Hello all,
I am new here. I have taken Adderall for about 6 years. For the first 4 years I took 20mg a day and it worked pretty well. Then about 2.5 years ago I got a new psychiatrist who was kind of careless and liberal with his prescriptions, plus I was going through a crazy stressful time in my life. Long story short, my Adderall use got completely out of control. I was prescribed 120 mg a day and would often take more than that, sometimes double at 240 mg.
After a little less than a year, I started to realize that the 120mg of Adderall was actually making me tired. It took me a while to figure this out. I actually tried stopping my other meds (Lexapro 20mg, Abilify 5-10 mg, Xanax 1mg as needed) at different times before the process of elimination made me realize it was the Adderall at such a high dose making me oversleep, lethargic, constantly wanting to lay down, less alert/more spacey, and also manic.
Upon realizing this about 1.5 years ago, I immediately lowered my dose to 60 mg and it was hell but after about 2 weeks I was actually starting to function well like I did before at 20 mg before. After another week or so I was even able to lower it to 45 mg and still feel sharp.
Then I relapsed. I had another major life change, this time regarding my living situation, and I also one day randomly took a bunch of Xanax which led to severe withdrawal for the next week or so. Eventually I was back on the roller coaster of high dose Adderall—taking 90mg, 100mg, 120mg, 160mg, 180mg, sometimes more pretty much everyday for the last 1.5 years.
In April I tried ti owed it again and I made it through 20-25 days at 60 mg a day. I still wasn't fully sharp and functionally but I noticed some improvement. For example, while I was able to do much reading or writing, I was able to go out and run errands eventually and even some exercise. But then I relapsed again.
I suppose part of me was expecting that after 2 weeks my body would acclimate to the 60 mg like it had a year or so prior. This of course was unrealistic because while the previous time I was coming off of 10 or so months of abuse, the second attempt was coming after about 25 months of abuse. So obviously it was going to take longer.
Anyway, I am making my 3rd attempt at lowering my Adderall. It has been about 16 days forcing myself to stick at 60 mg. I don't really feeling chills or acute withdrawal symptoms at this point, but I feel pretty much brain dead. It is hard to get out of bed. I have been sleeping a lot, which to me is good, because the worst part is being awake and just laying there like a vegetable incapable of even focusing to watch TV.
I'm trying to be patient and fight through this. My goal is to make it to July at 60 mg, so that will be about a total of 35 days. Hopefuly by then I will start to feel some significant improvement. But right now the improvement is frankly not noticeable, which is really discouraging.
THe only options I can think of are lowering it more gradually, like doing 90 mg until my body acclimates then going down to like 75 then 60. But the progress is coming so slowly even after essentially cutting my Adderall use in half to 60 mg, that I'm afraid lowering it more modestly will make this whole thing drawn out even worse.
I've othher intriguing option would be adding Wellbutrin, which in my experience works sort of similarly to Adderall, but again I'm afraid this is just going to be working the same receptors harder and make the recovery just more gradual and drawn out.
In other words, I'm thinking the reality of the matter is: no pain no gain. And that I should continue forcing myself to stick with 60 mg until I feel my body respond to it and I am back to functioning on par with how I did years ago at 20 mg before I started abusing. From there, I can wait until I feel my body tell I am reading to step down to 45.
What do you all think?
I am new here. I have taken Adderall for about 6 years. For the first 4 years I took 20mg a day and it worked pretty well. Then about 2.5 years ago I got a new psychiatrist who was kind of careless and liberal with his prescriptions, plus I was going through a crazy stressful time in my life. Long story short, my Adderall use got completely out of control. I was prescribed 120 mg a day and would often take more than that, sometimes double at 240 mg.
After a little less than a year, I started to realize that the 120mg of Adderall was actually making me tired. It took me a while to figure this out. I actually tried stopping my other meds (Lexapro 20mg, Abilify 5-10 mg, Xanax 1mg as needed) at different times before the process of elimination made me realize it was the Adderall at such a high dose making me oversleep, lethargic, constantly wanting to lay down, less alert/more spacey, and also manic.
Upon realizing this about 1.5 years ago, I immediately lowered my dose to 60 mg and it was hell but after about 2 weeks I was actually starting to function well like I did before at 20 mg before. After another week or so I was even able to lower it to 45 mg and still feel sharp.
Then I relapsed. I had another major life change, this time regarding my living situation, and I also one day randomly took a bunch of Xanax which led to severe withdrawal for the next week or so. Eventually I was back on the roller coaster of high dose Adderall—taking 90mg, 100mg, 120mg, 160mg, 180mg, sometimes more pretty much everyday for the last 1.5 years.
In April I tried ti owed it again and I made it through 20-25 days at 60 mg a day. I still wasn't fully sharp and functionally but I noticed some improvement. For example, while I was able to do much reading or writing, I was able to go out and run errands eventually and even some exercise. But then I relapsed again.
I suppose part of me was expecting that after 2 weeks my body would acclimate to the 60 mg like it had a year or so prior. This of course was unrealistic because while the previous time I was coming off of 10 or so months of abuse, the second attempt was coming after about 25 months of abuse. So obviously it was going to take longer.
Anyway, I am making my 3rd attempt at lowering my Adderall. It has been about 16 days forcing myself to stick at 60 mg. I don't really feeling chills or acute withdrawal symptoms at this point, but I feel pretty much brain dead. It is hard to get out of bed. I have been sleeping a lot, which to me is good, because the worst part is being awake and just laying there like a vegetable incapable of even focusing to watch TV.
I'm trying to be patient and fight through this. My goal is to make it to July at 60 mg, so that will be about a total of 35 days. Hopefuly by then I will start to feel some significant improvement. But right now the improvement is frankly not noticeable, which is really discouraging.
THe only options I can think of are lowering it more gradually, like doing 90 mg until my body acclimates then going down to like 75 then 60. But the progress is coming so slowly even after essentially cutting my Adderall use in half to 60 mg, that I'm afraid lowering it more modestly will make this whole thing drawn out even worse.
I've othher intriguing option would be adding Wellbutrin, which in my experience works sort of similarly to Adderall, but again I'm afraid this is just going to be working the same receptors harder and make the recovery just more gradual and drawn out.
In other words, I'm thinking the reality of the matter is: no pain no gain. And that I should continue forcing myself to stick with 60 mg until I feel my body respond to it and I am back to functioning on par with how I did years ago at 20 mg before I started abusing. From there, I can wait until I feel my body tell I am reading to step down to 45.
What do you all think?