History: 60-90 mg Dexedrine and Adderall every single day for 2.5 years. Intermittent abuse up to 120ish mg or topping it with 20 mg IR ritalin.

Overall feeling: 65-75% back to normal depending on the day. Improvements are uneven and very gradual.

What’s improved most: - sleep - derealization - depression severity - energy and fatigue - anhedonia

What I’m still struggling with: - depression - lingering energy and fatigue - motivation - lingering anhedonia - keeping hope I’ll get through this

To use a metaphor, I’m over the peak of the mountain and can see my way down. However, I struggle a lot with seeing how I still have to tread a steep path down. I’m tired and sometimes the ground seems so distant. I worry if I’ll ever even make it. Maybe I’ll just be stuck someway up the mountain.

A lot of what I’m still missing feels like the most important parts. Yes, I’m a lot more active and appear functional on the outside, but inside every hour of every day is still a struggle.

It’s still so hard to find any motivation, even for things I used to find easy before stimulants. I still feel so cognitively slow and find it hard to think the way I used to. I still have blunted emotions: joy and excitement are still foreign. My libido is still dead.

In some ways it feels like that final 25% is in some ways the most important. True, it’s not the hell that the first 10-12 months was, but it’s still a slog.

What keeps me going are the number of people who have told me that they really stated to feel good and recovered between 18-24 months.

I’m trying to do things to accelerate that, like sleep and exercise more, but I’m still nervous it won’t happen. I reallllllllly need my brain to kick back in full gear so I can advance my career (oh to be able to write once again like I could pre stims).

People want to know, “what helped?”

Honestly, not much but time. I’m sure more exercise and better eating would have sped things up, but I was so brain dead and drained for so long I couldn’t have done much if I wanted to.

I only started exercising (walks) around 12 months…

No supplement or anything else made a lick of difference.

I will say be careful with thinking a visit to the doctor for medication will be a quick fix. Two notes:

1. I was on Wellbutrin coming off stims. I didn’t realize how much it was affecting my sleep until I began titrating down a few weeks ago. Now I’m sleeping 10 hours per day. Obviously some sleep debt and brain repair to make up, but I wish a doctor had caught it earlier because I’ve no doubt sleeping more would have me in a better place right now.

2. If you’ve been on SSRIs, I understand turn urge to jump off them because you hate all psychiatry now, but be careful. I started to go down and got worse and now I’m back on them.

3. They will probably give you Gabapentin in rehab or a PHP. I’m mixed on this. On the one hand it helped reduce a lot of my distress over the last 14 months but now as I taper off of it I feel like I’m losing a crutch. Idk maybe it was a crutch I needed.

Ask me any questions and I’ll do my best to answer.