View Full Version : The Grandiose Illusion of Adderall and Alcohol


jtizzlicious
05-04-08, 08:20 PM
This is my first posting on this site. A little background:

I was diagnosed with ADD sophomore year of college, almost failed out....started taking adderall and bounced back with a 3.5 - going on to graduate with a degree in psychology. No doubt I owe much of my success to adderall (and my counselors).

But the real reason I wanted to post here today is that I came to a startling conclusion recently when my life began to come apart - from many angles and many relationships. And besides myself, I blame adderall.

I had always taken 10mg 3x/day until about 6 months ago, where I began to develop a so-called "tolerance" and had my RX upped to 40mg/day.

After dabbling with 15mg at a time, I began to experiment with 20mg, foolishly thinking that I knew more than my psychiatrist - simply because I know a lot about psychology and ADD!!

Long story short, I began to take adderall more and more to survive, even when out drinking - which proved to be dangerous - i had several occasions driving drunk on the wrong side of the road....staying out all night drinking and missing commitments the next day - which obviously strains relationships and sometimes gets you in trouble with the law.

I guess my point is that for a while, I thought I was bigger and better than the medication. I thought that I wasn't one of those idiots that got hooked and started abusing it. But that is the illusion - nobody actually KNOWS and THINKS they are doing it at the time! They think everything is fine...its a total MINDF*CK!

So be careful with this medication. It says do not drink alcohol on the front for a reason. It's a controlled substance - for a reason. Don't think you are better than this. It is a powerful drug - and can be used for so many wonderful, productive, amazing things - like rescuing someone with tons of talent and potential like myself and scores of others. But just like anything that good, it can be used to make you feel like you are superman, and just like any other stimulant like coke or meth or whatever - you will eventually reach your downfall.

Fortunately after several horrible situations like remembering driving drunk at 4am on the wrong side of the road and not crashing or getting pulled over - or nearly losing my job from being late so much because I was out drinking and able to sustain myself the next day because of adderall - or almost missing an international flight back to the US because I was out drinking flying high on adderall the night before - I realized what this drug - AND IT IS A DRUG - was doing to me before it was too late.

Others who have had bad experiences with alcohol and adderall please share. But here is my bottom line:

-Adderall increases your temporary tolerance to nearly unlimited for the time that it is acting on your body (4-5 hours per pill, excluding XR), yet your BAC is still rising. Once this wears off at the end of the night, you are in serious trouble.

-I'm not sure what mixing the two in high doses does to your body, but I know that cocaine and alcohol mixed is one of the worst things you can do to your body, so God only knows about this combo's toxicity....

one more note: I know some people are going to post about using a few drinks to help the "come down" from adderall. This is fine - I am not speaking to this. I am speaking to the blatant usage of adderrall to enhance a night of drinking or extend a night of drinking.

scarygreengiant
05-04-08, 09:28 PM
How about an option that says, "No, I would NEVER consider trying it." I get annoyed with people who abuse ADHD meds. It makes the rest of us look bad. That's why I keep my condition a secret. I don't want people trying to buy medication from me or thinking I'm a junkie.

teemunney
05-04-08, 10:30 PM
This is a bad idea--I did this with Cocnerta when I threw a 21st birthday party for myself; I also abused my meds on several other occasions without alcohol. I had lots of explaining to do when I left messages on peoples' facebook walls at 5am. They would say something like, "Why were you still up? You should have been knocked out!" I usually say I had a lot of energy drinks in combination with it, but that isn't the truth at all. I think I had at 72mg of Concerta that night in combination with at least 15 drinks...the drink number a ballpark estimate; it was my 21st, you know. It was scary to know there were things that I didn't remember because of the high alcohol consumption, yet due to the stimulant I was still "awake"; I didn't go to sleep until 7am but my memory started to get fuzzy around 4am.

I did it once again with a much smaller dose a week or so later, but I have since realized that I have not been given this medicine to just go out and have a good time.

Like scarygreengiant, I too have told nobody (except a couple of close friends) about my condition. If i sell it once to someone, they'll want it again, and rumors will then spread, effectively making me a prescription-drug kingpin by accident. And what if I NEED my medicine? Knowing you'll run out of meds a couple days early from misusing it, what happens on those two days when you need it for its actual purpose, yet you have none?

When I was diagnosed in November, I thought Concerta and Ritalin would make all my problems disappear. I thought I had nothing to worry about now that a pill would help me out. Needless to say, I have learned. It is scary to see how a drug can control you when you think you're in control of the drug.

roxy
05-05-08, 12:31 AM
"several occasions driving drunk on the wrong side of the road...."

What does driving drunk have to do with taking adderral? Did the combination cause you to drink and drive? It is outrageous that you did this several times. Your problem is not drinking and taking drugs together at the same time but that you would repeatedly drive wasted.

teemunney
05-05-08, 02:51 AM
Though I was not the one who was drunk driving, I can say from my experience that you can get much more drunk, yet stay awake due to the adderall/whatever stimulant it may be. Since you feel more "awake" you likely think you are capable of doing certain things, but your basic motor skills are 3 times out of whack. Had I drank as much as I did without the concerta, lord knows how long I would've been passed out.

molemania
05-05-08, 03:23 AM
This person said he/she drove drunk and on the wrong side of the rode "several times." Nothing new with using stimulants to increase your drinking staying power. Party animals have been snorting coke all night for decades so they can keep drinking and partying longer. But obviously never get behind the wheel after drinking. And if one has screwed up once and driven drunk on the wrong side of the rode, why would he/she do it several more times?

brewskijmu
05-05-08, 09:47 AM
yesterday i drank after had taken adderall 10mg a few hours prior and it was not a good experience at all. i could barely drink 3 drinks, if that really, and i felt nauseous and had a splitting headache for hours after. it didn't get me to that happy drunk feeling i usually get. i was outside all day so the sun probably had something to do with this too, but this was not an experience i would purposely replicate. i didn't intentionally mix adderall and alcohol but this was the first time i attempted to drink while being on adderall and i will never do it again. next time if i'm planning to drink i will just skip my dose that day.

Mincan
05-05-08, 12:02 PM
I went to a nightclub once in December and took a ritalin... that was dumb... i wasted like 60 bucks on alcohol (rum and coke and screwdrivers at 5.75 each) because ritalin takes away the drunk... stupid... never mixing the two again.

fxfake
05-05-08, 11:32 PM
"No - and I'll never do it again".

A bit oxymoronic; "again" requires a first time; :D

willinabox
07-30-09, 03:44 PM
I am in college and I take adderall so I take a little booster sometimes when I am about to go out because when I come down off the adderall I am really tired and in a bad mood (I dont rebound and get hyperactive, im Adhd-I)... Rather than drink it off (usually heavily) I will take a little IR booster and go out...Probably not a good idea, but I try to drink a lot of water too...I really dont think its too bad

willinabox
07-30-09, 03:48 PM
I meant to say if I was drinking that night (like on a sat), I don't drink during the week.

Im also not talking about loading up on amphetamines and getting wasted, just a few drinks and a lower dose than usual. Doctor said it would be O.K.

doiadhd
07-30-09, 04:54 PM
This is a one poster....

We have been warned about these....

Read the answers and there we have it....