DOSE:

repeated

oral

Amphetamines

(daily)

I've been a lifelong sufferer of depression and various other mental health problems (depression being the most severe and debilitating with dyslexia a distant but hardly overshadowed second), for a long time I decided to go with the toughing it out route but I realized that by acting like that all I really did was withdraw from life.

I started taking Wellbutrin, which had a mild effect on me, I was considering quitting it and trying something stronger until I saw I lost weight on it, I ended up augmenting it with lexapro which helped a lot. However some of my other problems still went unchecked and I began to feel the effects of the drugs I was on dwindle in only about a 2 month time frame. I would pop extra Lexapros because they made me drowsy and thus able to escape from life, not because they helped me mentally that much.

I got my psychiatrist to eventually to prescribe me Adderall to help with the appetite suppression effects that were beginning to wear off from the other pills. I got a pretty big supply, 90 20mg pills of the XR variety.

Because I had experience on my own with phentermine in the past, I skipped right ahead to taking 2 pills. I didn’t feel anything for a few hours and after about the passing of 5 hours. I had taken 3 more, It hit me like a wave suddenly. A powerful rush of energy and euphoria which actually seemed to increase as the night went on. I was amazingly sociable, and my thoughts raced at incredible speeds yet maintained coherency (for awhile). I was amazingly introspective and truthful and for about a hour I had life pretty much figured all out. As time went on though, I saw myself become way too impassioned and jacked up, I had amazing delusions of grandeur and a desire to literally take on the world with my bare hands and a feeling that with enough Adderall, I would win, without a doubt.

I compared to some of the stuff I was talking about in my new found confidence and passionate way of expression to Hitler without the racism (which was pretty wise, I found out later that Hitler was a huge meth head). I lost the ability to rationally figure out what I really wanted to say, While I didn’t say anything completely out of the blue, my statements were so grandiose and beyond reason that even during the trip I realized I was pretty fucked up. As I typed a lot of those statements, I even added in 'I’m on amphetamines don’t take anything I say seriously' liberally in every conversation I had, even though I felt like that, not only everything that came out of my mind was correct, I was shocked people didn’t feel exactly the way I did.

Eventually everyone went to bed. I was still jacked up, I cleaned out my entire room, which was a major fuckin mess, I hadn’t cleaned it in many months. I lifted weights, doing reps on 25 pounders. The number of em all together had to clock in at over 1,000 by the time the night was through. I still took me a few hours shy of a day to truly come down.

Despite my amazing confidence, new found zest for life and seemingly superhuman strength and stamina on a high enough dose of Adderall, I immediately cut back to 2 a day, I tried 3 a day for a brief time but it really didn’t help to much. With 2 I’m calm and energetic, with 3 I’m a little more wired, while still calm, my thoughts aren’t racing nor am I 'high', I experience the other more negative side effects like the horrible body odor you get from using amphetamines more intensely however, so 2 is what I’m sticking with.

Now I dont want to get all preachy here, but: The trip taught me a lot about my depression and addiction, having to compare how the depression made me feel day in day out to the exact opposite feeling given by Adderall. It made me stop looking at myself as a victim, domed to failure and just a general belief that life is horrible. Though I still have those feelings from time to time and always will, I can see them in the context of having a condition instead of a real existential crisis. Adderall made me understand depression's nature as a chemical imbalance/disorder alot clearer.

On 5 pills of Adderall I was telling friends and family that 'My depression is finally gone forever'. It wasn’t, but when I said it then, I was sure it was true. However I realized going over the recommended dose again would only make matters worse in the long run. Even if that effect remained for a long time to come, eventually it would disappear as my tolerance grew and the consequences of that started to create issues. What I wan people to realize, is what I realized, there is no pill, herb, magical formula, or set of circumstances that's going to make anyone's life perfect, the meaning of life sometimes seems to be learning and growing from the struggle of just hanging in there.

Exp Year: 2006	ExpID: 53237
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Jun 20, 2006	Views: 20,363
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Amphetamines (6) : Depression (15), Medical Use (47), Retrospective / Summary (11), Various (28)