[get a job fatso]

Hey Zerokewl,

 

I found this advice from an Amazon book review and I share it with you:

 

1) Staying in a loving place with yourself requires ongoing maintenance and support.  You will do better if you limit contact with people who make you feel bad or doubt yourself and increase contact with those who make you feel stronger and happier.  (Or as George Burns said:  "Happiness is having a loving, caring, close-knit family... in another city."). 

 

2) Learning to love yourself (by practicing doing loving things and speaking to yourself kindly and compassionately) will eventually shift your beliefs. 

 

I guess that would include the things you are planning on doing: eating healthy, exercise, and getting enough sleep.

 

A book that was very helpful to me about changing habits is: "Better than Before" (Gretchen Rubin)

 

Good luck, and take care!

[CBA - Cost Benefit Analysis]

Doesn't matter who runs the media outlets - women want to see skinny models and they are the consumers of fashion and beauty products. Women may say they want to see real women but if that were true in the aggregate then that's what would be portrayed. Kind of like how people said they wanted salads at McDonald's during focus groups and when they introduced salads they sold horribly. All media have the same advertising goals, to make you feel that buying their products/looking a certain way will help you achieve happiness. If you're reading fashion magazines, the images are for you.

I'm defending guys here because you're right, it's no secret that men don't want a chick that looks like a 12 year old boy. It's women that are ultimately at fault for beauty standards in the media.

 

There's an interesting book about this phenomenon, "What She's Not Telling You."  Amongst other things (like the fascinating world of focus groups and what marketing "professionals" are really doing behind their two-way mirrors), it talks about how the Dove campaign featuring "real" (as opposed to airbrushed/supernaturally skinny) women failed to draw new female customers. Worth checking out, imho. :-)

[my story]

_{Toward the end of my Adderall use, my parinoia became much more noticible. Before it became noticable, it was ruining friendships insidiously.}

 

_{I used to smoke weed to help compensate the jittery Adderall feelings, but it got to the point that I became so paranoid after smoking that I became afraid of using it and had to quit.} 

 

Must have been scary!

 

Glad that is over for you!

[my story]

Lol  when I was using I thought this site was developed by drug companies to study the effects of quitting or part of someone's phd thesis paper.  If you want to get paranoid start reading up on Big Pharma, that's the real conspiracy.     Welcome aboard  thanks for posting.

 

Doesn't seem like an ethical way to do research for any kind of PhD, imho.

 

Actually, it seems like it would be impossible for anyone would pull clean data from a message board anyway, if you think about it (the information any such person collecting really would be all anecdotal, and there would be selection bias from which people posted/which didn't, etc, etc, fraught w/problems).

 

Seems like it would be kind of pseudosciency to me..but the perfect example of an Adderall generated thought!

[my story]

At first I worried that someone could get my info & somehow tell my dr or pharmacy that I was abusing my meds. That sounds ridiculous now. And even if it's not, I don't give a shit now. . Nice to have you here!

 

Thanks, and it's totally true, like people don't have their own lives/problems that they would spend hours trying to figure out who you were, etc..

 

or.. ok, that could happen (in some horrible universe where people really did have nothing else to do but destroy other folks' lives)... but (thankfully!) unlikely, right?  

 

What helped me was in addition to thinking of multiple possible explanations for different events was determining their associated likelihood/probability of actually being true. 

 

As in.. there is a 1% probability that a sociopathic stalker is following my every move, interfering with relationships with friends and family, intercepting emails for employment, and in general destroying my psyche and ability to function.

 

I guess it's just a result of the drug making us kind of narcisstic?  

["Side Effects"]

Has anyone seen this film?

 

It's interesting because (without giving too much away) there is a physician who asks another physician for Adderall so that he can have the capacity to solve a complicated problem.

 

I'm not sure what the point of his asking for it was (?) but it seems rather irresponsible in any case, because the impression that I was left with is that it is not at all unreasonable to take Adderall as a study drug. 

 

 

[I took a drive.]

Mothers tend to be blamed for a lot in society = lame.

 

I don't know if you have a diagnosis of ADHD/ADD or if you even believe that it is a real disorder, but your post reminded me of a great book by Sari Solden about women with ADHD/ADD.

 

It talks about how (some) men with (and without) ADHD/ADD have wives, secretaries, assistants to help them stay organized vs. how women often have to do everything (and I mean everything) ourselves. Also, how men are allowed/encouraged to "narrow their focus/interests", vs where as women we sometimes have (and even our encouraged) to have more diffuse interests.

 

It's a great read if you believe that ADHD/ADD are real conditions.

 

Glad you are feeling better!

[Ran into old Adderall buddy]

Maybe if he didn't have ADHD, he'd still be just as brilliant AND he'd be able to hunker down and do his taxes or whatever his biggest issue is. 

 

Or he pays someone else to do them. 

 

Blech.  Tax returns..  :-p

 

1963 a letter written by Leo Mattersdorf (Einstein's tax accountant) as appeared in Time magazine:

 

"One year while I was at his Princeton home preparing his return, Mrs. Einstein, who was then still living, asked me to stay for lunch. During the course of the meal, the professor turned to me and with his inimitable chuckle said: 'The hardest thing in the world to understand is income taxes.' I replied: 'There is one thing more difficult, and that is your theory of relativity.' 'Oh, no,' he replied, 'that is easy.' To which Mrs. Einstein commented, 'Yes, for you.'"

[Ran into old Adderall buddy]

Anyway, I haven't seen this friend since I was on Adderall and I noticed a couple of things I thought I'd share. One, when we were talking he was staring at me so intensely, it was sort of creepy. His gaze was just weird - it was as if he was having a staring contest with someone and his blinking frequency was off. It made me think back to this one day at work when I was on Adderall and was talking to one of my employees, and my employee asked me why I was staring at him. I didn't understand what he was talking about. But now I get it. It was like I was trying so hard to make natural eye contact with people that it came across like I was trying to stare them down in a threatening manner.

 

I definitely have had this problem.  You describe it very well, imho. And I think it definitely creeped people out too.  

 

It's one of those little side effects that might only be picked up on "anecdotally" but might me much more common than one would expect.

[my story]

Being someone who can most definitely attest to the paranoia that can be brought on Adderall & Vyvannse (the latter being much worse for me personally), I can also ascertain that these drugs can also most definitely destroy your life (both literally and figuratively). 

 

Given the self-awareness of my paranoia, it might seem somewhat ironic that I was lurking on this board quite awhile before deciding to quit taking Adderall.  Reasons?

 

1) I do believe the drug can help folks with natural dopamine issues (lower overall production/lower receptor sensitivity, etc).  At least initially.  (like with MANY drugs, the big "initially")

 

2) Paranoia is something that has been increasing in society in general, so the idea of attributing my paranoia 100% to the Adderall seemed somewhat faulty - a great book to check out on this subject: Paranoia, by Donald Freeman.

 

"In a recent experiment, psychologist Daniel Freeman used a virtual-reality mock-up of a ride on the London Underground to probe his research subjects’ suspicious thoughts about strangers. Noting that those individuals who were often anxious or who have negative feelings about themselves and others were more likely to jump to unsubstantiated negative conclusions about their copassengers on the (virtual) Tube, Daniel was able to gain insight into the relatively high frequency of paranoid thoughts or “persecutory delusions†in  today’s society. With this selection, Daniel and his brother, journalist Jason Freeman, summarize this and other research in one of the first works on paranoia intended for lay readers. Their intent is largely to demystify a psychological phenomenon that may be as subtle and ubiquitous as depression. Noting connections between delusional thinking, social alienation, and stress, the authors also suggest that paranoia may be to some extent an epiphenomenon of modern urban life in unstable times. It’s an unsettling diagnosis, but it need not compound our worries: mild paranoiac tendencies, they suggest, can be successfully contained through cognitive behavioral techniques such as those described in a self-help guide by the same authors, Overcoming Paranoid and Suspicious Thoughts (2008)". --Brendan Driscoll

 

But being the kind of person who tries to look on the bright side when she can, I'm hoping that I will be able to look back and laugh at the experiences that I've had while taking Adderall (looking at them from a safe distance, that is).

 

Has anyone else ever wondered whether this entire website is "fake"?  That is the production of concerned parents/teachers who want to dissuade their children from taking the magical "study drug" that Adderall and friends can be?  I have.  

 

Then when I realized how paranoid that was, I simply wondered which of the users where "real" (and in reality, it is likely that at least some of the users might not actually be real people trying to quit / trying to decide whether to quit / etc Adderall).

 

I have been tapering down for awhile, and never was taking doses more than 40 mg.  I don't know if it's actually placebo effect, but this drug did seem to make me more paranoid even in the very small doses (7 -3.5 mg) that I had tapered back to before deciding to finally give it a rest.  Maybe it works like our immune system does -- a small amount of antigen can trigger a large reaction?  Je ne sais pas...

 

Anyway, thanks for reading this, hope that it makes you laugh to be suspected of being part of an internet plot to stop folks from taking Adderall!