DOSE:	30 mg	oral	Amphetamines
	10 mg	oral	Amphetamines

BODY WEIGHT:

125 lb

I started seeing a psychiatrist because of depression in the fall of 2009. I had been depressed most of my life and decided to go to a doctor hoping maybe life could be less painful. I had been doing illegal substances (weed, vicodin, alcohol) to try and just feel okay for a while and when those ran out, I needed a new plan of action.

They put me on anti-depressants first, then tried mood stabilizers, and I was very sensitive to both and had a lot of side effects. Then they decided I had ADD after giving me the long diagnostic test and everything and I was prescribed Concerta first, which didn't do much, and so then was prescribed Adderall, which is where this awful story begins.

They put me on 30 mg Adderall XR a day and pretty immediately I noticed it working. I really can't tell if I had ADD and this is how it was supposed to work, or if it was the general stimulant buzz that gave me my experience, but it started out positive. I was able to concentrate better than before - I always used to feel like I was walking around in a fog - and I felt more aware and alert. I could think quicker and wasn't absent-minded like usual. I regularly folded clothes, vacuumed - crap I hardly ever did at my house. I felt productive and it felt good. Also, I felt calmer than usual when taking Adderall. I stopped worrying about little things like I used to.

However, I tended to have a hard time sleeping already and this only made it worse. There were days when I just didn't sleep and would crash at 9pm the next day. With the adderall, it was like I didn't even need to sleep really. Also, I wasn't hungry ever, and was losing weight, which I was happy about, but probably wasn't very healthy.

After a while, the dose seemed like it started wearing off faster. I told my doc and she told me to take another 10mg of regular release about 10-12 hours after my first dose. So I did and my industriousness was able to continue throughout the day. However, I wasn't always being productive in things I should have been working on. Instead of doing homework (which I still had 0 interest in even with the pills), I would read and write for hours at a time. I was experiencing continuous streams of creativity. This was not the kind of productivity that the pill is supposed to produce. This is not a magic make-you-enjoy-homework pill.

Progressively, I started feeling emotionally worse and worse. While I would feel all right taking the pills, maybe some bad days mixed in, off the pills I would have horrible lows. I thought about suicide a lot when I didn't have the drug in my system. At night, when both doses wore off, I would feel mind-crushing depression. I am not sure if this is due to the pills though or due to my previous depression or perhaps both.

Due partly to the depression I experienced without the drug in my system and the fact that I was falling behind in all my schoolwork because I was able to more intensely focus on everything else, I started taking more doses than I should have. I'd take the XR before school at about 6am, the 10mg single release at about 4 or 5 and then another dose of it at about 12 am and a couple times I would even take one at about 4 am the next day.

I had no idea what this was doing to my mind or body at the time, though it should have been a no-brainer. Eventually, I became on edge all the time, thinking people were talking about me, staring at me, etc. I went without sleep for days at a time. I didn't feel the calm anymore. I stopped taking it just one day after my parents nagging me about how those pills aren't good for me and then things just got worse.

I can't remember if I stopped completely, or if I had a few days on or a few days off, but I definitely had not been following the Dr.'s orders and at the time, didn't think those extra few 10mg pops really did anything, but 10mg is a lot, especially to someone who is sensitive to medications like me. I was seriously like on the brink all the time and started fearing for my safety and accusing people of things and it just got bad.

My parents took my back to the doc and I explained my crackpot story that someone was out to get me because I thought I heard someone at school talk about it and they told me to take Seroquel when I got home and get some sleep. I took the pill, and then started feeling really dizzy and my breathing slowed (I realize now I was probably MAJORLY fatigued - had slept maybe 4 hours in five days and my body seriously needed sleep) but I thought I was actually dying and thought my ma and my doc were trying to kill me. I keeled over in the hallway and hit my head. Still thinking I was dying, told my ma to call an ambulance and from there I went to a regular hospital to a psych hospital and spent my summer in and out of places like that and it was horrible. A lot of people I knew before all this crap just don't think of me the same anymore after I went off the rails for a bit there. We grew apart, both due to change in life situations but sometimes I have this nagging feeling it's just because they think I'm still bizarro. Other friends I have who didn't really know about this time in my life I am afraid to tell and have lied about it to numerous people. I feel like a fraud and that is one of the hardest things to deal with about this whole situation now.

I don't see a psychiatrist anymore, and whatever ADD I have I am doing my best to push through. Ironically, now out of high school, I am doing better in school and well, in life, than I ever was. I still think about drugs from time to time, adderall and otherwise, but I try to abstain because I'm doing so much better now and because of all the problems drugs caused me before.

Adderall was much more dangerous than I thought it was - I quickly found myself needing to take more and more. Looking back, I became physically and psychologically dependent very fast and didn't even realize it at the time. In light of my personal experience, I would not recommend this drug to anyone for any reason.

Exp Year: 2009	ExpID: 86205
Gender: Female
Age at time of experience: 18
Published: Jan 13, 2023	Views: 2,373
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