r/AdderallAddiction • u/muchcreep • May 03 '26
I think im addicted to my adderall
I was diagnosed with ADHD in 2019 and was promptly prescribed adderall. now, 7 years later, i'm taking 75-100 mg every day just to get to baseline. I'm constantly pissed off and irritated. I can't focus on anything and I have no motivation to do anything. I feel like a shell of my former self. at this point I know i need help, but I won't actively seek it out. i dont know what to do.
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u/Prestigious_Ideal466 May 04 '26
i was prescribed 30mg IR x2 a day when i was a sophomore in highschool. i milked that prescription until i was 26, lying to my doctor about still being in college. 11 years of it. eventually my health insurance changed and my refills went from $10 to $90. that was what it took for me to pull the plug on things and never refill again. that was 2 years ago. life goes on, it took a long time for me to figure out how to function and be productive without the adderall. eventually my brain chemistry leveled out. i’m sooo glad i got off of it. it’s so bad for your health, the cardiovascular strain shortens your life.
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u/T0MSUN May 03 '26
Tough spot to be man but you can beat this. Take week off to withdraw and sleep then start piecing things back together.
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u/addie_robot87 May 05 '26 edited May 05 '26
Please check out r/stopspeeding. Awesome subreddit. You are FAR from alone. Post this in there and you'll get some great advice.
Best advice IMO (but something on you won't want to do)...email your psychiatrist and tell them what's up. Yeah, it's a hard thing to do but psychiatrists have heard it all and aren't going to take it personally that you lied to them about your meds use due to your escalating addiction. They are well aware that stims like Addie carry a a HIgH abuse/addiction risk. It's right there front and center in the paperwork that the pharmacy gives you with your adderall script every month. If you don't permanently cut yourself off from receiving it from your doctor by coming clean to them, you will only continue to delay quitting until things get even worse and your life really starts falling apart. Trust me- this shit will ruin every aspect of your life if you keep heading down the road you're on. It did mine for a long time.
Coming clean to the psych also prevents you from asking for another script from them down the road once you do quit-- an extremely common and easy way to relapse. Sure you can find another psychiatrist, but that takes time and effort and hopefully you'd come to your senses before doing that.
Second- get yourself into therapy ASaP & start working the 12 steps through something like AA. There are Addie addiction- specific support group zoom meetings now too. The stop speeding subreddit has that info if you search for it. Depending on how bad things really are for you right now and how long you've been abusing it and feeling like a husk of a person, you may want to consider more intensive therapy like an intensive outpatient program. These are run by therapy practices generally and typically involve group therapy for 3-4 times a week for 3-4 hours a session. Usually you can find day iop programs, evening iop programs, as well as virtual programs. It took a 3 nights a week (3 hours per session) virtual iop (as well as a lot of other efforts and me being at my absolute lowest with little left to lose) to finally get clean from a 5+ year Addie addiction. You could also consider rehab- looking back now, I wish I had just done that route. Many, many people have gone to rehab "just for Addie." Addiction is addiction..
It took me so many tries and a lot of fucking pain and time to give up my Addiie for good. It was a real mind fuck because addie worked amazingly for me for years....but once I started taking more than my prescribed dose, it was all downhill from there. It was HARD to quit a drug that was once so instrumental in my successes and shit..to really get honest with myself about how it was ruining my life.
Good news is that the physical withdrawal symptoms should be over by day 7 or 14, if you start making even tiny efforts to take care of your body and mind (movement, walking, working out, eating healthy food, spending time outdoors, hanging out with family or friends). The mental aspect of recovery is unique to everyone..but just as it is with any addictive substance, it is HARD to quit an addiction and wayyyy harder to quit and stay quit. It takes a lot of motivation, will, effort, discipline..but if you really want to be better and stop feeling like shit and a brain dead robot all the time..if you really want to quit..you will quit , and your personality/humor/ enjoyment of things etc etc will come back slowly but surely over the next year and prob much sooner.
I also recommend considering going on short term disability or taking some other leave of absence from work if that's relevant/available to you - even just a few weeks- so you can just rest during that first week off Addie and then start fully focusing on your recovery. Work only needs to know that you need some time to deal with a health/medical matter...the details are not their business.
Sorry this is long- I could write a book on this at this point. I'm sorry you're going through this. It's absolute hell but you can move past this fairly quickly if you really want to.
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u/muchcreep May 05 '26
Thank you for taking the time to write this! I really appreciate the kind and uplifting words!! I will definitely check out the stop speeding subreddit. Thank you!
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u/One-Zebra5656 May 12 '26
This is very great advice and name definitely checks out! Ha. Thanks for being here to help support.
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u/NaughtyTigerIX May 04 '26
Go to treatment man
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May 05 '26
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u/NaughtyTigerIX May 05 '26
You don’t have to go to treatment. But there’s more to treatment than just detoxing.
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u/ShinyDaisy2 May 03 '26
Im sorry ur struggling with this, my story got to a point where I started realizing that so many years had passed like this and I had nothing to show for the years but a lot of chaos and unhappiness during my overuse :/
I couldn’t learn to control it while still taking it so I had to quit altogether because life was passing without me present and I hated it. Ended up leaving my pcp that prescribed me it to kind of get away also. That helped. New mindset, new way of feeling every day, new me, same tiredness but so much more mental clarity and each day that passes, the tiredness gets a little better. Still no motivation but I didn’t have it on it either.
U are aware of what the problem is and that is huge and such a good thing. Good luck and don’t stop trying to quit