QUOTE(geigertube @ Dec 18 2007, 01:08 PM) [snapback]443342[/snapback]
I have a hunch it probably was, but after you went through the withdrawal, (how long was it until you were considered back to baseline? A month? Two?) was your diet and exercise being taken care of properly? When Im off caffeine and other stims, I have to cut back on drinking, can't smoke, have make sure I get 1/2 hr + of cardio daily, and cut out simple carbohydrates and large meals. All those things will sap my energy.
I apologize in advance for going offtopic here and making some giant personal emo blog post... BUT GEIGER MADE ME DO IT! /projection
For caffeine, I've gone very long periods of time without use, over a year recently I think, though I've "started using" again intermittently in the last two weeks or so. It's actually a pretty impressive effect initially, but the good effects fade too quickly and all I get is anxiety and sleep disturbances thereafter, so it's not really worth it.
Prior to that, and earlier in my life before I even knew what "amphetamine" or "ephedrine" were, I had the same types of issues; caffeine gave me a slight amount of wakefulness and energy but didn't do anything beyond that really. In the end, perhaps excessive caffeine consumption, especially late in the day, contributed to my problems. Though, I tended to sleep a lot and very solidly.
Anyway, off stims entirely, I'm very much zombie-like; my prefrontal cortex just doesn't work too well so dietary adherence is certainly an issue. In terms of exercise, I get fatigued almost immediately far before any physical limits of endurance are hit, not to mention the lack of goal-directed behavior to perform said exercise in the first place. Carb cravings were always an issue, but even on a ketogenic diet I mostly got more tired. I'm not diabetic or anything, and actually have a pretty low-carb diet now. I did notice that with carb cravings / simple carbs, they would typically come as mental fog / exhaustion came in, and partially relieve it... there are a lot of theories/studies about this being a form of self-medication in dopamine dysfunctions. Alcohol/nicotine were never problems for me, but if I had actually tried smoking I'm sure I'd have loved it. Drinking just made me catatonic very quickly, and even now my tolerance isn't that high.
Prior to that even, as a very young child, I ate quite well and was very active, but had some autistic-like thing involving very poor coordination and an inability to emulate other people's movement. Apparently I also taught myself to read, so there were some odd strengths and weaknesses in my brain from the start. Nowadays, my hand-eye coordination is certainly awesome and my general coordination, while probably not quite normal, is close and very much improved from where it was. I can emulate people's movement better but in my Aikido classes I was still slower, so I put in extra effort and practice. I picked up the METT/SETT emotion recognition training/test software and my first results were average and improved somewhat thereafter, so at least my mirror neurons are functioning to some degree now.
Yeah, caffeine is probably redundant now for me. Amphetamine I have mixed feelings about, it lets me function to a much greater degree but it is harder for me to laugh and smile and I feel cold all the time, save when the temp is 85 degrees or I'm working out (or for about an hour after a workout, the pump!). And sometimes I focus far too well on it, on things I shouldn't be. But there is no mental fog, and I can exercise without succumbing to fatigue so quickly. A lower dose sorta makes me zombie-like, and a higher dose just makes me way too overfocused. I've gone off it periodically, for about two months here recently, and while it was nice feeling warmer and relaxed, the subtle ways that the loss of executive control creeps in is just insidious and destructive towards everything in your life. I thought since I was recovering from injuries, less amphetamine = less stress / muscle tension / more dilated blood vessels = faster healing. But it wasn't, and I physically deteriorated. Not just because of the obvious factors, but at a deeper level, the unconscious posture, muscle tone, coordination, movement etc suffer to the point it is more destructive than the drug's side effects.
I wish I had a better answer but I've exhausted all the medically obvious and at the moment what works is partially treating some symptoms; I still hold myself to a goal of "natural clean living" and act accordingly but it seems like an unattainable ideal. So, what I concentrate on now ... well, first is recovery from current injuries, but beyond that, doing more things that give natural stimulation and reduce the amphetamine dosage I need (though this is difficult with my injuries limiting my activity level), and doing things that mitigate the side effects of the drug such as meditation and being a nazi about a regular cooldown period before sleep.
I remember shortly before first getting my knee injuries that the regular jogging outdoors let me go down to a dose of 10mg/day, and good socialization is also very stimulating to me. But without those things, and natural stimulation, the only product of reducing my dose to that wouldn't be pretty. And the irony is if I wasn't taking a higher dose than 10mg/day I never would've gotten to the point where I could reduce my dose in the first place.
Maybe that isn't a universal truth for everyone, and maybe most people would do better if they dropped their stimulants. But not always. In the end, I'm always going to run into my own personal experience first.
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(Why is having a natural healthy feeling such a giant pain in the ass? I didnt sign up to be a Spartan.)
This isn't Puritanland, THIS... IS... SPARTA!!