Hello everyone,
This is my first time coming to this site and posting here so I'll give you some background first. I am in my late 20's and an attorney. I have been diagnosed and on medication for ADD/ADHD since I was 6years old. Also, I smoked to some extent since probably high school.

Mostly to appease my grilfriend, who is a nurse, I agreed to try and quit smoking. Long story short, I haven't had a cigarette in 3 weeks. Ok, when I quit smoking I was up to about a pack a day, and I quit cold turkey...including no nicotine substitutes. I haven't found the cigarette cravings to be tooo extremely bad, BUT I have had some terrible side effects!! This is where I am hoping others have encountered similar issues and can help.

When I quit my medication dosage was around 1-30mg Aderrall XR plus 15mg of regular Adderrall in the AM, supplemented by more in the afternoon as/if needed. This was working relatively well for me before I quit.

Now.....after quitting smoking my world has been turned upside down. The side effects of quitting are really getting to be too much and I am looking for help/advice. As you can imagine, being an attorney really requires ones ability to communicate with others and more importantly to be able concentrate, etc. Right now I am restless, unable to concentrate, usually unable to communicate in what I would consider a sufficient nature, and in general, extremely unproductive. Because my performance is based on how many "Billable" hours I work, my inability to sit down, settle down, concentrate and get work done is killing my hours and honestly could have serious adverse affects on my employment status. I can be at the office for 10-12 hours and only have 4-5hours of billable work accomplished.

I am now working with my MD to try and find a suitable medication type/dosage, but I really can't take much more than this. My MD has explained that by smoking I was actually "Self medicating" my ADD so now it is really pronounced. While I can understand this, I have yet to find a medication type and dosage that seems to get me back to "Normal". Honestly, with the dosage trial and errors, it sometimes seems like I could understand how people can have a mental breakdown if they felt like this every day all day. My mind races, hands fidget, etc. As I am sure some of you know, it is not at all pleasant. So far we have tried upping the dosages of Adderall and switching to Concerta, but no solution. I think my MD wants to try some other different medications next.

I really don't want to give in on quitting nicotine. But, if this doesn't improve soon I feel I'll have to introduce nicotine into my system again somehow, be it through the patch or whatever, just to get back to some degree of normalsy, and just ween myself off of it over time later on. So, after bearing all, I just hope that someone else out there has encountered and triumphed over similar situations.

PLEASE let me know if any of you can offer any assistance or advice. I apologize for the length of the post, as probably half the people on this forum have ADD anyway, I bet they lost concentration and quit reading about half-way down. :p Little humor to lighten the mood. :D

Sincerely,

SCHunter

PS - Any parents with kids with ADD, I REALLY REALLY advocate preventing them from smoking.....if I new then what I know now I would never have picked up a cigarette.

I didn't even know I had ADHD when I quit smoking. I never even knew that the nicotine was self medicating me for this condition, but definately had a difficult time of things for a long time after I quit. Nicotine definately does help me and I never even knew it till I started taking Adderal. Medication is better, but nicotine definately helps. Hopefully your doctor can supplement your medication to replace the void that nicotine left.

Believe me...I know EXACTLY what you are going though. I quit smoking last April, cold turkey....and wanted to crawl out of my skin. I didn't know I was ADD at the time, so the nicotine had been self medicating and I took away my drug and ACK! The first 6 weeks made me long for the sweet harmony of going through a divorce! ;-)

As much as you probably don't want to...you should probably talk to your DR. about nic patches or gum, and lower that dosage. The abupt withddrawel is really what kicked your system into overdrive freakout. Quitting is often much harder for ADHD'ers than other folks for it's medicative effects.

What I can tell you...IT DOES GET BETTER. I joined quitnet.net, and commisserated with other quitters, and that helped alot! Also, altoids supersour fruit lozenges helped take my mind off the 'I want a cigarette' feeling.

Please feel free to email me though here. I'd be happy to share more of my experience and provide quit support. I DO know how hard it is, and if I could do it, ANYONE can!

Oh, that sounds familiar :)

I did read it to the end, nodding knowingly... I started smoking when I was around 14 and tried to quit the first time 28 years later. Until then I didn't really know about ADD, but the moment I stop smoking, my brain stopped along with it. Long story short, that's how I found out about ADD... Anywho, your body might need some extra time to adjust to the lack of nicotine and all the other stuff that's in there.
Just stick in there! It's really worth it!
Keep on trying with the meds, although I am not the expert on those :)

Wow everyone, this really does make me feel better and more hopeful. I was really hoping for a quick fix, but it sounds like I might be outta luck there :( Right now I am just concerned and getting stressed out worrying about keeping my job and continuing to do a good job for my clients. Like I said, the strange thing is that I don't really have a problem saying no to those cigarette cravings, it's just the other side effects.

The closest I come to a real craving is knowing that cigarettes/nicotine would help me concentrate and to sit still. Thank you everyone for your advise and keep it coming, especially if any of you found certain medication like Wellbutrin, etc. to be beneficial. My MD had me try Wellbutrin once way back as a substitute for Rittalin.....I was bouncing off the walls hyper. But I didn't ever try it in conjunction with other ADD medications like Aderall, and maybe it could substitute as the nicotine stimulant.

Someone once told me that the nicotine would be out of my system and the physical addition affects along with it within a couple days after quitting. Because I am here feeling this way 3 weeks later is what has had me concerned, well that and the fact that honestly I can't tell how much of what I feel is due to lack of nicotine, and how much is due to the medications/possible overmedicating I am going through while trying to find where I should be now.

Really ya'll you don't know how much it helps to know someone else has gone through this. :) Thank you and please keep up the correspondence!!

Most Sincerely!!

SCH

The outlet for your cravings probably are those "need nicotine to concentrate" thoughts. Hang in there! I wish you the best :) Letting go of cigarettes is god damn hard and your so far in it now

Drionk lots of fluids and get some vigorous exercise.

Stopping smoking is going to cause the seretonin levels in your brain to drop severly. The effects (withdrawal) can last for close to two weeks. After that, the rest is habit.


ME :D

Congratulations on being smoke free. Ask your doctor if you can add Wellbutrin to your other meds.

SC Hunter

I just wanted to add that I joined quit smoking forums to get the support that I needed to stay quit. They definately helped, but finding a time to sit down and get involved was a problem. MSN had a forum Keep The Quit that helped me the most. I took lot's of walks, drank bottled water, got busy doing things right after I finished eating, and tried to find something to distract myself when the urge was the greatest. All in all, time was the cure. I still wonder now how I ever did it, but I did. I wish you the best and with support I think you can make it.

Quitting smoking for me was, in a word, hell. The only thing that made it bearable was 1) Wellbutrin, which really does help to quell the cravings, 2) the gum, which I loved, because it really did help me think and, if I hadn't been completely broke, I probably never would have stopped taking the gum, ever, and 3) prayer. Considering that I was a 1 1/2-2 pack a day smoker for 8-9 years before I quit (on top of whatever nicotine is in a couple of joints a day, which I was smoking on top of the cigarettes -- my poor, poor lungs!!) the withdrawal was pure hell and I don't know what I would have done without the patch (which I tried the first time I quit, but started smoking after I'd quit for a year -- then had an allergic reaction to the adhesive and had to switch to the gum) or the gum.

However it has been over 5 years since I've smoked and I really don't miss it. I take ritalin 10 mg. per day and that's it for now, and I function all right, but I don't have a really high-performance job like you do.

Some of the side effects that you are experiencing are drug withdrawal and may subside after a few more weeks as your body adjusts. Nicotine is powerful, way way powerful. God bless, and it really does pay to quit smoking -- if you haven't noticed already, food tastes a whole lot better. Not to mention the whole being able to breathe and not being a slave to a stinky nasty dirty habit.

Hey there! There is a study that's been used as reference on this forum a lot lately. I don't smoke, but I have a sister who smokes and is ADHD and bipolar. The study references past studies of how nicotene effects the brain.


I disagree with a previous poster in the serotonin/nicotine issue. With what I've studied, it would seem that nicotine increases dopamine levels in the brain. My sister says it keeps her calm, yet she feels buzzy sometimes.

I am a nurse/drug rep who's been dx for about 3 years now. I have always been on some SSRI for PPD or just plain depression, etc. They made me loopy and fogged out feeling. The first SNRI I tried was Wellbutrin. This was about 5 years ago. This did wonders for me. I could think clearly, etc. I finally figured out I had ADD and the Norepi effects of the Wellbutrin was helping with my new Dx of ADD.

Fast Forward to now- I have had moody/depressed issues that I can directly contribute to increasing my Adderall to 20mg XR a day. I've been on it a year. After about 3 months of the Adderall, I fell in a deep depression. Some life stresses helped too, but looking back it all makes sense that I had the classic dopamine/serotonin imbalance in my head. I have been taking Cymbalta as well, very small dose. I had a bad down time last week. I had done the increase in the adderall. I decided to take a weekend Adderall holiday after looking on the forum for advice. I was so sleepy and lethargic all weekend. I started on Monday back on Adderall and it was like I had just started taking it. Happy!!!

So, I guess I'm trying to tie this in to your smoking. Work with your doc and think of the smoking as a dopamine enhancer, so if you are low/normal on the dopamine drugs-nicotine,adderall, concerta-you'll have higher serotonin and vise versa. Hope that helps.