Adderall withdrawals: depression?

Hi, since Adderall is quite strong drug it shouldn’t be used with any other strong drug or stopped suddenly. It belongs to class of stimulants, but it’s usage is generally safe. Adderall is a methamphetamine, and carries a risk of developing addiction. For this reason, the lowest effective dosage should be applied. If your brain gets used to stimulation produced by the drug, it will stop production of natural stimulants. So, when stopping a therapy you need to do it gradually, in order to stimulate body;s production a little by little. There are some natural ingredients that have proven to be effective in the treatment of ADHD symptoms, containing ginseng, centella and green oats. They can be safe alternative to Adderall.

adderall is an amphetamine, Desoxyn is not.

Depression is a symptom of ADHD especially in patient's who are moderately to highly introverted. Adderall makes the patient more extroverted therefore eliminating a large portion mental inhibitors that would cause the child to be withdrawn. Without knowing the background of your son, it is hard to say for certain if this is the cause of his depression. But if before medication he was prone to introversion, I would think this may be the case.

I have taken adderral a month and today is my first day off bc my rx ran out....all day i have been eating like crazy,and i HAVE NO ENERGY AT ALL...i just want to lay around, and i have been thinking of stuff depressing me like crazy.

I am 25 and am a relatively intelligent and highly motivated person. Not to mention I wouldn't say I was hyper, but I was always working and fast paced and was always highly productive. Anyways, I went 24 years without ever thinking I may have A.D.D., nor am I sure I do now. But anyways, I started law school at a very competitive law school last year so I obviously could do school work, tests, and concentrate well prior to ever taking adderral. However, once I started law school due to the intensity and having to read more than I could have ever imagined I couldn't stay focused and saw the Dr. about it. He proscribed me the generic version of adderral at two 20mg pills a day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. I was usually fine with just one in the morning so usually did just that. Once in a while I would not take one on a day that I wasn't doing any school work. I found that on days I didn't take it I was incredibly tired, weak, and unmotivated to do anything because I was so tired. But then if I later took one I became fine and productive and energetic. After a while of taking it my body seemed to get used to it and I didn't feel the very elevating effects anymore and instead I felt like when I was on it I was just at my normal level as I had been all my life. I feel like now my normal is when I am on adderral and without it I am a tired and unergetic version of myself. So needless to say, even when I didn't want to take it, I needed to just to be normal and functional. Recently, I decided to stop taking it cold turkey. So I decided to do so over summer break when I wasn't involved with school. I went about a month without taking it and was very tired for sometime but fought through it figuring I just needed to put up with it till my system got used to not having it. Anyways about a month after my last dose I began to feel super depressed and incredibly tired. I slept like 10 hours each night (not great quality sleep though) and was still tired all day and usually napped at least once per day. On days I had work I would be useless all day at the law firm I work for and then come home by 5pm and be ready to lay down and watch tv and thats it, whereas I used to come home and get a lot done and be able to stay up pretty late and get by on 7-8 hrs of sleep. I started having second thoughts about my career choice, where I have always been incredibly confident in. I felt like something was missing in my life for the first time and just overall sad and incredibly stressed when in reality my life is great and no event caused me to be sad. Since I was so tired which caused me to be unproductive and unmotivated that made my depression and stress even worse since I began to have my "to-do" list pile-up adding more stress and I began to feel like I just wasn't as good at things as I used to be and felt bad that my girlfriend kind of had to pick up my slack around the house with chores and such. I began to just want to lie around in bed and watch tv or sleep all day, and on a few days did just that. Also, my appetite, which has always been healthy, decreased drastically. I didn't even have the energy to go out with friends like I have always enjoyed doing so on the weekends. After a week or so of feeling really low I started to think there must be something causing this because I have always been an incredibly positive and perky person and no event has changed in my life recently which would make one feel depressed, I thought it may have something to do with the Adderral or a headache preventive I just started taking for my migraines. I cut off using the headache preventive with no change. My Dr. mention to me that he had heard of some people having depression when they aren't using adderral or at the end of the day when its effects wear off because Adderral is such an upper. After using it some days and not on some days and doing some research online I am certain it is because of the adderral, but not that the adderral is causing my depression, but since my body is on such a high when using it you can't help but feel incredibly low compared to when you are on it. And eventually, as in my case, it seems like once your body gets used to the adderral and has a tolerance for it that becomes your normal level and when you aren't on it you are not normal like you used to be but in fact incredibly low in comparison and very tired and weak in comparison to the awake and energetic feeling your body is used to on the adderral. I started using it again about 4 days ago, and instantly one day I was depressed and tired and the next (when I took one in the morning) no longer was I sad, tired and impersonal, I was energetic, felt great once again about my future in my career as I used to and went out and had a great time with friends. Once again I was just sleeping about 8 hrs. a night with no urge to nap or rest. It was a complete 180 from my severe depressed feeling just the day before. I took it for about 3 days and then tried a day off, I was a little tired and in the evening started feeling depressed, though not as bad as I had been when I was off it for a month. Today again I took one and feel like I used to before ever taking adderral and overall great. My Dr. has prescribed to me an anti-depressant I am going to give a try starting tonight and also I am going to stop taking the adderral. Not immediately cold turkey like I had a month ago, but 1 a day for a week or so, then a half for a while, then a quarter. And I am hoping that the anti-depressant will keep away any symptoms and eventually when my body is used to not having adderral, and therefore experiencing lows when I am not on it, I will be able to discontinue using the anti-depressant as well. After having done some readings it seems like my experience was not abnormal and eventually I should be able to get back to my normal self. This is because the chemicals the brain normally release are replaced with the adderral and therefore discontinue producing the proper levels of those chemicals. From another forum I read about someone with the same situation who slowly weened himself off of it allowing his brain to start slowly increasing the levels of chemicals it produces where it once didn't need to since the adderral was providing it. I am not a Dr. or have any medical knowledge, but this all makes perfect sense to me and I am hoping with some time I will not be dependent on adderral to have the energy I need to get through a day and I will be back to myself and not depressed because that feeling was horrible. Now that I have pretty much determined for sure that this theory is why I was depressed, mostly because it is only on days I am off it and all other factors are the same, I am going to tell my Dr. my plan of getting off of it and get some guidance. I suggest anyone feeling any depression symptoms while using adderral, not necessarily cease taking it, because that may cause depression as it did in my case, but talk to a Dr. and let them know what you're feeling and this possible theory that you have read about online, it seems to me a lot of people have felt like this and some say adderral is causing depression but others say it can't because the type of drug it is is an upper and in fact is sometime used to TREAT depression. As I have said, I don't think adderral makes me feel depressed, rather, due to my body's reliance and being use to it the lack of adderral in my system causes me to be depressed, and in fact taking a pill will treat that and make me feel great again. However, I don't want to be reliant on it and have to take it forever so I am going to try and get myself off of it. Good luck to anyone experiencing similar symptoms.

ur right on the money

^^ Right on dude. Sounds like me and you have similar reactions to adderal.
A little background information on me. I am a 20 year old male attending a university college, suffering from depression and anxiety. I am currently taking an antidepressant for this very reason, but it doesn't really seem to help all that much. I bought a 20mg Quick release tablet of adderall the other day and found it sky rocketed my reading comprehension and speed. The Euphoric feeling seemed to combat my depression and anxiety symptoms 100%.

Three hours of intense studying and focus, I realized that my life had been completely turned around. I was thinking "Holy c**p!" I may have A.D.D, because i am always coming in last with my reading and comprehending things. It also takes me an eternity to get things done cause i always zone out or get bored with tedious tasks. My mother was diagnosed with mild AD/HD and it just dawned on me that this entire time that my A.D.D. or Ad/HD has really held me back from my true potential. I find that i lose my train of thought very quickly and tend to zone out easy. I get bored with things and as metioned above i ALWAYS wait till the last minute to get things done because it puts the pressure on me to do them. This pressure was probably used to give me the "awakeneing or increased focus" to do the task.

Once again i dunno if any of you have experienced this, but my father is one of those guys who thinks depression anxiety and AD/hd is a bunch of bull. For so long i was told, " You just need to focus more and you just need to be happy." Since realizing i have had depression i am going to talk with my therapist about medication for ADD. Since taking adderrall i just see that i have the energy and motivation to do the tasks that took me forever to do cause of my ADD.

I have gotten by for 20 years of my life, but getting by is not where i want to be. I want to be the person who knocks out tasks with full capability having nothing holding me back. I just really feel like since i was never checked out for this condition and it remained ignored, that it could have led to depression. Especially for having to put more effort into daily tasks because of my lack of concentration and focus.

Im definitly guna talk to my therapist about this. But as i was coming down i felt moderatly depressed. Kind of edgy and angry. Has anyone on this forum experienced this? Thanks for reading and getting back. :-D

I've been taking 30mg of Adderall XR for the last few years and I totally remember feeling everything the last post just said. It was an instant fix for every single problem I had in my life, and previous to Adderall I had the same attitude your father has. Even after all of this time, I haven't admitted to or agreed with anyone saying that I may have ADD. The short version of my story is this...Adderall began wrecking my life, and because of the great feelings it gave me, I didn't notice or even care about the problems I was having. I was a smoker years back and began using smokeless tobacco in place of cigarettes. While on the Adderall, I became completely dependent on the nicotine. Same goes for caffeine and alcohol. I was ashamed of those habits and so I hid them from as many people as I could. That led me to a very private and withdrawn lifestyle, one which had me drinking 6 or more beers every night at home by myself. The tobacco of course started giving me problems with my teeth and gums, but I honestly didn't want to stop doing it. Within the last year, all of these problems got out of my control completely and I began feeling like a zombie with no personality or ability to make decisions on my own. The depression came back and I was feeling incredibly lonely in my life. The only time that I was ok was in the mornings after I had taken the pill and had my morning coffee, which by the way I started buying religiously from the same place at the same time daily. Mornings were great for me, but then on my weekends when I didn't have work to go to, I would get bored. I started drinking pretty regularly throught the days off and a lot of those days had the first beer getting cracked at 11AM or around there. I was getting really lonely and sick of drinking all the time. Sick of having pain in my teeth and sick of the boredom. So I decided to slow down the drinking, but I couldn't stop. I would make my mind up early in the day to not go to the store and buy beer or tobacco. Never made it to the end of the day without hitting up the store for my fix. I could not control myself or my addictions that I finally admitted to myself were actual addictions and I knew that the Adderall was behind it all. This past Sunday morning I made my mind up that I was done with the Adderall and I didn't take it. I spent most of the day in bed with the craziest mood swings that were changing what seemed like every five minutes. At one point I was on the phone with a family member and screaming angrily so loud that my throat hurt, five minutes later I was lonley, five minutes later I was sad and in tears. Monday was more of the same but my energy level had come back up a bit. Tuesday was less sad and I found a lot of enjoyment just in talking to people and being around them. Today I still have that depression in the back of my mind, but I'm working on that and starting to believe that it's caused by lonliness. I'm going to talk to a therapist as soon as I feel like my emotions are stable again. Oh and I didn't mention...I haven't touched a drop of alcohol since the last day I took the Adderall. The tobacco use is way down and I find that it's become a physical habit now, and not so much a chemical one. I find myself spitting the c**p out five minutes after I put it in my mouth and go hours between being tempted. Before now it was just about in my mouth as long as I was awake. The moral of my story is that the Adderall took my life over, it took my brain over, and I didn't have the common sense to even see it happeing to me. The depression I thought that the Adderall had solved is back, and that tells me that the Adderall hid my problems while giving me new ones. The high fools you into thinking everything is good when it's not good at all.

how much adderal where u on when you wrote this lol

I guess the drug affects everyone differently but I don't understand the high people talk about when on adderall.  I'm 32 and have diagnosed ADHD innattentive type.  I take 10 mg per day of Adderall and it has changed my life (positively).  After I take a pill I don't feel high or abnormal at all really.  I do however gain the ability to shut out distractions and focus on tasks with the proper priority, which for those of us who don't have that ability, is bordering on miraculous.

I think alot of people that have problems with abuse are prone to addictions. (smoking, drinking, sex, etc.) Maybe adderall doesn't affect me in the same way because I don't tend to develop addictions?  Only time will tell I guess.

Your experience on adderal is very similar to mine. I'm 50 yrs. old and didn't start taking adderall until I was about 48. I'm a musician and found that suddenly I was a lot more interested in music theory than I ever was before. I became in involved in doing music at a much more difficult level than ever before and this was a great find. I found it helped a lot with my anxiety, as I could overcome all the things I was anxious about. In 2006 my oldest son was killed in a car accident and my husband and I had to deal with this and the chaotic effects this had on our family and other children. I started abusing adderal as a way to cope and do all the things my other kids needed (included a disabled child) while coping with deep and complicated grief. I didn't care about the effect it had on me as long as I could get my family through this horrible event. That was 7 years ago and we've survived this terrible tragedy - if one ever survives such a thing, actually, you just feel dead all the time - but now I need to get off of adderal. It's really wreaked havoc on my hormones at a bad time since I'm a woman in my 50s. I bike, am very active and perform classical music - but I stopped sleeping - literally - I cannot sleep because there is too much amphetamine in my system. I'm titrating off and am dealing with deep, deep, unrelenting depression and a feeling of worthlessness. Thank you for your post - it helped me to realize what I suspected is going on, IS going on. Also, I'm experiencing bouts of not understanding simple things that are going on. …..like I'm in a bewildered fog. AND - that's not me. I've always been a high achiever and very driven. This is tough, but this forum has really helped me. Thank you.