And jumping on the bandwagon, although I don't know why, since others, particularly SOmuch, have done a fine job already...

I've got a lot of time (although I suspect SO has the most time in this thread by quite a margin), I take stimulant meds for a neurological condition. I have been doing so for years now.

One thing that happened to me at first was that I freaked out a little. I liked the feeling of being on the stimulants. Stimulants were a drug of choice for me back in the day. Now I am taking stimulants, and I am LIKING them. That has to be wrong and I must be loaded. It isn't wrong, it is normal.

I wasn't and am not loaded. I am treating a serious problem. My doctors (and it was a whole crew of them at first) all knew about my history, and one of them specializes just in people who are addicts.

I felt disconnected from the program. I am taking a drug, a drug that isn't that fucking far off from my drug of choice. It felt like there was a huge wall between me and everyone else in the program. I didn't, and don't, share about this in meetings.

But I did share about it to a small crew of people I trusted. If I started to go off the rails, I wanted to someone other than me who I trusted to be watching me. Turns out, once I started talking to some folks with time and experience openly about this, there are a lot of people in basically this situation and still staying clean.

And I still watch this stuff pretty carefully and reassess now and then.

Another thing that helps me a lot is that I have made the majority of the management of my particular fun neurology not about the chemicals. A lot more of it is about exercise, meditation, trying to sleep correctly and taking low impact supplements. I still use meds, and I might always need to keep using meds, but by doing the other stuff as part of a holistic thing I am way, way more functional than just using the meds but more importantly the drug isn't the focus in my thinking, if you see what I mean. It's just one part that helps me be clearer to do the other stuff I need to do.