I know he didn’t feel anything either, because when you’re on ADHD meds emotions are marginalized.
I dated a boy last summer who would do nice things for me. He put Band-Aids on my cuts and bought me a coffeemaker so I’d stop leaving him in the morning for Starbucks. He was really into pulling my hair when fucking me from behind and calling me a bitch. He was a human vending machine for prescription pills, and sometimes before I left I’d tip myself in ADHD meds for putting up with his shit. Dexedrine, these little orange pills shaped like guitar picks.
Most of the summer I spent in a Dexedrine induced stupor, sitting either in my office or in the library, or in the gym on the elliptical, or in the backs of cabs, or in nightclubs that just opened. The drugs were right there, and it was bikini season. I lost twenty-five pounds - that’s not an endorsement. I remember really liking him, but when we broke up I didn’t feel anything. I know he didn’t feel anything either, because when you’re on ADHD meds emotions are marginalized. All your brainpower is focused towards marking papers, or doing research, or your workout, or memorizing the number of your cab driver, or on a conversation with some girl about mascara application techniques.
One time I took way too many and got obsessive about pulling out all the hairs in my arms because I was convinced they were spider legs. I swear I saw them twitching. That’s not normal.
I mostly use study drugs during finals. Who doesn’t, right? My friend and I rail lines of the stuff off our MacBooks in the bathroom at, like, nine in the morning on a Tuesday after pulling an Adderallnighter. It’s great. You get your shit done surrounded by your friends, eating candy and shotgunning redbulls in the bathroom. Do I have a prescription? No. It’d probably be more work to get a prescription than to just pick it up. I have four different people in my phone that I can call at any given time and they’ll drop it off at my door or at the library during exams. It’s faster than ordering a pizza. The Ritalin kids who grew up to be Adderall adults, my friends who will spot me during finals out of the kind bottoms of their hearts, the guys who charge fifteen bucks a pop, and this one guy who offered to give them to me for free in exchange for tit pics. I do them all. Ritalin, Dexadrine, Adderall, Concerta, Vyvanse. Vyvanse is basically designer Adderall, only for the super rich fancy kids and they charge up the ass, like they need the money.
I’ve had some awful experiences, pretty much due to my inability to know my limits. One time my friend and I did too many lines of Adderall and we were lying on the floor of the library bathroom, simultaneously puking and trying to finish our papers on time. I remember feeling like my eyes were vibrating and like my internal organs had pins and needles. One time I took way too many and got obsessive about pulling out all the hairs in my arms because I was convinced they were spider legs. I swear I saw them twitching. That’s not normal. I still have scars on my arms, these white little dots that look like acne scars that no one would ever notice unless they got up close and personal with my hands.
I’ve pulled academic heists. I’ve written award-winning papers on books I’ve never read.
Another time when I was hungover as fuck and I thought drugs would help me get shit done – they didn’t, Adderall is not a cure for hangovers, FYI – and I was on the bus and suddenly became convinced that I had partied too hard the night before and died, and this was my brain’s way of coping. I was going through all the motions, but when the bus pulled into the station that I was going to be taken to the Other Side or whatever. I consciously knew that wasn’t what was actually happening, but I just had it in my head. Like, the feeling when you think someone’s mad at you and you view everything they’ve ever said through a paradigm of them hating your guts. I feel like I’m not adequately explaining that one, but it was scary. Bad trips on study drugs turn into these anecdotal stories with all these punchlines like, “Haha look how fucked up we are.” Our cycle is this: smoke weed to relax, drink to socialize, take Adderall to get work done. We have similar stories about all those narcotics.
I’ve had some good times on study drugs. I’ve had some great times. I’ve pulled academic heists. I’ve written award-winning papers on books I’ve never read. I have sat down, taken an Adderall, opened a 600-page textbook and finished the entire thing in a few hours. One of my favorite memories from second year was pulling an all nighter with my best friend, out of our minds on Adderall and Red Bull, listening to “All of the Lights” on repeat. We went through a semester’s worth of material in like, eight hours. We were rolling. It got to the point where the two of us had been in the library for three days straight, not eating or sleeping and taking whore-baths with makeup remover wipes. At the time, I felt like a hyper-literate vixen but in reality I was probably just really neurotic. Natural cues took a backseat, and my personality was overruled by this manic desire to digest information.
My problem is that I hate this person I depend on, this person I turn into, me 2.0 who is an overly talkative emotionally crippled narcissist hell bent on being the very best.
I don’t hit the pills as hard as I used to, but when I did I was all about being speedy and zonked out and loosing weight. But then when I finished whatever Adderall bender I happened to be on it was a nightmare. Cause when I crashed – and trust me, after three days of only eating Adderall you crash hard – I was too tired to get out of bed, I just wanted to stay in my blankets and eat carbs. For like, a week. And everyone would be all, “You need to get out of the house”, and I obviously needed to it just wasn’t going to happen. Instead, I would just turn off my phone and jibernate, chain smoking joints in my underwear. And then I get out of the crash and swearing up and down that I’m never going to do it again, and that I’m going to get clean, and maybe go on a juice cleanse to purify my body of all those toxins.
But then as soon as another academic crisis presents itself I panic. That is my problem with study drugs. It isn’t the crazy psychosis I go into when it’s four in the morning and I’m Googling “Adderall overdose symptoms” or the ethics behind taking mental steroids. My problem is that I hate this person I depend on, this person I turn into, me 2.0 who is an overly talkative emotionally crippled narcissist hell bent on being the very best, like no one ever was. I’m not saying that everyone with a prescription is a soulless, calculator-brained monster or that’s what happens to everyone. I’m just saying that’s what I’m like when I have ingested enough study drugs to pacify an entire kindergarten class. And I’m not going to stop.
Written by Aspen Ellis
