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.

Stupid computer. Stupid desk. Stupid blithe, distraction-less environment. You know, I really do feel this raging guilt pulsating through my veins if I spend even a split-second "procrastinating" in any traditional manner... so I know how to make a room look dull enough to be completely free of things to divert your attention to. And I don't open social media, ever, when I set out to complete something. I just keep myself locked in a fixed gaze on the task at hand... so that even if I don't accomplish shit I can tolerate my miserable self for knowing I tortured off all the extraneous compulsions to do anything but keep my attention in a locked, hyper-targeted gaze. Aim the arrow... the shot will come eventually. Just keep aiming with an incessant obsessiveness that burns off the deadwood that clouds your vision. Eventually, it'll become a little more fun and a little less like hell. And eventually, the cataract will break and shatter and out I will gain clear sight... clear sight of the world around me and of what I can do... of what's worth doing. Meaning (real meaning) is a biologically-orchestrated feeling and it's real in that sense; it's not to be found in a goddamn stationary, punctual, symmetrical, fluorescent-light-laden prison... it's to be found in the world out among people... out among exposure to reality, and a careful awareness and acceptance of that reality... not in digging your own grave to run from reality... to bury yourself in a delusion and close your eyes and scream. Or, worse yet, to think you're not worthy of screaming... of doing an activity that expresses your utmost discontent with the degree of lies you've been force-feeding yourself... to appear sane in a world of satiated, blithe, comatose people... I digress. It's counterproductive to scream cynically into oblivion. It's also counterproductive to hold the belief that I can't finish this stupid essay...; maybe biologically or "neurophysiologically" I just don't have the juice to fire up brain cells to operate rapidly at a level of abstraction high enough to cohesively interpolate thoughts about a boring, personally meaningless topic... but... God knows, maybe it's just because I'm in a room that expedites/keys up hunger, anger, loneliness and tiredness... the trio (or "quatro") that makes any cynical belief system buttressed/reinforced through proof of its reality (as suggested by the immediacy of your stupid, baseless pain). But I guess maybe what I'm trying to do by sitting here and letting these thoughts/physiological/psychological states brew is... I'm trying to desensitize myself to their influence... until all that's left is a realization of the intrinsic value of completing that assignment. That's what I did in 2020 and 2021... for 16 months... for 10 or 14 hours a day... and it got me Straight As! It also killed me... but it left the part that was capable of subjecting itself to quiet brooding misery until--layers and layer of numbing later--a still, unwavering core of awareness was found to be awake. You know, that reminds me of a lot of funny memories: I recall this one time (sometime in 2020, here in this very same miserable room, before I even touched Adderall)... when I... well, no I actually left this room and went outside and spent 5 or 6 hours daydreaming about being a completely different person. When I "snapped out" of it I got so sick of and embarrassed by my own behavior that I actually had the urge to vomit. It wasn't a pleasant daydream; what disgusted me about it is I tried to simulate a normal, challenge-infused life into a character conceptualized in a dreamscape... which I used as some sort of sick mechanism to escape reality. And yet I kept doing it! In my room, in my bed, in the big blank quiet office room with the giant chandelier and the enormous wooden desk with the nice grayish office chair with special cushioning... where I would curl up my body into a fetal ball, close my eyes, and seep into these daydreams until like 2 AM. Viktor... no Victor Frankenstein did that right? In the (towards the) very end of the novel, when he was chasing his creature right up to the North Pole... he tried to find a solemn reprieve from the misery of his obsessive frenzied pursuit... by daydreaming that his family was still alive... and sorta frollicking around in sceneries of aggrandized childish beauty. What was my point? I don't know, man. I just know it helps to think out all the vomit-thoughts before they take root in the "shadow" and start to grow into inexplicable emotional states of vicious, uncontrollable anger.

Yeah that sounds incredibly useful. I guess you’re (in essence) trying to use a mental crutch which forces you to not even initiate that cycle of rationalization which accompanies ruminating/envisioning all the possible ways you might screw up/relapse in the future. And by not initiating it, you sorta play a game with the compulsion to do so; you catch the parasitic thought dead in its tracks and find a sneaky way to redirect your thinking.

Good-morning! I'm going to spam the living daylights out of this thread while I try to overcome these first couple days of withdrawal pains. I want to share something on here; it's a really naive, pathetic little "dialogue" I wrote up while suffering a light fever in early November 2022. This was after about 5 conscientious, "pedal-to-the-metal" days on a prescription 20mg Adderall dose. For all I cared, I was a generally "virtuous" person; note that I'm 17--which means (in part) that I haven't had much time to explore the idea of virtue... and the degree to which people can and do deviate from it appallingly with tremendous consequences. And so... being extremely naive (even moreso than now)... I saw the prospect of taking 40 miligrams as an outright sin... as something to view with nauseating contempt... because the compulsion for me to do so was terrifying to my brittle belief systems. So here's what I wrote (censored all uses of my name--for reasons I don't fully know)... If I had those pills, I would studiously sit down and approach my unfinished work with a candor and diligence which would overcompensate for the brief hiccup in health consequences that it would cause.) But what then? (Now, now, []! Don’t be so hasty! You’d like to see me act this out, wouldn’t you? It wouldn’t cost you much. I mean, it will cost you your conscience… but not your entire faculty of moral understanding. Come on! Do you really want to (it’s trying to deceive me here) do this [] assignment? The two or three [] assignments? The [] Assignment?… All with your limited mental faculties!? You have intellect but… you don’t have grace. You don’t have dynamism. You have the machinations of intellect but no lubricant to make the machine operate flawlessly… unerringly… with no delays or… Heaven forbid… self-consciousness! Oh, Dear God, [], your self-consciousness! Isn’t it a sore! Doesn’t it terrify you! I don’t want to take it away… I just want to make it… work correctly. You know what I mean, []! You’ve explored these ideas yourself! You know that Western society carries on its shoulders this erroneous notion that everyone should be neurotically concerned with enslaving their individuality. To build a picket fence with electrical wiring around it… and to put the self on a pedestal right in the middle… and signs all around the fencing saying [Full Name]! The Great Intellectual Hero (Claims he can Change the Fabric of Being! Discovered the Secrets of Spiritual Enlightenment (Learn all About It!) Listen To His Story! His Story of “how I sat in one spot for 7,500 hours over a period of 2 years!” (And... what he learned!) Dear God, self-consciousness is only useful because it lets you ground yourself in reality. It helps you see yourself in the shoes of different roles—and to cooperate with other people who have roles that align with yours—so that you can work together to keep this world turning. But how have you used it, []?! How have we used it? — We’ve used it to torture ourselves out of Freedom—out of the Garden of Eden. We are fallen men. Our righteous place in the paradisal state has been taken from us— ) But maybe the point isn’t to go back into those walls and to live like a clueless bunch of blind infants! (Do you really have the fucking time to establish such an erroneous argument, []?) This isn’t just about the game I have to play tomorrow and on Friday. It’s about the game I will play for much of my life. (Oh, Dear God, Great Good God [], I’m not your enemy! I’m not trying to tell you to do this forever! Just do it to show yourself who you could become if you oriented yourself properly—and while you catch that fleeting short-term glimpse, maybe you can take care of the dozen things you’ve neglected.) Etc., etc. Look, I hope you get the point. And the point is this: the problems I wrestled with (in my psyche) back then... are the exact same nascent, unresolved, partly-unconscious conflicts I'm wrestling in a chaotic loop. Ouroboros... the ancient symbol depicting a dragon eating its own tail. But... what else? Well, if I can fish out some sense... and reel myself into rationality... by recognizing the timeframe across which this problem stabbed me, burned me, drowned me, left me reborn in a hedonistic stasis, then re-tempted me into cowardly workaholicism... then maybe, (what?) then maybe I can tolerate myself a little more--because I can realize that I'm not actually a clueless infant washing up on a primordial shore when I wake up the first morning to withdrawal pains. Why is that useful? -- Because if I'm not an infant, I'm not limited to the reaction of wailing, kicking, sleeping, and blithe/slow exploratory behavior. (What do you mean by that last part? -- I mean, I'm not limited to waking up and standing up and just kinda "going through the motions" and "feeling my way" through the pains, only to regress into my other 3 infant-like states: falling asleep or starting to scream when the exploration [sensory stimulation through coffee, or long walks, or complaining in a long and pointless and guilt-inducing rant to a close friend] gets too tiring.) Okay, so if you're not limited to "wailing, kicking, sleeping, and blithe/slow exploratory behavior"... what has the past conceivably taught you which you can use to make this withdrawal experience different in a positive (transformative) way? -- I can avoid hedonic money-spending (which I've done a LOT while withdrawing in the past)... which means I won't have to be confronted by angry people indirectly affected by that spending. (What else?) -- I can avoid slouching in a chair and ruminating on the past in a coma... as if to "pass the time" while simultaneously creating the grounds for severe and logarithmically worsening depression. (What else?) -- I can avoid walking for too long; strange as it seems, my habit of walking for like 4 hours a day while suffering withdrawal agonies (a) exhausts me, and (b) translates that exhaustion into an increased unwillingness to perform anything else, and (c) which is further reinforced by the guilt trip that happens when I start to ruminate on/rationalize this notion: "I spent the whole day walking and ruminating and brooding... so why should I come home for 2 hours to do homework only to feel the compulsive urge to just keep walking afterward?" (what do you mean? -- I mean: I have a tendency (possibly moreso than other people) to... only feel willing to do any given piece of work... if... my routine prior to that activity and after that activity... is filled with other responsibilities... so as to feel proud in an overarching sense of the work I had done. And... what's the downside of that? -- The downside is I hate weekends where I have 1 hour of homework surrounded by 23 hours of precosmogonic goop... chaos in its highest order resolution... walloping me with the agonies of having to exist without a game to play (that is, a piece of work to complete... whether it be working out or homework or a rote fast food job or even hanging out [through some meaningful medium, like a board game or a movie with challenging/nuanced moral themes] with my family). Okay, what else can you avoid? -- Well, I covered the whole spectrum. So, what can I add into the category of "positive things I've done while simultaneously suffering from withdrawal pains?" Or, first of all, what is already in that category? -- Reformulate the question. Make the question worth answering as a standalone thing. What falls into the category of "positive things you've done while simultaneously suffering from withdrawal pains"? -- I've worked at my "rote" kitchen job. (Why was this "positive"? -- It was playful; it was repetitive but I did it with a childlike playfulness and a synergistic aspect to it which outsourced the problem of existential dread to a goal-directed frame that constrained the degree to which I had the time and the extra willingness to deviate from the fun and engagement offered by the job... to transfer energy into rumination. What else? -- I watched a movie, but learned from it and paid attention to it and it wasn't a damn sitcom or something satiating. What else? -- I put in "genuine moral striving" at the gym--really revving up my capacity to push through fatigue in a very visceral way. What else? Or, perhaps, What is something positive (something with rewarding valence) that you did in relation to homework... which justified your withdrawal-related suffering...by proving to you that you were capable of doing challenging, stationary, cognitively-demanding work without Adderall...shortly after coming off it...while suffering those withdrawal pains? -- Advertising. I wrote that ad (hand-copied it) and studied it (took some notes) for 4 hours. Why? Cause it was an intrinsically interesting thing to do. I don't know where the hell those notes are, 9 months later (or 7, whenever it was August...)... and they don't help me with anything in any direct way... but the memory of doing that on day 12 of withdrawal fills me with efficacy I guess. Even on day 1 of that withdrawal cycle, I went for like a 8 mile run, worked for 1.5 hours on studying info for some "mock sales letter" (for a portfolio-type thing)... and I even (in a daze of obsession) decided to go for another 4.5 mile run... and lift some weights for maybe 30 minutes... and in between, I spent time poring over sales/copywriting notes and... occasionally... doing some fiction reading for fun (but it was stimulating fun)... and I took naps a couple times but those naps didn't interfere with the overarching continuity of the industrious routine! What can I learn from that? -- That life starts with volition and attention. Or maybe attention is a precursor (or even inextricable partner) of volition... and the action that follows varies based on what kind of a load you're bearing (like the load of withdrawal) but... BUT... who gives a shit!?? As long as it's genuine moral striving, you are... bound to make progress. Stupid and miserable and weak and incapacitated as you are... you aren't dead. And Goddamnit... if you aren't dead you shouldn't succumb to those stimuli/compulsions to move towards it.. like dodging responsibility, sleeping extraneously, etc. What do you mean? -- I mean, go do something... and as long as there is power in you to do it... look the damn monstrously-sized goal dead in the eyes and then scale it down to the smallest step forward you can take... and then take that... and then let the next goal present itself to you as a consequence of reaching the first one. But reach the first damn goal first! (Stop 8:43 AM)

@Jon B @Nicky_B @SleepyStupid thanks for the recent comments and… for keeping a continuity to this thread so I don’t get discouraged/disintegrate instantly into a self loathing stupor. Unfortunately (and in some ways quite obviously), I fell right back into the cycle; I sent that last post on Monday, stayed in a withdrawn comatose daze on Tuesday, and took 40mg come Wednesday in a rebellious, cathartic compulsion to redeem myself of all my pathetic weak self-denigrating habits which not only kept me weak but also hurt my family in a roundabout second hand way. And so that’s what I did on Wednesday and it was ecstatic productive bliss… with a fair share of genuine challenges which can’t be dismissed as purely “bad”. I mean, it was a beautifully rich day of wrestling with all sorts of complicated ideas in my classwork/homework. From there I decided to taper down to 37.5mg; pathetic but the point is that I decided to pay attention to the prospect of stepping down. Attention is our greatest and most readily yielding ability; as long as we direct it properly, if we don’t deviate too far or too stupidly, it’ll inevitably thrust us into action when the right times come. So whatever. Thursday, 37.5 mg + a boatload of caffeine to render the net “productive bliss” higher than it was the day before. And today I took 30… and managed to weasel out that morally contemptible, pathetic, half-assed devilish feeling of brooding pride associated with an ‘A’ on a big exam. Plus… a heap of finished assignments; I mean, god, it’s overwhelming but I also can’t help but feel a veil distancing me from the appreciation of my efforts. Why? — Well, are you (I’m asking myself) are you satisfied with the fact that you weren’t able to pull anything back down to earth out of that cloud of ecstasy? — No. What could have made you proud? — If I had taken those meds inside of a context where the work had a life or death type of valence. So, you’re saying that: your proclivity to use Adderall is associated with the desire to engage in work which is bound to a goal framework that has adrenaline-rattling risk associated with it. Yeah, ultimately (even though that’s long winded) that’s about right. But if you wanted to simplify your desire into an axiom of sorts, what would that axiom be? — I want my miserable, boring, scrawny pathetic life to be less like a solitary cell and more like… a broad range of risk-taking activity which, well, it’s not “risk taking” in the adrenaline junkie sense… but in the sense of being expected and forced to push and break through the borders of your limitations… maximally.. so that you don’t have a split second of free time to be thinking “oh, I wish I could make my life more stimulating with Adderall”. A storm is on the horizon and… it’s gonna knock me off. These “ideas” are just ideas. I’m going to try to make it the next 2 days without this horrid devil in my system but… I have only a vague subset of hunches as to what I might do to stave off the proclivity to dramatically “surprise” the people in my family with erratic, horrifying and otherwise-disorienting behaviors What are they? — I guess I could (as I’ve done before) wake up and immediately plunge into a cold shower. Then, breathe intensely and deeply while sitting still for some x number of minutes, maybe 5-10. Then, go for a walk while some relatively interesting podcast anchors me into a “sane” topic of thinking… creating like a thin sheet of ice on top of the propensity to start brooding in cynicism. And from there, as long as I perpetually keep myself anchored into “conservative-type” environments (that is to say, for example, a desk where I have a set of clear, cohesively organized materials laid out; or a gym — even if all I’m doing is walking on a treadmill), then I can conceivably see myself being able to perform actions which are “sane” and, however slowly-evolving, lead to marked progress in relation to some goal. Even if all I do on that desk is battle that monstrous hedonic compulsion to fall asleep… if I can just keep my damn spine erect and keep breathing at a slightly deeper and faster pace than normal… I can probably at least manage a routine where I hand-copy, word for word, sentences in a textbook onto a notebook… for 10 minutes at a time… followed by a 2-minute break with eyes closed, doing a mindfulness type activity. I swear to god and perhaps on my mother’s life that… so long as there is still air on earth to breathe tomorrow… I’m going to follow this routine and enforce it with an iron fist.

Took 10 milligrams at 3 PM (it's 9:30 PM now). It's not 40mg but... I'm still a tad bit disappointed. I'm typing this little message and it somehow feels disingenuous because I know that, once again, I'm cheating. Once again, there is some part of its "essence" which will now be compromised because the faculties I'm using to abstract and generate new words/concepts/ideas... has been hijacked by a drug that makes me just a little too interested in things that I would otherwise dismiss... thus obscuring whatever you might call authenticity and replacing it with... with frills. And thus, the truth is hidden inside of a mist of distortions... like one of those carnival mirror places. I recall late July/early August of 2022... when I went cold turkey off Adderall (and coffee) and stayed that way for 15 days(!); I decided to stick with the truth but only with the shallowest "logical support"... ideas that were intuitively true ("going through this will make me stronger")... but had no accompanying platform of stable, cohesive goals that would allow me to take the next step after the flood. And so... the flood came... and cleansed my weary, egomaniacal, neurotic, overwrought soul... and by the end of the most wretched physical pains, I was left with nothing but a silent brooding... a cancerous sickness of the spirit associated with the fact that: I still had no friends; I had no job; I had only 2 interesting classes... and that interest is inextricably chained to a monstrous workload. The complexity of the broader world walloped my stupid, lofty house of cards. What's my point? I think it's this: the whole business of quitting can't be justified by anything like an "ideology", at least not for me. Here's a thought: periods like the Renaissance/Enlightenment were chock-full of scientists and artists whose careers were led by an "embodied" vision of the future. And to "feel" that ambition that they felt... all you have to do is look at some of the overwhelming beauty in the art or architecture from that era. I guess anybody's goals--to have a shot at success--have to possess that "transcendent" subtlety to them; it has to strike you as something so meaningful that... no matter how far you are from the long-term goal... you're awestruck and grateful and overwhelmed by the fact that you have the resources and life to pursue it.

Zap! Woah, it's been over a month since I last posted. And... Adderall really screws with your time-perception. I swear to god... Just pop a pill, enter that ecstatic daze of focused bliss, repeat 15 times... and whap! You "wake up" from your quasi-comatose daze and your room is stuffed with 3x5 flashcards (hundreds of them, everywhere)... and notebooks with pages and pages of rich, dense analysis... and the only problem is you put this elaborate labyrinth of knowledge together for nobody. Nobody but yourself... and an advantage in a couple classes that you really don't give a shit about (if you contextualize them in a bigger picture). That said... today's been a pretty decent "Day 1" of withdrawal. Got up at 6 AM and, until 12 PM, I did not stop walking, running or lifting weights. Constant light to moderate exercise, either at the gym or around my neighborhood or whatever. And whenever I took a break, it would be paired with deep, rapid breathing. Keeping the oxygen and blood circulating through the system is a viciously efficient defense against the usual depression/anger/"dissociative" suicidal contemplations and ramifications that start sputtering out of a million different memories/amygdala-activating associations. But that's just thanks to the fact that... I have a day off from school today. Let's see how far I get before... inevitably... I fall apart again.

I'm tired. Ridden with fatigue... albeit not in the flavor of "cynical, self-righteous, and self-destructive". That's a horrible direction to move in... even though... it's literally the most pleasant and tempting one when you start an experience with withdrawal. It's just that, this assignment, it's walloping me with something like intimidation. It's laughing at me. And I'm, on the surface, just casually dismissing it (like, "Screw this! What kind of poorly-formatted learning model is this? What kind of website is this? Why isn't there any string to tug here-and-there which might give me a chance to do something remotely creative inside the assignment?"). That's disappointing. Although, it's still possible to turn rote orderly, box-governed note-taking (2 words, 10 words, per box) into a certain type of art. I opened my laptop to witness an amazing sight of: a split-screen, split between two Chrome windows, with about 30 tabs open on one side where I was Googling definitions/ideas... and the other side had another 15 tabs open... and in the assignment itself, with all its fact-oriented questions ("define this"; "go to this website and paste this specific address into this box"), I actually followed the damn rules, and found a certain vivacity in the feelings associated with taking my laterally-thinking, sporadic, spontaneous thought process and shoving it through a narrow tunnel of motor actions: click this tab; place your finger onto the mousepad; click (apply pressure to it) and drag across a certain span of text listing an address of some government official; press ctrl+c; click (apply pressure to the mousepad) on the tab with the assignment; click on the specific goddamn box wherein you are supposed to drop the piece of information; press ctrl+v. God, agonizing as it was it was addictive in the type of torturously ecstatic kick I got from accomplishing every micro-action... FORCING myself (while full of this back-burning Adderall stimulation) to conform to the rules of the game. I'm tired. I'd better get back to work or,... as close to it as i can conceivably try to get.

I've dwindled right back to the "starting line" so to speak. At least if you look at it from a purely factual perspective. But anyway, I don't think it's worth it to count progress merely by how many days I've managed to begrudgingly abstain from Adderall; that line of thinking (at least for me) often forces me to disregard/forget about the genuine "implicit learning" that's going on while I abuse Adderall. This is not an easy problem to "rationally" explain your way out of. I don't know if any of you guys also experience this: Whenever you talk to friends, there's always a nagging compulsion to find some way to mention your problem with Adderall; When you listen to that compulsion, you start to "rationalize", as in, explain all the reasons why your use of Adderall is associated with an implicit messianism ("I'm an amazing person, aren't I? I'm confronting all sorts of real problems left and right, and moving forthrightly through the world... and battling with actual fatigue and cognitive pain and strenuous/ demanding activity... to the point where my head aches and I'm ending my days with dozens of pieces of evidence that I accomplished a bunch of meaningful stuff.") And, I mean, it's true. That's the damn problem: this addiction is unique insofar as it actually (if you're willing) makes you capable of undertaking genuinely meaningful, justifiably "righteous" work. So it's literally impossible to rationally think up some kind of philosophy that will get you through the pangs of withdrawal... or the regret of the inability to achieve the same heightened state of focus. What's funny about that is: I heard somewhere that the way you build a skill can be neurophysiologically tracked across time. If you're trying to learn a song on the piano, and you never played the piano before, the first few sessions of playing are going to involve activation in dozens of brain areas... in a very sporadic/spontaneous/disorganized way. But as you get better and better... and you start to learn the song... and you engrain the song into your rote memory... what happens is a very small, but very densely-packed chunk of space in the back of the left-hemisphere... gets stuffed with neurons that are hyper-effective at repeating the mapped pattern of behavior. Point is: you can -- across time, while indulging in the false messianism and self-aggrandizement produced by your use of Adderall -- build a hyper-effective, densely-bundled piece of real estate in your brain that works like a "Adderall-Craving Machine" which is then capable of spitting out, in fractions of a second, viciously polished reasons why Adderall really isn't that bad after all... and I'm just using it to be a good person.... and etc., etc. I'm tired, man. I mean, I'm not going to stop moving (either cognitively or physically) but it's going to be tiring. I got up today and immediately made my bed and went for a 45-minute walk, then had a light but protein-rich breakfast, had some small talk with my family, and came into my room to start typing up this little post. I don't know what your guys' experience is but... I find that I can As long as I can keep "moving forward" somehow--walking, running, doing the dishes, getting a stash of 100 3x5 index cards and hand-copying individual sentences from a stupid textbook and then shuffling the damn pile so that it takes up a ton of space on my desk... and then taking a shot at writing original sentences which somehow comment on/interpret the ideas contained in the textbook--even if I'm writhing in agony from the withdrawal, it's like I can prevent an "exponential" growth effect to the latter half of the withdrawal symptoms (depression, nightmares, cynicism, denigration of "my stupid worthless classes and miserable naiveté"). I guess part of that is my above-average neuroticism (tendency toward anxiety) and when that shit really fires up, it opens up a whole new world of hell. How about you guys? To give some context, this last "slip-up"/"workaholic bender" has lasted since Sunday (so, 4 days); the most I've taken in one day is 50mg--the lowest, 25mg. I used it on being hyper-productive at my fast food job (at which I spent 13 hours), completing an onslaught of 9 late assignments (over the course of... 15 hours!) (ironically, those assignments accumulated during my last "withdrawal window" which I sustained for 9 days), and reading dense psychology-related manuscripts for a psych class (for about 8 hours). And lots of long-distance running; I can't believe I've contaminated this good habit with superficial stimulation but... yeah, I've been doing 7-8 miles a day as usual, though faster and up steeper inclines this time. Ha! I caught myself there for a sec; it's hard to not feel proud of my accomplishments, even if they're sorta oozing with a "disingenuous underpinning". But anyway, that's my state of affairs. It was by no means a fun 4 days of blissful ecstatic focus. A lot of those study sessions involved short breaks wherein all I could do was complain unnervingly to friends (here's a short excerpt: ALL human beings are massively dysfunctional. We're all a bunch of primordial apes screaming obscenities at the top of our lungs... trying desperately to figure out at least something about how to act in the world. And we fuck up time and time again. We're a bunch of blundering baboons... with no [pre-installed] resolve to get better. That resolve has to be worked up to... through tons and tons of iterative dialogue: complaining, worrying, fetishizing, idealizing, scrapping stupid shit, planning useful shit; it's just a never-ending maze. And then when we've finally talked about it long enough and exhausted our "time-waster circuit", as long as we ran it with competent people, maybe we can start to synergize. But it doesn't happen on its own... or by default... or in the "natural course of human development". ) I also found myself, quite unsuspectingly, subject to bouts of extreme emotion. So as to confuse, startle and even viscerally nauseate me. Random memories of me with my family flashed before my eyes and along with them an "emotional valence" which was like: the intense desire to apologize. For what? For something, maybe for "the class of all things which you did which are contemptible in some final sense". It's what people sometimes describe as "life flashing before your eyes". And then, 5 minutes pass, I drive this intense emotion into a ditch of despair, I look around me (a desk covered in rich, thick, viciously articulate notes), and I think, "Ha! Haha! You idiot, what are you all wound up for? Look at this! Look at this work of art; your workspace is a work of art in and of itself. Nobody you've ever met can ever dare to venture so far into chaos and derive so much wealth of knowledge! What an idiot you are! What a petty fella... possessed by trifles! You childish genius, you! Always cracking me up!" And then I stand up, order a coffee (I'm at a cafe usually), grab it, sit back down, take a sip, and that sip instantly revivifies my ravaged conscience. "It's a game, after all! This life thing, it's a game and you are merely a naive little player. Good! See that girl sitting a few feet away from you? Isn't she pretty! I'll bet you can really impress her (albeit subconsciously) if you ride the wave of caffeination that's about to kick in and commingle with the Adderall. Eh? Not bad, eh? That'll give you a burden to bear; a responsibility to lug; a purpose in your purposeless life.!" Yes! YES! YES IT WILL, you're goddamn right you GENIUS! And so I spend another 3 hours at the cafe... dancing with the keys on the keyboard... scribbling infinitely deep notes, oozing with viscous nectar. A slow, deep, rich burn of learning... as I feel the individual neurons getting myelinated second after second... YES! Well, and that epoch ends, I come home, take another 21mg, and work voraciously and ravenously (like a rabid [albeit stoic] dog) at my job... preparing perfectly-organized meals for the hungry, lonely, angry, tired customers... waiting for a sliver of satiation to wash them clean. I can give it to them! I have the energy! I have the mental toughness to bear my burden with unwavering vivacity. Untrammeled continuity. Watch me, God! Watch me, Beelzebub! I--a mortal man--am dancing with your energies... one foot in order, the other in absolutely unbearable chaos. The neurosis, I guess, is like the pang of conscience telling me, "Well, if you committed such a miserable sin, you might as well put in more effort. No, more than that. Yes, more than that." It forces me to perform at my absolute peak... and then (when I hit the peak of the pyramid) a new pyramid forms from the peak, diverging infinitely upward into a "divine domain" of productivity. Anyway, I drank a coffee (a tall one) toward the end of the shift, ended on a high note, devoured a free employee meal and... came home [ravaged by neurosis] to go for a 7.192 mile walk/run. Such is life. And now, what do I make of this? Well, one thing's for sure: I'm definitely not "defeated" after my Adderall bender; it was a masochistic rendezvous but at least it wasn't just a bullet to the head (which is the "zombie" effect -- the result of not engaging the incentive reward system soon enough after Adderall kicks in). If I sleep, I can sleep for 10 hours tonight... but it has to be bound by some kind of a schedule; there is nothing more agonizing (to me) than to not only suffer this withdrawal... but to suffer it without any structure; to let myself fall apart and bleed uncontrollably in the face of my responsibilities. Other than sleep, I intend to (hm), well, keep moving as much as I need to, to complete the work I was doing for the last 4 days. I guess now that I've come back from the chaotic hell, and got the gold (the wisdom inextricably linked with my strange experience), I can put that wisdom to use to add some "beauty" to these essays I was writing for school. They have the blood and bones, but now I can really make 'em shine.

I spiraled right back to Day 0. But it's not like I really lost anything; I took a detour and it can be part of the broader "success story". But yesterday before I took it I actually decided to journal about what the compulsion was coming from. But after doing so for a while, I think I figured out something pretty useful, and it's this: I think that what I've been trying to treat with ADD is a brain calibrated for obtaining success through an obsession. On the Big 5 Personality Model (which assesses personality pretty predictably; and it doesn't shift all that much, if at all, when using stimulant medications) I'm very high in openness, intellect, but like 3rd percentile (extremely low) on industriousness.... the dimension that determines your biological predisposition to "hard work". And that creates a conundrum for me where, like, I feel like I have a lot of "potential" to do anything I put my mind to but... I never really feel like doing anything besides goal-directed work which meets a very strict set of criteria. I mean, I love to exercise regardless of the context, but for any sort of "mental exertion", I always gravitate toward writing... mostly on deeply meaningful topics... and when I get that balance just right I could spend 12 hours a day on that. It envelops me in something like the brain circuit responsible for pretend play in young kids; I really feel like I'm playing something for the sake of the game (and not for the sake of an extrinsic result)... and that circuit can keep running in my head until I'm forced to stop and do something else. Which really sucks when I'm at school... 'cause it means I only want to do the things that meet these criteria, and everything else is like... has too few parameters to creatively manipulate for long stretches of time... so I'm stuck with a paradox wherein the lack of complexity is what repels me from the work. And as anyone with ADD would know, this repulsion is a discernible visceral sensation. It's horrifically real. That work, for all your "primordial brain" is concerned, is a predatory animal... and the only way to fight it (as it seems in the heat of the moment) is with Adderall (which buttresses the desire to fight). Or... worse, if you don't decide to fight it when you're on Adderall, I think what happens is your dopamine system starts to generate a disproportionate boatload of consummatory reward. Consummatory reward is like the, "I got away from the predator! I can sit back and relax and calm down!" -- it's satiating. Whereas incentive reward is the, "I completed this [one part of the goal]! Now I'm motivated to go on to the next part." -- it's motivating. Either one (or both at different times) can be stimulated to a disproportionately high degree when you take Adderall, but... I think the consummatory reward system gets overstimulated -- creating the "Adderall Zombie" effect -- if you decide to deviate from your main goal while you're on Adderall (especially in the first 3 hours). 'Cause for all your brain is concerned, that assignment is a predator you were fighting... and you somehow managed to get away from it. Anyway, my goal today is: let me describe it this way: Adderall withdrawal and ADD in and of itself is unmotivating. But a lack of motivation can either be "nobly" pushed through or, it can turn into cynicism, resent and dread. And I think that the reduction of fatigue/resistance to work... scales linearly as you start pushing forward... but if you turn the other way... the cynicism/resent/dread scales exponentially. Point is, if you slack off and brood in resent for 7 days after Adderall withdrawal, maybe the chemical basis of your fatigue/depression is gone... but you also built a dragon of resent/brooding into your brain which scaled exponentially in size/psychological control. So then, in retrospect, you look at the "uphill linear battle" of motivation and there's no way in hell you'll take it on. I've got to go. Goodluck to all of you guys.

Start of Day 9: Yesterday I got up about an hour late (7 AM), convulsed randomly on my bed in guilt to shake off the intrusive/anxiety-provoking thoughts, stepped into a cold shower (a very very long hot shower... before scrounging up the will to spend 5 minutes under ice-cold water), chugged a couple giant cups of black bitter coffee and got to school. I showed up 30 minutes early (I have a lot of "routine crutches", so screwing up one part doesn't destroy the whole routine), hid somewhere in the back of my campus and did some meditation... coupled with a Wim Hoff breathing exercise. That gave me about enough energy to hobble into my first period and get a (checking now) 80.5% score on the exam. After that I hobbled down to my next class which, because of its rigor and my general interest in its topics, was a rollicking time; we did a bunch of writing exercises and class discussions and it helped me lose track of time for a little while. But then third period (guitar) came along which is just the most atrocious group of people you can imagine. They're not malevolent or egocentric or destructive... just... the entire class seems clinically depressed, and unwilling to lift a single finger to change it. The teacher doesn't want to conduct the class; the students sit around asleep or on their phones; all I do in that class is try and do some "independent practice" for 2 minutes at a time... then look around me... quietly but irritatingly chuckle to myself in rage... and walk out of the classroom to walk around the campus for 10 minutes. I did this cycle like 3 times yesterday. At least I decide to withdraw from situations that are futile and despondent; and withdraw to do something mildly productive like walking... which restabilizes the breathing and helps me watch my thoughts come and go. In the next class I decided to spend 45 minutes in my journal writing a detailed analysis of everything I did wrong while taking Adderall for long stretches of time. In the sense that: this drug increases sympathetic nervous system arousal and the dopaminergic reward/punishment system. That means (as I see it) it increases the amount of positive emotion felt when you make progress toward some goal... but... it also increases the amount of negative emotion felt when any inconvenience obstructs you from a goal. That seems to be why this drug is so damn popular to take overnight; not just because it gives you untrammeled work time... but because you get to avoid the horrifying anxiety-ridden state that happens when you're doing homework in an ecstatic frenzy and then your dentist calls you and tells you that you have an appointment (this happened to me and--GOD--I do NOT recommend ever having to experience such a wretched 2 hours). Anyway, my point is: you dance along a very thin line when you're using this substance. And I can't say that Adderall is 100% pure evil... to a point where you can't learn anything from surfing that line. I decided to spend time figuring out... using 11+ months of "data"...: what were the most common mistakes I made while using Adderall... which limited or rectified my output of productive work? Trying to "holistically integrate" my Adderall-fueled subpersonality into a normal life. 110% impossible. It's going to feel like hell. You guys ever read "Crime and Punishment"? I read that damn thing while on 50mg of Adderall and (shit!) the neurotic/impulsive feeling induced by the drug perfectly mirrored the plot. Anyway, point is: if you try to use Adderall for anything other than solo cognitively-demanding work, you're going to suffer incessantly... and it's going to feel almost like you've murdered somebody and you're just trying to put on a facade of a "calm sane person". Everywhere you go... to your family dinner, to your friends, to the grocery store, to the gym, to your fast-food job.... you'll feel like an otherworldly surge of stress gushing out of you every time you try to "act normal". ("Ha! Stupid parents! They don't know I'm a productive beast ripping through work at blazing speed. Oh, oh shit, wait, I don't want to be arrogant. Don't make me arrogant. I don't want to live. I want to die. I want to leave. Leave me, don't leave me. Are they catching on? No they're not, idiot! We're having some delicious... what is this meal? Pizza! Homemade pizza. It looks like this homemade pizza has... wow, what an assortment of delicious toppings! Oh God, what if I start showing signs of nausea while I start eating it? Shit! I'd better chew it really slowly.") My favorite recent memory was the one of being asked to take chips from a giant bag and put them into small bags at my fast-food job... for 2 hours on end. I developed a technique for unfolding those little bags, perfectly balancing them on the yellow containers in which they were placed to maximize the used surface area, determined the exact number of chips I could place with one handful into a small bag which would maximize the available surface area of the bag and provide the most satisfying customer experience... and when all of that was done, I started to conceptualize an implicit moral framework through which I could construe myself and my role as the "chips bagger" in relation to the sheer tremendous volume of people that I was going to indirectly help... by pretty much feeding them these chips. I realized I was going to indirectly help the lives of about 760 people through that 2 hours' effort.... and then proceeded to conceptualize miniature narratives of some of those people and how that bag of chips will permeate into their lives and help them sort out their personal problems (indirectly). And I did all that while absolutely terrified of myself. I've gotten quite successful at concealing the "external signs" of this inner battle... but... you can't conceal anything from yourself. Having no tangible incentive for doing the homework I set out to do... while on Adderall. This is just the classic hyperfocus/hyperfixation problem on steroids. Even without Adderall, I can recall long stretches of time (especially on the weekends, often of 9+ hours) of untrammeled absorption in some creative activity that I did simply to have a rollicking time. And it wasn't just something "implicitly enjoyable" like video games; it was often very cognitively demanding work like writing advertisements or studying computer programming or learning to use a design tool like Adobe Illustrator. Adderall does not quell this problem; if you are low in industriousness (basically the #1 predictor of an ADD diagnosis), that "gravitation" toward playful absorption in random tasks doesn't vaporize when you're on Adderall. In fact, since it increases the amount of dopamine gushing through your system, it just gives you obscene amounts of motivation to "hyperfixate" on stuff you're intrinsically passionate about. You have to develop an environment full of failsafes to get you through an Adderall cycle; in the final days of my Adderall experience (9-15 days ago) I liked to do a Wim Hoff breathing exercise and, immediately afterward, open a journal and spend 15 minutes articulating to myself... why I NEED to get THIS work [and not all this OTHER work] done during my upcoming Adderall cycle. And it boosted my productive output by (probably) like 1,000% if you tried to quantify it. Developing a "Superman Complex" while using Adderall. "I'm going to study for 3 upcoming assessments... and then I'm going to write these 2 large papers... and then I'm going to start working on this passion project that I've been throwing on the back burner for 4 years... and then I'm going to contact clients and establish a firm network of relationships with people who can get me going on this other passion project... and I know I probably won't have time for all of this so I'm going to go to the gym for 2 hours and I'll just 'feel my way around' all these ambitious goals before I determine which ones are the most viable to spend the next 8 hours on." My point is: it's very easy to, while on Adderall, mistake planning for work. You have so much motivational goop gushing out of you that just thinking about doing something produces a firework display in your prefrontal cortex so spectacular that you start to think you're doing the thing you're thinking about doing just by thinking about it. Then 2 hours pass and you were just journaling out your plans about doing this cool thing. And this problem tends to intersect with the problem of long-term abuse: "I'm going to use this little pill just today"... turns into "well I had a learning experience today; I realized that I'm a shitty goal-setter. I can think this through and fix myself up and do it again tomorrow"... turns into "That was a little better... but I want to have this access to a hidden undercurrent of alert focus every day for every project so that nobody sees me as an incompetent snob anymore. It's not like I can just jump off of this cloud after getting on it; it's not like I can integrate what I learned from this heightened state of awareness into my regular sober life; not yet... not now... not like this. I want to have a longer 'learning experience'. At least 7 days." And then "At least 1 month." And then "At least a year. A year is a valid window of time to be a competent citizen and diligent contributor to my family/company/friend circle/broader community right? All I want is a year within which all of that seems easy; I'll learn from it, I swear. I'll learn from it and then come back to reality and just enact what I learned." So anyway, if you're going to use Adderall, you have to put up failsafes that stop you from falling down any of these "pits of self-aggrandizing rationalization". The truth is that, if you actually use Adderall like a tool and not sit in front of the tool and put it on a pedestal and pray to it, you find out that the tool is its own monster that you have to tame and get under your control. And then after that, it inevitable leaves you and leaves a bunch of residue behind that you have to clean up... and you have to factor that cleanup into your "budget" of emotional resources. Anyway, unfortunately I'm out of time to keep this hyper-focused rant going. I'm going to confront the coming day's responsibilities with as much vivacity as I can muster. Final note, though: After that school day yesterday, I went for a 2-hour walk, then walked randomly into an office supplies stores, bought $100 worth of fancy (useful formatting; intuitive design) notebooks and a really nice ($25) pen, and then I walked back home and (fueled only by a tall "cold brew" coffee) went for an 8.383 mile run. Movement (even simple physical movement like walking) will always beat wallowing in self-pity. No matter how hard it seems to get started, get started on something. It'll kill the subpersonality inside you that wants to sulk... and empower/reinforce the habits that'll sculpt you into a genuinely disciplined person. I'll cya guys.