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If anyone here reading this needs the motivation or gentle reminder: you might not need Adderall anymore. I've used it to get ahead in software for the past ~8

If anyone here reading this needs the motivation or gentle reminder: you might not need Adderall anymore. I've used it to get ahead in software for the past ~8 years. I recently gave it up, but it was hard to realize that it was time. It might be time for you, too. The thing holding me back was fear. Fear I wasn't enough, that I couldn't be efficient. That I would get fired from my high position. Or even if I could make it work, that I still wouldn't get enough done on my startup (which has its own list of fears itself). What finally pushed me to quit was realizing I wasn't as compassionate anymore; it was impacting my relationships. I had three separate people tell me in my coworking space that I look too busy and unapproachable so they never came to chat. I had a SO tell me that I'm emotionally unavailable too often. All within the time span of a month. I'm naturally an optimistic, compassionate person. This wasn't me, and being a robot (as mentioned in the article!) wasn't who I wanted to be, at any cost. Indeed, three days after I quit I felt like a new person. I felt silly, fun, again. I had a week of "brain fog" where I wasn't productive. Afterward my efficiency went back up. Nowhere near the Adderall levels, but to a very acceptable level. So in summary, you might not need it anymore if it's causing you grief. Sorry for the lame motivational things I'm about to say (Taken from the book, Daring Greatly): You are enough. You are worthy.

jasonlotito 9y ago
Do you actually have ADHD? > I've used it to get ahead in software for the past ~8 years No, you don't. At least not from how you are describing your use. You don't take this medication to get ahead. You take this medication to get to an even playing field. To get some control over your life. So yes, if you are abusing drugs, don't. That's generally good advice. Don't abuse drugs.
- textor 9y ago
  Life is not a playing field full of fun and games, even though you could frame it in terms of game theory. People want to be successful, not to evaluate their "innate" performance against other people. Moral justification for doping is unimportant, because it's arbitrary. In reality, however many competing actors make me miserably insecure by their superiority, whatever is their percentile relative to the general sample, I wish to win, I wish be more than what I am all the same. Please read the article.
  - jasonlotito 9y ago
    I did. Doesn't change what I said, nor should it. The OP was potentially offering dangerous advice. I see all too often people suggesting things about ADHD, medication and drugs that are dangerous. Speak with a medical professional. If you are taking drugs you have not been prescribed, see a doctor. As for your "want to be successful" argument, that's a fallacy. You are causing more harm by abusing drugs to get ahead than you realize. Read the article? No, go see a doctor.
    - goldenkey 9y ago
      Its terribly easy to be prescribed these drugs by doctors. I feel like you feel less responsible and even coy by pushing the discussion off onto the "See your doctor" rails. But what good is that when any psych will hand these drugs out like skittles?? I have 4 boxes of unused adderall sitting in my cabinets from a script I was given. Acting like doctors are going to solve whatever explanation you are obliged to give is just silly. Lets hear the whole story..
- barrkel 9y ago
  Did you read the article? This perspective is covered quite well, I think.
  - jasonlotito 9y ago
    Yes, it talked about the dangers. I took the parents comments as saying that you don't need to take drugs. The reality is, you shouldn't take advice like that from a comment. See a doctor. Work with them to find what works for you. What I saw from the OP was dangerous advice.
- zschuessler 9y ago
  I apologize my wording made it appear I was abusing drugs, I don't condone that. In fact I'm the opposite: I microdosed Adderall. 5mg a day for the longest time, then bumped up to 10mg. My doctors over the years pushed me to take more but I always said no. Instead I would take breaks and let tolerance die down before resuming. I first got a prescription when I found I would rather spend 2-3 hours of my work day staring at a wall than work on a tedious task (literally, I did this). I was either hyper focused on a task and spent all day and night on it, or would rather be left with my thoughts. I went home many days wondering what was wrong with me and waited every day to hear the news I was fired. I eventually went to a doctor around the age of 20 and he said, without a doubt, I have severe ADHD. I have found other ways to cope with the condition. Many already shared in this very thread what has worked for me: no sugar, exercise, plenty of sleep, and a tinge of coffee. Even when on small doses of Adderall, if I had more than a handful of Oreos, I would have to go home because work is impossible. This actually happened! I know it's hard for people without ADHD to understand. It's not about willpower, it was an impossibility for me to work.
  - ankushnarula 9y ago
    I was convinced that I had ADHD by the time I was 21 after a lot of struggling in high school and college. I went to a psychiatrist and he asked me the basic DSM IV questions and he said it was a 90% match. So he put me on Ritalin and then eventually Adderall. I also had severe insomnia so this exacerbated my abuse potential in order to make it thru multiple days with higher performance without sleep. Within a year or two, I got off all the stimulants because I was falling apart. Almost 13 years later (and a lot more serious work struggle) I started talk therapy and began to realize that confidence, self-esteem, chronic anxiety and depression were my real underlying problems. It's hard to focus when you feel anxious all of the time. It's very hard to think deep - which reinforces the confidence and focus problem in high performance work situations. A vicious circle. So we tried the usual SSRIs, sleep meds, and benzodiazepines - which all have their own problems. Another 12 years later after being on these meds, I stopped early in 2016. Life was slowly getting worse - and my physical health as well. In the start of this year I to realized that SSRI/SNRI are not fully effective if you don't change your lifestyle. So I cut out sugar, juice, sweet fruits, simple carbs, alcohol, and limited my caffeine to the morning - all of which makes a world of difference. Now I'm struggling to form the daily habits of cardio in the morning and mindfulness meditation a couple times a day. I feel 100% more focused and stable. Only wish I had figured this shit out when I was a younger man.
- empath75 9y ago
  If most people are stronger than you, and steroids make you stronger, does taking steroids to ‘even the playing field’ constitute abuse or just taking medicine? How is that substantively different from taking adderall?
  - jasonlotito 9y ago
    Regarding your first question: is this prescribed by a doctor, or simply you deciding to use it? I can't answer the second question until you answer mine.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
wincy 9y ago
I really relate with this. It took extraordinary measures for me to get where I can work efficiently without Adderall. Adderall turned me into such a different person that my wife started to be scared of me. Just interrupting me from work was a landmine, I was so mean. The doctor just said “be nicer” when I asked him about Adderall and anger issues. I’m a fun and easygoing person and it was like that part of me would get snuffed out and I’d become a robot on Adderall. I feel like it let me become a programmer. I locked myself in a home office for three months 10 hours a day learning to program, working on a demo project, and got my first professional position. The Adderall definitely enabled this singlemindedness. To reorient myself in a way that I can concentrate on work without Adderall, I sold my TV, my VR, and my $700 graphics card. I unsubscribed from Netflix, deleted Facebook, and got rid of Twitter. I don’t listen to music as background noise, or in the car. I’ve gone on a ketogenic diet with no MSG (so no cheap meats like sausages). I try to sit without looking at my phone when I’m waiting for five or ten minutes somewhere. The whole idea was to “reset” my brain to a lower level of overall stimuli, and largely it has worked. I feel better and can work harder than I did on Adderall, because I can work in the evenings without having a total breakdown, because taking Adderall after 5pm was always a disaster, I wouldn’t be able to sleep and I’d have really weird thoughts as I went to sleep. I’m really glad I did all this as it made me realize what’s really important in my life, family and to a smaller extent friends, and the time with them is much more meaningful now. I can actually concentrate on what someone is saying to me. Maybe moreso, I actually care.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- goldenkey 9y ago
  That's great (the lower stimuli regimen.) I envy your ability to discipline yourself for greater accomplishments in your future. Good luck friend!
ma2rten 9y ago
Have you considered other medication such as Atomoxetine?
tedchs 9y ago
I started taking Adderall recently and so far, I've had the inverse experience socially. It's made it much easier for me to meaningfully engage with people. By gaining control over my focus, I can now overlook "the little things", and I'm no longer compelled to "chase dopamine".
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
I'll be honest, but I find it very hard to believe that amphetamines can really enhance your cognitive skills. I'm talking from second-hand experience only, but it's pretty clear to me that they can have the effect of making you feel like you're smarter, faster, leaner, better- but this feeling is just a side effect of taking the drug, and does not reflect a real improvement. I can believe that the drugs can help some people get over some psychological hurdles that are keeping them from delivering a piece of work, but I'm really not sure why the work itself would end up any better than if it was done while sober. Given that a big effect of apmhetamines is to make you stay up all night, for weeks on end, in other words causing sleep deprivation, I find it very likely that the end result is in fact much worse than the baseline. Personally, the only magic drug that I've found really helps me do better and more is getting enough sleep and doing so regularly, for many weeks. Even if it means having fewer waking hours for work during the day, it doesn't matter, because I can pull twice the work (and twice the quality of it) when I'm well-rested than I do when I'm tired and haven't been sleeping well. So, taking a drug that completely screws your sleep patterns and just makes you forget how tired you are, sounds like a recipe for destroying the quality of your work, to me. And I think those studies the article quotes, the ones that haven't found any cognitive enhancement from Aderall (to healthy individuals and ADHD sufferers alike) are basically justifying my hunch.
- goldenkey 9y ago
  They definitely increase energy levels. A person can stay up for days on them. They are an unwise and partial substitute for sleep but a substitute nonetheless. Like you mention, a large part of what they do is change intrinsic motivation, not intelligence. When you feel "charged" with energy, it is hard to oppose doing intellectual work. Amphetamines are pure energy. And intellect loves pure energy...so does physical work. But its not for free. Amphetamines decrease circulation..they caused Peyronies Disease for me..and I used to take them all the time in college with no issues. Age always brings the true nature of bad habits to bear.
- tr0ut 9y ago
  I agree with you. If anything I believe the amount of people these drugs assist is actually a tiny fraction.
adderaldecade 9y ago
I've spent years trying to get off adderall, swinging between having serious addictions with it (even pouring bottles down toilets), quitting it for months, and then eventually coming back to it as work/stress accumulates. A few years ago I quite adderall/dexedrine at a startup, it lowered my productivity as I rushed with caffeine and other things to fill the void, and within a month I was fired as I had become useless. Adderall changed my personality well before I discovered coding. I discovered coding because it suited my adderall addiction, not the other way around. In fact, almost as a maladaptive trait, I changed my whole career path towards coding away from politics precisely because I realized how well suited this new line of work would be for my addiction: Only in coding could I continue with my dysfunctional adderall-addicted personality, get paid well for it, and paradoxically be seen as a functioning member of society. ------- But now I'm stuck. I want to quit adderall but I know I can't do it without at least a month of not working. Every vacation comes around, and I promise myself I'll make another attempt at quitting but back out, but fear prevents me from doing it. The longest I ever quit successfully was for a few months while traveling around the world. I experienced the best romance I've ever had in my life, because without my personality being blunted by the effects of adderall, I could be my charming emotional self again. That all faded when the trip ended, when I needed to become productive again and faced the disaster of not being able to perform. And that, my friends, is what makes Adderall addiction so uniquely fucked up. Unlike heroin, alcohol, or benzodiazepines, our economy currently rewards and even encourages us to continue our addiction to this drug.
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  I felt the same way about cigarettes (and then sugar) for awhile. They helped me focus and think about hard problems (or so I thought). Anyways, not as good example as Adderall, whose effects are probably more effective than what I imagined. Have you considered taking a personal leave to kick your habit? I mean, don’t take a vacation, but take a leave from your job and then quit the drug while instead working on personal projects and trying to remain productive. You will slump at first, but if you like what you are working on, you’ll probably pick up again after a few weeks. I know not everyone can afford to do that, but it’s the best solution I could think of. Good luck!
- 9y ago

jasonlotito 9y ago

Do you actually have ADHD? > I've used it to get ahead in software for the past ~8 years No, you don't. At least not from how you are describing your use. You don't take this medication to get ahead. You take this medication to get to an even playing field. To get some control over your life. So yes, if you are abusing drugs, don't. That's generally good advice. Don't abuse drugs.

textor 9y ago
Life is not a playing field full of fun and games, even though you could frame it in terms of game theory. People want to be successful, not to evaluate their "innate" performance against other people. Moral justification for doping is unimportant, because it's arbitrary. In reality, however many competing actors make me miserably insecure by their superiority, whatever is their percentile relative to the general sample, I wish to win, I wish be more than what I am all the same. Please read the article.
- jasonlotito 9y ago
  I did. Doesn't change what I said, nor should it. The OP was potentially offering dangerous advice. I see all too often people suggesting things about ADHD, medication and drugs that are dangerous. Speak with a medical professional. If you are taking drugs you have not been prescribed, see a doctor. As for your "want to be successful" argument, that's a fallacy. You are causing more harm by abusing drugs to get ahead than you realize. Read the article? No, go see a doctor.
  - goldenkey 9y ago
    Its terribly easy to be prescribed these drugs by doctors. I feel like you feel less responsible and even coy by pushing the discussion off onto the "See your doctor" rails. But what good is that when any psych will hand these drugs out like skittles?? I have 4 boxes of unused adderall sitting in my cabinets from a script I was given. Acting like doctors are going to solve whatever explanation you are obliged to give is just silly. Lets hear the whole story..
barrkel 9y ago
Did you read the article? This perspective is covered quite well, I think.
- jasonlotito 9y ago
  Yes, it talked about the dangers. I took the parents comments as saying that you don't need to take drugs. The reality is, you shouldn't take advice like that from a comment. See a doctor. Work with them to find what works for you. What I saw from the OP was dangerous advice.
zschuessler 9y ago
I apologize my wording made it appear I was abusing drugs, I don't condone that. In fact I'm the opposite: I microdosed Adderall. 5mg a day for the longest time, then bumped up to 10mg. My doctors over the years pushed me to take more but I always said no. Instead I would take breaks and let tolerance die down before resuming. I first got a prescription when I found I would rather spend 2-3 hours of my work day staring at a wall than work on a tedious task (literally, I did this). I was either hyper focused on a task and spent all day and night on it, or would rather be left with my thoughts. I went home many days wondering what was wrong with me and waited every day to hear the news I was fired. I eventually went to a doctor around the age of 20 and he said, without a doubt, I have severe ADHD. I have found other ways to cope with the condition. Many already shared in this very thread what has worked for me: no sugar, exercise, plenty of sleep, and a tinge of coffee. Even when on small doses of Adderall, if I had more than a handful of Oreos, I would have to go home because work is impossible. This actually happened! I know it's hard for people without ADHD to understand. It's not about willpower, it was an impossibility for me to work.
- ankushnarula 9y ago
  I was convinced that I had ADHD by the time I was 21 after a lot of struggling in high school and college. I went to a psychiatrist and he asked me the basic DSM IV questions and he said it was a 90% match. So he put me on Ritalin and then eventually Adderall. I also had severe insomnia so this exacerbated my abuse potential in order to make it thru multiple days with higher performance without sleep. Within a year or two, I got off all the stimulants because I was falling apart. Almost 13 years later (and a lot more serious work struggle) I started talk therapy and began to realize that confidence, self-esteem, chronic anxiety and depression were my real underlying problems. It's hard to focus when you feel anxious all of the time. It's very hard to think deep - which reinforces the confidence and focus problem in high performance work situations. A vicious circle. So we tried the usual SSRIs, sleep meds, and benzodiazepines - which all have their own problems. Another 12 years later after being on these meds, I stopped early in 2016. Life was slowly getting worse - and my physical health as well. In the start of this year I to realized that SSRI/SNRI are not fully effective if you don't change your lifestyle. So I cut out sugar, juice, sweet fruits, simple carbs, alcohol, and limited my caffeine to the morning - all of which makes a world of difference. Now I'm struggling to form the daily habits of cardio in the morning and mindfulness meditation a couple times a day. I feel 100% more focused and stable. Only wish I had figured this shit out when I was a younger man.
empath75 9y ago
If most people are stronger than you, and steroids make you stronger, does taking steroids to ‘even the playing field’ constitute abuse or just taking medicine? How is that substantively different from taking adderall?
- jasonlotito 9y ago
  Regarding your first question: is this prescribed by a doctor, or simply you deciding to use it? I can't answer the second question until you answer mine.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

wincy 9y ago

I really relate with this. It took extraordinary measures for me to get where I can work efficiently without Adderall. Adderall turned me into such a different person that my wife started to be scared of me. Just interrupting me from work was a landmine, I was so mean. The doctor just said “be nicer” when I asked him about Adderall and anger issues. I’m a fun and easygoing person and it was like that part of me would get snuffed out and I’d become a robot on Adderall. I feel like it let me become a programmer. I locked myself in a home office for three months 10 hours a day learning to program, working on a demo project, and got my first professional position. The Adderall definitely enabled this singlemindedness. To reorient myself in a way that I can concentrate on work without Adderall, I sold my TV, my VR, and my $700 graphics card. I unsubscribed from Netflix, deleted Facebook, and got rid of Twitter. I don’t listen to music as background noise, or in the car. I’ve gone on a ketogenic diet with no MSG (so no cheap meats like sausages). I try to sit without looking at my phone when I’m waiting for five or ten minutes somewhere. The whole idea was to “reset” my brain to a lower level of overall stimuli, and largely it has worked. I feel better and can work harder than I did on Adderall, because I can work in the evenings without having a total breakdown, because taking Adderall after 5pm was always a disaster, I wouldn’t be able to sleep and I’d have really weird thoughts as I went to sleep. I’m really glad I did all this as it made me realize what’s really important in my life, family and to a smaller extent friends, and the time with them is much more meaningful now. I can actually concentrate on what someone is saying to me. Maybe moreso, I actually care.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
goldenkey 9y ago
That's great (the lower stimuli regimen.) I envy your ability to discipline yourself for greater accomplishments in your future. Good luck friend!

ma2rten 9y ago

Have you considered other medication such as Atomoxetine?

tedchs 9y ago

I started taking Adderall recently and so far, I've had the inverse experience socially. It's made it much easier for me to meaningfully engage with people. By gaining control over my focus, I can now overlook "the little things", and I'm no longer compelled to "chase dopamine".

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago

I'll be honest, but I find it very hard to believe that amphetamines can really enhance your cognitive skills. I'm talking from second-hand experience only, but it's pretty clear to me that they can have the effect of making you feel like you're smarter, faster, leaner, better- but this feeling is just a side effect of taking the drug, and does not reflect a real improvement. I can believe that the drugs can help some people get over some psychological hurdles that are keeping them from delivering a piece of work, but I'm really not sure why the work itself would end up any better than if it was done while sober. Given that a big effect of apmhetamines is to make you stay up all night, for weeks on end, in other words causing sleep deprivation, I find it very likely that the end result is in fact much worse than the baseline. Personally, the only magic drug that I've found really helps me do better and more is getting enough sleep and doing so regularly, for many weeks. Even if it means having fewer waking hours for work during the day, it doesn't matter, because I can pull twice the work (and twice the quality of it) when I'm well-rested than I do when I'm tired and haven't been sleeping well. So, taking a drug that completely screws your sleep patterns and just makes you forget how tired you are, sounds like a recipe for destroying the quality of your work, to me. And I think those studies the article quotes, the ones that haven't found any cognitive enhancement from Aderall (to healthy individuals and ADHD sufferers alike) are basically justifying my hunch.

goldenkey 9y ago
They definitely increase energy levels. A person can stay up for days on them. They are an unwise and partial substitute for sleep but a substitute nonetheless. Like you mention, a large part of what they do is change intrinsic motivation, not intelligence. When you feel "charged" with energy, it is hard to oppose doing intellectual work. Amphetamines are pure energy. And intellect loves pure energy...so does physical work. But its not for free. Amphetamines decrease circulation..they caused Peyronies Disease for me..and I used to take them all the time in college with no issues. Age always brings the true nature of bad habits to bear.
tr0ut 9y ago
I agree with you. If anything I believe the amount of people these drugs assist is actually a tiny fraction.

adderaldecade 9y ago

I've spent years trying to get off adderall, swinging between having serious addictions with it (even pouring bottles down toilets), quitting it for months, and then eventually coming back to it as work/stress accumulates. A few years ago I quite adderall/dexedrine at a startup, it lowered my productivity as I rushed with caffeine and other things to fill the void, and within a month I was fired as I had become useless. Adderall changed my personality well before I discovered coding. I discovered coding because it suited my adderall addiction, not the other way around. In fact, almost as a maladaptive trait, I changed my whole career path towards coding away from politics precisely because I realized how well suited this new line of work would be for my addiction: Only in coding could I continue with my dysfunctional adderall-addicted personality, get paid well for it, and paradoxically be seen as a functioning member of society. ------- But now I'm stuck. I want to quit adderall but I know I can't do it without at least a month of not working. Every vacation comes around, and I promise myself I'll make another attempt at quitting but back out, but fear prevents me from doing it. The longest I ever quit successfully was for a few months while traveling around the world. I experienced the best romance I've ever had in my life, because without my personality being blunted by the effects of adderall, I could be my charming emotional self again. That all faded when the trip ended, when I needed to become productive again and faced the disaster of not being able to perform. And that, my friends, is what makes Adderall addiction so uniquely fucked up. Unlike heroin, alcohol, or benzodiazepines, our economy currently rewards and even encourages us to continue our addiction to this drug.

seanmcdirmid 9y ago
I felt the same way about cigarettes (and then sugar) for awhile. They helped me focus and think about hard problems (or so I thought). Anyways, not as good example as Adderall, whose effects are probably more effective than what I imagined. Have you considered taking a personal leave to kick your habit? I mean, don’t take a vacation, but take a leave from your job and then quit the drug while instead working on personal projects and trying to remain productive. You will slump at first, but if you like what you are working on, you’ll probably pick up again after a few weeks. I know not everyone can afford to do that, but it’s the best solution I could think of. Good luck!
9y ago