Posted by Ezekiel on November 16, 2008, at 4:15:54
In reply to Re: Struggling graduate student needs Adderall advice! » Ezekiel, posted by JadeKelly on November 14, 2008, at 23:52:29
Hello Jade,
I'm ezekiel aka Robert - thank you immensely for caring enough to share your experience with ritalin! I'll have to give that idea some consideration, I'm still going back and forth with several options to treat my emotional/mental difficulties, e.g., I may try naturopathic approaches such as omega 3 fish oil & the like - I've read many clinical trials concerning its efficacy for treating depression an adult ADD.
Presently, I'm still taking adderall and have really refined my therapeutic use of it (5 months or so now) to a science. BUT, I have since my first post experienced withdrawal from it twice, and it wasn't as catastrophic of an experience as I anticipated it would be - but don't get me wrong here, I still went through several days of morbid depression (not suicidal but vicious pessimism about the world & intense sadness). It seems to begin lifting around day 3, and each day after that I've always experienced dramatic improvement wih each subsequent day off adderall.
Also, I've since learned that adderall is a "profoundly addictive" drug with respect to psychological dependency - this drug has provided me extraordinary assistance academically (usually, not always!), but at a cost - what I mean is this - once you achieve what formally seemed to be unattainable goals "after" beginning adderall, you then become completely uncertain if it was really "YOU" or the drug that produced the success.
This is a huge bioethical debate, and I don't claim to have an answer, but I can say this much, for most people (encountered through via internet forums) this confusion about which "cause & effect" relationship (you or adderall) is the real one, is no easy task to determine if you attain your goals post-adderall use.
So, I've thus far arrived at some less than glowing conclusions with respect to adderall, but also positive - here's just a few:
1) adderall does not create increased intelligence that did not exist already for those of you who believe the drug will sky rocket you to the top of the dean's list - it certainly can increase the "rate" of one's thoughts & inferences concerning ideas, but only to the complexity that one was already capable of engaging in in the first place (i.e., you won't all of the sudden grasp the nuances of Isaac Newton's laws of planetary motion, when prior to adderall you could not get past intermediate algebra!). Hey, don't laugh, I've interacted with many adults who had such outlandish expectations of what adderall would do for them, like going from a general manager position to a top executive in 6 months!
2) one can quickly & easily come to believe that they cannot sufficiently function in novel, or even familiar social settings w/o a dose of adderall taken beforehand - it develops into quite an insidious belief which is often completely erroneous, but this false belief quickly can become a self-fulfilling prophecy - this may be the case because social settings become much less strenuous on the mind & emotions when you actually find yourself having a "genuine interest" in other people's lives, rather than feigning interest because depression or acute anxiety have made you entirely self-absorbed - depression almost never allowed gratifying social experiences due to my melancholic propensity to engage in perpetual & severe morbid introspection about the wretchedness of this life, along with shameful levels of self-centeredness, which nearly always prevented me from ever even getting to a social event in the first place!
3) at least a full 24-48 hr break from adderall a week MUST be done for most people it seems, or tolerance will rapidly spiral out of control and can drive many good people to serious abuse of adderall to avoid the inevitable crash & withdrawal symptoms.
Ok, I would love to provide more of my experiences, but I have 3 more weeks until I graduate, this assuming I exceed a 3.0 GPA, which it actually looks as if I will! I should be overjoyed about finally reaching graduation (I am excited, no mistaking that!), but here's the downside, for the rest of my life I will never know with ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY if it was I myself who persevered, or a powerful stimulatory compound named adderall that enabled me to achieve what I could never have achieved naturally - just a thought.
Furthermore, wondering which came first "the chicken or the egg" can potentially have long-lasting detrimental effects on one's sense of self-efficacy - but honestly, what can you do really do when you feel you have run out of recourses?? You can either refuse the chemical help and risk failure, or accept the help and raise your chances to succeed - I chose the latter, and now I will have to live with that decision - but heck, you know what, life could have turned out far worse for me, so I really am not apt to complain at the present moment, but rather be thankful that I found a way (just in time) to help myself persevere through my long pursued goal of graduating from grad school - but I also don't believe it was just "I" who did it - please allow me to briefly elucidate what I mean.
I don't wish to bore people, but I believe that my faith in God ultimately made the final difference.
Lastly, I wish all of you out there true peace in this crazy life - never stop seeking for it, because you truly never know when it may find you, just as you were about to lose all hope - I eventually found the elusive peace of mind I had searched for every day of my life, it finally happened through faith in the God of the Christian scriptures - I believe God honored my faith in Him and used various means to keep me going in life & enabled me to not give up when most days I just wanted it all to end. I tried reading western philosophers, comparative religion texts, majored in psychology, and on & on, BUT FOR ME, reading the ancient and holy scriptures was the only experience that ever provided me "tangible relief" from my anguish in life that I could actually "feel". So as previously said, NEVER give up on life, because if you can find a reason OUTSIDE OF YOURSELF to justify goig on, then you will appreciate this brief life FAR MORE than someone who has never suffered from a disturbed mind - I gambled and acted in faith that my existence was not in vain and lept across the chasm and unable to see the other side, not knowing if I would land safely or continue falling forever - BUT, we must all be sure of this fact - each one of us must ONE DAY make the leap (for some on their death bed) - I chose to jump even though I could not see if their was anything on the other side, and for me there was, and I have never been the same - take the chance and jump into the unknown, you just may land safely on the other side as I did - peace & joy to all of you . . .
Robert
poster:Ezekiel
thread:835343
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20081114/msgs/863303.html