I told him my history of depression and my reluctance to get back on anti-depressants
The majority of them, I don’t even remember but I recall a feeling of overall satisfaction with most of them
I went to a psychiatrist about 7 months ago for the first time in a long time (my mom urged me to do it). He acknowledged that but based on some of my statements throughout and some question he asked me, he said I may also suffer from ADD. I wasn’t crazy about the idea of more pills again but it was a different approach so I thought I’d at least try it out.
A started off taking it as directed(30mg/once daily). Having never used amphetamines or any kind of stimulant prior to this, Vyvanse was an utterly new experience. As a lot of people will attest, the initial results were amazing. The mild euphoria and “push” I got from just 30mgs was actually helpful at first, I’d say. My psychiatrist seemed to agree so he decided to keep me on it.
Shortly thereafter, I started pondering possible benefits of upping the dose. Regardless of being fully aware of the fact that it’s basically diluted speed, I felt compelled to at least try it once. I did a little research before-hand (wish I would have found this site then..) and determined that it probably wouldn’t land me in the hospital. Satisfied with that knowledge, I doubled my next dose. Of course, that push was intensified substantially. I felt motivated to do all sorts of things. I ended up playing my guitar for a couple of hours. Pretty much until my fingers started getting sore. My mind was spitting out all sorts of ideas, left and right.
Trying to wrap this up here… As you figure, it wasn’t long before this turned into a semi-regular thing. The self-medicating started again. The fact that it’s a prescription drug made it somewhat easier to justify to myself. Pretty twisted, but I now see that as some of the first indications of this addiction.
When I started losing a visible amount of weight, I told myself to lay off it a bit. Of course, that has proved easier said than done. I held off for three or four days before caving. After repeating this process a few times with basically the same results, I just slowly started accepting the addiction, in a way. I started to accommodate it, without the shame. This is probably the most pivotal point of change in my personality and mentality. This went on for a bit, all the while, I slipped further and further into this hole and not even really realizing just how deep it was getting. It took a couple pretty intense withdrawal spells to come to some serious realizations of what this horrible drug has really done to me.
Even in all my unhappiness and dissatisfaction prior to Vyvanse, I had some level of respect for myself. In my darkest days, I’d never considered suicide as a solution. In the drug’s tightest grip, I could feel myself declining towards what feels like passive suicide and yet, I couldn’t say no to it.
Truth be told I still can’t really say no to it, but something has changed
I definitely had a wake-up call. Not sure how I’m going to go about it yet, but I’m going talk to my psychiatrist about it one way or another.
Thanks for creating this site. There are a lot of online resources for stimulant abuse but nothing quite as specialized and intensive as this. I’ve bookmarked it and plan on reading more of it ASAP.