Coming up on July again.
July 4th of 2007 – all of my “4th of July” memories are secondary to my “4th of July on Adderall” memories. Indeed, almost all of my memories from 2007 through 2008 are anchored to Adderall in some way.
“Oh, yes, that was the month I first ran out over a week early. I remember taking my last dose at 3am.”
“THAT was the time I took 60mgs at once. My feet turned blue, and my chest felt so tight that I simply had a lie motionless for an hour. That was ok though, because lying there motionally, I had a flood of inspired ideas [for coding].” [And they WERE actually great ideas, that I will have time to pursue... when I win the lotto.]
“I do remember that… it happened a couple of days after my first experience of having the sun rise and birds start chirping while I was speeding away.” [It's very depressing the first few times the sun rises on you... when you first notice the cracks in the window blinds have gone from black to slighly gray.]
I can read through code I’d written (mainly for BoxCAD) and remember what time it was, what mood I was in, and how much Adderall I had left.
It’s not surprising that all of my memories are associated with Adderall in some way, considering that I had an explicit thought about the stuff literally every ten minutes max.
The “funny” thing is, in almost all of those memories, there is a vague unpleasantness. A hovering feeling that something is very wrong. While I might have been pleasantly speeding at any given time (I won’t lie – it’s very pleasant), my credit was ransacked, my wife was crying or angry that I was still dosing after two or three days awake (and my oblivion to my son asking to “go to the park,” among other things), and my house was starting to look like it had been abandoned.
So where are we now?
I haven’t touched Adderall for four or five months. An accurate measure of my obsession can be found in “Time between thoughts of Adderall”:
Just after last dose: 5 minutes
Week after last dose: 10 mintues
Month after last dose: 10 minutes
Two Months: 15 minutes
Three Months: 1 hour
Four Months: 1 day
Current: Every other day
I no longer crave it. I’m at about 90% of my pre-Adderall functionality.
But what would I do if I found a piece of Adderall laying around… that had been misplaced? I feel like I could resist, but I also know that the beast is simply asleep. It will probably never be dead.
There’s a lot more to say – things that might be helpful to other addicts in withdrawal. But, I have to say – I write at about half the speed I did before I quit. :\ So I will have to say my “more” in a later post.
