I found this site about 6 months ago, while researching adderall and vyvanse and desperately seeking answers. This website has saved my sanity. Thank you to everyone who has shared their story. My husband and I met back in 2016 after he completed his first year of medical school. I moved across the country to be with him and we got married at the end of 2018. I knew early on he was on adderall, but I did not know anything specifically about adderall. He told me he went to a provider back in college to get a prescription while he was pre-med. I am not in the medical field, have never been on any medications and never had a reason to do a deep dive on these drugs until last year. I was incredibly naive to say the least, but hindsight is 20/20. I knew he had these pills he took and before board exams he would often get extra from other classmates or friends. While he was in medical school he was prince charming. He was charismatic, a gentleman, outgoing, life of the party, kind, empathetic, compassionate, etc. All I heard was how much he wanted to be a father and a husband and have a family. His parents and my parents are still together after 30+ years of marriage and he always told me he was the "never get divorced" type. He assured me of how much of a family man he was. I pretty much doted on him all of medical school, cooking for him, supporting him financially, doing his laundry, errands, etc. to lighten his load so he could focus on school.
We moved across the country yet again (2020) once he matched into residency. I got pregnant and had our first baby after his first week of starting his anesthesia residency in 2021. We made the decision together I would get pregnant when I did and that I would stop working to stay home with our daughter. To condense years of our life, I started seeing Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I started to see massive binge-drinking and worried about his drinking constantly. I started seeing massive sleep issues. If he was off work he would sleep until 1 or 2 pm. He would tell me he was going to get up and study all day and we could do things as a family in the evening if he got a full day of studying in. Inevitably, he would toss and turn all night and fall asleep in the wee hours of the morning and sleep until the afternoon. Get up and pop a pill and study until past midnight. Our sleep schedule slowly stopped aligning. I would be going to sleep and he would be up jogging around the neighborhood at 11 pm/midnight. Exercising until he vomited I think to come down from the amphetamines. In hindsight, I think drinking to also come down. I didn't feel like my daughter and I were a priority, but whenever I would talk to him about my concerns he would say, it was just residency and the only way out was through. I started seeing a massive lack of empathy, comparing my traumatic emergency c-section where I lost a liter of blood to a broken arm he had as child, for example. He blamed his drinking and sleep issues on residency and I believed him. He kept telling me things would get better once he was out of residency and we could finally be a normal family. He would get extra pills from friends prior to board exams while in residency and now looking back, I think he was hoarding his pills. He told me himself he was doubling up prior to his last exam in July of 2024. He toggled back and forth from adderall and vyvanse throughout the years. There's a lot more to it, but my family basically helped financially support us while he was in residency, believing it to be a temporary situation. They bought us the house we lived in and let him pay whatever he wanted.
He accepted a job and I knew we were moving back to my hometown after residency was done to be near family. He begged me for another child and after putting him off for a while I finally agreed. I got pregnant and when I was 4 months pregnant last January (2024) he basically sat me down and told me we were no longer in love, he wasn't buying a house with me or getting financially entangled with me. We had just gotten pre-qualified to buy a house that week. He was 6 months out from being done with residency and us starting our lives together. All I heard for years was how much he loved me, couldn't do this without me, etc. We had our problems and we weren't in the honeymoon stage by any means, residency had taken a toll on us, but I think at the time we absolutely could have salvaged our marriage. Prior to January 2024, I would have never called him abusive. He became very verbally abusive, emotionally abusive, financially abusive, crossed the line physically a few times, all while I was pregnant and postpartum. I started seeing the man I love turn into a monster. Throughout the months one minute telling me how much he loves me, wants to make it work, doesn't want to split up our family, to 72 hours later telling me we're divorcing. We moved states and he moved out two weeks later and left me with our newborn and 3 year old. His rage and anger became out of control. I started looking into all of his supplements, researching bipolar disorder trying to understand what was going on with him. When I finally had a lightbulb go off and started researching amphetamines and started talking to him about it, he became enraged. He says I can't handle that the problem is staring me in the face every day and so I have to make it about drugs. He has been on these pills for 15 years now. When we moved he tried getting off the pills, which was the peak of the crazy. I found him in the bath at 7 am sweating profusely when he had been in a deep sleep. The next time I talked to him he was back on the pills. He denies they have played a role in his personality change and the destruction of our marriage. Yet, he is still on these pills. He has a different excuse for staying on them each time I talk to him. He has turned into such a liar, which I never used to think he lied. He filed for divorce over the holidays. We have a 3 year old and a 10 month old and just recently learned our 10 month old has a very rare neurological disorder. He wouldn't go to church with me, wouldn't go to intensive couples therapy, therapy for himself, or see a psychologist. I got him referrals. I put myself in therapy and our daughter as well. He told me at one point his dopamine was screwed and I believe it. I saw depression throughout the years. He takes no joy in anything anymore and has become very isolated. He seems a shell of his former self. I begged him not to file and to give us time to be a family for even 6 months and to get off the pills. His story changed every month why we were divorcing, but largely that he will "never be happy with me" although he was happy with me for years. I read books on strengthening our marriage and communication and he was reading books on divorce and telling me the kids will be fine. Everything is about him. He is always the victim, he has 0 remorse for anything he says or does, no accountability. He won't admit he has a pill problem, a drinking problem, or that he is very abusive now. I don't recognize the person I married anymore. I know what I see isn't normal. His behavior is super erratic. He has even mentioned not going through with the divorce twice this month alone. I have never seen or heard of a transformation like this. Sometimes it feels like my life is a movie, a horrible nightmare. He says his behavior changed because our marriage changed. I recently learned that he also had a cocaine addiction prior to meeting me, which I had no clue about. We are currently in the thick of our divorce and some days I will wake up in the morning to extremely crazy, verbose tirades that are almost delusional at all hours of the night when he should be sleeping.
I know he abused these pills at high doses for years. Before we moved he was given a script for 90 pills of vyvanse at 60 mg. He was often operating on 4 hours of sleep and popping a pill, drinking on these pills, chewing nicotine, and drinking coffee and taking caffeine pills on top of it trying to make it through the shifts at work. I guess my question is - does this sound largely related to addiction? Or could there be another explanation? Has anyone ever gotten clean with this type of abuse and stayed clean? If he does ever get fully clean will he understand the wreckage he created?
