Dextroamphetamine

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How do I manage dextroaphetamine use? I had it prescribed for ADD (as part of my main diagnosis; sperger's yndrome), social anxiety disorder and major depression. The first two months were great; I felt as if I experienced the life I never had: I got confidence, energy, attention, happiness and most of all EMPATHY and SOCIABILITY. I haven't experienced anything quite like it, and though I still lacked fundamental social skills, I was aware of it during conversation, and life was progressing rapidly. I suppose one could say I experienced love and life, whereas before I'd always been anxious and almost viewed people as objects, and had been severely and consistently depressed since I was twelve years old. I'm nice-teen now. Basically I started obsessing about medicine, and I was noticing (or maybe thinking) that the dextroamphetamne was decreasing in effectiveness. I started using 5mg + 15mg + 5mg every other day to keep myself going instead of the usual 5mg + 5mg + 5mg every day. Whenever I had a depressive episode, I would swallow 20mg, and it would disappear again. During this period I had taken a two-months break from school because I felt that I simply needed to leave the source of my misfortune. At the same time, the sun began shining in Denmark and I was swimming 5x2 hours a week with help from a 15mg dose and my underwater mp3. Life was good. Then I decided to start school again. I was extremely anxious, but decided to stick with the 3x5 dose during school days. Obviously it wasn't enough. Then I tried 3x10mg, 3x15mg and 3x20mg. The last dosage seemed to do the trick, however I still had depressive episodes, and when I came off the medicine at home, I would feel terribly depressed, loneliney and deadly bored.
After those two weeks I decided to take a medication break for seven days without dextroamphetamine and quit my daily dose of 20mg escitalopram at the same time. That week was an emotional storm, and I stayed completely away from familiy and school, locking myself up in my room 24/7 where I just lied on my bed feeling absolutely terrible. Started at 3x5mg again, but was long (3 days) before I needed 3x10mg. Then I decided to join my class for a party. I had never attended a party before. I was extremely excited, and really wanted it to be a succes, so I just kept popping 10mg every third hour until I had been awake for 40+ hours. The others had been buying me alcohol as well, which basically f****d everything up. I had never drunk alcohol before. I became even more overwhelmed with sensory input, and lost all the benefits I received from the medication; I returned to my autistic core and became completely apathic and uninterested in leaving my own head and talking to the others. I would become extremely bored and also kind of overwhelmed when the others started hugging me and sharing their emotional problems to which I could not reply emotionally properly, which made them rather angry, I believe, and actually I didn't care. All my emotions, concentration and empathy were gone. I was even experiencing dissociative symptoms; I couldn't relate to the physical world I was in, and I couldn't recognize myself in the mirror in the bathroom; like viewing yourself and your world as a 3rd person character. It basically put my life in perspective and made me regretful for my life; I hadn't made any friends, I was left emotionally behind, my famility sucked, bored, lonely, no hope, and I felt that I had had the chance, but then again constant depression and anxiety had destroyed everything. People hate me, and I understand them. I am the devil. They try to be nice, but I'm just unable to emotionally return the favor. Next day the others had hangover (headache, dizzy, the usual), and I had my amphetamine + alchohol hangover. Completely stoned out and withdrawn, but no headache, bad balance or anything. Just sat by myself among the other, listening to music, looking angry/evil and being asocial. My batteries were just completely emptied. Took me a couple of days to get over.

Now I'm again at 50-70mg dextroamphetamine a day, and I started 10mg escitalopram again since night time anxiety was killing me with auditary hallucinations, paranoia, sleep paralysis, hypnogogic hallucinations, night terrors, and the list goes on; anxiety during the day also increased - just like before the pills: depression, anxiety, insomnia, loneliness and deadly boredom during nighttime.
I get cranky when I'm not on my medication. I have to keep taking them, and I no longer know what's pills, and what me. There's no more euphoria, the wonderful time of the two first months are long gone, and it will never be the same. I will forever have developed a tolerance to the amphetamine. I had hoped it was a cure, but in the long-term God will forever laugh mockingly at my pathetic existence.

I'm so lonely and this existential boredom is turning into major depression again DURING THE FREAKING SUMMERTIME.
I wasted all my chances at high school. Now I'll graduate without ever had achieved friends, been to parties with them, spend time with them or developed any kind of hobbies or social skills. I've become emotionally immature even more than before, and I'll never catch up to the others. It feels like my life is over. I wish I could start all over again; maybe been given some medicine at earlier point, which my mother hadn't take care of. When I'm off the medicine, I can't even breathe because of adrenergic downregulation. I really all sucks :/

I can't stand this loneliness. I'm having a nervous breakdown again soon

Okay, I'm sorry, if this was rather unstructured, and English isn't my mother tongue, but I simply needed to vent =/

Believe it or not, the biggest factor is simply luck. I have a theory that 1 out of 9 groups work out. And by this, I mean a hiking group, a chess group, a local Democratic party group, etc, etc. And I actually take this to mean an optimistic theory because I take it to mean light touch the groups, skim a variety of groups, and I mean this in a respectful fashion, visit the group.

Many of the members are already 'peopled out.' The leaders are sometimes sorry that they have taken on this responsibility and want to discharge their duties a minimum of time, minimum of effort.

Yes, social skills are part of it. And perhaps like you, I also come from a dysfunctional family , where I've had to learn social skills bit by bit. But with social skills, I have to remind myself, don't come on too strong, it's not like I'm selling Amway or preaching religion or something like that. I just want to light-touch it, be open to appreciating the other person. And still, luck is one of the big factors.

With medication, please phase up slowly and phase down slowly.

And please consider different professions: medicine, architecture, law, engineering, etc, etc.

And let me throw a curve ball at you. Consider developing low-key leadership skills. For myself, I kind of decided, instead of developing a poor parody of followship skills, why don't I develop the really good skills? And if I ask people in a matter-of-fact fashion, if they're interested in say a billiards club, I can count it as a success whether they happen to be interested or not.

And by the way, for a person from Denmark, you write English very well.

I can get all these benefits by taking amphetamines? I wonder what I'd be like on this stuff. Surely there must be a downside, though, so I think I'll stick to caffeine and its derivatives.

Still, some may have brain chemistry that is a good fit to amphetamines. Paul Erdos appeared to require them in order to work, but that doesn't mean that everyone will benefit by taking them on a long term basis.

http://www.amphetamines.com/paul-erdos.html

So will amphetamines turn one into the NT of NTs, Lemmy, the lead singer of Motorhead? Part of me wants to be a little more like this guy. He was an amphetamine user, and maybe he still is for all I know, but he started out as NT. Paul Erdos was still basically asexual even while taking amphetamines, but without amphetamines a blank piece of paper was just that to him, and he couldn't do math.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaFcx09BII4[/youtube]

Motorhead is frickin' awesome, but I'm still not advocating amphetamines. They can cause your penis not to work.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi0khDTAvoQ[/youtube]

Maybe your experience is somewhat similar to mine when I got involved in peace activism at age 26. I opened to the world, but the world did not in return graciously open to me, and it was extremely disappointing. I later decided, look, activists have gone through a recent growth period both intellectually learning about the stuff and emotionally gearing up to be an activist, now they're kind of in a consolidation period. So be it. And also, people have heard enough stories about government lists and informers to be kind of spooked, and to tend to shy away from anyone "weird," which is a shame. (I have a nasal voice, I like to talk about intellectual topics, so sue me). At the time, however, it was a body blow. It was a big bad thing. It was a major disappointment in my life, following on the heels of a relationship which did not work out.

Which brings me back to the subject of luck. Sometime after this, I kind became friends with a co-worker at a photocopy center. He was politically conservative and religious. I'm an atheist and I bat from the left side of the plate politically (obviously!). You wouldn't think the two of us would be friends. But, we looked at things a little bit similarly intellectually and maybe he was just a little bit aspie.

College and particularly living in the dorm, you meet some people. Now, the bad side, straight up, there are cheap status games, put downs, 'joking' that blurs to mean-spirited, and even some occasions of physical bullying. I recommend having a set of easy skills such as 'He seems like an alright guy for me.' That is, it's so much easier to matter-of-factly stand up for someone else, it kind of gives you a street cred, and it gives you good practice standing up for yourself. And also, I recommend my essay Tight, defensive boxing to a draw. One week. http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt134616.html Hope it doesn't come to this, but nice to have this available if it does. Yes, if you happen to "win" a fight, graciously accept it, if you happen to lose a fight, graciously accept it, I mean, what else can you do, but you'd almost prefer to fight to a draw, esp with people you're going to see again, not trying to humiliate anyone, not trying to be a 'star.' If someone tries to compliment you, 'sorry it had to come to that.' (and please don't take a bunch of blows to the head during training, because all that stuff about post-concussion syndrome is largely true, and just like football helmets don't really protect, presumably neither does boxing headgear. Just tell the instructor, 'I don't want to take a bunch of blows to the head . . . ' and if he or she is not savvy to it at this point, get another instructor.) Again, hopefully it doesn't come to this, and really only works with someone your own size, but still, gives some confidence having this available as a backup.

And if your grades are low, well, in the American system, you can attend community college a year or two and transfer this credit to a full four-year university. I hope Denmark has something similar.

And then maybe the low-key leadership like I talked about above. Then maybe meeting the more artistically creative students, the more political students, or whatever endeavors and fields of studies you're interested in.

Wow, I just read through the OP's post, and it sounds scary. I guess the experience of amphetamines is that they lose their potency for whatever you're trying to get out of them and you have to take more and more. Sooner or later, you'll have to come off of them. What are the odds that a "happy pill" won't work forever or might have bad side effects? Why should anyone believe that chemicals can sustainably change who we are at the core?

From PubMed Health website article on Dextroamphetamine (Dexadrine):

I've decided to stop taking dexadrine at about 8mg a day, 5 days a week, because of the neurotoxicity post. That, and that it doesn't seem to help me as much as it did in the beginning. It gives me energy still, and I maybe can concentrate a little better, but I get extra tired at the end of the day.

One of the big downsides to drugs you can "party" with is that they're never quite as good as when you first start.

50mg a day? Damn, that's a lot.

dont regulate your own doses, if losing effectiveness, contact physician and alert them.

Good call, but I'm tapering down slowly. I want to still have some on hand for days when I need to focus more.

I know this post is a little old, but I couldn't help but add something to this.

You remind me a lot of myself, I don't have any autism spectrum problems, but I have had a history of severe clinical depression since I was 17 (27 now). I was diagnosed with ADD (Inattentive type) when I was 9 years old and put on Ritalin... I took it for a few months when I was 9 yrs, absolutely hated it but it did change the major issues I had in school for a short while, refusal to focus or do work, they thought maybe I had a learning disability, I stopped taking it because I just felt strange while on it. I was dealing with problems at home, a mother with borderline personality disorder who turned me against my Father and essentially made me a walking heap of neurosis. I was a "gifted" kid and my school problems may have just been a symptom of the "giftedness," as in it wasn't challenging enough, I could master tests without even learning material or doing any homework so I guess I didn't see the point. Long story short that never changed. I did the same thing through HS and most of college (from which I didn't graduate, big surprise!) My life was in constant chaos, I was a really genuinely nice kid (and still am) who had some amazing social and intellectual talents, but was also never really 'successful' socially, aside from the few friends I can count on one hand that actually matter today... I just wanted to fit in or find a place, get social approval. HS passed, then on to a rather prestigious private university on scholarship... I did well at first til I suffered a complete and critical nervous breakdown at 19... the next six years were just a blur, I didn't really drink much until 21, then I drank quite a lot for several years, then I discovered painkillers, which may have actually helped me turn my back on alcohol (a mixed blessing possibly). These "party drugs" helped me pretend to have a social life, I was the life of the party or at least so I was told on the mornings following such events; I blacked out frequently. I agree with you, alcohol does indeed screw everything up when you let it become part of who you are and your every day decisions and choices are soaked in it.

Things I saw every day: My repeated failures to live up to my academic potential (or anything close to it), repeated social failures, depression that lived in me like a stone, and a complete dearth of meaningful connections, or so I thought. I kept fighting "the good fight" and believe me at times it really was more like a war, and I was losing all of the big battles. One day I decided I would get back on ADD meds as a last ditch "ends justify the means" attempt to graduate college (I was 25 at this point). Got a script for Dexedrine 10mg BID, I experienced much of what you did, an "inner awakening" and a sense of great progress. I felt like I was no longer depressed and was starting to achieve again, to act like a normal person who jumped through life's hoops and shrugged it off at the end of the day. During this period I quit smoking and drinking completely (smoking I quit in 2 weeks and didn't look back, the drinking just gradually faded from my life). I did well for a while, but within six months the same problems resurfaced, they were much deeper than just untreated ADD; the problems I'm referring to are refusal to go to my classes, complete my work on time or at all, show up to work on time, etc.). I was profoundly and deeply angry and had developed or discovered some strong bipolar tendencies at this point (no mania, but mixed states, hypomania and severe depression). I slept better, it was easier to wake up and function like I was supposed to. Most of the time. I still failed critically at work and in school, ended up leaving college and working in fast food, which did not help my outlook, or at least it didn't at first.

My mother almost died, almost killed herself would be me more appropriate, at this point I saw the depth of her psychological illness and the ways that she had twisted my thoughts and turned me against myself, my father, and the world. I helped her get physically well, drove her to her mother's house with all of her things and left her there. At this point I actually started to fix all the problems I had in my life, I had identified a wellspring of unending suffering, chaos, and anger in my life. I love my mother dearly, but I have to live for myself. She did her part to raise me and to her credit she did a lot of things right. However, I realized that if I really wanted to live in this world, I could no longer accept her influence over me and had to get away from it forever. I actually haven't spoken to her in over a year, I am fairly certain the next time I see her will be her funeral, it nearly broke my heart to get to this point, but since accepting this I feel like I actually have a heart for the first time in my entire life, a breathing golden warm heart that hates and loves and isn't made of post-it notes and rubber bands. For the first time in my life I am not mired in an existential void.

" I hadn't made any friends, I was left emotionally behind, my famility sucked, bored, lonely, no hope, and I felt that I had had the chance, but then again constant depression and anxiety had destroyed everything. People hate me, and I understand them. I am the devil. "

In many ways the above tells you everything you need to know about where you are and what you want. People will try to argue with you and tell you that your life and theirs are worth living and are inherently meaningful, but you won't hear it because your experience tells you otherwise. Both of you are right. This stage in life exists for everybody, and often in your late teens or early to mid twenties. I hated those years, I never realized how angry I was despite my insistence on being a nice person and keeping my anger all for myself. I say this like it is all behind me, I know anger still lurks deep within me and will find unique and masterful ways to express itself, but at least now I know that it exists in me and I can recognize it when it happens. This revelation did not happen overnight either, it took years of self examination, self-therapy (never got much from professional counselors/psychologists/psychiatrists) and a series of fundamental crises begging for choices to recognize and truly appreciate who I was, good and bad. When you call yourself "the devil" I know that's not how you really think about yourself, maybe you fantasize that you are because it gives you an identity that you didn't have to choose but was given to you by a divine and righteous force absolving you of the burden of creating yourself one piece at a time, better to see yourself as the most negatively polarized force in man's cultural universe than to have your meaning and purpose unfold before your very eyes with your fair-weather motivations and the inevitable hypocrisies they beget. Most who've been where you are have little use for religion despite a tacit endorsement for appearances sake; well at least that applies for me.

If you re-read your original post I think you will find a wealth of insight you can apply to figuring out who you really are, or what things about yourself you will willingly endorse for the foreseeable future. Just to get it out of the way you need to understand (I think you understand, but are in denial of it) that you are abusing your dextroamphetamine prescription and it is progressive. Self-medicating like this will not get you any closer to understanding your place in the universe or finding peace, purpose, comfort, or whatever state you are trying to reach; what do I know, maybe it will? The truth is, even if dexedrine "cured" all of these problems and you never developed tolerance, and you could just take it every day as prescribed and all of the symptoms of these problems you have outlined would go away and never return, the foundation that these thoughts/behaviors/ideas/emotions/cognition still exists and is the important part of who you are, for today, tomorrow and always. Dexedrine is a drug, it has numerous side effects, if you take too much you will experience psychotic breaks and derealization. It will play with your emotions and your mind, but so does everything you see touch smell and hear, but I get the sense you're okay with that, you've probably experienced the various ends of the emotional spectrum with regularity. If you stay up for 40 hours on amphetamine and the worst thing that you experience is derealization and depression I say not much has changed. I personally value the drug and it has a place in my life, but it will never stop me from being depressed and seeing the world the way I always have but couldn't admit to myself, I don't really want it to anymore. No one can tell you why you are here, or why they are here, or why earth, people, animals, life or anything exists beyond explaining the causal relationships. In this great mysterious exception we call "life" there is a tendency to create self-perpetuating and evolving systems of relative order in contrast to the chaos that spawns and sustains it and that is absolutely all there is to life, including human life. One day life will disappear and everything that existed on this earth, the earth sun and moon will all be collapsed into a singularity after it is consumed by a supernova, to be recycled as the universe contracts into a single entity of disordered mass and energy only later to explode into everything that exists to which nothing that lives, nothing that will descend from anything that lives, will ever be connected.

So hold on, or let go, move forward, or fall backward... 'it has all happened before and it will all happen again.' Understand that you have control over how you think and feel all of the time, if the universe has created one true thing it is that. Conscious choice, the only thing that is real for a human. Choices can never be wrong in the big scheme of things, and in the end we all share the same fate. Some day you will absolutely die forever and lose the simultaneous gift and burden of conscious existence. It is this madness of living that broke my mother's mind, and when I talk to my father I see it in his eyes, we know the same thing, we know that it's not all about anything. A frightening concept, but also a liberating and comforting one if that's what you seek from it. Understanding this idea helps me understand more clearly what I truly want, and not what the world wants from me for the so-called "greater good." There is no "greater good." There's just me and every other conscious individual on the planet making everything up as we go along, I decided to live for me and what I want, not to bend to the will of others because it is what has been asked of me. Never compromise the integrity of your conscious existence for the sake of appeasing anyone else, doing so you kill yourself partially, the part of you that you know is alive or at least worth appeasing the unconscious impulses to remain that way.

Think about why you stopped taking the dextroamphetamine for a week and stopped taking your SSRI, you wanted to see what happened when you unplugged your brain, you wanted to reclaim your existence, your miserable unchanging pile of suffering and ennui. I know that I have found happiness before, recently even, maybe I'm happy now. I think I became happy about ten days ago, in a way that I never have before, and it was the most meaningless experience I've ever had, I yearned for a hangover. If you were born a dwarf, or sexless, or a well-endowed human superhero with a chiseled jawline and a mind that would cure cancer and bring you eternal gratitude, honor, and praise, that's still all you have and it will all go away, and if you're lucky it will be a long slow agonizing fade and you can ponder all the things that are disappearing from who you are. So embrace who you are, all of your choices, and be everything that anyone who has ever existed has been.

ps. your English is fantastic, better than most Americans (which is not saying all that much).

FWIW I would drink a beer with you, or have a sip of water, lemonade, or take psilocybin mushrooms, or just talk about the weather for five seconds, and they would all be worthwhile ways to see a brief glimpse of the iceberg of our respective existences.

People say amphetamine can be bad for you, but amphetamine and caffeine kept me awake enough to write all of this, maybe it raised my blood pressure or took a few of my final days, but I can't consciously control any penultimate outcome with any degree of certainty, so I embrace this bit of poetry and hope that it resonates with you in any way, even if it's the way I don't want it to. I will undoubtedly regret staying up this late when the morning comes, but then the morning will go, and one day I'll read this again and I will parse the words, look for meaning, analyze, induce, deduce, pontificate and most likely syllogise that these words are unplanned, dirty, pretentious, and common, but they are unmistakably mine.