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The Benefits of Quitting Adderall (by Mka and LilTex)

The below lists were collected from a pair of great forum posts by QuittingAdderall.com forum members Mka and LILTEX41, with their permissions. Let me know if you have anything to add and I’ll keep making this list bigger!

Benefits of Quitting After 35 Days Free by Mka

  1. The ability to truly and completely relax. Before, I always felt like I had to go, go, go, always do, create, etc. Now, on Saturday mornings, I let myself sleep in until 9, even 10 somedays. Back on Adderall, I was up at 6 am 6 days a week.
  2. My sex drive is back. Not only that, but I’m not anxious about sex anymore. I found that on Adderall I tended to overthink everything, including sex, which took a lot of the enjoyment out of it for me.
  3. I’m down to less that half a pack of cigarettes a day, which is huge for me. Considering when I was on Adderall I smokes anywhere from a pack to a pack and a half a day. I am working on quitting cigarettes completely, but am trying not to overwhelm myself. I find the less I think about quitting smoking, the less I smoke.
  4. I have more patience with people, especially my boyfriend. 

Quitting Adderall Rewards by Lil’Tex

  1. Sleep
  2. Sanity
  3. Happiness
  4. Health
  5. New Opportunities
  6. Exercise!
  7. Friends!
  8. Repaired family relationships
  9. Training (see list of all races I am signed up for below)
    1. Bridgeland Sprint Triathlon (august 2011)
    2.  Clear Lake Olympic Triathlon (august 2011)
    3.  San Antonio Marathon (november 2011)
    4.  Half Ironman/Austin (october 2011)
    5.  The Woodlands Marathon (march 2012)
    6.  The Woodlands Ironman (may 2012)
  10. Self Respect
  11. Self Worth
  12. Self Esteem
  13. Lost weight through eating healthy and have a crazy sculpted physique (I look a thousand times better now than I did when I was malnourshied unhealthy and chain smoking cigarettes). I feel awesome.
  14. I have more energy than ever
  15. I have finally stopped wanting adderall. This is by far the biggest accomplishment. I thought I wouldn’t be able to live without adderall. What I’ve discovered was that adderall stopped me from living. It shut off the world around me and left me as prisoner to its wrath. Everyone around me knew I was sick and people ran from me. A psychic even told me that. She said said they could tell I had a good heart, but as soon as they knew me for more than 15 minutes they ran like hell. That’s not a way to live. Get help if you need to people! There is an incredible life out there waiting for you and believe me it is patiently waiting for the day you can man up and get off those junk pills! You are WORTH IT!!!!!!

4 Responses to “The Benefits of Quitting Adderall (by Mka and LilTex)”

  1. Sboo says:

    I love your benefits/rewards lists!! I share many of the same benefits since I quit. Here are two benefits I can add from my list:

    1. Saving money: without insurance, I paid $160 a month on drugs alone. Once every three months I’d visit with the psychiatrist ($150). I save $210 a month by not taking adderall.

    2. Saving time and energy: I had to drive across town to pick up my prescription from the doctors office. 50% of the time the doctor would forget to leave it out for me to pick up, or he’d be on vacation, or the office would be closed. Faxing it, calling it in, or mailing it was out of the question. I had to physically retrieve it every time. But worse than retrieving the prescription was getting it filled…..I spent soooo much time waiting around at pharmacies! Half the time the pharmacy didn’t even have the full amount in stock, so I would have to go down the list of pharmacies in the phone book and call ahead of time until I found one that had it in. My doctor would never write me a prescription early, so I’d pretty much have one day to get the script and get it filled, otherwise I’d face debilitating withdrawals. This meant that getting my prescription on that day was top priority, and I made lame excuses to get out of whatever school, work, friends, or family was scheduled.

    …it’s good to be off adderall!

  2. InRecovery says:

    Soooooooooooooooooo True guys!!! You are KINDRED spirits. It’s unbelievable to hear other people feeling the EXACT same way I do. I can’t believe it. These are secrets I kept to myself for so long and could never in my wildest dreams imagine someone else with the same problems…

    MKA, I was chain smoking on adderall. i hated feeling compelled to go outside every half an hour to smoke a cigarette, no matter what the weather was like, because of adderall. I have completely quit smoking since I stopped the adderall.

    LilTex, I agree with everything on the list. Particularly with regaining my sanity. I was really losing my mind on adderall. I also loved the points about health, Repaired Family relationships, having more energy than ever and Not Wanting Adderall. I, too, never thought I could live without adderall. The days I began to feel like I preferred being off of adderall than on adderall were a complete shock to me. That was the biggest point in my recovery so far.

    Sboo – Ha ha ha ha. You basically described me EXACTLY. Except I was seeing two different doctors so I was going through that same process twice and spending about twice the amount of cash every month.

    I remember all those STUPID drives to the doctors office. And all those hours WAITING AROUND in pharmacies. THAT was me. THAT was all I did. Doctors never refilled prescriptions early. When I was working, used to leave my job all the time to go pick up prescriptions from doctors or go on doctors visits. I would NEVER leave a pharmacy without a prescription. I always waited around. I spent hours waiting sometimes. They WERE always out of stock.. My doctors NEVER refilled my prescriptions early… I always had to pick them up THAT VERY day or I wouldn’t be able to function because of the withdrawals.

    It’s nice having all that extra cash every month from not SPENDING it on adderall isn’t it? You said you were going through about $210 a month. I was Spending about twice that a month. Plus, I would buy cartons of cigarettes because I couldn’t take adderall without smoking cigarettes!

  3. Sick Kid says:

    I don’t think I am the traditional quitter. I replaced it essentially.

    It works short term, so maybe once or twice a week is ok.

    But long term it does nothing but make you dependent and not able to wake up without it. It harms your synapses I think, but maybe your body regenerates faster than it does that. I know that since I started taking them, I tend to take more drugs.

    I have back pain pain and I quit quit Tramadol, Klonopin, as well as Adderall. The back pain bothered me enough that I had to take a lot of hot baths and I didn’t sleep so well. I just went back on Tramadol.

    I am not strong enough to quit on my own, at least not this time. I did in the past, but quitting in the past doesn’t count. I took a medium dose of MXE and that has become my DoC. I never thought I had an addictive personality, but I guess people change. I didn’t take a lot of it, and don’t do it everyday, but it helped me overcome my addiction to other things… probably because its slightly psychedelic, slightly opiate (helped my pain) and also stimulating (like Adderall).

    I’m not endorsing anything, but I’m glad I quit… again.

  4. josh says:

    You probably didn’t have ADHD. If you had addiction to Cigarettes and Alcohol without your medication, it could be possible that you had ADHD. But to really know is when you did take you medication, your need to smoke and drink become small to none. You automatically don’t do it as well as other compensatory effects, like yelling, getting mad, etc. You probably had OCD, which can mimic some things as ADHD but are polar opposites of one another. ADHD medication with OCD makes your OCD worse, and then when you get off medication your effects are back to your original normalcy.

    Those that take away stimulants would need more from external environments like Your exercise, but also you would be smoking considerably more than normal. Your smoking has cut down while getting of your medication hence you didnt have ADHD

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