellbutrin because I have about a year of college left and I want to get it knocked out, but my depression is making it hard and my lack of motivation. So i'm going to try wellbutrin and limit anything else stimulating to see if I see any results. I know it's not smart to get on another stimulant but I feel like I will not be able to get through my college without it. 

[Wellbutrin after adderall abuse]

I am 22 years old and I am 2 years clean from adderall abuse, and still have 1 1/2 years of college left to complete and I feel that my brain has recovered a lot. I am pretty depressed though and lack motivation to get through my studies. I got prescribed wellbutrin xl 150mg and was thinking about using for awhile to help me in my situation. I am just worried and don't want to mess my brain up anymore than i already have. But I also really need to get through school so I move forward in my life. Do you think that the wellbutrin will mess up all the recovering my brain has done from being off adderall?