in sterquiliniis invenitur

HAHAHA! It's March! How is it March 11, 2024? It was just recently October of 2022 when I was sitting in a coffee shop and writing a dumb little "dialogue" with some kind of personified Satan telling me to take 40mg instead of the prescribed 20mg. Just once. Just to get over a rough period of time with a high workload. I have very odd memories from the last 16 or so months. Maybe up to 20 months. Is it just me or do I get the impression that fewer people are sharing information about Adderall addiction in 2024 than, say, 2010.? I was just a little kid back then but--sifting through forums like this one--it seems like that epoch [early to late 2000s] experienced a sort of Renaissance of people who'd discover this "hidden under-current" of hyper-productivity and create social atmospheres that reinforced it and then eventually crash and try to find some kind of redemption. Is that 85% gone or am I just not looking hard enough for support networks? I have to say: this is a damn lonely endeavor... quitting Adderall. I may be able to talk virtually on forums like this but when I try to explain this experience to my coworkers they often look at me like I'm doing something righteous with my abuse of this drug. And that's how I rationalize it to myself. And the Western Judeo-Christian thought process... when it exists inside a religious person that I try to talk to... doesn't really know how to respond to my venting. They're much more used to people talking about sexual immorality or alcoholism or even speed but not this nice comfy and motivating gem of Adderall... which can flow through your system without many noticeable effects on the outside, while making you a skillful, righteous, creative, driven laborer on the inside. Everyone loves you! You yourself become creative and interesting and you can weave a nice narrative about yourself in your own mind out of memory of your meaningful work. Fortunately this time when I relapsed--after 16 days sober--the highest dose I was on was 30mg. This is unbelievable progress for me. I didn't even pull a single all-nighter in these 7-days of active use. Can you guys help? Where do I go from here? I developed a certain kind of addiction to my own breathing (specifically hyperventilation) and somehow--even when I'm not on Adderall--I often am compulsively aware of my own breathing while trying to sit down and do mental labor. I exercise a lot, which helps, but clearly it doesn't eliminate the mental temptation patterns. I am morbidly terrified of seeking professional help or "confessing" my "sin". Is that even a sensible way to think about this problem... as a sin? Isn't it more like a sickness? But a sickness of what? It can't be a psychological sickness alone because after 5-days of withdrawal I'm fine! I can come across as funny, interesting, even productive to other people without a single milligram of Adderall in my system. I don't even necessarily experience any sort of moment-to-moment "depression". Is it really just a metaphor to call this a "sickness of the spirit"? I am disgusted by the cynicism, hedonism, nihilism of the world... by how awfully young people like me conduct their lives. It seems as if my emotional or affective system is super-glued or perhaps fused to whatever part of my head makes rational judgments and so... every time I experience something like boredom, I rationalize the boredom into the conclusion that "Life and responsibility have left me. I have no real, meaningful, tangible responsibilities. What am I doing here? Why don't I just stay in this blithe coma and keep stumbling blindly through life.?" And then even when I'm on Adderall... when I experience those secondary effects of increased anxiety and such... I am repenting and hyper-rationalizing the stupidity of my decision while "enjoying" and utilizing the effect of the drug! I am presenting my body and limbs and face to the external world as one kind of character... and intrapsychically I am killing hundreds of ideas per minute as new ones are being born against my will. "When will I finish the homework? After I finish my shift. What am I doing in this shift? Feeding the middle class. Why am I feeding the middle class if there are dozens of health crises plaguing people because they don't get enough physical exercise. Why can't I just do 10 push-ups right now to give myself a bit of subtle endorphins to clarify my thoughts and set myself straight? Because I'm being morally righteous here washing these dishes. What's so righteous about washing these dishes here? Well, for one, it develops a certain kind of humility? Humility?! After this I'm going home to a cushioned middle class home in the most prosperous country in the world and I get to get 8 or 9 full hours of sleep! Wow, what an idiot! No, back to the task at hand!!" Multiply that by several hours each day for months on end... whether I'm on Adderall or not.! When I'm trying to do homework, on the other hand, I often read a paragraph of text and then close my eyes and visually imagine the representation of the abstract concept while imagining in my mind's eye... writing a paragraph response in my own words while deep-breathing. Then I'd open my eyes and jot something down for 17 seconds and read the next page. And I lost all touch with what it really means to study something. What is studying? To my subconscious it's a time of rabid indulgence in the value of ideas from the external world. The Western world does a rather poor job artistically representing pathologies like this. We have all the operational definitions and DSM diagnostic criteria and science-oriented mental health media in the world... and yet it's all aimed at some future that's... well, it's just the re-establishment of a "stable carnival of efficient human motion". Freeways. Red lights. Green lights. Buildings with doors and heating systems and plumbing systems. Brooms to sweep the floors. Courts to judge the sinners. All institutions.. all forms of human action... every twitch of the muscle... is operationally defined, sequenced in a socially-agreed context, and played out in a manner that's mildly pleasurable at all times. PEOPLE, ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME? HEAR ME, PLEASE! There's something odd about human nature where--when someone is crying for help in a way that's hyper-intelligent and maybe a bit excessive--the initial tendency is to turn your head and quickly look away. I've lost the only friend group I've had in my entire life 4 years ago because I was talking for MONTHS about how meaningless I felt life was. This was before I ever started really abusing Adderall. But see, what's my point? My point is I'm HERE! I'm AWAKE! I'm CIVILIZED! I expend herculean energy to be sane in the face of society and it's become a skill. I'm not some bum who poses an immediate threat to your safety. I'm just asking for a bit of social support. A reminder that maybe my thoughts--absurd and disgruntled as they are--were brought into being as part of this "spiritual war" I'm fighting. I can't be the only one fighting this, right?

I'm now a whopping 9-days "sober" from Adderall. Have I taken any steps to diverge from the usual withdrawal narrative? Kind of. I'm, at the very least, always chaining myself to very conservative routines and habits like exercise or school or the kitchen where I work.. even attending some social events. Again, I don't even think I'm experiencing any sorta physical withdrawal symptoms at all that are different from the general symptoms of adhd. We'll see.

Good morning. I'm now 4-days sober again and I have to admit: it is awfully easy to suffer the physical aspects of withdrawal. I don't think I even had any past maybe the first day when I had some general fatigue and irritability. It's the brain that becomes the major share-holder of rationalizations, chemicals and other such tools to entice me to abuse my next month's prescription. And it's coming.. like clockwork, in 3-weeks or so I'm going to start getting occupied by thoughts of getting a refill and getting entangled with the drug. I respect your effort and getting on here to reply to my rambling and my blind stumbling. I'm a chaotic mess and somehow, I'm figuring things out as I go. I complain a lot and complain about the wrong things--my middle-class privege, my lack of general interest in the classes I take, lack of a meaningful social circle and so on. I've trapped myself in an airtight vacuum of complaining that can cycle perpetually--especially in a progressive utopia like California, utterly dissociated from any deep and abiding systems of belief and integrated narrative. (But that too, is cynical.) I have to stand outside myself and start observing my thoughts and trying to consciously denote cynical ones.

Hey thanks for that detailed reply. This forum really deserves more people like you. It's been dead for the entire year (or year and a half) that I kept coming back to it with my morbid rants about my self-loathing condition. (Except.. the few people who, amazingly, seemed to offer valuable nuggets of sanity to dilute my insanity and help me move forward). Anyway, my addiction does not have the "catalysts" your had. Your environment involved a job where the amount of work you're "allowed to" do is very high. I just work in a kitchen and go to college and the rigor level of my courses is laughably low. I have a very isolated and limited social life.. out of a sort of subconscious cynicism. I distract myself with a lot of physical exercise (which I maintain regardless of whether I have the drug or not) and with these "creative frenzies" I have with the drug where I stumble through my meaningless coursework but I do that extremely well. Look, this might sound amusing to more hard core addicts but my idea of an addictive dose is 40-50mg. Maybe a few times I took 90 XR's over the course of 20-hours to maintain a steady "haze of attentive awareness". It's sick. And yet even right now I'm on a relatively low 32-35mg and all it's doing is keeping me mildly more energized and alert and critically-thinking while in my (kitchen) workplace, so I can enjoy a vivid review of concepts from class while doing rote-procedural stuff with my hands. I'm trying to say that: the line between insane frenzied abuse and sane efficiency is blurry. I'm all alone in the world 60 or 70% of the week and just the fact of that isolation makes even 10mg have a profoundly horrid effect on me. I start deep breathing and critically imagining BS in my head relating to what I'm studying and take frenzied notes but it's all in a vacuum. And then, when I'm not on the drug the withdrawal isn't bad! I sweat it out in exercise on Day 1 and maybe have some bit of lethargy till Day 5. What's terrifying is that I'm often subject to a horrifying devil that pops out of my own psyche with a bunch of irrational, emotion-laden ideas about why I'm useless, and why I'm doomed to be useless because I'm trapped in the comfortable middle class. It's OK though. I am hyper-involved in affirmations and I only use this negative language as a sort of "give the devil his due" type of exercise. I approach Satan with all the well-learned politesse I've accrued from my mad suffering. My lunch break is over.

Oh yea, I've already started trying to find a dealer like that. It's extremely inefficient though. Again, I live in a suburban city and suburbs are the absolute worst, most dry, most hyper-comfortable hell-holes that the American collective consciousness has come up with. It is impossible to find Adderall here because nobody even dares to raise their eyes above the mundane and try to conceive of an ideal self.

Yeah, that is the only feasible next step.

This is such a pathetic, miserable, self-sabotaging path I'm on. I've poured my entire being out in front of various different Christian "disciples" about this over the last 8 months, only to run away from them in a sort of vengeful fear. I turn back to adderall for about a week every month. Then withdraw. Then repent. Then suffer. Then face temptation and give in. The relapses get more and more beautiful each month.. I find godforsaken isolated liminal spaces miles and miles away from home to hide in while I scribble away ideas on note cards and note books. I mark them and make inter-associations and drown in intellectual excitement. Then I crash. And burn. And emerge as an inferior, defeated fool. Where am I? Why am I forgiven each time? Why do I lose all memory of my accomplishments after each rabid session? Why do I throw away all those dozens of pages of notes out of a sort of shame? It's gonna take divine intervention to get me out of here. I'm trapped in the middle class. Comfort kills the soul and Adderall adequarely challenges me enough to help me delude myself into thinking I'm not trapped in this middle class purgatory. Lord, Hear me. All of you guys, please hear me. Help me.

Man, you should have seen me!! After I wrote this post on September 7th, I made it a few more days and I think the final score was "24 days". I then relapsed for 2 weeks and made it 22 days "sober" afterward. And then about... Jesus, it's been only a week ago... I "relapsed" again and here I am sitting here in my bed-room... on 30-milligrams... in a shallow "haze" of "satisfaction" which isn't really satisfaction at all. The most I used this past week was about... I dunno, it was multiple pills across a 40-hour time span (during which I did not sleep at all). In fact, for several hours as a form of a "break" I spent about 4 hours meditating but... it felt like it was maybe an incomparably long and short amount of time. "Timeless"-- a sort of altered state of consciousness where all I did was analyze myself, my perceptions, my past, my future, my present state of being. Then I snapped out of it and went right back to formulas and equations and whatever B.S. I was studying. God, I really am pathetic aren't I? Or, correction: I am FAR too self-critical. I would really say something... after a rant to some free therapist on campus or to some random person who studies the Bible and preaches it... something like "I really do hate myself" and I'd have tears forming in my eyes and... all they'd do is express a terribly unstoppable form of "sympathy" which does not have any rational or constructive feedback attached to it. The conversation would just end a few minutes later... as if some law of nature forces the other person to let me engage in my suffering alone. Why? God knows! Maybe it's because I really do need to suffer alone to learn from it. I mean look at the way my entire last... jeez, I guess the last year... has looked like: Adderall --> Productive and effective work --> Self-gratifying happiness associated with sight of the productive and effective work --> More Adderall --> More work --> Realize it ain't "effective" anymore but at least I'm doing a lot of things. I can just hide in things. --> Either a psychotic episode or a "nervous breakdown". And so it repeats... and the end of that "long story" has a little chain to connect the end to the next start and it's something like... two to four weeks of repentance, self-improvement, temperance, and on, and on. (DAMN IT! I got friggin' interrupted somewhere at this point and... my whole idea was... I'm enslaving myself in these withdrawal periods. I put myself into a self-enslaving pattern... of... deceiving myself into... believing I'm some kind of a saint for my withdrawal commitment.) I don't really know what to do. I am weak in character. I am a timid coward with no naturally occurring self-respect. I have the conscience of a slave whose every action is overseen by some tyrant... or maybe, the conscience of someone who's acutely aware of the pathology of the 1984 society yet... consciously commits to making tiny exercises of free will against it. And ironically enough, my "mini narrative" there--the abuse cycle and all the (damn-near "deterministic") cognitive and behavioral factors therein--ends the same way that story ended: I go from industrious... and intelligent... and competent... and rebellious in a secretive and constructive way... to emasculated, timid, lazy and... my only form of work is "some old nonsense somewhere". My intellect really is a virus! It can go on forever ranting like this and then becoming proud of its own ranting as if there's anything to it. But there isn't! There isn't a trophy I get for articulating my problems! I'm sick of people praising me for something I can't control! I'm sick of being praised when... free from Adderall and withdrawing... or even having "recovered" from the physiological symptoms... I get "praise" for something I did which was not really all that effortful but rather just a manifestation of my intellect at the right place at the right time. Who am I? Am I doomed to this deterministic pattern? Is every word I am putting on here tonight a "procedural vomiting"--part of the same cycle I have been and will be in forever? Well, I don't think so. Or rather, I think that... after you exhaust your reserve of "effective effort" for a given day... you regress into "procedural" action--the kind that's simple for you (whatever that might be for any given person). "The night cometh when no man can work" -- is... a natural law with few outliers. I am not a "super-human". I do not need to prove myself to anyone -- including "to myself" -- by instantiating a form of slavery unto myself. I think... and this really is something I started to think about when I was withdrawing in late-August-early-September and still think about often... that I have to... start thinking about things through the lens of Christianity. Even though the bedrock "rules" for being Christian are these easy-to-state, easy-to-disbelieve claims... the entire rest of it is so madly effective at problem-solving and self-improvement and... so on... that I can't help but crave to, every day, find a form of rest in an intense pursuit of those ideas. It's different from the "punching bag" rest of rabid ranting. It's different from the... "rest" of an unconscious state of "procedural, Adderall-fueled" studying. And if anything... Whatever. It is time for me to do a little bit of prayer, I think, because... there are just too many distractions pulling me away from taking this seriously.

man oh man. How did i get to this point.? Easy: I was caught in a crossfire of external forces (shortages and back orders and constant delays of those back orders) and so I was forced to stop. A set of strangely well-sequenced positive events (starting college and buying my first car) has kept my general outlook high. I also somehow seem to be occupying myself with random social interactions and long periods of aimless walking each day. I also run--still about 7-miles "per day" but often (2-3x a week) much less. 2 days ago as well as yesterday I experienced the hardest wave of inexplicable withdrawal symptoms: I was possessed completely by brain fog to a point where my memory of the fatigue and agony has now been strangely repressed or shrouded by sleep. Last night I ended up taking 600+mg of caffeine and then driving around some local cities with a friend until boredom and sporadic (as well as deeply unsatosfying) caffeine stimulation forced me to find a quiet space and spend 4-hours doing a couple of destructively boring (and almost insultingly simpleminded) homework. Nonetheless I managed to weasel my way to a striking F+ on a little online virtual quiz for one of my classes. I went to bed with a painfully shallow excitement about this fact. OK well, it looks to be the case that I'm heading downhill for a while. I will resume exercising and eating more or less properly, but I need to stop clinging to arbitrary idealistic notions about college and see it as the damn prison my withdrawal will make it into. That way theres no cognitive dissonance. Thank you to anyone who -- in the last 6 or 8 months -- sent me some sorta comment or encouragement. Even if i didnt reply I read everything and visited every link provided.

Here's a little chronology of recent events.. I made it 6 days without Adderall I relapsed for one lousy day (30mg only) I made it to the end of the 8th day without Adderall And at like 10:00 PM I started popping little pills (I took 12 10mg capsules of the short-acting stuff... over the course of 20 hours), pulled an all-nighter, worked myself into a manic raging fire of uncontrollable passion And it started to rapidly die down the next day at 6:00 PM. And I call myself faithful! I have no faith... or rather, I can write a cute little post where I immaculately articulate the value of faith and virtue and how far it can take you... but you know, there's some widely known philosophy out there (I think it's existentialism) that outright says... that if you want to know the nature of a person or the root of their problems or whatever... you can't rely on what they say or (God forbid) how well they say it. After all, a high intelligence or "IQ" is a random and (one can say) undeserved quality if you happen to have it. I don't want to sound arrogant saying that. I have no "street savvy", minimal social skills, and a VERY tiny range of actual skills. Even then, those "skills" are more like under-exercised talents that were forced into very occasional, short-term bursts of development while on Adderall (AND... here's the kicker: I think Adderall abuse actually kinda, in my experience, makes you better at getting "things" done but highly limits the degree to which your brain uses things like sleep to potentiate information... move certain useful memories of your own damn accomplishments into long-term storage... build deeply-ingrained procedural memory that elevates your skill level etc. etc. etc.) Man, if you wanted to look at it from a Christian perspective... Adderall addiction (and withdrawal) matches perfectly into the mold of that "escape slavery, wander the desert" motif. You become a slave to a neurochemical state... which grants you readily accessible benefits which you can't get anywhere else (at least, nowhere nearby in the spatial and temporal and social geography in which you live). And so... what are you gonna do? You work... you work diligently, constantly, even creatively and gracefully... and you produce REAL QUALITY (the kind that other people may genuinely respect you for)..... but here's the kicker: ALL of that quality... was rendered in the service of strengthening the rationale that "my use of Adderall is positively improving my life, and has minimal drawbacks, with very little reason to try and withdraw from it.". Right?! I mean, I have a long-winded way of putting together ideas... because it's not like I'm just writing down what I already fully knew in my head. I'm trying to grapple with this. But nonetheless, I hope I made sense there: Adderallics--who use Adderall outside the peripheries of an organized medical system (which goes to great lengths to make the diagnosis and treatment of problems objective and factual beyond belief)--basically... (A) Lose their protective relationship with the medical system (which, again, helps you think about Attention problems through a very clarified, objective lens... minimizing the impact of scary subjective anomalies like "building up a tolerance" or "feeling speedy in my interpersonal interactions"). As a result, we react more erratically and simplemindedly to all sorts of experiences that are subjective (and no longer bounded to the advice of a medical professional). (Example: "Here, I'll just pop an extra Adderall and drink some coffee to compensate for my 3-hours of sleep"; "Well, I feel an arbitrary but super-powerful compulsion to keep working on this so I guess the outcome might be so meaningful that I shouldn't sleep at all tonight to keep working.") (B) So, like this, we turn into (especially if we're doing something we have some intrinsic interest in) obsessed, skillful, creative people... but I just have to ask: When was the last time I did any sort of work for the sake of its intrinsic value to other people? You (the reader) should ask yourself that too because my suspicion is: well, no Adderallic is a follower of hedonism (that is, the belief that life should be about self-centered pleasure seeking and derivation of maximal sensory pleasure before dying); after all, no Adderallic takes the drug to sit cross-legged for 8-12 hours and indulge in its effects. BUT... (tell me if I'm wrong here)... I think being a work-craving Adderall user (or a workaholic in general, probably).... is fundamentally motivated by the subjective pleasure derived from overcoming hardship to share the "lessons learned" with others. It's a hero complex, if that's a psychological concept: "I want to be like that thing I see in movies where the main character is an archetype representing...in a hyper-obvious way...the way a person can overcome challenges." We Adderallics don't like a normal life. We don't like the burden that's ironically tied to trifling "simple pleasures" like dinner with the family... or a short chat with a parent/sibling... or a slow day at work where there's time to just talk and reflect on what got us through the really busy days. Heck, even before I was addicted to this substance... during the summer break months... I was positively terrified of and averse to "short-term pleasure" or "value-less" activities. I would sit in my room from 8:00 AM to about 7:00 PM and simply study concepts related to a career I wanted to have in the future (I'm 18 now--but this "pre-addiction" reflection goes back to when I was 15-16; I still have the same obsessions, though it's a bit more clear to me now WHY I have those passions--and what road it can lead me down; anyway back to the main topic: ). Sometimes though, it would be more like 8:00 AM to about 12:00 AM or longer. I took a break in the afternoon to run for an hour or hour and-a-half... and I took a power nap of about 25-minutes sometime after that... but... well, I never "fit in" with the normative tide of social expectations. I despised the notion of a "balanced" life. But before I started Adderall... well, before I get to the subjective/"hidden" positive element I should say there were REAL problems: I had real trouble at school and my "range" of emotional experience was sort-of shallow and acquiescent (not depressed... just kinda detached... until I got to the part of the day where I could cram in some time with my obsession; even if it was only an hour or two there was a time dilation effect going on there where it felt "timeless", like a sort of infinity). But anyway, that said, there was a positive side to my pre-Adderall existence and it is something like: I wasn't afraid of getting tired. I often worked on my obsession (which was writing, or rather, studying the principles of direct response sales writing.. and the underlying psychology that powers those principles) at midnight after a day of sitting in classes while trying to creatively hide slips of paper from books I was studying talking about those principles... or hiding very successful sales letters that I would "study" in a sort of directionless obsessive frenzy of trying to find out everything that made it work as well as it did. And then after sitting in those classes I'd run like 5, 7, 10 miles and then do my homework over a period of 4 hours and THEN... FINALLY... I could do my "obsession-powered studying" but in a quiet, conducive environment. I was exhausted all day, every day...but I was free. Gosh, that's a real cliche isn't it. But it's true, even if it's incomplete (because being human is more complex than abstinence and a healthy obsession). Alas, I'm tired. I will continue this type of ranting later. I don't know when though. Ha, it's funny: see that biggest paragraph in this thread? After the first 30% of it my medication "kicked" and then I went off the rails and into a world of self-reflective babbling. Only 10mg though (if that's any solace to me). OK it's now a few minutes later. Anyway, my original point before derailing was that the Adderallic personality is obsessed with the drug's ability to trigger a feeling that "you are the hero or messiah in this situation; you can do this". By default, in my case, before Adderall, I did not have any sort of "hero complex" where I had some massive ego about the effort I was putting into life. I was doing it 'cause I hated slothfulness with a vile vengeance and found the stuff I was doing intrinsically valuable. I was sacrificing good grades/a social life/all the markers of high school success... for some hunch that the alternative path I was taking was, though a bit dumb, still effortful... and would thus lead me to a more sorta adventurous and meaningful life. BUT... WITH Adderall... well, I could do anything, anywhere, under any parameters instead of hiding from most of life. And so I think it ascribed a sort of intense pride to skills I always had and was always humble about. But that pride got entangled with the experience of being on Adderall. SO... basically, in unconscious form... I was telling myself "Actually, all that time I spent obsessed with sales copy-writing was completely worthless and... rather than being a smart and humble and careful person I was actually just a weak, innocent soul subject to the force of a stupid education system and NOW... with this Adderall... I get to redeem myself by being something of value in some arbitrary sense to the teachers and classmates. Damn it! I know it doesn't make sense but at least you love doing everything so shut up and head to class." Does any of this make any sense? I did amazing work throughout my time on Adderall but... It was done without any sense that it has any long-term worth. I only did those things to "please the teacher". It was done in a daze of self-gratifying pride. So that I could say, "See? Maybe the assignment is meaningless in the long term and you won't even have any damn MEMORY OF DOING IT... but... the fact of the arbitrary dopamine kicks you're getting from getting it done... WHILE using Adderall... means that your use of the drug in conjunction with arbitrarily-defined hard work... is a sufficient combination of actions to equal a meaningful life. Boom! The problem of meaning in life is solved for good, buddy. Now, repress this conclusion and go do something practical. Like going to the next class period." Does any of this make sense? I hope it does. I'm not trying to write an essay here though. As I start college (in 2 weeks!) and study psychology in a more discipline-oriented environment, maybe I'll be spending absurd amounts of time in the library studying both the science of Adderall use... and the breadth of real-life accounts of people enduring this mad hell. And maybe after a while gathering this "fuel" of impressions/ideas, I can write a real essay which posits the possibility that maybe, without Adderall dependency, you can eventually trigger some mad upward spiral that leads you to "fulfilling the full extent of your potential in life" rather than "easily accomplishing the goals of day to day life with Adderall and then losing all memory of ever having accomplished those goals". It's a vague, strange, even paralyzing desire (it preoccupies me all the time)... but... I really do want to write an essay like that and as far as my unconscious mind is concerned, it's the most "real" desire I've had in years. Because... I've always tried to run from the ambiguous cloud of anxiety surrounding my abuse patterns. Part of the reason (PART, not ALL) why... is because... high school was (in my subjective experience; I don't have delusions I swear) a humiliating, mocking, demoralizing, emasculating, even malevolent place... where maybe 3% of the teachers actually cared and NONE of the classes encouraged truly deep critical thinking applied to real problems. But now that I'm starting college, and studying psychology for that matter, I have a system which is organized so that my effort toward understanding Adderall addiction while actually battling it... is a "playable game". That is to say, college is designed to train you in critical thinking directed at REAL problems... and why not align that "training" with the heavily emotional body of experiences I have with Adderall use, abuse, and attempts to quit? And, well, what if I stopped thinking so shallowly about why I like studying the principles of salesmanship as they apply to written sales messages.? That is to say, maybe I don't want to have a career of just being a freelance sales copy-writer. Maybe what I really want is... to sell my own information products... maybe even something like a book or a detailed 100-page report... which... tries to explain the logical, sequential side of effective Adderall withdrawal... AND... bind that to the confusing emotional side of the reader's experience. That's kinda what this website does, after all. But still... while a blog post might be a unit of information large enough to give you one new tool... or another ounce of hope for a rough day... a book is a unit of information (theoretically) large enough to act like a person or a friend. As in, you get to know the author's thought process by seeing how they take a massive amount of information and organize it to be as goal-directed and useful and easy-to-understand-and-apply as possible. Maybe if I can't be the kind of friend that sets up spontaneous "simple pleasures"... I can be the kind of friend that cuts right to the heart of the matter... right to the core of somebody's suffering... and helps them engineer their own future. So now I'm thinking: okay, I have some raw materials, like the college environment... the fact that I'm studying Psychology... the massive library with lots of books on this exact subject (I already checked)... the fact of my current reality which is highly bound to this Adderall entanglement... my arbitrary-but-intense enjoyment of studying ideas relating to long-form sales copy-writing. Now what do I do with them? -- And, well, that's what we'll figure out. In the short-term... I really would like to write something like a preliminary essay about Adderall abuse (although the topic will change the more I study about it). Later down the road though... I would really find it useful to start outlining something like a book or report... the one I described earlier. And maybe sometime eventually I'll put together a very detailed advertisement which actually stops some unsuspecting Adderallic cold with the realization... that... something very valuable to them has just come into their attention. And we can go from there. I think that's just about all I can "plan out" because the scope of possibility is too wide to get more detailed quite yet. I'm gonna go exercise for a little while. Have a great day guys.

It's been a month (or two? or three?) since I posted last and... the reason why is... absurdly clear. Time vortex. Adderall makes your perception of time in such a way that... 4 hours can feel like a half-second and 24 hours at the same time. And for a better analogy... 1 week can feel like a couple hours and a month at the same time. And so you forget all the interpersonal relationships and social structures you're nested in... and react neurotically to them... because it's almost like the fact of the existence of your family reminds you that your 1 or 2 days of frenzied passion actually wasn't a full month of progress; it was just this tiny blip of intellect which you now have to pay for with all sorts of regret and rationalization. Well, let's see. What have I done? I graduated (with... get this... C's and D's; just sayin'). I have worked at my fast-food-type job for I don't know how long (I don't keep count and I hardly spend the money I earn; I just love to escape into a predictably industrious environment). I scribbled tons of notes on directionless projects that evaporated almost as quickly as I made the decision to start pursuing them (god, that's a long-winded sentence isn't it). I escaped into all sorts of self-help philosophies and doctrines to try and justify my Adderall state-of-mind with the fact of my morally righteous pursuit of effective modes of being. And I have made attempts to quit... 3 times... for 2-days each. Today is Day 1 of the 4th attempt. See, one of the things I'm scared of (perpetually so) is... the fact that... my parents are not industrious. And, by default, I am not industrious either (hence, the prescription for Adderall; I rationally justify it with "building neuro-plasticity that allows me to -- over the long-term -- feel a greater sense of urgency to do any given work"). But, I am, I guess, "orderly". Though I can get very sporadic and lateral in my thinking... I berate myself whenever I veer too far from a predictable routine. Whether or not I'm on meds I love to wake up early... and immediately hop into a cold shower... and immediately go work out for 90-120 minutes... and then immediately get into comfortable black-and-white clothing... and walk to the nearest coffee shop... and lay out my notebook and my laptop and cup of coffee.. and rip right into the nearest interesting or relevant thing to study. But the problem with all that is... by default... I often just don't do anything of value! I just sit there and hand-copy ideas from a textbook or article. And then occasionally write something original for 20 seconds and collapse from exhaustion... and then berate myself for that... and then get embarrassed. Hence, the compulsion (eternal compulsion) for Adderall. God, what an idiot I can be! Look at me go, blaming my parents' lack of favorable/inspiring temperamental traits for my own lack of those traits. OK, well, the ranting does me good sometimes. I like this forum because... it's full of people who are kinda just like me: you guys seem to have that prophetic quality... that is, you can predict your own future, or the future of anyone you talk to on this forum, because all of us are stuck (or "were" stuck) in that same primordial instinct-driven plateau of despondent fatigue, looking around... with nothing to see except, I guess, the judgment personified in the barrenness of your surroundings. God, I'm long-winded. I swear these thoughts are being spit out at lightning-speed because this is all I ever think about in my head. These abstract impressions of misery can crystallize themselves for like 16 hours straight if I don't consciously decide to stop. Although, you know, I did do this to someone I know a few days back (a girl, as it so happened)... and... to my bewilderment... she didn't abandon my horrid rambling! She actually replied in a manner that... was thoughtful and vivid and deeply encouraging. The following day, bursting with motivation, I took about 50mg and... under the pretense of "acting under the protective veil of somebody else's encouragement"... I had an ecstatic 5-hour period of studying something that "might help me" when I start my first semester in college in August. Christ. And the next day was similar (a smaller dose, but still 5 solid hours of intense focus). And now here I am. All out. I need help. Not just logical cognitive-behavioral quick-fixes. I need, as it seems a "catastrophe" that'll force me off this stupid cyclical self-abuse done inside a hyper-safe vacuum of ignorance... and make me fall somewhere where the consequences of my actions are made clear. But, damn it! It's not like I can ask God for that, can I? "God, send me to hell instead of this satiating middle-class over-protected purgatory". That just sounds pathetic and ungrateful. Hm.

Well anyway, how do I expect to awake tomorrow? My choices, of course, are: blithely, pessimistically, with the compulsion to pop another pill to briefly absolve myself of the deeper more “axiomatic” moral challenge in order to enter the domain of a higher-resolution, more short-term goal-directed frame which—as a result of entering—instantly sets fire to more of the surrounding and underlying territory… thus subjecting that small patch of goal-directed land to a catastrophic collapse into irrelevance. The flood will still drown it in a sea of anomalous details that invalidate all the “effort” I applied for those 5 fleeting hours of productive bliss. Anyway, it doesn’t matter whether or not I can articulate that. What matters is that I can actually keep the promise to myself that: tomorrow, I will wake up and immediately jump into life—without succumbing to that ultimate temptation. I will immediately make my bed… and jump into an ice-cold shower… and grab a cup of coffee… and breathe the morning air outdoors at 6:00 AM… and walk the dog while listening to podcasts which favorably package information related to upcoming exams into digestible impressions of thought that potentiate/recall formerly-studied information… and come back home to have a high-protein breakfast… and have a communal, mutually beneficial conversation with the members of my family… and reach school 30 minutes early to have time to read something like “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”… and then conscientiously enter each class with the intention of subordinating my pride to my receptive ignorance and the willingness to rectify that ignorance… and then head to my minimum-wage job with the intention of not feeling like it’s “below me” but rather… doing my duties dutifully and in a spirit of reciprocally influencing the quality of the customers’ days by assembling and packaging and serving the food under a guideline of favorable impressions left on those customers within the bounds of everything the restaurant can control/optimize. And then… end the day with another run… sufficiently lengthy and up a sufficiently steep incline… so as to burn that carbonized deadwood of limiting inferiority complexes that have (by that point) once again started to form under the weight of the transitory chemical imbalance. Ultimately, the question lying at the root of such a plan is: am I willing to change the things I can change… while accepting the things I can’t as implicit realities which I must work with (as opposed to balking at them)? — Yes, and the first step is a “good night’s rest”.

8:36 PM I must invest my life in something worthwhile or else it’ll go to waste and I’ll be dead before I take a first step. We’re always trapped in this dumb delusion that we have an infinite amount of time to dabble around in ignorance… But we don’t! It’s over! The ignorant bliss is over! What’s left? What’s left is the reality I’ve been hiding from incessantly with my greedy hoarding of heightened faculties. Why was that intrinsically wrong? It wasn’t! It was just an unsustainable means of attaining a power which I directed at something indeterminate. I had no clue that what I was doing — I just knew people accepted it… and it was easier than being in a sober, inattentive, lazy stupor. It’s better to be ballsy and bold than it is to be meek. But in the final analysis, I wasn’t really “bold”; I was just running on a treadmill of delusion — thinking I was productive and esoterically self-actualized… when I was really just expending energy in a direction that seemed to be justified by the hedonistic, short-term “positivity” it rendered. Was it completely useless? — No. Because it led to this moment—the moment of realization. But how do I use the moment of realization? — Well, I can probably either: (a) ignore it or (b) build a cohesive understanding of a more sensible way to move forward. What’s the most sensible way to move forward through life, from hereon out? — Well, the answer isn’t gonna strike me on the head like a flash from heaven! I have to sow the answer into being… through genuine moral striving. What does that “genuine moral striving” look like? — I have to let all the deadwood burn away, by deliberately subjecting myself to intense periods concentrating on articulating “top-down” rationalizations which question the overarching purpose of an assignment by first looking at life from a perspective of “becoming the best person I can possibly be within 5 years”—then scaling my frame of reference down over and over again until I finally concentrate on the sensible, rational purpose of doing the first 60 seconds of work on the respective task… and only then… beginning the task… and only then… begrudgingly, harrowingly, with great moral agony and voluntary subjugation to the “unfairness” and “cruelty” of the whole game… sowing the seed that will grant me a respective “step forward” in the overarching context of striving toward that vision of the ideal self. But it’s gotta be top-down. I can’t do bottom-up anymore. Without Adderall, surely it isn’t impossible but… it is exponentially more unnecessary and agonizing to do the homework assignment before you realize its intrinsic purpose in retrospect to the amount of effort it took to do it. With no motivation to begin with, it makes more sense to justify the living daylights out of doing it before you even begin… to start by looking at your 5-year goals… then 1-year goals… then 1-month goals… then 1 week… 1 day… 1 hour… 10 minutes… and then… as you gain an equilibrated insight on the meaning of 10 minutes of genuine moral striving in the frame of this one assignment… you operate within this active framework for the few minutes that it can sustain its untrammeled clarity and perceptual relevance… and maybe(!) … just maybe… you can do those 10 minutes of work… and then another 5 or 10… and then another 25… and then reap a little sapling of truth in your garden of moral striving. Look, it's pretty easy to roll a boulder downhill--at least, easier than it is to heave it uphill. With all the experience I've had journaling about my own emotional states... in a loop of pathologically high-resolution self-consciousness... it seems sensible to... instead of sleeping or eating or lounging around in front of unfinished work... just sit down and start viscerally going through the physical process of writing out the emotional states and rationalizations that beset me before I start any given assignment... and slowly... articulate actual reasons why it's a good idea to get started. It's only a crutch and it doesn't make the pain worse... but... it does create momentum that justifies the pain. I think (I have a vague suspicion) that the amount of influence we have over other people is often imperceptible and governed by no specific laws. Take, for example, the randomness of seeing some homeless guy playing a spellbinding guitar solo... to which you respond by tossing a couple quarters at him. Then, you're on your merry way and... that guy who just gave you 35 seconds of spellbinding transcendence (of time, self-awareness, compulsive thoughts about your fatigue/hunger/etc) will eventually stop playing and regress into a fetal ball of semi-starvation in the cold street... a pitiful animal who--just a couple hours before--delivered a small crowd into a state of collective, transient divinity. What's my point? Damn it, I don't need to always have a point but I think it's: the "specifics" of your "moral striving" doesn't have to be understood by everybody. There's no perfect thing to do at every given moment of your life--and often, the most wretchedly "pointless" activities--as long as they require time and attention and vision and effort--can render the greatest long-term value... often in virtually imperceptible ways. Goodnight guys. (I've regressed back to "Day 1", by the way.)

Today is "Day 7" of sobriety! And... it's 9:10 PM so... it's almost the start of Day 8. Day 8 is (if I remember correctly) the streak I managed to reach in the initial (most active) stage of me posting on this thread... back in February or so. It's really quite amazing how "plastic" the brain is and how... even if you throw it into a wretched burning fire... it finds a way to bring a certain "musical continuity" to your experience. Even on a really painful, exhausting, begrudging day, it's not just one linear experience of one linear negative emotion; there are "ebbs" and "flows" and some amount of autonomous control over how you respond to those things to learn from them and determine the course of the next moment. I must admit, though; the one "lifeline" for me is... this sort of "flaring pride" I have for my ability to abstain from anything that's "lazy". I never give in to the temptation to sleep or scroll endlessly through my phone or anything. If I can't do shit, I can still walk; a few days ago I walked for 6 or so hours straight along sidewalks and just hopped into random coffee shops to chug down black coffee every 3 hours to keep me going. But I didn't stop. Or yesterday, for example, I spent 80 minutes walking through neughborhood streets/a new local park, reached a coffee shop to do 40 minutes' worth of homework, then walked 60 minutes back home and then ran 7.3 miles. OK, time to sleep. I'm not going to draw this message out endlessly. But here's a "nugget of [at least partly] earned wisdom" I gained... Most people around you (anywhere you go) are, by the fundamental laws of nature, not really willing to accept or "vibe with" change. They will do everything to preserve perverse, old belief systems and hide in shallow "cold comforts" like proverbial pigs in shit. That's why success in any given pursuit is proportionately meaningful and "real": because a "hierarchy" governs it. A hierarchy, by definition, has an exponentially enormous clump of "pigs in shit" at the bottom... and as you cascade upward, you get less and less people but those people are more and more hyper-actualized. That said...: (what relevant thing did I want to say?) -- There are so many people suffering from an addiction that it's just unbelievable. And if you start to commune with the masses, one of the things that'll just naturally tend to happen is you'll drown in a sea of real, genuine pity and acceptance from these people... reinforcing the carbonized shit comprising your pathetic, decrepit paradigms of inferiority. I think there's a point in there (what is it?) and it's this: you ultimately have to take responsibility for your own change... and... stop comparing your degree of suffering or degree of decrepitness to other people. Your burden is horrible enough; stop trying to heave somebody else's by identifying with them. You've been dealt certain cards and... other people have been dealt different cards but... the one continuity is the randomness of the whole thing, the "bad luck" you can rationalize out of the hand you've been dealt, and the "luck" you can engineer by exploiting the unique set of opportunities you get to play with. That was very poorly (or at least in-cohesively) struck together but... such is life. I'm going to bed.

Ha, that's the double-edged sword! On one end of the coin, adolescence is supposed to be a time of venturing out into challenging circumstances and coming back with "data" to integrate into your personality (which amphetamines have done to quite an extent, for all intents and purposes). On the other end, if you fly too close to the sun (which there is a far greater tendency to do in youth) you just spiral exponentially into long-term problems later in adulthood... and then the regret/blame falls on your "past self". It's a silly conundrum but a (what should I call it?).... well, let me restart that sentence: My use of amphetamines has reminded me that my life has no intrinsic meaning to it--or, not enough to (on its own) justify the regulation of drug temptation. So what? -- So, if I were to truly quit, I have to replace the drug with a meaningful life. And I really don't know what that looks like yet; I'm learning every day and... this most recent (so far, successful) "stepping down process" will hopefully help.