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So it’s been about a year since I said goodbye to Adderall. And it has been one @%^@%! boring year. Every now and then I manage to get caught up in something for a few days – but never have the oomph to follow through and really create. Oh how I miss my old productive self.

I’ve come to the painful conclusion that I might actually have to go through an unpleasant re-training process. My brain became so accustomed to effortlessly cruising along, fueled by the little magical orange candy for $30/month, that it seems to have forgotten what real effort is. Now I mentally recoil at the thought of making myself DO something.

So I haven’t  spontaneously re-awakened after a year (@#%$!); I guess it’s time to be systematic about it. Set some goals or something (recoil! recoil! recoil!).

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.

It doesn’t take much browsing of drug forums and viewing search queries to realize that the most sought-after information regarding Adderall is related to tolerance reduction. There are volumes of amateur research to be found.

Magnesium is probably the dominant “cure” brought up in discussions. L-Tyrosine comes up often. Some users swear by these (and other) supplements. But when you take the response as a whole, the general consensus seems to be that there is really no way to significantly reduce tolerance.

But here’s the thing. When you do enough research to get a handle on what people are really after, it’s not actually the therapeutic value of the class of drugs. They are generally looking for the high.

Adderall is kind of mean that way. The first time you take it, it’s mind blowing. The second time… it’s almost mind blowing. The third time… well, it degrades rapidly from there. But what exactly is mind blowing?

I’ll tell you one thing for sure – it’s not the ability to focus.

It is the euphoria. The feeling of world-conquering motivation. Feeling like you want to give everyone a hug. The ability to carry on quick-witted conversation like you are reading from a fast-paced movie script.

Those few hours, when you first used amphetamines, are burned into your mind – only to tease you for the rest of your life (as far as I know).

But here’s the thing. And it is a goodthing, despite not being what most tolerance-reduction seekers want to hear: you were not prescribed Adderall for it’s mind-blowing effects. You were prescribed Adderall to help keep your mind on task, or (in my case), to help you get through the day without a 2-hour  nap.

I attached a graph comparing the therapeutic effects, “recreational” effects and other side effects (the unpleasant ones – cold limbs, appetite suppression, tachycardia, etc) over time. The graph is purely intuitive, and the relative levels of the “quantities” are meaningless. The levels per quantity, however, ARE meaningful. The graph is based on personal experience, and a lot of reading of other’s experiences.

Each vertical line indicates a new month. A couple of things to notice:

• “Recreational” effects are tolerated extremely quickly. Euphoria and such literally do not occur after a couple of days.
• An “abuse event” may provide a glimpse of the original “high”, but only a glimpse. Further, it severely attenuates the therapeutic effects for as much as several weeks, depending on the duration and magnitude of the event. Debatably, the brain never fully “recovers”, as the projected post-event Therapeutic Effects shows. If it does, it does so very slowly.

So, what is the point of all of this?

1. You’re never going to attain that initial high again, so forget about it.
2. Trying to attain a high has severe detrimental effects on the therapeutic value of amphetamines.
3. While the brain quickly tolerates the “recreational” effects, the physical effects (vasco, pulmonary, etc) seem to vary about linearly with the size of the dose. Obviously then, the higher your recreational tolerance, the more dangerous it is to achieve recreational levels.
4. On the extreme end, users have demonstrated tolerance for up to as much as 2 grams (!!) of meth (!!) per day. THAT is where the recreational road ends up. It’s futile… and… well, at 2 grams per day, that’s got to be getting expensive.

For those who are considering going on Adderall, here is a piece of advice I very much wish I had been given at the very beginning:

Do NOT start your use with a prescribed dose. Instead, taper up over a week, or even two. In doing so, you’ll be mitigating possible issues from the outset.

Of course, I have to say at this point – don’t do ANYthing other than what your doctor has told you, without discussing it first.

Further reading: All the amphetamine information you ever wanted.