need some advice

Hi guys,

I've never posted here but I've read a lot of threads and just feel like I need to talk to someone. I've been a 2+ year adderall user (20-60mg every day) throughout college until this spring when I subconsciously decided that as I proceed into the "real world" I'm gonna need some healthier habits. I've never been prescribed adderall, nor have I ever talked to a med professional about my usage. My entire college career has been built on my adderall use: I never wrote a paper or took a test without it, and after a few months I couldn't really even go to class without it. After a year it was a daily habit and if one morning I couldn't find it, I'd be in bed all day.

I tried to quit a couple times, once making it a full two months (last summer when I was in Europe). Of course I went right back to it upon my return. But in August I discovered kratom. Magic! I would take it every evening once the adderall comedown was interfering with my productivity, and it'd give me a great natural boost that lasted until I fell asleep. So began the honeymoon phase.

Fast forward a few months, my adderall addiction was starting to weigh down on me. When I went home for winter break, my brother was out of his script and I only used it once the whole six weeks. But of course my father had ordered 16oz bag of kratom after I told him about it ("it's a great natural stimulant, really pleasant and mild!") and I used that every morning when I woke up. I had no idea I was trading dependencies. In my mind I was using kratom to alleviate the withdrawals from adderall, and it was going fine. I suffered through the physical withdrawals and assumed there simply were no psychological withdrawals.

So my last semester of college starts up this spring, and I go back to using both. But now the time between my adderall usage and kratom alleviation has shrunk from 8 hours to about two. Used to be I could take addie at 8am and work until 3 or 4 before needing kratom. But this spring, I'd take adderall in the morning and feel so out of it by noon that I had to take the kratom to feel any better.

I blamed it on the adderall, and decided to quit for real.

It wasn't very difficult, because I was using kratom every morning. Oh, and for reference, I've never exceeded an 8-9g daily habit. I tried redosing a few times but it never felt like it worked and it fucked with my tolerance so I figured, why bother. More than 9g used to make me feel dizzy and sleepy so I never went over it, which I'm thankful for now.

Around spring break, I started feeling really existential. I couldn't put my finger on it. I could tell something was wrong, but I figured it was just lingering adderall PAWS. I had considered quitting kratom but I was dead in the middle of my last semester of college and couldn't imagine dealing with two separate substance withdrawals while trying to struggle through 15 senior level credits. "I'll just put it off till summer," I thought.

Of course it didn't work out that way. One evening while I was doing homework, about 8 hours after my morning kratom, I felt a panic attack coming on. I was reading a pretty dismal book, and whenever I felt a happy/euphoric/confident thought approach, it would melt away before really reaching me. I felt cold and distant and numb, and all at once it hit me. I traded my addie psych dependence for a kratom psych dependence, and I was no better off than I had been last year. All these epiphanies came rushing at me: it seems so benign, so natural, so much less detrimental to your bodily/mental health than the disgusting meth complex that is adderall. But kratom is so quiet and subtle. It sneaks in before you realize it. You have no idea you're so dependent on it, and when you realize, it's too late.

So I quit. At that point it had been about 4 weeks since my last adderall use. I woke up the next day with a horrible fever-type thing and skipped all my classes. After that it was a long process of forcing myself through the simplest tasks, never feeling satisfied or particularly confident. I stopped working on my novel, stopped doing my homework, could hardly make it through my classes. And my classes have been fucking hard this semester.

After about two weeks, I had a huge neuroscience test approaching. I panicked one night, because I was so antsy and depressed that I just couldn't possibly study, and my roommate and I decided to take some so we could have time to go over the test materials. It went great, but the next morning I felt terrible. I felt like I had failed myself and my withdrawals came surging back. The whole morning before my test I was sitting in a puddle of my own anxiety, absolutely powerless in the face of my cravings. After my girlfriend left for class I snuck into my roommate's room and put down a spoonful of kratom just to get it out of my head. Probably no more than 3-4g. It cut my anxiety but I got a 58 on my test (for reference, I've gotten all As in 3.5 years of college except 2 B+s). Naturally I felt terrible. But I haven't done it since.

Now, finals are approaching, and I feel like I keep waiting for my "natural endorphins" to return. I've got so much work to do. I've got fifty pages of papers and another neuroscience test and an undergrad research conference this week. I'm applying for grad school and a fulbright. I'm trying to keep my job and find a place to live. And of course I'm trying to stay happy.

It just feels so insurmountable. This morning I woke up with really bad cravings. You know: "I'll be out of school in two weeks. I'll just do it once or twice before then so I can keep up with my work. I'm not relapsing, I just need a little boost for the end of the semester." I even feel like I could stick to that. But I'm worried it'll make every other day of the week feel the way the morning of my test felt, which I can't handle. I have no motivation, no energy, no drive, and no passion. It's probably been about 4-5 weeks without kratom, save that one relapse. I try to exercise--I go on long walks by the river--and it help marginally. But... I don't know. I guess I just need some positive energy or something. I'm really open and honest with my girlfriend and circle of friends, and I've got a good head on my shoulders for figuring this stuff out. But I just feel like I'm drowning in it all. I feel like I'm gonna fuck up my last semester of college and hurt my future. I'm worried I'm gonna bomb my neuroscience test. I'm worried my marijuana use is interfering with my reward system recovery. I'm worried I'm gonna relapse, thinking it's just once to help with finals, and then be incapacitated the next day. I find myself wishing in my head that someone will give me an excuse to just go take a little dose, worry about all this once school's out. And I know that's the wrong thing to do. But it's so hard to balance my mental health against my future, my studies, my relationships, my work. I feel like I need a new philosophy.

Thanks for reading this. It helped me just to write it out and think through the whole process. But damn, do I wish I got this over with during winter break. I'd say the moral of the story is not to try quitting an addictive substance right in the middle of your hardest college semester. But then again, I think the time to quit a substance finds you, not the other way around. It felt, in some ways, like fate was trying to strip me of my addiction before I graduated. And I'm happy to be free of it. But I'm having a really hard few weeks, and found myself in need of some anonymous support.

Love to the community ~~~