I've been through benzo withdrawal originally from a 1 mg 2x daily Rx for clonazepam, shortly after that I went through a second withdrawal off of street acquired benzos. I never fully faced the acute wd's from my original addiction, I was put on mirtazapine, then I weaned off that. Six months went by and I still felt dissociated from myself, so started taking Kratom sporadically at first. The stimulating batches seemed to make me feel as close to the old me as I could hope for, so I remembered my childhood ADD diagnosis and got re-diagnosed as an adult, and was prescribed Concerta.
The point of my final break from myself happened when I started getting addicted to daily Kratom use, as for some reason the Concerta crashes hit me harder than what I think it should have, and I was under the impression that Kratom was more benign because at first it didn't give me side effects or withdrawals. I started only taking the Concerta while attending college and doing studying, but the Kratom usage stayed as a daily crutch at that point.
Fast forward maybe a year at around 20 grams per day of Kratom and I start realizing that it actually contains two moderately potent opiates. Somewhere down the line I start having to dose around every 3-4 hours, and I would wake up in the night and have to dose to stop RLS and the acutes. I decide to rapid taper and rot away for a month or so while I transition to PAWS. I start getting suicidal a few months in as the lack of energy, anhedonia, everything wasn't really improving. I take St. John Wort(a natural S.S.R.I. type supplement), and it kind of makes me okay with being basically a nobody now(as I couldn't go to college with the severe anxiety while always being concerned about my next fix).
After 5 months or so I figure the P.A.W.S. from the Kratom should be subsiding since I wasn't on that high of a dose, so I taper off of the St. John Wort, and shortly after that my anhedonia and apathy and my feelings of seeing no point in things creep back in. This is when I've started taking the odd Concerta again or another RC stimulant to see if it would bring back some zest for life and normalcy, and it did! For a very short time, but if you explained it and I understood your post correctly, the tolerance for stimulation and forced release of dopamine, etc, it only made me feel like I had my shit put back together for a week or two.
Now I'm back to rotting away with no hope I'll ever feel like I did before I started taking either the opiates or stimulants. I'm not quite sure which class of substances did what, but my brain just won't connect with things like it used to anymore. I was proud of my sobriety which I still have imo, since I only used Concerta as Rxd or an equal strength dose of the RC stimulant I have(3-FPM) for about two weeks until the tolerance started building. Like you say, it's a hellish existence not feeling connected to life for months at a time when sober.
Everyone tells everyone else it will get better, stay the course. But, if I can't even maintain a feeling of artificial connection to the world and myself with conservatively used stimulants, will our brain and minds ever heal with time? I can't explain this feeling to anyone in real life, but it's like I'm a ghost now and even the illusion I held for so long that I just had a chemical imbalance and needed Concerta for ADD or a benzo for my GAD and SoAD, it doesn't comfort me anymore. I know 100% I'll always start feeling efficacy going down on any medication, or something will make it not worth taking, like bad crashes and side effects. I can't find peace on drugs or off of them anymore, I've seen both sides, and don't fit on either one.
I hope for your sake if you continue to take your Adderal, you'll keep feeling things, and it will keep you somewhat glued together and motivated. I don't know how anyone can try and sell false hope to you; the human brain is complex, and maybe some of us don't ever look at the world the same or feel like we did prior to coming off of our choice drug. There's a really great chance that will happen in time for you naturally, and the odds are it will, I just can't say from my experience getting sober off of all the substances I've experimented with that it happens to everyone.
I will tell you ime existing in a lifeless void can get easier to bare with time, and the sober time does give you some pride and something to look after, even if you can't really feel any point to doing so. It's like going to see a bunch of horror movies, playing violent videogames non-stop, or climaxing excessively; eventually feeling like a ghost and having no way to fix it fails to make you get so worked up about that fact.
I say the above all with a grain of salt, as I'm in a mood right now where I'm about to hop out of this void and relapse the same as you. I'm thinking of making another appointment with my Dr. and telling him I can't function without a stimulant(which I really haven't been). But its only been 6 months(?) since quitting Kratom, and I haven't counted my time off St. John Wort, as I didn't think I was on it long enough for it to make what's left of my personality and perception any worse when I stopped taking it than it already is. Maybe it added to this last episode though? I just lump it all together as one boring silent movie flick at this point on a fuzzy T.V. set. When I stated that my stimulant tolerance skyrocketed for me in two weeks time, I don't think even renewing my prescription for Concerta will be a long-term solution for me though...If I remember correctly it was after coming off of the S.J.W. that I noticed apathy and anhedonia, and the sickening reality that I was still broken, which shattered my resolve momentarily, so I did dabble with and get some effects from stimulants, but it wasn't long lived
I will wait another 6 months, maybe even till I can count 1.5 years since abusing drugs, before I go back on Concerta, or figure out something that will solve the problem long-term. I know Kratom at first made me feel like I was on a smoother form of methylphenidate, so in my situation, using both that and Concerta quite frequently on the same day might have really messed my brain up. If you weren't using two different classes of DAT/NET releasing agents/inhibitors at the same time, you will probably bounce back.
Keep telling yourself that your brain is just being stubborn till you decide to live life stimulant free with all of your heart, and that it will function like it used to once it's sure you've made a commitment to live without the chemical crutch. I kept telling myself that these last few months even though I didn't believe it at first, and I started to convince myself it was possible. It very likely is possible, I just lost hope when I came off the anti-dep. then dabbled with stimulants for a short time, only to find out they lost efficacy in a couple weeks(54mg Concerta x1 daily, 50 mg 3-FPM x 3 daily, not using two stims on the same day).
