Hey everyone,
First, thanks so much to everyone who has posted in this forum and takes the time to reply. I’m so glad this is here.
I'm looking for anyone who has input and experience on my situation. Where I’m at: 103 days ago, I stopped using all drugs and alcohol including Adderall, which was prescribed to me for ADHD. About 60 days ago I also stopped taking a med I was on for a mood disorder that I DONT have and increasingly feel was misdiagnosed because of side effects of taking prescribed stimulants for 19 years. Now I’m just taking a low dose of Wellbutrin which helped with quitting Adderall in the early days but now doesn’t seem to be doing much.
Like so many of you, I’m over three months in and I still feel god awful. No energy whatsoever, depressed, no ability to initiate tasks. Completely couch ridden. Quitting weed and alcohol sucked and coming off the mood stabilizer was rough for a month or so, but I have no desire to go back to any of those. It’s just the desire for Adderall that is sticking around. I never really misused it but my prescribed dose steadily increased over the years up to 30 mg XR, which at the end wasn’t doing a thing for me.
My question for you all: On day 97, so 6 days ago, I’d had enough and decided to take about 10 mg Adderall XR. I definitely do have ADHD, diagnosed when I was a teenager and don’t doubt my diagnosis at all, so I guess I convinced myself maybe I needed it to function after all, even though toward the end I was depressed, uncreative, constantly irritable and prone to random rage. It’s hard when a doctor is telling me I need it to treat a condition I know I have, but I know deep down the drug is harming me physically, emotionally, spiritually. Anyway, I took it, and almost immediately was able to complete a bunch of things on my to do list for weeks, but other than that brief bit of motivation, I felt straight up horrible—anxious, detached from my spouse and the world around me. Within a few hours I was like, nope, gotta go back to quitting, and haven’t taken it again since.
My question is, in terms of withdrawal timelines and everything else, am I really back at square one because of a 10 mg relapse on day 97? Should I start the counter back at 0 or consider this a small hiccup? Just curious what others think because I know you all said it gets better-ish after 6 months and even better after a year, and I want to stick it out, but if that one day starts the clock back at 0 days instead of being at about 3 months, I guess I just want to know when you’d expect I could start to feel human again. I find myself daily fighting the urge to just call my psychiatrist and go back on it because I know she’d fill the script in a heartbeat because of my diagnosis.
Any advice greatly appreciated, about the timeline, quitting, ADHD or anything else. Thank you!