> I am afraid to walk into a doctors office after not going for years and asking for drugs.

Just do it, it's really not that hard. Lots of patients (especially with ADHD) go off their meds for long periods. If anything, it's a sign that the diagnosis was correct.

Many medical organizations require a licensed psychologist to write the prescription for ADHD medications, rather than the attending PCP, and many insurance plans don't cover psychologist visits.

It would be a psychiatrist, not a psychologist.

And all insurance plans do cover mental health per the ACA... It is one of the ten benefits that must be covered on all plans under the law.

As a psychologist, my experience is that lots of physicians, even psychiatrists, want testing and a diagnosis from a psychologist before prescribing, so it might look like the psychologist is prescribing, when they are just diagnosing.

Incidentally, psychologist prescribing happens in some states also.

They cover prescriptions, but not the ongoing meetings to get the type II drug prescriptions.

For similar reasons to your use of caffeine, I decided to intermittently take Sudafed for when I needed extra focus or energy. Not the off-the-shelf kind with phelylephrine(which is a total placebo), but the kind with pseudoephedrine that you have to ask the pharmacist for. I find it works very well for short periods of time, and it has effects that are closer to that of prescription amphetamines. I'm probably on a list of "possible meth cooks" at this point because of how often I buy it, but it's worth it to not have to justify myself to a doctor all the time.

If you live in Southern California I can recommend some doctors who will prescribe it (if you have a legitimate need for it). I don't currently use adderall but I believe people should have access to it with medical supervision if they've done the research and think it will help.

    I have tried not drinking any, but the inability to focus and headaches mean that trying to cutback seriously puts my job at risk.

Hey, I've been there.

How do you consume your caffeine? Black coffee or something else?

If you're drinking coffees with a bunch of cream and sugar, or energy drinks, you're addicted to both caffeine and sugar. Try quitting one at a time. Slowly switch to unsweetened tea/coffee so that you're getting your caffeine but not blasts of sugar. Even if that's all you do it's an improvement in mood/energy. Once the sugar thing's stabilized you can think about tapering down the caffeine. YMMV but if you do it over the course of a week or so you should be fine.

If you're drinking diet soda energy drinks with no sugar... I still feel like these have a lot of the effects of sugar because they trigger a lot of the same chemicals in the body. I think these artificial sweeteners have their own weirdly addictive properties.

In any case... good luck!!!

My drink of choice is sugar free monsters, so I got the sugar thing in check. Definitely a valid point, though.

I'm going to take a guess here.

I'm guessing you drink the zero-cal Monsters because you don't like the taste of coffee or tea? Don't worry, you're not alone. =)

I'm going to make a suggestion. If you want to break the Monster addiction you might think about exploring cold brew coffee. It's not the same as brewing a pot of coffee and throwing it in the fridge. With cold brew coffee, you just soak the coffee grounds in water over night. What you get is extremely concentrated coffee, with like 4x the caffeine of regular coffee, but with a ridiculously smooth taste, lacking the acridity/acidity/whatever of regular coffee... a lot of people who don't like coffee enjoy cold brew coffee.

Just remember that it's very concentrated stuff, 1/4 cup of cold brew coffee has the caffeine of an entire cup of coffee.

It's also a lot cheaper than Monster; you just use regular old coffee from the supermarket, you're gonna save like $50 a week.

But anyway, that's one possible way to tackle the addictions separately. Monster --> cold brew coffee --> single addiction that you should be able to beat just by tapering the dosage over time.

You may consider contacting a general practitioner or psychiatrist to get a prescription for Vyvanse. From what I've read, it is essentially a harder-to-abuse time-release version of Adderall. Doctors can reduce patient visits to once every 3 months or even 6 months.

Vyvanse is terrible in my experience. The release of the drug is highly irregular. I'm not sure what's responsible for this, but when I was on it, some days it wouldn't even last 8 hours and I'd have too much in my system at once, and other days it wouldn't pick up enough and then keep me up at night. Adderall XR is much more consistent.

I also do large doses of caffeine to get through the day. I have long-term severe insomnia, and have just been prescribed modafinil, which in theory does not affect sleep.

And definitely go see your doctor, if you are anxious about it, doing it will make you feel less anxious afterwards, even if the visit accomplishes nothing.

I have essentially been doing the same thing with 2-4 grams a day, and occasionally add nicotine gum as well. Fortunately I'll be getting health insurance again soon though, so I may head back to a doctor and try and get my prescription back. I've been without it for a couple years now.

Once my dose was titrated, I went down to 1 visit per 6 months; my Psychiatrist will mail my prescriptions monthly. They are required to see you every so often, and cannot issue a prescription for more than a month, but do not need to see you in person every month.

Jesus, that's like 10 espressos!

I'm at >= 5. Pretty bad.

I also feels like caffeine doesn't have much effect anymore.

Any way to make quitting easier?

I quit a heavy coffee habit recently.

I cut my caffeine in half each day (and went from a quarter cup to zero) I did experience some withdrawal symptoms, including headache, lethargy, and some mild but notable depression. The worst of it was over in a couple of days, I'd say the full deal took about a week and a half. Not a load of fun but honestly not that bad considering I was a heavy coffee drinker for 30 years.

I'd recommend drawing down a little slower than 50% a day. Maybe a third or quarter? Either way don't go cold turkey definitely draw down.

I've been out out caffeine since January because I did something similar (and got similar withdrawal symptoms): I started by mixing regular coffee beans with decaf ones. First two weeks I used a 25/75% decaf to regular mix, next two weeks 50/50%, then 75%/25%, etc.

The key for my was finding good quality (and expensive) decaf coffe beans. After triying differente brands I settled with Lavazza.

Biggest tip: make sure you're not addicted to sugar as well. If you are taking your caffeine as part of a sugary concoction, taper down the sugar part and get onto plain coffee/tea.

Then taper down the coffee. Have 3/4 of a cup when you would have had a whole cup. Then 1/2 cup. Etc.

YMMV but I find I can do it fairly easily over the course of a week usually. With the amount you're drinking, maybe a month would be easier. Go as slow as you want... it's not a "macho" contest, there's 0 reason to make it hurt. Go as slowly as you want... no need to impact your mood or anything.

I quit for a while by switching to black tea. Lots and lots of the stuff, and working down from there.

Isn't that caffeine, too (actually we have a name for caffeine found in tea vs. coffee called "teina" vs. "caffeina" in Italian, but not in English I believe)?

Sounds like quitting drinking by switching from wine to lots and lots of beer...

Black and green tea do contain caffeine, but quite a bit less: http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-he...

It depends a bit on the specific preparation but black tea contains at most half as much caffeine as brewed coffee (per liter) and green tea is again half as much.

Thus an easy way to reduce your caffeine intake is to replace a cup coffee by a cup of the same size of black tea and maybe later green tea (you are not going to drink twice as much liquid and are not drastically cutting your caffeine intake).

Sure, OP was saying "lots and lots of tea", though :-)

Of course. Switching to lots of it and working down from there.

The English term, "theine" (not to be confused with theanine, an amino acid analogue also found in tea), is not commonly used anymore. It's occasionally used by cranks who insist that it's actually a different and preferable compound to caffeine.

No need to quit if you don't want to. Just drink less. Mix your coffee with decaf.

I kind of want to, because at this point I _have to_ drink it to function, but it doesn't really wake me up.

I would say that when I'm down of caffeine I'm more tired that I should, but not that I'm more awake when I drink it.

Try taking some theanine with your caffeine, it will be MUCH easier to cutback.

Exchanging caffeine for amphetamines that develop real physical dependence doesn't feel like a good course of action.

Why is "amphetamines" italicized?

Also, it appears parent has an unusual level of caffeine intake, and did much better when they were taking amphetamines.