How I Use (and Don’t Use) Adderall to Help with Focus

An 8-year journal of lowkey amphetamine usage, including highs, lows, and specific recommendations.

Hey everyone! This is the first post of the year with a paywall. I’m going to write about some health things and I’d prefer to keep parts of that process to a smaller community. If you’re not signed up yet, you can get access to everything for just $6/month, or even less when paying for the year.

Alright, for those who stick around, let’s talk about Adderall (and also Vyvanse, Ritalin, and more…). 

Not shockingly, this post begins with a few disclaimers. They probably don’t matter for casual readers, but if you actually end up thinking about medication for ADHD or other conditions, be sure to actually read them.  

The obvious one: I’m not your doctor, or anyone’s. It’s great that we’re able to learn independently and share personal experiences with one another (really, it is), but that’s not a substitution for getting diagnosed and/or being prescribed any sort of legit medicine. Pretty basic, right? Yet also important. 

Next, I’m writing specifically about my experience with a combination drug that consists of equal parts amphetamine and dextroamphetamine, commonly known as Adderall. It’s widely available in the U.S., Canada, and some other countries. 

Notably, it’s not available in many other countries (including the U.K., where a lot of our readers are from), and you can actually go to jail (really!) if you get caught with it in countries like Japan. Similar drugs that tend to be available where Adderall isn’t welcome include Ritalin, Concerta, Modafinil, and Vyvanse. 

Okay, let’s get to it…

An Amphetamine Origins Story 

Way back in … 2016? … I started taking Adderall to help with my adult ADHD. I’d been diagnosed as a kid (and took meds then) but never really got help as an adult. Then, during a disastrous visit to my university health clinic while in graduate school (2008), I tried to go back on medication, but was summarily rejected. 

The rejection stung, and I didn’t get help for eight more years. Oops. Poor decision.

Well, let’s move to the better part of the story. 

Many years after the grad school rejection, my ability to focus was getting worse, not better. I was trying to write my third book, and it was a struggle. It felt impossible to sit down to work on it, and then I hated myself for being so dumb.

Just to be clear, this was a book I wanted to write. It was not a dreaded task, or something I had to do in order to do other things. 

I had always wanted to write books, and now I had the chance to do so. A major publisher was paying me, and I had a great editor—and it wasn’t working. 

I think it’s helpful to clarify all of that, because if your life sucks or you’re not doing something you enjoy, taking a stimulant probably isn’t going to help. In fact, it might make it worse. 

But for me, life was pretty good! I just couldn’t do what I most wanted. I also had a hard time with other tasks, too. I started projects and didn’t finish them, left people hanging on things, and generally felt bad about it but didn’t know how to change. 

So that’s when I decided to try again. I got a referral to a naturopath who was much more understanding than the university doctor I’d seen a while back. She agreed to prescribe the medication I’d heard so much about but hadn’t ever tried. 

Duly prescribed, I started taking a very low dose of Adderall, and guess what? From DAY ONE I was like holy shit this is incredible. Like, honest to God, it changed my life. It made hard things easier. It helped me to write the book.

Again, from day one. Immediate effect. I took 5mg/day, the lowest possible dose, and it was incredibly effective.

That’s pretty much all there is to say about those first few months: it worked, remarkably well. This classic Kermit meme fits perfectly: 

Live view of Chris Guillebeau writing The Happiness of Pursuit.

The side effects were minimal. I learned how to take it (see all my specific recommendations at the bottom of this post), and it helped. I had other problems, which I’ll share about in other stories as we go along, but they weren’t Adderall’s fault. :)

Probably the only thing I worried about was that the early benefits wouldn’t last. Sooner or later, would I need to take more? And then still more? And isn’t that what addiction, or at least chemical dependency looks like? 

But at least for me, that’s not what happened. 

For the next 5+ years. I continued taking it most days. After a while I was taking around 10-15mg/day, but I never exceeded that amount—not once. 

The positive effects did dampen over time a little, but they were still noticeable and helpful.

Adderall doesn’t come in the form of cute Valentine’s Day candy…but maybe it should! 📷 Lance Reis

A 90-Day Break

And then, after many years of taking Adderall almost every day … I stopped. I wrote about this experience on my blog last year: 

Why stop? Well, it’s been five years! Just because something was the right idea at one time doesn’t mean it will always be. I’ve done a lot of health experiments, but I’ve never tried to stop taking Adderall until now.

I slowly noticed that it didn’t seem to be as effective as it once was, to the point where I began to wonder if it was having adverse effects. I was struggling with focusing, and since that was the whole point of taking Adderall, I thought about trying something different.

To mix things up, a couple of months earlier I got a prescription for Vyvanse. Vyvanse is another ADHD drug like Adderall that some people like better. (To be clear, you wouldn’t take both of these drugs on the same day—so whenever I used Vyvanse, I wouldn’t use Adderall.)

At first I thought Vyvanse was incredible. It brought me back to the mind-blowing days of first using Adderall years earlier. But this feeling wore off much more quickly than the Adderall feeling did, and the more I used Vyvanse, the worse it made me feel.

There’s more in the post, but the short version is: I was doing a bunch of health experiments, and I decided to see what life was like without stimulants. 

And at first it was just fine! I even started sleeping more at night, which of course is a major benefit. 

I wasn’t sure I was done with it forever (spoiler, I wasn’t) but going on a little pause felt right for a while. 

What Came Next: Power Tuesday!

So what happened next? 

Well, I had a book launch coming up, and I was feeling … unfocused. My list of tasks was long and I was struggling once again. 

I made a new routine I called “Adderall Tuesday,” which is pretty much exactly how it sounds. Once a week, I’d take my old Adderall dose and crush out a bunch of work. 

And … it felt great! I loved it. It was all upside, no downside. If anything, the detox I’d done helped me appreciate the positive effects even more.

A few weeks later I went to Adderall Weekdays, and that’s been perfectly fine. It’s not as amazing as one power day, but five days spread out is probably a bit more balanced. 

I realize how this might sound to someone who hates the idea of taking stimulants. Maybe this was “Adderall relapse,” or maybe I really did have a severe dependency on it. 

And that’s a fair opinion! But rather than censor myself, I’m just telling you the reality of what happened and what I decided. Since it seemed to be effective for me again, and I didn’t have any major side effects, I figured it was fine to resume taking it more frequently. 

To me it feels like a win rather than a loss: I was able to stop for several months, and now I’m on it again, and I feel good. 

So that’s what I’m doing, for now. 

Okay, So You Started Taking It Again after You Stopped? 

Yes! At least for now. And I’m very happy about it, overall.

I’m more aware of the tradeoffs. There are some side effects (mostly not sleeping as well), but they’re fairly minimal. I’m still taking a low dose, the same 5-15mg/day as always, after all these years. 

I did make a couple of changes that I follow more strictly, and I’ll share those in the next section. 

At some point I’d like to get back to the place of “power Tuesday,” because that was amazing. But I’m also fairly comfortable where I’m at. I don’t plan to take more or less, at least for now. 

A Few Recommendations 

Again, I’m just sharing my experience here! These tips might be helpful, but please make sure to follow any instructions you get from your real doctor. 

• Take it only in the mornings or early afternoon. Never take it in the evenings or even later in the afternoon, at least not unless you want to have major sleep issues.

• For those who enjoy coffee or tea, caffeine and Adderall can be a wonderful combo. (But if you don’t normally consume caffeine, be careful about mixing the two.)

• Plan to eat! I don’t have a big problem with this myself, because I eat a lot due to running every day. But it’s well-known that people on stimulants sometimes forget to eat—and also, one of the ways Adderall and similar meds are abused is as a diet drug. (So, to be clear: don’t abuse it. Plan to eat.)

• Plan to work on something specific. When you take Adderall (and probably any stimulant), make sure you have a goal in mind of how you’ll spend your focused hours. Without a goal, you can feel worse, not better. Your mind will be operating at a high level and not have anything to focus on—which doesn’t feel great. Give it an outlet!

• Take only the amount you need. Seems obvious, but sometimes I hear from people who are prescribed really high amounts. Obviously we’re all different, so who am I to say what any individual needs—but in a general sense, it also seems fair to assume that some people are taking way too much. Be careful, start low.

• Get overprescribed so you don’t run out of meds. Even though you shouldn’t take more than you need, you also don’t want a situation where you can’t get your normal dose. In my experience with several different doctors in two different states, it seems pretty normal to get a prescription for more than you take each month. 

• If your pharmacy runs out, ask if they have any other dosages available. An ongoing Adderall shortage has made life difficult for lots of people—but this is one thing that can help. If you’re prescribed 20mg a day, for example, but the pharmacy only has 10mg tablets (for example), it’s easy enough to take two instead of one. The opposite is also true: you could take half a tablet if you needed the smaller dose. 

This is a neat trick! But if you don’t ask, they won’t usually offer it. You’ll need to get your prescriber to approve this, but they’re used to it.

Finally, on these last two points, I realize it might not be ideal or perfectly rule-following to be overprescribed, or to get creative with your dosages. But this is the American healthcare system I’m talking about, after all. You have to advocate for yourself. 🤷🏼‍♂️

Conclusion & Reminders 

Well, this ended up being a 2,500 word post, and much longer than I originally intended. But I wanted to write something thoughtful and comprehensive, so hopefully that intention comes across. 

I don’t think that everyone should take stimulants (or anything, necessarily). We’re all different. I also know that this is something that made a big difference in my life, and I held back on it for years out of shame or self-judgment.

So just consider this: what if something simple is holding you back? Why wouldn’t you want to see if there’s actually a simple, chemical solution that could help? 

Notwithstanding all the disclaimers, one truth holds up: no course of treatment has helped more than Adderall. Ever since I started taking it, I worried about growing a dependence on it, and also about needing to take a higher dose for it to be effective. Yet for the most part, my worries have proved unfounded. Many years in, a low dose continues to work just fine.

I’m happy to answer any questions about MY experience with Adderall, again with the disclaimer that this isn’t health advice and I can’t speak to what YOU need.

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