My life completely changed when I first started taking Adderall. For the first time in a while I had an abundance of energy and motivation. I thought I was cured.
Unfortunately, strong stimulants come with some side effects. The most obvious one is that it’s difficult to sleep. You don’t need as much sleep when you’re on drugs like Adderall – you can get 4-6 hours and wake up feeling ready to go, but after a few days of this it starts to creep up on you. Your muscles get more tense and a variety of ticks can develop which vary from person to person. Some rub their fingers together, some make facial twitches, and worst of all some grind their teeth together.
Tolerance develops very quickly with stimulants. I recall looking up a drugs experience site for people with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and all the reviews for Adderall were either “I just started taking it last week! It’s great! I’m cured!” or “I started taking it a year ago… it’s not working as well anymore. I’m tired and my brain is getting foggy again.”
Doctors prescribe Adderall for daily use, but in my experience, using it daily just makes all the negative effects listed above much worse. I learned this the hard way. I took it daily for many years and it helped me live somewhat of a “normal” life for a while. At the end though, I was sleep-deprived, my muscles constantly felt like they were on fire, and my fatigue/brain fog levels were getting pretty high again. I realized there was nothing to do but stop it, so I did. After a year of withdrawal (sleeping up to 15 hours a day, only getting out of bed to use the bathroom, only being capable of watching TV) I began cycling it.
Cycling helps reduce side effects and prevents tolerance. Some people take “Adderall vacations” on the weekends. I take it 2-5 times a week depending on how much I need to get done.
Adderall is fairly easy to get prescribed from a psychiatrist. It’s cheap for insurance companies, it’s their go-to stimulant drug. In fact if you try to get a perscription for a wakefulness-promoting agent like Modafinil, they’ll refuse to cover it and say “Why not just take Adderall instead?”
I’ve seen some members of the CFS community say they don’t like stimulants due to the side-effects and crash. While it’s true that there are some uncomfortable side-effects like muscle stiffness, ticks, and insomnia, it’s done more for me than I ever could have imagined.
Shaking Off the Chains 