Comment by adderaldecade | Hacker News Reader

Comment by adderaldecade | Hacker News Reader

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I've spent years trying to get off adderall, swinging between having serious addictions with it (even pouring bottles down toilets), quitting it for months, and then eventually coming back to it as work/stress accumulates.

A few years ago I quite adderall/dexedrine at a startup, it lowered my productivity as I rushed with caffeine and other things to fill the void, and within a month I was fired as I had become useless.

Adderall changed my personality well before I discovered coding. I discovered coding because it suited my adderall addiction, not the other way around. In fact, almost as a maladaptive trait, I changed my whole career path towards coding away from politics precisely because I realized how well suited this new line of work would be for my addiction: Only in coding could I continue with my dysfunctional adderall-addicted personality, get paid well for it, and paradoxically be seen as a functioning member of society.

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But now I'm stuck. I want to quit adderall but I know I can't do it without at least a month of not working.

Every vacation comes around, and I promise myself I'll make another attempt at quitting but back out, but fear prevents me from doing it.

The longest I ever quit successfully was for a few months while traveling around the world. I experienced the best romance I've ever had in my life, because without my personality being blunted by the effects of adderall, I could be my charming emotional self again.

That all faded when the trip ended, when I needed to become productive again and faced the disaster of not being able to perform.

And that, my friends, is what makes Adderall addiction so uniquely fucked up.

Unlike heroin, alcohol, or benzodiazepines, our economy currently rewards and even encourages us to continue our addiction to this drug.

You sure you're not me? I got into coding seriously in college after I started to take adderall to help study, and ended up making a career of it. I was absolutely terrified of quitting, because I felt like I couldn't do the one thing I was good at without it. I tried quitting and lost jobs over it, several times. It got to a point where I couldn't function as a human without it - I'd just sit in bed and feel sorry for myself. My addiction progressed to needing more than I could convince any doctor to prescribe, so I started getting more in various illegal ways.

I've been off the stuff for about 4 years, and I don't miss it at all. I'm actually a much better programmer without it - I don't get sucked into unimportant details, I have a more realistic sense of what I can and can't accomplish, and I'm more creative. More to the point, I have a life outside of a little bottle of pills now.

I got off of it after talking to some people who'd also gotten off - this helped alleviate my fears that I would have to give up my sweet programming career, and re-framed the problem as a matter of underused and atrophied motivation and willpower. It wasn't easy, but with a lot of love and support I managed to quit for good.

Hit me up if you want to talk - jonathan dot j dot mason, gmail.

Very good points. I do notice while on it, that it's extremely easy to get sucked down into rabbit holes, losing sense of time and of what's important.

I've also run into the same problem you described, of running out of adderall due to more and more tolerance. In desperation it even led me once to get some darknet speed pills off the internet, containing what I later found out to be meth... all due to a lack of available prescription alternatives. (I quickly learned methamphetamine is a completely different animal -- far more addictive, dangerously euphoric, and seriously neurotoxic. I learned to never do that again.).

I'm now experiencing my first health wake up call, which I'm convinced is linked to adderall use: just in the last few months, while using my iPhone I started to notice a very slight shaking in my fingers. Turns out: I have a family history of essential tremors and Parkinsons (caused by accumulated damage to dopamine receptors)... with ALS as a possible risk factor. That's right: A L fucking S.

And I'm only in my late 20's.

Terrifying. The illusion of my own invincibility has been shattered. For the first time in my life, it's abundantly clear that my problem with adderall is no longer just psychological: it's physical. That if I don't make changes soon... things could start going downhill for me -- fast.

I may take you up on that offer when I can muster up the courage. Thank you.

> I may take you up on that offer when I can muster up the courage. Thank you.

Please do - it's always a pleasure to help someone out of a bad situation that I've been in. And remember, fear is a prison without walls - you just have to make a decision to walk through that fear, and you're free.

I felt the same way about cigarettes (and then sugar) for awhile. They helped me focus and think about hard problems (or so I thought). Anyways, not as good example as Adderall, whose effects are probably more effective than what I imagined.

Have you considered taking a personal leave to kick your habit? I mean, don’t take a vacation, but take a leave from your job and then quit the drug while instead working on personal projects and trying to remain productive. You will slump at first, but if you like what you are working on, you’ll probably pick up again after a few weeks.

I know not everyone can afford to do that, but it’s the best solution I could think of. Good luck!

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