What I meant is, can you get to Step 7 taking just 20mg/day for a year? Is it the frequency of the dosage or the amount of the dosage that influences the development of the negative features? If it is both, which one accounts for it the most?
It's the frequency. In my experience stimulant side effects don't scale all that much with the dosage. I was on 10-30mg or so per day for 18 months and you could just see my life crumble down bit by bit during that time until finally constant hypomania turned into a full-blown manic shitstorm. Now large doses of stimulants for (taken for a couple of consecutive days) merely extend the duration. It doesn't seem to affect me as much personality wise. I can still cry tears of joy just looking at that beautiful angel of a daughter of mine, opposed to being dominated by cold logic and enthusiasm for cognitive tasks. I will be more impatient and moody for a few days and - surprise surprise - I lose weight due to that non-sustainably low caloric intake, but that is about it.
On the other hand... People who have a prescription can last decades without it having any significant negative impact on their somatic or psychological health. A psychiatrist would argue that is because in the case of legit use opposed to abuse the amphetamine fills a void not apparent in the SUD patients. Still, when if you asked me I'd say frequency and duration matter a whole lot. Daily use is pretty standard for most stimulant users, so best make sure not to go on with it forever. I eventually had to quit because it was systematically ruining both my health, social life and bringing my academic progress to a halt. Let's just hope you are like me and recognize the warning signs (e.g. a lot more interpersonal conflicts, weight loss, ideas your environment looks at with great scepticism, inability to reflect on flaws in your behaviour to the point where you are blaming everyone but you for the shit youre into and tell yourself you need the speed because it makes you whole...). But hey, on the plus I acquired some MAD low level coding skills during these past years due to the cognitive enhancement. I suppose a lot of us experience comparable benefits, however miniscule they may be compared to the negs.
Oh god, I am ranting. That's what stimulants will do to you, see? See what a monster
they have
me turn into ? :D Not kidding. The worst part is that I like many others I become less and less able to focus my energy until the concept of free will seems like a mere trick of the brain, eventually becoming less real than the randomly ensueing flares of stimulant-imposed delusion. Only then seems the transformative loss of my personality whole, leaving me locked into a dirty sweaty stinking muddle-brained epitome of obsessive-compulsive procrastination spiked by episodes of enormous self harm (think 1000pokes with 70 in 2 nights and cleaning blood off the entire place for 12h straight).
Yeah, that's about what I am now, marking time by just wasting my life, struggling to stand my social ground against the personality mauling hail, made rather difficult due to what feels like blinding blizzard of anxious thoughts and ephemeral dreams I cling onto only to realize redemption was yet another illusion, still far from seizable however straining the latest endeavours I assigned myself to may have been, I am trying to move forward against this raging storm, now left a helpless captive in the cold grips of addiction, now engrossed in the bewildering delight, never hesitating to trade fleeting moments of sensual pleasure for the joy that life was meant to be, giving way to the stormy sea that life has come to drown me in, the chaos and confusion only eased by the brief relief of scarce encounters with but a few seconds of oblivion. Oblivious like parents who have turned away from those uncountable orphans whose sprouting youth, once an epitomy of coruscating life force promising a sanguine future as
comforting as warmth radiating from a bon fire when camping in Northern European on a windy rainy night, it is no more as of today, has faded into memory that feels as dim as the shadowy apparitions of erstwhile sharp minds belonging to the hopelessly insane they once seemed inseparably fused with, a memory now overcast by wailing lamentations of those whose deliverence to a fate of rejection has been reverbing as a haunting anguish of a unforgiven crime against an intense pain that since has grown to take on a gore-spitting vividness powerful enough to render vain every attempt of relief from the burden of regret from being those very special moments in time that nullify all other joy. Not only for a moment will the neglected grant relief, not only a singular unburdened aspiration may they take in however deep yearning for absconding into the serenity of life, the fate though once written for them yet lying occult to the faces of all creatures who are to cross time's path, concealed by dark stains of decisions long past and sealed by a mind since hypnotized into indulgence, by it's once unquenchable thirst for life, not hindered by a second thought soon afraid of his every move, bound to that illusion of freedom to fill his cup and shaken to the bone at the thought of resigning the safe-haven where his soul now lies chained as it vainly looks to cool it's burning desire, but instead is now an observer alien to himself, a stranger to life, not more than a torpid witness losing trust in his own senses at the unanticipated yet feared reality of grotesque imagery depicting the demise he is said to have brought onto himself, all the while aware of the complete lack of understanding the world would show for this most lonely end of his, trying to make sense of a world in which great ailing is met with great contempt, but more than anything he is wondering:
"My memory can impossibly play such tricks on me. I have long been very optimistic to live long and prosper and express be able to express all the love I have, I was certain to thrive on the beauty around me, willing to work towards finding a home where people could trust me with their life. But how then, looking at how things have turned out, could a person accuse my will of being free?"
And one last time he finds himself preparing for what had once made him so ecstatic that it gave off the illusion of changing his destiny, but has since long stopped haunting the what has become a barely
perceptible tingle from the
And one last time he finds himself preparing to blend out the long drawm out incomprehensible utterings of lingering spirits both from the presence as well as originating in days long past, the spirits that have throughout the decades grown to be strangers, when once we formed an inseparable unit that defined who I was. And then he wonders what things may be like if he hadn't been such a curious child, if he had not tried to find security inside the loving embrace of these few seconds, if he could look at the clock and attribute the same sense of meaning to it as my dog attributes meaning to a mirror. "Maybe that would've meant freedom?"
When he closed his eyes and saw his life flashing by, he came to a profound realization:
"The worst part was waking up to that god awful vague idea that I might have reason to actually have brought some shame onto myself. I knew feeling ashame the moment i open my eyes in the morning, for the variance in my moral standards (highly likely), having possibly put strain on friendships, most certainly on my health and i feel awfully weak for eliciting such the lack of control that could have held me back. But most of all, what I am really ashamed of is the beast that my
paroxysmal poetocarminolalia has turned into, leaving me unable to resist the untamable urge of haveing a regular chat or a forum post turn into an aimless endeavour during which direction is impossibloe to determine for myselfforget which sentence I am currently writing, often breaking off on the middle or not forming sentences at all writeup of some of the most try-hard yet laughingly bad pseudopoetically spiked stories the world has ever seen since self loathing tenth grade ghemo girls' self-pity laden diarrheous release of an entire week's emotional congestive emoccumulation.
I remember writing a 20 page letter to this completely drug and booze naive guy from Uni who I was gonna let in on my plan to bring a USB stick the next day for some filecopies, during another episode of verbal diarrhea I wrote one of my psychology teacher 4 pages... the list goes on and on. I might be bipolar but mania and stimulant psychosis can not be discriminated ver easily. Just saying, this is where you could end up or worse: pass by on the way to being an even more successful winner type of guy like me.