The red-flag point here is that the symptoms are causing you to re-dose when you intended to have a break. One major withdrawal symptom of amps, especially meth, is craving that emerges around 2 days after your last dose. I’ve never heard it manifesting as brain zaps but definitely as ‘baseline equilibrium’ being out of whack and feeling very erratic.
DO you keep up your Rx type amps when you stop taking meth? That could account for lack of real comedown feelings. Maybe a total amp rest for a couple for weeks would be a good idea and see if the effects subside.
Also, hard to see the point in mixing those Rx amps with meth. If you take them first they will bind to receptors and take the edge of your meth (or maybe this only an issue for people looking for a rush) and if you take them at the same time the meth will just overpower them. However, I’m curious if you see any benefit or novel experience in taking them together?
On red-flags, yes I was disconcerted to find myself feeling so uncomfortably physically unwell from the absence of a drug I had thought not habit forming--I just wasn't expecting or prepared for it. I've had dependencies over the years, on alcohol and on heroin, and I've suffered extreme withdrawals innumerable times. A long time ago I decided to try and avoid using anything habit forming long enough to form a habit. I never use opiates for more than five days without a break--it doesn't seem to take much longer than that for them to start to dig into me again. If I've been in a phase where I basically always want to be under the influence, I rotate substances. My drinking patterns have varied a lot over the years, but generally I seem to drink less frequently and less heavily as I age. I try not to get very cosy with cocaine any more after years of shooting it, then years more of smoking it when my arms were getting tapped out. It may not generate any dependency, but the all-encompassing severity of obsession, craving, and constantly wanting more coupled with the horrible soul gnawing crashes was just too much cost. It is probably the only drug I hate. When I have enough amphetamines, I don't touch much of anything else at all anymore.
I've only been using amphetamines regularly for the last few years. I was assessed as being ADHD and prescribed accordingly. I was surprised at how I took to them as they'd never made much impression before. I really appreciated that they made it much easier to cope with high stimulus environments, like crowds, or malls, or anywhere many people are speaking over each other without any order. They make a lot of regular daily tasks feel less daunting and overwhelming. They also quell depressive states and the raw haunting by loss that I am, in my middle aged years, acutely plagued by, often with little ability to regulate. Amphetamines literally make me feel normal, and like I am "ok", that I am content. They make me feel not just able, but willing to go through my day. I do also appreciate sometimes taking excessive amounts, binging, and being very high--losing myself in hyperfocus, or just indulging in a protracted libidinous fervour; but it does seem to have hard limits as tolerance skyrockets that way, sometimes doubling with every dosing. It rapidly becomes costly in quantities consumed. I also just pretty much poop out after three or four days max with the itch for excessiveness well sated.
Even for maintenance usage, I have a greater tolerance than many people(always have and with most any substances) and take breaks pretty regularly. I don't find breaks need to be very lengthy to be effective. For the longest time I had a friendly connection for very reasonably priced, ample quantities of dexedrine and adderall with which to heavily supplement my actual script--usually five or six times the amount in my script, so, the lion share of my habit. At some point my connection ghosted me for nearly a year with no explanation, and has sadly done the same again. It's been about six months so far this time and she's still AWOL. Not fun.
It is only during this recent period that meth became something readily available to me. I briefly flirted with shooting it because it can be a real showstopper that way and I was just loving shooting again. But that shit is like battery acid, traumatizing what's left of my remaining spidery little veins. Hit or miss it seemed to ravage any entry point leaving worrisome hard discoloured knots. I have never known anything so noxious that screams "poison!" as crystal meth does. After playing around with eating it and booty bumping it, as both methods can also get enough in you at once to get really lit up, I put aside using it for getting fried and now generally just smoke it. It is so mild that way that it works well for more therapeutic purposes. It was a few months into this new drug regime that I started having the nasty brain skewed "withdrawals" from not using that feel just like SSRI cessation. It is harder to take breaks when that is in store. I have now read in several places now that one mechanism of meth acts on serotonin in some similar ways to those SSRIs which in my experience were nasty and toxic. Apparently it isn't that common, but some people get the brain zaps from meth and I seem to be one of them. Yay, i'm so special. . .
I've been slowly using less and using less regularly to minimize having symptoms when not using. It has me sad and frustrated though, because I'm left with the supply problem again. For a little context, the last decade plus of my life has been a terrible desolated era for me--I made some pivotal failures and also suffered some grievous essential losses. It was sufficient to break me in ways that just don't heal--I'm not really the same person I once was and I mostly find simply existing to be a gruelling yet banal marathon without end. Hence, I had been so relieved and soundly satisfied finding amphetamines. They had been reliably making life so bearable, and doable, that it's been maddening to simply not have access to adequate amounts. It certainly hasn't been comforting that the only other option is this shabby swampy chemical gunk that costs too much to be a real solution, doesn't work as well, doesn't feel as good, and has foul side effects. Not to mention having to mix with unpleasant unreliable people in a never-ending merry-go-round of foraging for the stuff.
Regarding balancing my Rx with meth, I don't. I often burn through my script fairly quickly and usually only find a little pharmaceutical supplementation here and there throughout the month. I go periods with nothing in my system and at other times might have two or three different stims in me. I've also found, as I originally posted, that it doesn't take that much meth use now to produce the strung out serotonin thing in my brain.
As far as mixing and matching substances go, I find all stimulants tend to stack well with each other, rather than cancelling each other out, or crowding my brain's hungry little receptors. I even rather like the feeling that coffee on top of amphetamines gives. The exception is coke. Coke and amphetamines don't work well together--i get less desired effects of both, and more undesired effects.
I honestly think my brain is severely deficient in something dopamine related, or else decades of being stuck on wellbutrin has destroyed something essential in there, because amphetamines are always smooth and copacetic in me and short of doing mountains of them, I just feel good, natural and, for lack of a better term, normal. They don't feel like escape, or getting wasted. I don't look or act much different even at the end of a large lengthy binge other than physical things like excessive perspiration or shaky hands(two issues I have already anyways). I have always tended towards tedious long-windedness, so the verbosity pills just make for a heady confluence. I don't get anxious or paranoid. I eat, I don't waste away. Unless I am intending a binge, I sleep well regularly. I've never had any psychotic type stuff go on (and that despite during my adolescence and twenties, I had severe bipolar episodes, so you'd think maybe I might be susceptible).
I was the same with coke, generally mellow and coherent despite a massive appetite for the stuff taken at the highest possible doses. So many people I know or cross paths with who use stims get so batshit, or agitated, sketchy, bobble-headed, paranoid or cognitively disordered. With many of them, I wonder why they use at all, because they don't seem to enjoy it and instead it seems to produce only distressing negative states.
Anywhoo, thanks for replying and the queries. I don't find many places to talk meaningfully about this facet of my life. Oh, lets face it, I don't find many places to talk about anything at all. I've been enjoying reading various threads.
