Is it Adderall withdrawal, or is your ADHD back?

You stopped Adderall, or stepped the dose down, and two days later you crashed: heavy fatigue, long sleep, low mood, no focus. This episode is about what that is, how long it usually lasts on a prescribed dose, and how to tell it apart from ADHD coming back.

We cover why most of the frightening withdrawal timelines online come from studies of high-dose misuse rather than prescribed use, what the FDA label says about stopping and who it describes, the review that puts the peak in the first two to three days and the easing over four to seven, and the finding that about 30 percent of young people in controlled discontinuation studies did not get worse off medication. Then the plan: choosing a quiet month, stepping down by roughly a quarter to a third of the dose every one to two weeks with your provider, why extended-release capsules cannot be split, protecting sleep from day one, and the six-to-eight-week symptom log that separates withdrawal, which fades, from returning ADHD, which holds steady.

Read the full guide: How to Safely Come Off Adderall. To find a clinician who works on deprescribing, see our provider directory.

The hosts of this episode are AI-generated, and the discussion is built from our written guide.

Educational only, not medical advice. Never stop a medication without your provider. If you are in crisis in the US, call or text 988.