listful

You know what? I needed to hear that. That's probably the source of my anger. Now I'm just like everyone else and things - challenges - before me that seemed fun to tackle now seem like "tasks" again, the way everyone else sees them. My kids are happier. More carefree, less guarded around me. They're so young but they can (could always?) sense it, I can tell. That, in itself, is motivation to push on...

I'm back again. It's been quite awhile. Guess you can read my history for my backstory. I've been on Adderall on and off (for the past 2 years, on) for the better part of 15 years?! Weird to add that up. I quit a bunch. Never identified this to anyone as a problem IRL, including dr. In a nutshell: Broke down. Told my mom. She came in town, stayed a few days. We ripped up my remaining script. I called the dr and cut off the source in front of her. Self-imposed, no going back. closing the door with no way to go back is scary. All the times I "quit" I never did that. And now I have. Not scary, that's not accurate. Mourning. I'm in mourning. It's like a death. It feels just like how you feel when someone dies. How weird is that. Going through the motions. The lethargy, the can't-peel=myself-off-the couch phase, which I know will pass, I've done all this before. The part I can't BEAR is the lack of pleasure in ANYTHING I found interesting. The extreme motivation. The lack of ALL motivation, which I know I will experience for months and months and months. Lots happened. If you read my history, you'll see this shit put me through some really bad stuff. Well. Doest hold a candle to what went down over the past 1.5 years after I went AWOL from this site. I'm not ready to get into all that right now. Right now I just feel super tired, listless, sad, and PISSED AS HELL. Everyone pisses me off. I also have kids, who I am NOT taking this out on. I am exercising extreme self restraint in that dept. I'm so angry. I didn't come back for lectures. I came back for support. It's over and I know it. And 'Im so mad and sad because I know in my heart of hearts it's gone.

I called my dr and made an appointment. Gonna explain I have a problem and get on antidepressants

What is there to say? Relapsed back in May. Sped through the summer and an out of state move. Saw the signs, cried, gnashed teeth.dark thoughts... Darkkkkk thoughts. Poured bleach on my brand new prescription refill. Here I am, day 2, eating, sleeping, cant stand being in my skin. My tounge hurts bc there's sores at the tip I'm only noticing now. Just kill me. Sorry I'm not more verbose at the moment. I need some support.

I went through that too, always awes, But it was actual wasps outside when I was building a garden a couple summers ago. There were only a couple but I was tweaked out so I kept running inside every five minutes thinking they were everywhere and after me. I'm glad our yard is fenced. I must've looked like an idiot. As for the dream, it's weird because I never had visual hallucinations (besides maybe one that I'm still unsure about) ... It was always auditory for me. But in the dream I FELT like how you feel at the end of a jag and addy was never in the dream but I somehow knew it was an adderall crash, if that makes sense. And you could like see through the spiders. Weird, also, lil tex, that you saw the spiders. Maybe there is an actual reason for that, something in the wiring of the brain or something subconscious... Just so strange. Lately, too, I've really been losing things in my mind, like having trouble with my short term memory on a noticeable level. It's starting to scare me, like maybe I did some real damage this last time since I'm not as young as I was before. I don't know.

So I stayed up too late last night, and right when I fell asleep, i had this dream that I was at the end of a three day jag. You know that feeling. And I saw this spider, this like transparent yellowish spider appear and crawl towards me, like as in psychosis. Over two years clean, wtf brain? Soooo weird.

I've been off for 2 years. I wrote an 80-page business plan in November.

Wow @Liltex41 that is insane and sounds so familiar. As far as the paranoia I mean... I can match that... I thought towards the end that the hackers were listening to every phone conversation. I started buying burner phones and then thought those were compromised... Ended up trying to call the police at a payphone because I thought it was the only way to talk on a non-compromised line... But even when I was doing that I thought they were listening. They? #badadderalltrip

No, we were out. Lol. But it was a pretty big fire.

Thanks forum people. After reading nonstop for two days around here I did something that is, to me, really huge. During my last stint with Adderall, got hacked, entered psychosis of epic proportions thinking my whole home network and every device in it was compromised. Luckily for me now, I guess I felt it necessary to document the whole thing in pictures. I'm talking several thousand on USB sticks, sd cards, hard drives I removed. Ever since the day I abruptly quit addys two years ago, I haven't been able to bring myself to look at any of it. I did tonight. Lord almighty picture after picture videos etc of different setting screens on touch devices, code from laptops, none of it organized. None makes sense. Like in the movie Pi. The most cringeworthy was some short video of me with the camera facing my kindle screen, trying to do... Something.... My hands were shaky and couldn't hit the buttons right so I would tap in the same place over and over. Hard to watch. Thinking of an office cleanse and bonfire in the pit outside. No joke.

My sister once said I seemed "predatory" ... Very sad to hear

I'm a stay at home mom of three kids 5 and under... One's a baby. And yes, it is a special kind of hell I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. I quit before when I didn't have kids and it was nowhere NEAR as hard as it is now. Two years clean and I muddle through, but with so many things that need my attention RIGHT NOW and so many people depending on me, the desire to go back to the doctor is so overwhelming it feels like drowning. Truly. It's like this drug was tailor made for stay at home moms. Lord have mercy. And with the ridiculously unrealistic societal expectations of us (ie - keep everyone's lives running smoothly, keep a guest-ready home, and look HOT while you're doing it ... After all, you stay home all day, your life is so eassssyyyyy), it is so tempting to reach for pills to make it all happen. Special kind of hell, recovery.,,. Damn right. And the guilt, oh my god. That inner voice all the time, "are the kids bored? Will they resent me being lazy and unmotivated off of it? will they resent me being high strung on it? Am I fucking them up? Am I fucking them up? AM I FUCKING THEM UP??????????" Recovery with kids is a whole other ball game.

Hi all, I've been posting out of control around here the last couple of days. I'm just still dumbfounded there is a group for this specific issue. I've been so alone in my head for over a decade and finding a group that is thinking the exact things as me, going through the same mental and physical stuff is just... unreal. So please put up with me while this sinks in lol. I was planning to call my dr in a month but now I'm not. Rationalizing is over after finding this place. Thank y'all for existing.

Wow I'm chiming in late but I am simply blown away. I had every one of the symptoms too. I'll add this.. I bit off my thumbnail. The whole thing. It grew back after I quit but it came in crooked. My nails were ragged and brittle. Also I developed this throat tic that's hard to describe. Husband asked me why I did it a long time ago. Embarrassing. Like the sound you make when you're trying to suck back drainage then clearing your throat? Really sexy. I still do that when I'm alone but not every five seconds like I did on Adderall. Convinced I damaged the back of my mouth, or the flap in the esophagus somehow. I couldn't swallow food either and almost choked a couple of times, saw above that happened to someone else. I started drinking Ensure to maintain weight but couldn't stomach it. When it was really bad I'd crush the pills and parachute them to get them down my throat. Hallucinations, mainly auditory when I went on 3 day jags. Blotchy skin, thin skin, mystery bruises and cuts. Lots of cuts. Really cold all the time. Low, low weight at the end. Like scary low. Also pounded red bull when I was on it. Sure that didn't do me any favors.

I am dumbfounded by the weight thing in my situation. Had kids in between using episodes, so I really don't know what my true weight is/should be. I think I was around 110 in high school, I'm 5'3 though, pretty short. First pregnancy stopped adderall and weighed 114, shot up to 170 by term. Then after two kids, started using and dropped to 98. Stopped, had another kid, 11 months postpartum currently and 119. Who knows...

It's a very humbling feeling when you see stuff you did on Adderall years later when you're fully sober. And very humiliating.

This is funny. I wrote this term paper for a class that was supposed to be this end of semester project and fell down the rabbit hole of adapting it into a book about global economics. I thought I was gonna end up a guest on Hardball or something. Turned it in late, cried in my professors office, acted like I was saving the world with this epic analysis of the stock market... I pulled it out recently ..... No comment. Just .... What? I swear for awhile I thought I had predicted the global economic crisis. Good one, Adderall. Good one. Touché.

Also it is worth noting that 6 full years during this time period were completely Adderall-free (and free of anything else harmful, even smoking... didn't even take Tylenol, just prenatal vitamins), so my total "doping" time was about 6 years, broken up over a 12-year period.

Made it to 8. Difficulty talking, making thoughts come out, stutter. Can't access certain words, deep thinking, halted thoughts when I reach deeper. MARKED irritability.

My husband said the same thing to me in a roundabout way. That makes it so hard.

I thought about it every second of every day the first year. Now in year two, I think about it about 2-3 times a day, mainly when I'm obsessing about some big thing I need to do and how much I imagine addys would help. So it's still not great but better than a few month in was for sure.

Thank you thank you. Yes, discovered that part of the forum right after posting that last night. I'm going to do exactly your regimen. I have to wait until I'm done breastfeeding though before I can take anything, even supplements. That's why I'm so blah right now, I can't do anything to help myself (including antidepressants) until I'm done. Guess I'll cruise the board the next month or so for support until I can try this.

I think you're absolutely right. I actually thought about seeing a therapist and going the antidepressant route. Didn't think it would be that long of a process but I guess it really is!

And I read around this forum, which is amazing by the way... And two years clean a lot of people are seeming really positive with their changes. I feel worse than ever. Pregnancy and breastfeeding were the motivators to put it down without question, and after reading here I don't want to pick it back up. Getting pregnant stopped me from hitting bottom twice and saved me, but now my tubes are tied and I'm scared if I start back I won't have the internal fortitude to stop. But I also can't bear the thought of feeling like I'm just trying to get to the end of each day so I can sleep and not be awake for my life. I wake up and think things are just so bleak without adderall, so sad it's like that. Like being on it makes you look forward to every day. I want to be able to do that naturally. With kids you'd think that I'd be happy and content and I love them but I'm not content. I feel like I've damaged my pleasure receptors in my brain. Or maybe it is hormonal shifts, who knows.

Thanks y'all. A word on long-term damage.. I've been clean two years and I find lately that I lose words a lot. Like I'll stand there talking and reach for a word and just cannot find it. Sometimes I read the grad school papers I wrote and can't even understand them, they're so amazing. I've had family tell me that it's the hormone fog from post pregnancy and I agree with them out loud, but I know my cognitive function well and I am certain I damaged my brain. I don't say it out loud but deep down I know. I hurt my mind irreversibly.