The placebo effect helped me stop

Hi guys! This might be a bit of a longer post so bear with me.

For context, I’ve been binging regularly for almost a year now. I had the fortune of finally getting in to see a psychiatrist at the end of August who prescribed me 20mg of Vyvanse then switched me down to 10mg after about a week because of severe anxiety. I didn’t binge at all while I was on the Vyvanse despite still having a lot of food noise.

I had to stop the Vyvanse after 2-3 weeks because it sent me into a severe mixed episode (I have bipolar disorder) and my psychiatrist said I could never use Vyvanse or an antidepressant ever again because of the risk of destabilizing my mood. As you can imagine, this revelation absolutely destroyed me since taking Vyvanse gave me the most time I’d ever gone without a binge.

It’s been about three months since then and for the past couple weeks I’ve been binging almost non stop and trying to make up for it with hours of exercise. It’s taking so much time out of my days to perform these compulsions, I don’t even have time to study anymore. The distress peaked for me yesterday after I’d been so tempted to find the old bottle of Vyvanse and pop a few just to get some sense of relief.

And that’s when I realized that i felt a strong, almost overwhelming wave of calm at even the idea of being able to take Vyvanse again. It was like hobbling around on a fractured ankle, trying desperately to ignore the pain and fight the damage that you know the act of simply trying to walk causes you, when everyone else can do it just fine. Then being told you were finally getting a boot/crutches!

So I took the Vyvanse (again—I don’t advise taking pills against your doctor’s wishes. But my impulse control left a longgg time ago).

And that’s when something magical happened. I felt in control before the Vyvanse even started working (I know from past experience it takes at least 3-5 hours). It was as though I already decided I wasn’t going to binge because people who take Vyvanse don’t binge. People on Vyvanse lose their appetites. People on Vyvanse can control themselves. And I was now a person on Vyvanse. The pill hadn’t even taken effect, but it was the idea of the presumed effect that really changed my behavior.

I haven’t binged yet and haven’t had the urge despite it having been overwhelming every single day for the past few weeks.

It almost feels like the crutch I described earlier: the idea that something is actively there to aid me gives me the strength to push through the day with a renewed vigor instead of trying to fight this dark, solitary disorder all by myself. Instead of constantly fighting myself, constantly relying on willpower, there’s something else there to fight part of the battle.

From now on, I’m going to try taking sugar pills every morning even though I know, logically, they aren’t doing anything. Nonetheless, something about the action of swallowing the pill, designating it as an anti-binge pill, makes me feel like something is helping me stop; like I’m not alone.

I urge you all to look more into the placebo effect— there are thousands of great studies out there that show heavy improvement even when the user knows they’re taking a placebo (or maybe you can try to lie to yourself that is is Vyvanse like me 😭 lmao). Maybe it can give you at least a little bit of motivation to get better?