I’m not trying to police what people say, but recently I’ve been seeing two largely untrue statements for people getting help that risk causing real harm:

1. “You’ll never be back to how you were before stimulants.”

This is unequivocally false. Yes, it could take several years for the neurological repair, and you’re going to have to commit to therapy and recovery to heal the psychological toll, but you absolutely will return to a full range of emotions and be able to enjoy things again to your full potential, as well as have your cognitive abilities back.

You will probably even find you can be BETTER than your pre-stimulant baseline as you work to become healthier and address the psychological issues that made you turn to stims.

1. “You’ll be back to normal in 6 months.”

This is extremely uncommon, and people need to know that so they don’t turn back to stimulants at 18 months because they think they’ve just permanently fucked their brains beyond recovery.

It can take years. The more people I listen to, the more I find that the range is 2-3, with most people saying that the true return to baseline happens between the second and third year.

It’s possible that some could even take 4-5 (meth).

I went to a neurological institute and they confirmed this.

The truth is we really don’t know, and all those websites saying “PAWS lasts two years” are just making guesses based on anecdotal reports.

I can tell you that my daily life didn’t start becoming manageable until 18 months. And even at 19, I’m probably about 70% there, but it’s getting better slowly.

My point is, I know people mean well, but be careful. The wrong information can absolutely crush people.

I’m not the expert or anything and I’m not trying to be condescending, but I’m a fairly high IQ individual with a lot of knowledge on this topic after extensive reading of what available research there is, talking with experts, and a lot of listening to users who have been clean for 5 years.