Amphetamines and Friends

“Sure I may sacrifice my very humanity but at least it’s covered by medicare.”

I used to take Ritalin for my ADHD in high school but I gave it up for the HSC - I think i wanted my score to be an accurate reflection of my ability or something. Anyway now, a decade later, I've started taking meds for it again, this time Lisdexamphetamine. Had to jump through a lot of hoops and spend quite a bit on fancy doctors but I got it all sorted out (much faster than usual because I managed to remember the name of the doctor who diagnosed me at age 10, no small feat). I'd procrastinated for a long time because I was afraid, you know? It's a serious mind-altering drug and I was worried i'd become like the citizens in the movie Equilibrium - once you take the drug it changes the way you'd make decisions, so you'd always decide to take the drug, so your old self would essentially be gone and you'd be at the mercy of the symptoms forever. Paranoia perhaps but it was enough to give me pause for a long time. That and my social media feed is chock-full of friends of mine talking about how the drugs they're on for various mental illnesses and encumbrances aren't cutting it or have nasty side effects that render them infeasible. I've been on them for three or four weeks now and here are the results:

I can't believe I didn't do this sooner. It's perfect.

I haven't lost myself, i even ask people occasionally if i'm acting differently and they say no, perhaps a little more mellow. I still feel laziness but the "heavy blanket of the mind" I've described before - the other nigh-on-indomitable thing beyond laziness that makes everything good and bad seem like such a chore - is gone. Or at least, it's no longer so heavy that I can't lift it. I still sleep in too long sometimes and miss exercising like anyone else but i don't feel crushed beneath it anymore. If I take it any later than 10am then it prevents me from sleeping which is reasonable enough - it's amphetamine - but holy hot damn I can just do stuff now.

I haven't finished my first bottle of the stuff yet so things may change in the future, but for now I feel like I can accomplish things now. I reckon i'm just about equipped to take over the world now.

The same day I got the pills, my great friend Nicolas came over for two weeks and, essentially parented/bullied me into action. Cut through my reflexive layers of bullshit and pointed out some things to me:

- Maybe never dusting your room is a bad way to live your life when you're extremely allergic to dust, and maybe that's why you feel like shit all the time?

- When swimming, you don't have to go as hard as you possibly can, all the time. Maybe that's why it's so hard?

- Stop ordering Uber Eats every day and just cook, it's easy, cheap, and fun.

Obviously it's not the first time I'd heard someone tell me point 1 and 3. It’s amazing how easy it is to defend one’s own obviously awful behaviour. But this time was different. Maybe it's the pills and maybe it's Nicolas' particular brand of spirit and influence but it's sticking.

It ain't gonna be all sunshine and rainbows, no life is, but there's a break in the pelting hail of my mind and i'm gonna cover as much distance as I can right now, lest it picks back up again.

All I have to do now is keep it up, and decide what I want to do with myself.