
Long Term Adderall Use - SueR
I am a 68 year old female who has been taking adderall since 1997, prescribed by a psychiatrist for depression. Several antidepressants were unsuccessful when he decided I should try this. My original dosage was 30 mgs 3 times per day. I stayed on this dosage for a few years, then decreased to 20 mgs 3 times per day for several years. About 6 years ago I went down to 20 mgs twice a day and for the past year have been decreasing to 15, then 12.5, then 10 mgs twice a day. A month ago I tried just 10 mgs only once a day and now just started 5 mgs once a day. I am mainly experiencing vivid, crazy dreams and somewhat of a foggy brain. I hope I can really quit this drug. 22 years of it and especially at my age is scaring me. Anyone else out there who has been on this for this long and has successfully withdrawn from it?
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salawat
I've been on it since about the 2000's and am in my 30's. I'm starting to walk
back my dose. Mine's a bit more of a precipitous drop (at my request, long
story), since I was at 70mg in the morning, 40mg in the evening about a month
ago. Bumped down to 50mg in the morning, 30mg at night for a few weeks, and am
now trying 40mg in the morning, 30mg at night.

It's fast, And I know it, but I'm trying to do it as quickly as I can
reasonably feel safe doing it without feeling like I'm losing my mind, because
the high dose was just not getting me anywhere positive in my personal
relationships, and after weight loss was starting to generate side-effects
beyond what I was willing to put up with. I've survived a doctor going against
the literature and trying to cold turkey me from 100mg daily to 30 mg daily
before ( _do not recommend_ ), so I've got a bit more experience with bad
transitions to get me through it.

There's some fog and upset; there's going to be. Your neurons have
physiologically adapted to dealing with the elevated levels of
neurotransmitter analog, and it'll take some time for everything to settle
back down and readjust to having to produce your own neurotransmitters again.
The nice thing is, your brain still knows how to do it's thing from before the
Adderall... It just takes some time for all the cellular equipment to fire
back up. The FAA, for example, for pilot candidates wishing to submit to a
neurological panel after stopping treatment with something like Adderall,
requires a minimum of 90 days to have elapsed since cessation of treatment. So
given you changed your dosage schedule a month ago, you're probably still in
the transitionary period where you'll be most prone to mental disturbances as
your brain transitions.

I'm not a doctor, just some bloke on the Net who's walking about the same path
you are at the moment.

The things I've done to try to keep me sane in the transitions include:

-Focusing on our animals and my garden. The fog seems to settle in when I'm not doing anything, so I just keep setting little goals and tasks to keep me busy, thinking, and dealing with the external world instead of angsting over the fog.

-talk to my partner about it. Conversation can be a bit spurious at times, but again, small talk gets me out of my head and engaged with the world, even if I'm bad at it.

-try learning something new. It's okay if your attention wanders while doing it. The point is to keep you doing something. Reading can be a godsend, but sometimes just trying to do something to keep your hands busy is better

-If all else fails, talk to your doctor, therapist, clergyperson or a close friend. It can be scary, having your mind play tricks on you, but I swear it gets better! Vivid dreams are kind of a hand-in-hand thing with changing med doses; and the fog will pass with time.

I have faith in you! You can do it! You're so close!

