Getting Off Adderall Was the Hardest Thing I’ve Ever Done
For the past 7 years, I was living on Adderall XR. Each morning, I would take a 25mg Adderall XR with an 80mg Strattera.
A few months back, I decided to wean my way off both medications. I’ve now been off Adderall for a few months.
I was diagnosed with inattentive ADHD towards the end of high school. For years, the medication helped me survive school. Early on, I could notice a difference in my ability to focus, levels of motivation, and general mood.
For so long, these medications worked well for me. At a certain point though, I was experiencing severe nausea, acid reflux, and intense daily headaches that I suspected were related to my meds. After weaning off, I’m now happy to report that I don’t experience those side effects. That said, I’ve had to face a whole host of other challenges.
I spent several months tapering off Adderall before going completely off it. I spent one month at 20mg, one month at 15mg, one month at 10mg, and a final month at 5mg before finally living without Adderall.
I did a very slow taper so that I could give my mind and body time to adjust to the lower dosages. I think that by the time I got down to 5mg, my body already knew it was missing something that had been such a core part of my daily routine. My goal with the whole process was to treat everything like an experiment and take detailed daily notes about how I was feeling.
Now that I’ve been off Adderall for 3 months, I can share what my experience coming off it was like. It was absolutely brutal. I know that it would have been worse if I quit cold turkey, but it still felt awful.
The main things I felt were extreme fatigue, low mood, severe brain fog, slowness of thinking, and lack of motivation. Now at 3 months out, I feel better than I did initially, but I still don’t have the same energy levels that I had while on Adderall and I still feel like my mind works more slowly. I’m also just not as productive, and that has been tough to accept.
In the first week off Adderall, I would wake up feeling completely exhausted. Even if I had slept for 8–9 hours, I didn’t feel rested at all and felt like I could have fallen asleep at any time throughout the day.
My mood was very low and I had a hard time finding positive aspects of my life. I lacked any motivation and felt like I could have laid in bed all day. I had to fight hard to just show up and get my job done. The constant, massive dopamine boost that I was getting each day was no longer there.
I also noticed serious brain fog. Day to day, I felt like I was thinking much slower and it took me longer to find the right words in conversation. I felt like my working memory was also significantly diminished.
After years of relying on stimulants, I felt a complete lack of motivation as well. I felt like I didn’t have a reason to get out of bed in the morning and it felt like a challenge to just make it through the day. I found myself avoiding chores and procrastinating more than I typically would.
I also found that my appetite went through the roof when I went off the stimulant. I no longer had something to suppress my appetite and it also felt like my metabolism slowed down a bit, so I put on a few pounds. From what I’ve heard, this is a pretty common experience.
Another one of the biggest things I noticed was a flood of emotions. When on the Adderall, I noticed a level of emotional blunting, where I really didn’t feel much negative emotion at all. I’d simply wake up, take my pill, get a ton of work done, go to sleep, and then repeat. After getting off the Adderall, I felt a lot more sad and down than I had in years and I also felt unable to deal with the emotions. It was a tough experience. I also felt somewhat low just because I knew that I couldn’t be very productive.
All in all, the experience was really challenging. If you or someone you know is getting off of stimulant medications, the biggest advice I can give is to be kind to yourself and very, very patient.
Outside of that, there were several things that helped me if I could actually find the motivation and resolve to do them: exercising, getting out in nature, creating structure and routine for myself, getting plenty of sleep, and eating nutritious food. Acknowledging that I needed extra rest and allowing myself to sleep for 9 or 10 hours was huge for me.
Disclaimer: I am not a doctor and I am not giving out any medical advice. I believe that it’s important to work with a qualified doctor or psychiatrist to figure out what’s best for an individual. Medicating is a very personal choice and can involve plenty of individual experimentation.
To keep up with my writing journey, please consider doing the following:
- Subscribe to my email list for more updates
- Follow for my latest reads