It always makes me laugh when people say what these meds are supposed to do and no one can agree. Not the patients or the docs or even the companies that make it.
Anyways, I know this is late to respond but maybe it will help the OP or some one else looking these things up.
I won't say what these meds are supposed to do, because from what I know, from the many ADHD people i've known and doctors i've had the pleasure to talk to on it, the truth is no one has a concrete answer for what these meds should do.
They were originally designed to calm hyperactive kids down, then they added the PI form of adhd and said these meds could help them too. My perspective is how? If the med was meant to calm you down but you are already calm, then what is it supposed to do?
I've asked these questions to docs before and it seems that a newer opinion is that the PI type is not always ADHD, but another more reasonable answer for the op is that hyperactivity can be expressed internally rather than externally. What adhd is, for most, is an inability to distinguish importance of tasks from A to B. In this regard, the brain loses sight of what to focus on and multiple thoughts pop up while you read, or try to pay attention to everything. What is worse, is if you are like me, your mind races a mile a minute without meds.
So, when we are talking recreational useage, some one said it was not meant to make you feel stimulated. This is true, it's meant to calm you down. Both internal and external, however, this is not always enough. Recently adjunct treatments of alpha agonists which also help calm the brain down are being used.
My guess is the op is one of the 80 percent of adhd people with comorbidity of anxiety and he's treating it with a med that treats adhd, not anxiety. Dexedrine and adderall calm my brain down to focus, but often I find when one curtain is pulled down it reveals something else. Like the op, I was in the honey moon stage for a bit, thinking it could cure all that ails me but adhd meds work on one disorder and one disorder alone. In short term they are some times used off label as an anti depressant but this hardly lasts long term.
So for me, what I found worked was adding clonidine, with adderall. I also do take dexedrine at low doses with it as well. For me, if I take a high dose above 20 mgs of either dex or adderall, I get sleepy, foggy and can't function.
When I took dexedrine for a while, I thought tolerances were building but in fact I was taking too much. Dexedrine is such a subtle med for me, that I could not tell when it was working. But it was working. It was only after I stopped taking all meds together that I saw where I needed help and where I didnt. My suggestion for the OP is to stop taking adhd meds, this isnt about trying to reduce tolerance, because tolerance does not actually occur in true adhd people. Our brains just don't transmit the effects the same way other peoples do. It's why these meds are approved for us, because the worst we can get is feeling foggy and sleepy. In a general sense, if you took too much, you'd feel your adhd symptoms worsen. I found that my tolerance went down as I took the meds, so that one day I was taking 60 mgs, then I realized it was making me foggy, so I went down, till now im taking 30 at most and even then I keep having to go down.
Anyways that's my perspective, you need to remember what your full symptoms were before the meds, then find the very minimal dose that helps, you'd be surprised what 2.5 mgs can do. You also need to understand you are facing a confidence issue, in which you think you need meds to operate perfect all the time. This is far from the truth. If you go off em for a few weeks you will see how many things you can do well you thought you couldnt.
Good luck.