Have you ever heard that Andy Warhol quote “I never fall apart because I never fall together?” Well I wish I could say that. ADHD drugs did make me fall together when I was fifteen. I’d felt like such a failure getting those terrible grades- then I took Ritalin and everything changed. I went from loser to winner so fast! I guess I should put “winner” in quotes. As Charlie Sheen, Lance Armstrong, Lamar Odom, and I can all attest, when you’re “winning!” on performance-enhancing drugs, well… you’re actually sort of losing the whole time.
How so? Because instead of learning to push through my helplessness and overcome obstacles, I’d learned that I could chemically alter my brain. But the medicine never worked as well as it did in the beginning. After I initially “fell together” sophomore year, I used more and more pills to keep myself that way- an ill-fated strategy if there ever was one. I’ve been stuck in a gnarly cycle of “performance-enhancing” drug abuse followed by completely falling apart ever since.