Love A.D.D.erall
At 21 they diagnosed me with AD/HD & gave me smart pills. My grades shot up & my future brightened & some said I was better. But I am numb inside of this drug. People I love become distant strangers sometimes, so proud of me for victories I didn’t earn. How do I tell them I am not what I do or have done. I’ll never be happy on this drug, but I’ll never be successful without it. If only I could Love Adderall.Archive for August, 2008
What It Felt Like to Not Yet Care
There were pictures, and we smiled in them.
The morning images blurrily resembled the night before—reminders of who we were, vague & hazy & lazy, as the drunken subjects under the flash never sat still enough to see it coming.
There also was an image of tomorrow, but that was blurry too—a string of daydream fantasies that looked more like PlayStation graphics: creative, but clearly not real, not really.
There were sounds… our noisy escape from the dark floors inside, where college kids danced under strobe lights and dreamt aloud about tomorrow.
But the noise was outside us, we could still hear ourselves. Not like now, how everything blares inside the A.D.D. head. No deserted library or soundproof room or magical forest can quiet the screams within.
Yesterday’s “tomorrow” wasn’t like today. The future was already a memory; the crowds just didn’t know it yet, or did not care.
Trajectories & Divergences from Our Unmedicated Selves
Today I was reading Aikahi’s Blog and it got me thinking about the difference between who I am today and that hypothetical person I’d have become had I not been introduced to Adderall.
The blogger writes:
“It feels good being off Adderall but I have been experiencing some withdraw symptoms. For one I sometimes feel that I need this drug in order to succeed in life. I made it all the way through college without Adderall so I know it is possible to get ahead without it. But sometimes my mind tells me otherwise and I have to constantly remind myself that it is possible. The other problem is that some of my developed negative thinking and bad habits carried over from the drug. Before taking Adderall I was ambitious and motivated but once I started taking it that all declined. Now that I stopped I have to get motivated again and get back into my original mindset. I am fearful because sometimes I wonder if its even possible. I could just be depressed and need to see a psychologist but I am not going off the deep end or anything. Hopefully I will overcome this and get back on track.”
I can relate to this fellow-blogger’s feelings. Before I took Adderall I knew who I was. I had passions, and the ambition to grow. Now I am a space cadet with it and aimless without it. It’s like my head, drugged or not, second-guesses everything: what’s the point of the “pursuit of happiness” if I know already I’ll find some excuse to not be happy when I get there?
Nothing I do is quick or efficient enough. So I do nothing, or I dick around with trivial matters, because somehow I can convince myself dicking around is less wasteful than doing something productive in an inefficient, unproductive manner.
Can we get back to the people we were before Adderall, the trajectories we were on? I have diverged from that other life, such that I don’t know the person I was or could have been—much less who I might be now, seven years later, had I never taken Adderall.
