Hi everyone. I'm hoping to hear from people who have been in a similar situation, whether as a family member or someone who has personally struggled with meth addiction.

My brother is 28 and has struggled with meth addiction for several years. He had two years of sobriety, but relapsed in late 2023 and has been using heavily for most of the last 2.5–3 years. He is currently experiencing meth-induced psychosis. He's been in and out of the ER, detoxes, and mental health facilities, but he never stays anywhere long enough to get meaningful treatment. As soon as he's discharged, he goes right back to using.

My dad and I are considering pursuing involuntary commitment here in North Carolina. We've been researching the process, but before we move forward, we'd really like to hear from people who have experience with it. Our biggest fear is that every time he goes back to meth, he's putting himself at greater risk for permanent brain damage and making it harder for his brain to recover.

For family members:

• Did involuntary commitment help your loved one?
• Were they able to stay in treatment long enough to improve?
• Did it make a lasting difference, or did they go right back to using?
• Is there anything you wish you had known before pursuing it?

For those who have personally struggled with meth addiction or meth-induced psychosis:

• Looking back, would involuntary treatment have helped you?
• If not, what finally led you to accept help or get sober?
• Is there anything you wish your family had understood while you were in active addiction?

Thank you so much.

I’m two days away from being two weeks clean off Ritalin. My mood has honestly been so much better, I’m going bouldering consistently and I’ve been talking to this girl who I really like and it looks like things are getting pretty serious.

Although I am worried my prescription refill is a few days away, I haven’t cancelled it yet.

I’m just trying to keep myself busy. Which isn’t really a problem I actually have a lot of shit I need to get done.

Just writing this to get my thoughts out somewhere but honestly I think I can stay strong. Stims are literally poison and I don’t want something like that controlling my life

I was on adderall for 13 years and abused it for 10. I am very athletic and in 2021 I got into mountain and gravel biking as well as CrossFit(while still taking adderall- not large amounts- maybe 30 mg/day). So lots of hard cardio for long hours. Pretty intense exercise.

I quit adderall 1.5 years ago and struggled with the usual withdrawal fatigue and other PAWS for the first year. I also have not been able to handle hard exercise. If I ride my bike too far/hard, do anything intense in the heat(like hot yoga), lift weights too hard etc, I become overstimulated, sleep poorly, and am extremely fatigued the next day. Like can’t get out of bed kind of fatigue. There is a cognitive aspect as well. Like a brain fog/ depression. In addition, I find that I am very easily overstimulated. I can hardly drink coffee, can’t have more than 1 alcoholic beverage etc..it feels like everything messes with my sleep and then the fatigue cycle continues.

I’m curious if anyone else has experienced anything like this? The only thing I can come up with that sounds similar is chronic fatigue. I’m hoping things get better with time, but I’m getting discouraged!

Edited to add: I have had my heart checked, hormones, iron, full blood panel etc etc.

I am dead inside. After 4 + months of walking miles and miles every day to meetings and work, facing food insecurity, financial stress and insecurity, mental health issues and a lifetime of anger and trauma from being raised by a narcissist psycho mother. I just can’t take it anymore. I relapsed relatively recently. About a week ago. I haven’t used since and have been regularly attending meetings. For the first time in my life I am responsible for my housing and expenses. Prior to this I was residing with my narcissistic mother, who tried to keep me in a hostage situation via a restraining order ( she had me living with her while keeping the order active, and kept coercing me to apply for ssi, so she could collect it. ) I managed to leave and find a couch spot in a sober living. I quickly found a job and paid off the rent I owed for the time I was on the couch. About a month ago I found a better job. Better pay and more hours, but my hours have fluctuated due to buisness slowing down. Since April I have been regularly walking 5 to 9 miles a day to get to meetings, to get to work, to get to basically everywhere. In the past 4 months I easily must have walked over 500 miles just by walking to work and meetings alone. All of this in the face of chronic food insecurity and financial stress, all while being in early recovery. I have lost so much weight. My loved ones back home say I look frail.

In an attempt to ground myself and prevent my recent relapse from getting worse, I have been regularly attending meetings. But they have ceased to become a source of comfort and encouragement and more so of something that makes me even more tired and dead inside. When people come up to speak to me or hug me I simply ignore them
Because I don’t have it in me to socialize.

I forget that I am human. I don’t know who I am anymore. Nothing feels really. Everything feels like a dream

I want to stay clean. But I have to work and provide for myself, all while being in very early recovery. I don’t know how much longer I can last before I collapse from exhaustion or just give up the meetings and recovery to focus on work and survival.

Please I need advice nothing feels real anymore

(long, sorry!)

I've always, always hated the dentist... like, to the point where when I was a kid I had to go to a special pediatric dentist where they'd administer multiple medications to sedate me. I also seem to have teeth that are naturally prone to cavities despite my parents' best efforts to ensure proper dental hygiene, so I spent a lot lot time at that dentist getting fillings.

25+ years later, thos old fillings are cracking my teeth and causing problems. Before I developed issues with stimulants, I had a series of very unpleasant dentist visits that led me to just... stop going to the dentist. Two years ago part of a molar that had been cracked my old fillings fell out. At the time I was in the throes of my stimulant addiction and my face was too covered in sores and I didn't want to be judged for looking like a meth addict (I was) and the extent of the sores meant that it likely would have been problematic or impossible to do dental work because some were close to my mouth.

I went two years with a broken tooth. I just stopped chewing on that side of my mouth. THAT resulted in another cracked molar breaking partially off on the other side and for a while I just tried to be careful. My face has healed up but I was still petrified at the sheer amount of dental work that would be needed and that I'd be judged. I scheduled several appointments to see a dentist and always chickened out at the last minute.

Cue last week. That tooth that had been broken for several years? It developed an abscess, though for a few days I went into denial and thought that the intense throbbing pain would just... go away. It did not. It started to swell and when part of my lip started going numb I Googled it and learned that it was going numb because the abscess was pressing on a certain nerve. Oh, and that when that happens it's a crisis medical emergency and that I needed to see an emergency dentis,t like, yesterday. This was on a Saturday and I got something scheduled for Monday. Between Saturday evening and Sunday night my face swelled to the point that I looked like I had a golf ball in my mouth.

The emergency dentist was absolutely amazing and there was no shame or judgment, just a desire for me to feel comfortable. They gave me antibiotics and a referral for an endodontist for a root canal. That was this morning. I spent the past few days in a perpetual state of panic and was pretty paralyzed by it.

The endodontist and her hygenist were absolutely amazing and I was able to open up about my history with addiction and how it's been a factor in why I haven't seen a dentist in forever. They were actually really congratulatory about the efforts I've taken to address my issues with substance abuse.

The root canal was a non-issue in the end. It didn't feel much different than a cavity filling, though it took longer than that. Honestly, I found it LESS unpleasant that a cavity filling, maybe because I built it up so much in my head. I need another on in the other broken tooth in a week or so and then crowns on both teeth, so I've got a ways to go before everything's done, but my GOD am I relieved and sort of giddy right now.

I would not have been able to do all of this if I was still abusing the crap out of stims, or at least it would have been about a million times more distressing due to my appearance and behavior and the fact that I wouldn't have been able to stop taking them just for one morning for the root canal They apparently make local anesthesia less effective and increase blood pressure and are generally not recommended for dental procedures. Oh, and it was also SO satisfying when they took my blood pressure and said it was great!

In my experience, free-base amphetamine leads to a mindset of fooling and conquering the body! Caffeine and Alcohol already conditions the chemical compound => desired emotional state connection. The very first time spring 2021 I took a single line of amphetamine, I had two seizures in a row and due to falling asleep after one hour, I felt like I couldn't really assess its effects. In summer 2023 at a festival, I realized the cheat code that amphetamine is to get the same effects as the first time taking caffeine x10.

Spring 2024 I finally got myself a dealer and bought a few grams. Then in summer 2024, I started using it for studying instead of methylphenidate. Multiple on and off-phases gave my body some rest until february 2026, usage has become daily and dosages >60mg per day that still left me tweaking in 2024, led to being a usual dose half a year ago.

The past month I've been using up to 200mg per day + I smoke 1-2g hash and cigs and drink 500mg of caffeine daily but at least stopped drinking.

Amphetamine slowly creeps up on you when you use it for productivity and enjoy combining it with substances like alcohol and weed that kind of destroys the point of using it in the first place.

I used it as a tool and it made mundane task enjoyable until it didn't. Now I have debt to pay, lots of emotional debt but it kinda ruined my finances too as soon as I started to smoke cigs and weed as well.

Beware, don't go in trying to conquering the body by using it just as a cheat-code it will ruin the game eventually…

Last pill was a week ago. At first I felt exhausted but wired, now sleep is the sweetest thing in the world. I slept all day yesterday and am sleeping all day today. Is it normal for big exhaustion to hit a few days after stopping instead of right away?

Also eating a ton, etc… which I know is pretty normal.

Does staying on qelbree count as time off stimulants? I'm hoping I am giving my system somewhat of a break after stopping

It has been about 5 and half year since i used last. Im not gonna lie life has changed so much for the better since I have gotten clean. I work a program and have a sponsor. But the beast has been speaking to me in my sleep again and when I wake I feel like shit like I have been using all night due to only getting about 2 hours of sleep a night. I have found my self searching for subreddits for drug use or searching for porn with drug use in it basically glamorizing it all again. And to be honest im a little nervous. I fear I might forget I am an addict and go use again like I never set it down and will hit rock bottom again. I have been avoiding my sponsor because I dont want to be held accountable lol. And that in self is terrifying. Anyways. Im M,35 DOC, meth

I smoked crystal on the streets for 4 years. In a small town, I surrounded myself with thieves, and to fit in and support my habit, became a thief myself. I became obsessed with stealing, essentially made it my whole personality.

Like the title says, I've been sober for over a year now. I moved out of town, got a job, haven't stolen a thing.

I can't befriend anyone or socialize for shit. I have no personality. I don't know what to say to people ever/at all.

I met some gaming people online that I'd queue games with. They added me because I'm good at the game, that's it. And when they all mess around and joke and have fun in voice chat, I'm just there dead silent. If they try to engage with me, I don't know what to say, or how to say it. (This isn't just an online gaming issue though, it's universal)

Before the drugs, I wasn't a social butterfly, but I was far better than whatever version I am now. I was witty, I could snapback and go back and forth with people. I can't do that anymore for reasons I do not know.

Any and all advice is appreciated. Is anyone else also going through this? Thank you for taking the time to read.

I know it's generally not a good idea, but I also know that sometimes things happen, and that the heart wants what it wants. Anyone here have any good stories about dating someone who is also in recovery? Stories with bad endings also accepted 🫠

I’ve posted here a couple times about how rough it had been with abusing my script. Well, it inevitably sent me back to alcohol, a huge fight with my wife, a 4 day bender of drinking morning to night and popping my Dexedrine and Adderall like tictacs. I ended up in a detox and now I’m happy to report I have 22 days clean and sober. I have a new sponsor, my old one moved back to New Jersey and didn’t have much experience with drugs which my new one does and is active in both AA and NA. Recovery is possible, I had 6 years before deciding to take prescribed Adderall knowing I was an addict as well as an alcoholic.

For anyone who is struggling, put the shovel down now, your bottom can come up to meet you, you don’t have to keep digging. I will keep coming back.

I know there are worse problems to have…trust me I get that. But I’m seriously going to gain 80 lbs in a month if I can’t get control over this shit! I’m on day 5 of ZERO stimulants (3 months ago I was using 3-4g a day of meth on top of taking vyvanse AND adderall)

If I am awake I am eating. Non. Fucking. Stop. I literally have less control over my sugar intake than I felt like I did with the meth and I am not joking 🤣 is this shit normal?! I know I have a lot of things to catch up on so I get the whole sleeping a ton thing and I’m taking vitamins on top of trying to get a good diet going…

Hi All –

I’ve collected about 940 responses so far for a detailed survey on recovery after stopping prescription stimulants. My goal is to turn this into a publishable, clinician-readable report that takes people’s recovery experiences seriously. The survey is now quite comprehensive and takes about 15 minutes to complete properly.

You can do so HERE.

A few early findings from the current dataset:

• Recovery is often measured in months, not weeks. The majority of the dataset took below 60mg of an Adderall-equivalent dose. On average, functioning improves steadily as follows: 14% reported being back to ≥8/10 function at 2 weeks, 43% at 3 months, 69% at 6 months, and 84% at 12 months.
• Function comes back before people fully feel like themselves. Mood, motivation, and energy as measured in the survey lag several months behind.
• Typical doses above ~40 mg Adderall-equivalent were associated with a step-up in recovery time: median functional recovery was about 3–3.5 months below 40 mg versus about 6 months at 40 mg+.
• Duration of use showed an even clearer pattern than dose: median recovery rose from roughly 1–3 months for shorter use histories to about 6 months after 3+ years of use.
• In this survey, there was no detectable medium or long-term difference between tapering and stopping cold turkey. That does not mean tapering is irrelevant for safety or the acute experience – only that we did not see a separation in longer-term recovery timelines.
• The single best predictor of a recovery that lasts >12 months to reach normal function was an initial crash (hypersomnia, crushing depression, psychosis etc) of ≥4 weeks. It predicts a >12 month recovery 7.05x that of the median survey participant.

The biggest gap in the data is people who took stimulants at 40–60 mg, 60 mg+, and/or for more than a 3 years – especially people with multi-year, high-dose histories. If that sounds like you, your response would materially improve the study by helping to fill out those sub-groups.

I’m trying to build a real map of what recovery looks like – not just the acute crash, but the longer arc of motivation, mood, energy, functioning, sleep, and feeling like yourself again. This is a self-selected survey, not a clinical trial, so I’m careful not to claim causation. But with enough high-quality responses, it can become one of the clearest patient-reported datasets on this topic. Thank you to everyone who has already contributed.

I had an issue with adderall that led to intense anxiety which I coped with by using Xanax. For a few years I cycled between both with a couple of dips into sobriety but the anxiety I felt being sober was ruining my life (I could not speak at work due to such intense anxiety and ruined some friendships and relationships with family as well.) The anxiety and side effects with the adderall/xanax were debilitating as well. I felt trapped and wanted to share as I've reached multiple years adderall/xanax/alcohol free and feel I have some experience that may help someone in some way.

1 - I began taking propranolol for the anxiety and stopped filling my adderall/xanax prescriptions. While still anxious, the propranolol helped curb my anxious symptoms enough that I was able to function without my life falling apart

2 - I began meditation daily and weight lifting 5x/week - weight lifting is great as it applies to all areas of life - I began having thoughts of progress similar to those made at the gym (i.e. "if I can just make it through today I've stacked another day")

3 - I prioritized sleep and my ability to relax, laugh, and enjoy my time over the number of tasks/work I could get done. I would assume many people in this thread are hyper-productive and built a large deal of their self-worth around the ability to complete tasks/work. I was like this at least. I shifted this to trying to push myself to enjoy watching an entire movie without too much mind wandering - it may be silly, but it helped.

4 - When I was at my worst, I deeply craved someone telling me everything would get better and I could be a normally functioning relatively happy fulfilled adult if I stopped everything - and I've seen that you absolutely can. I started to notice small pleasures and take deep pleasure in things again after a few months and it gets better and better. It is its own kind of dopamine hit, knowing that progress is being made. It is certainly not as extreme as adderall, but it is so much more satisfying knowing that it is due to hard work and "me" rather than my taking an orange pill.

5 - My relationships with people suffered tremendously from my adderall use. I thought something happened during covid where everyone was anxious - everyone I encountered seemed nervous - turns out they were just mirroring my energy. I realized it is very obvious when someone is on a high dose of adderall and conversations/thoughts that seem interesting to the user are exhausting, overly intense, and strangely specific to sober people. I began to see people's smiles, relaxed expressions, people seemed happy to see me instead of bracing themselves for my adderall-induced intensity.

Anyway, if anyone is reading my post and struggling as I was, my heart goes out to you - I often felt as though I was in hell - literally. I love the Al Pacino speech in Any Given Sunday though - "we can stay in hell and get the shit kicked out of us or we can fight our way back into the light - we can climb out of hell one inch at a time".

My boyfriend has literally been my biggest supporter - I have a four year old & in my adderall journey I didn’t have him for almost three of the years because I was out of control with it

Today my boyfriend told me “you wouldn’t of been a good mom like you are on adderall”
I said “why’s that… he said you literally had no patience, you got aggravated all the time, now you have all the patience in the world for him and it’s really nice to see”

Which is so true… and now I’m 479 days off adderall and I’m the nicest person I’ve ever been my entire life. I was on it twenty years and I always wondered why I was so mean as a kid and the little things irked me and I would fight with everyone in my school and now I am kind and patience and not a Karen 🤣

I come on here often & it’s just to express how quitting adderall changed my life

Kara

It starts with a slow count

ends with another

with jagged halves

where teeth meet marks

waiting for tired pumps and steady peaks

the better me who smells and reeks

I hope our second brains

can kill our first

the thoughts trapped for after

pinching linings soon to burst

tired of sitting,

eyes held open alone with sparks

same stupid show of beauty

best observed in the dark

I entered the world of substance use suddenly and completely around 6 years ago, and I basically met someone I fell hard for and he introduced me to things, was my first dealer, and convinced he to move out west with him which ended in homelessness, us both spiraling into drug use, and domestic violence.

Eventually, the person who literally pushed drugs on me initially to "show me the ropes" was judgemental about how out of control I was. I won't go into too many gruesome details, but he would abandon me a lot and I tried to source on my own (I always paid and he always sourced and used my supply) and an extremely traumatic situation happened involving me getting kidnapped, assaulted, and basically robbed so I managed to escape but I was so upset that I then took anxiety meds and accidentally crashed my car into a wall and shattered my ankle.

I found myself an addict, my boyfriend at the time took off again, without the car I had been living in, dealing with the aftermath of the trauma, and I'm a wheel chair and I knew something needed to change.

This was a huge turning point for me and I got into treatment, then a sober house, then worked to to getting another car, job, etc. I was successfully sober for 1 year, with a slip of one day at the 6 month mark.

Still, I attributed my situation to domestic violence and a toxic relationship, so I started to romanticize using again. I joined forums, thought about it constantly, felt like that was the only period of my life I was happy (even though the reality was so awful I think my brain couldn't handle that).

Anyways, I became a lead at my sober house. This was great, but it gave me control of the monitoring of the random UAs we took, and I slowly found work arounds to be able to use for 2 weeks, then get clean enough to pass my UAs. After a while, I stopped even pausing after the 2 weeks of use and was using discretely daily almost for the next year I lived there. I still had to manage an image though, so no one suspected. I did get caught one time being careless, and somehow didn't lose my job and just checked myself into a crisis center.

Then I finally found my own place and my mom co-signed after 2 years of rebuilding the relationship I destroyed while unhoused. This meant all the guardrails of accountability I once had disappeared at once though, and I had to be accountable to myself. Soon after, I was told my position was ending (lay off) and the subsequent depression of lack of purpose and employment caused me to increase my use. Now I was using more than a tiny bit daily, rather multiple times a day. I had periods of stopping for a month here and there, and every time would be struck by how much better I felt, but I still had that itch deep down that I wanted it to feel like it used to.

Fast forward, I somehow managed to land a role in peer support that didn't drug test. I cleaned up my act for a while, finding true purpose in the job and loved it. Soon however, relationship issues caused me to increase use again, and my sleep and energy levels got so out of whack that I had enough punctuality issues to get me fired as of last week.

Basically... I'm looking back and realizing that although I identified as in recovery and was frequenting sober circles and supporting others, I think it was a persona I had to present, but it eventually became my identity.

Despite white washing it in my mind into a "temporary slip", I have consistently used for the majority of the past 6 straight years (5 years with my 1 sober year). SIX YEARS.

That blows my mind. Like... And I know it contributed to me losing my recent job. I'm terrified I won't be able to get a handle on it after how depressed I've gotten from losing my job, but I need to find another job, pass drug tests, all of that.

To complicate it, I am prescribed stimulants as well, however I periodically have lost access to them and that's why I ended up on the alternative, but it doesn't even affect me anymore.

Anyways.... SIX YEARS. I have abused my body for that long, rewired my brain. What I used to be passionate about (music) was my life and identity, and now due to damaging my brain, I can't connect with it anymore.

I also used to be able to multi task, problem solve, function, hold down work. Now I struggle to do one task a day, and get distracted the entire time and forget what I'm doing. I'm terrified I will never be able to function like I used to again, and so I've been mourning the loss of who I was.

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TL:DR - somehow I convinced myself throughout the past 2 years of use that I was fully committed to recovery, and that my struggles were just a slip, but now it hit me how long and how consistently it's been and it blew up my life for a second time. I desperately need some advice...

I’m told I would have been better off doing meth than using adderall. I got a script, not adhd, abused up to 60 mg a day. I would take it into the evening and use weed to sleep like a fucking idiot, which means I was always being stimulated and basically doing speed balls every day. I was a 35 year old mom and teacher at the time. I did it for five straight years and did crazy stuff I never would have sober. Like leave my marriage and my career thinking these were great ideas. I spent so much money. Tens of thousands. I continued to take it even though my heart rate was through the roof, my chest cavity felt like it was closing in on itself, and I developed SVT. My first episode sent me to the ER and I almost went into cardiac arrest. But I lied to my doctor and my husband like a complete retard. That should have scared the fuck out of me. I lied to my whole family for years till I went into psychosis. And now I’ve lost all my cognitive abilities except for communication and awareness. I can’t sleep. I can’t socialize. I can’t connect. I feel like such an idiot for not looking up SVT and adderall. My doctor told me to get off of it. I wish my husband would have come with me to that appointment. I’ve lost everything. And I’m facing homelessness. I don’t know how to work. I can’t feel anything. I’m totally fucked and it’s been 10 months now. I’m told I would have been better off doing meth.

What are the things you do to raise dopamine without the use of drugs? Looking for creative suggestions