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Help me with focalin addiction
Hello, i need help with a focalin addiction. i was prescribed focalin earlier this year in september. people always would come up to me asking if they could buy it off me and a few months ago (christmas time) someone again came to me to ask to buy it. i was wondering what all the hype was about so i decided to split the pill with him (30mg) and snort it. It was awesome... so awesome that a couple days later i wanted to do it again just for fun. Over xmas break i went from doing half a pill once a day to doing 1.5-2 pills a day (only 2 weeks). Since then i have done it everyday. now i go to a boarding school that holds all medication in the nurses office and gives you your medication every morning. So while i am at school (i might go home once a month for a weekend or so) it is impossible for me to get any more than 1 30mg pill a day. Every morning i go up there i get my focalin, pretend to take it then bring it to my room and snort it before class. throughout the day i might fiend a little bit but there is no way i can get more so it just quickly goes away and im fine. What is really starting to scare me is when i go home... when im at home i snort much more, il find myself every hour or so crushing up a third or half a pill until midnight and be awake until 3-4am and then sleep and do it again. its just so easy, all i have to do is walk to my bathroom, grab one and snort it. i kept telling myself and friends "im just doin it to study for the SAT" or "im just doin it cause i have a test today" but i never stop. i keep lying to myself. I am finally able to admit that im addicted a need help. im only a junior in high school and im messing my life up. The worst part is my dad... He was a drug addict/alcoholic and left us 10 years ago, i havnt seen him since. infact, i just found out today he has hepatitis C. He scarred my whole family and i cant help but think about how im just gunna end up like him. I come from such an addictive parent that my future seems hopeless to me. Im way to scared to go to my mom just because she would feel like she failed as a mother. She didnt, shes my greatest inspiration and she tries so hard for us. she has enough pressure on her already being a single mom with a kid in college and high school and i cant morally put more on her. I screwed up and i need to fix it. I need help on how to stop this addiction, how to control my temptations. If anybody is still reading my story, thank you and please help me quit this addiction.
I can't speak as someone addicted to this drug, what I can speak to is a mother. I am an addict... In recovery... And when I went to my mother, heart in hand at 34, I thought my mother would never trust or want to speak to me again once I fessed up to my addiction. She was so concerned and wanted only the best for me.. And as a mother myself, if my kids ever faced this, I would want total honesty. If you have gotten yourself into a situation you can't control...which is what's happening to you now...you need to let your mother in NOW to help you. Don't let this go, you will regret it always. Please tell her what's going on and tell her you need help, because you do. It scares the hell out of me to see kids on here...if I can save just one kid from this life of hell, I have totally earned my clean time. Please please let her in.... She is a great mother for raising someone who knows this is wrong....and you know it is...please let her in......for your own health and well being, please DO NOT continue with this. As a mother my heart aches typing this to you.... Please don't let this bring you down....it's a very slippery slope....don't slide down.....
I'm sorry you're going through this. I know how tough it is to live with a Focalin addiction, as I myself went through a period of compulsive Focally snorting that ended roughly four months ago. I had worked at a substance abuse clinic -- you have a father with a history of addiction -- so I also know what it's like to know about addiction and find yourself falling into its trap anyway, to know exactly how you're hurting yourself and how you're rationalizing your behavior without being able to stop it.
I had been prescribed Concerta, Ritalin, and Adderall at various times, but none of them gave me that excited, energetic, optimistic feeling Focalin gave me to a mild degree even when I took it orally as prescribed, which I did for about six months. I have long struggled with depression, so this feeling, the polar opposite of depression, was unfamiliar and had great pull for me.
The real problem, i.e., the snorting, went on for about two months starting a few months after failing out of graduate school -- which I took really hard and which was the main reason I started on the path to addiction. I was prescribed the short-acting Focalin, 5-mg and 10-mg tablets. They are really small and really easy to crush, no beads or anything. Unlike you, with your natural restrictions in place (which, trust me, is a good thing, though I'm sure it feels really frustrating when you just wanna do more and all you have is that one pill), I had basically a limitless supply, 90-day bottles with 180 10-mg pills in each (the 5-mg pills became quite irrelevant due to the extremely rapidity with which stimulants build tolerance).
I kept doing more and more and more. A number of times, I did well over 100 or 150 mg in a day, maxing out at probably around 80 mg in an hour and 225 mg in a day. I found myself taking up to 40 or 50 mg in a matter of minutes in a hopeless effort to match the euphoria that, at the beginning, I could get with only 15-20 mg.
The last two weeks, things really came to a head. I was snorting large amounts almost every day. It stopped being fun. I was doing it to make it through the day, to avoid the horrible crashes and the complete loss of life and energy they left me with, to feel some semblance of pleasure and chase away the suicidal depression the highs left in their wake. I was lying to my girlfriend, my appetite was all over the place, my apartment was a mess. I had horrible road rage, I was isolating myself from the world, doing the drug constantly in service of a tolerance that demanded it more and more often to keep up some kind of high and avoid the low, concentrating on making sure no one else could tell what I was doing. I ended up going nearly three days without sleep, having to make a four-hour round car trip in this condition, snorting in my car and a public bathroom in an effort to stay sharp enough.
By the end, even the "up" feelings were largely tweaky anxiety, irritability and anger, and borderline psychosis. My senses of sight and hearing were distorted. I kept thinking I heard sounds or that sounds were different from how they really were, kept thinking I saw faces or forms popping up out of the corner of my eye. Everything startled me. On the night of my last binge day, after the nearly three days of not sleeping and despite being incredibly exhausted, I lay terrified on the couch in my apartment with all the lights on, trying to sleep. I had music playing so I wouldn't have to deal with my unreliable perceptions of the ambiguous auditory stimuli that might come to me in a quiet environment. I screamed aloud when, for a second here or a second there, I saw a face looking at me from a painting (upon further inspection, I found the painting was of a chair) or a gross insect on the ground (I think it was an olive) or whatever other nonsense my mind could concoct.
My path to recovery began when, during a screaming fight on the phone with my girlfriend related to behavior I knew to be Focalin-influenced, I blurted out a confession of my addiction. It definitely shook her trust in me, but telling her was the best decision I made, and our relationship began healing. She was the one who ended up telling my parents.
My advice is tell someone you trust. I think you probably will have to tell your mom eventually -- I could be wrong, but I think it will eat you up inside if you don't. But for now, it can be whoever. I gather some of your friends know, but if you're not being honest with them and you're making it seem like it's not really a big deal, then you're still alone in it and it doesn't do you much good. So tell someone what's really going on, that you're concerned about it and feel out of control, that you want help, that you want to change.
My life has definitely improved since I quit, but know that it won't be easy. You will have strong cravings and fond reminiscences on the highs you once enjoyed (speed is more of a psychological addiction than a physical one), you will have times when you curse yourself for cutting off your access. You will remember the good times and forget the bad ones. You have to make yourself remember the dark moments because you know there were plenty, that there was more bad than good or you wouldn't be here. Movie scenes, music, lots of things will trigger cravings, but they go away. You just have to fight them, you have to find something else to occupy your thoughts and time. If you're like me, you'll miss the rituals associated with use, the process of crushing and snorting a pill.
With time it gets easier, but life is never easy. I don't often have cravings anymore. My perspective on drugs and myself are not the same as they were before I started using and may never be. I try to use my experience as a learning opportunity, a what-not-to-do lesson. If I had written this three months ago, my mouth would be watering, I would be dying for a hit. Now I can look back without wanting to go back. I'm happy where I am and you can be, too.
I had been prescribed Concerta, Ritalin, and Adderall at various times, but none of them gave me that excited, energetic, optimistic feeling Focalin gave me to a mild degree even when I took it orally as prescribed, which I did for about six months. I have long struggled with depression, so this feeling, the polar opposite of depression, was unfamiliar and had great pull for me.
The real problem, i.e., the snorting, went on for about two months starting a few months after failing out of graduate school -- which I took really hard and which was the main reason I started on the path to addiction. I was prescribed the short-acting Focalin, 5-mg and 10-mg tablets. They are really small and really easy to crush, no beads or anything. Unlike you, with your natural restrictions in place (which, trust me, is a good thing, though I'm sure it feels really frustrating when you just wanna do more and all you have is that one pill), I had basically a limitless supply, 90-day bottles with 180 10-mg pills in each (the 5-mg pills became quite irrelevant due to the extremely rapidity with which stimulants build tolerance).
I kept doing more and more and more. A number of times, I did well over 100 or 150 mg in a day, maxing out at probably around 80 mg in an hour and 225 mg in a day. I found myself taking up to 40 or 50 mg in a matter of minutes in a hopeless effort to match the euphoria that, at the beginning, I could get with only 15-20 mg.
The last two weeks, things really came to a head. I was snorting large amounts almost every day. It stopped being fun. I was doing it to make it through the day, to avoid the horrible crashes and the complete loss of life and energy they left me with, to feel some semblance of pleasure and chase away the suicidal depression the highs left in their wake. I was lying to my girlfriend, my appetite was all over the place, my apartment was a mess. I had horrible road rage, I was isolating myself from the world, doing the drug constantly in service of a tolerance that demanded it more and more often to keep up some kind of high and avoid the low, concentrating on making sure no one else could tell what I was doing. I ended up going nearly three days without sleep, having to make a four-hour round car trip in this condition, snorting in my car and a public bathroom in an effort to stay sharp enough.
By the end, even the "up" feelings were largely tweaky anxiety, irritability and anger, and borderline psychosis. My senses of sight and hearing were distorted. I kept thinking I heard sounds or that sounds were different from how they really were, kept thinking I saw faces or forms popping up out of the corner of my eye. Everything startled me. On the night of my last binge day, after the nearly three days of not sleeping and despite being incredibly exhausted, I lay terrified on the couch in my apartment with all the lights on, trying to sleep. I had music playing so I wouldn't have to deal with my unreliable perceptions of the ambiguous auditory stimuli that might come to me in a quiet environment. I screamed aloud when, for a second here or a second there, I saw a face looking at me from a painting (upon further inspection, I found the painting was of a chair) or a gross insect on the ground (I think it was an olive) or whatever other nonsense my mind could concoct.
My path to recovery began when, during a screaming fight on the phone with my girlfriend related to behavior I knew to be Focalin-influenced, I blurted out a confession of my addiction. It definitely shook her trust in me, but telling her was the best decision I made, and our relationship began healing. She was the one who ended up telling my parents.
My advice is tell someone you trust. I think you probably will have to tell your mom eventually -- I could be wrong, but I think it will eat you up inside if you don't. But for now, it can be whoever. I gather some of your friends know, but if you're not being honest with them and you're making it seem like it's not really a big deal, then you're still alone in it and it doesn't do you much good. So tell someone what's really going on, that you're concerned about it and feel out of control, that you want help, that you want to change.
My life has definitely improved since I quit, but know that it won't be easy. You will have strong cravings and fond reminiscences on the highs you once enjoyed (speed is more of a psychological addiction than a physical one), you will have times when you curse yourself for cutting off your access. You will remember the good times and forget the bad ones. You have to make yourself remember the dark moments because you know there were plenty, that there was more bad than good or you wouldn't be here. Movie scenes, music, lots of things will trigger cravings, but they go away. You just have to fight them, you have to find something else to occupy your thoughts and time. If you're like me, you'll miss the rituals associated with use, the process of crushing and snorting a pill.
With time it gets easier, but life is never easy. I don't often have cravings anymore. My perspective on drugs and myself are not the same as they were before I started using and may never be. I try to use my experience as a learning opportunity, a what-not-to-do lesson. If I had written this three months ago, my mouth would be watering, I would be dying for a hit. Now I can look back without wanting to go back. I'm happy where I am and you can be, too.
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