Modified post
I'm someone older who is naturally type A but abuses adderall (I'm prescribed it for ADHD, maybe incorrectly so) to get through the bullshit of daily life everyday.
I have been taking it for nearly a decade and a half intermittently when I am overwhelmed or I am going through an immense amount of bullshit due to culture or structure but it is still the right thing to do and fills my needs in the long term.
I notice negative thoughts and feeling tweaky about two months into it. When I have taken it for a year +, your body adjusts to it and you become clean like American Psycho as a normal habit but you feel like a robot and for me, I become more introverted and chronically depressed. I don't really increase my dose and max out at 30 mgs / daily. I usually even feel like thats too much with the side effects and USUALLY down it to 15-20 mg by pouring out some of my XR beads and doing a partition everyday.
There are 3 main reasons I detox from Adderall
1) To reduce persistent negative side effects
2) To decrease tolerance
3) To make sure my body is healthy without the masking effect of amphetamines
When I feel negative every night, too robotic, too introverted due to cynical jaded thoughts, and chronically depressed, I usually aim to detox. You also start experiencing physical symptoms that persist chronically like insomnia and itchiness. The detox time period for 1-2 months of use is short...(when I used it for finals in the past) I ween off it roughly in 2 weeks and feel normal. After a year of consistent use, I required 3 months of sobriety to start cleaning the house and working out again. But even 3-6 months of sobriety duration I was only able to keep working out and keep the house OCD clean...NO WORK OR STUDIES BEYOND THAT. About 9 months into the detox, I had my old mind back again and was able to start cutting trees in the right direction and plan my life. I was making application binders to apply to programs because I KNEW I wanted to further my education and it was me thinking these thoughts not the adder all. I find these detoxes useful to eliminate the negative chronic side effects I may feel due to its use. These breaks also allow me to decrease my tolerance back down. Tolerance builds back up quickly though as I usually start at 5 mg and go back to my normal dose of 10-15 mg within a month. Also, notice how you don't get sick while all your colleagues are while you are on adder all? Notice how your knee might hurt in the mornings but it doesn't hurt once you take your meds? Notice how you think all negatively but then you think all motivated and positively after you take your prescribed dose? I think being on amphetamines everyday might mask PHYSICAL health problems (like pain from a tooth cavity might be unfelt, or a mouth ulcer) and it is GOOD to detox to let your body truly sleep and heal up so you know you are atleast at baseline health wise.
When you ween off you need minimal responsibilities. You can push through with the bare minimum but don't expect to be superman like you are when you are medicated. I find moments I detox joyful, as I become more my natural self, extroverted, and at least not stressed and dwelling on every responsibility in my life. I can leave the house messy and my assignments and tasks postponed and feel OK about it. IMHO, the decrease in perceived stress (maybe not necessarily even a decrease in the stressors around us) has a healing effect and should be enjoyed. It is relaxing and non-stressful at the very least and I treat it like a gift if I have a time period where its like vacation and I can afford to detox. The key is with detox duration. If it is too long (as sometimes I've seen with attempts to permanently quit the drug), your whole identity might possibly change to your detox persona. This is not good because all the benefits to our persona & character and resulting actions that came with the drug are completely lost. If it is too short, the side effects remain and the detox feels like it is done in vain. Thus, I usually try to time the detox so all my PHYSICAL side effects are healed up (no more itching, all chronic health problems that show during initial days of detox heal, normal sleeping) and I don't enter a too cynical negative perspective outlook on life. Depending on my duration of use and dose, this time period can vary dramatically. I subjectively evaluate my physical health and mental health before jumping back on it. Short term acute signs that your body is healing up physically that are UNIVERSAL include: lack of paleness in the extremities (knuckles turn normal color, hands turn normal color and normal temperature and aren't super cold all the time), no more insomnia, and hunger returns to normal. Sometimes after a long time of use with zero detox days, I will get sick, headaches, and bed sweats and tremors for about a week before I am physically healed up. If I continually detox intermittently through a long period of use, side effects of sobriety are just lack of motivation and lethargy. Usually I am forced back on it due to some big stressor where I am pushed outside of my comfort zone and return to adderall as a habit of comfort. All this being said, I try to keep the minimal detox period to two weeks as this was the time period I found useful for completely eliminating tolerance and side effects during short adder all binges (1-2 weeks for finals) Everyone's body is different though and my opinion uses inductive reasoning to make an argument for my belief on detoxing.
If you are like the rest of us doing a grind, you might rarely be able to find the time to detox. Thus when you do, it is important to follow through with it, as these moments of adderall vacation tend to be rare in most of our normal busy lives. You won't regret it and detox is actually meditative for me.
