The consequences of an Adderall bender

Here’s how the problem starts. The first round of tests and papers are upon us. Spring semester is bitter. The hangover of holiday spirits is miserable and nauseating. All of a sudden there’s three full papers due in two days and a unit test tomorrow morning. I’m sluggish and upset with everything. Cal has been pissing me off, but he’s not the problem, and I’m certainly not it. The weather is all black ice and no sun, just sad shears of white piercing the barren trees planted around campus. The dorm is quiet with the muteness of fairy lights. No one is going out anymore. 

So I’m sitting here, alone in my room, papers piled up on my desk like mountain shreds of bad news and the radiator is loud and banging away. I remember that Jason doesn’t take his Adderall every day. I go down the hall to their room. Aspen isn’t home (or maybe he is, his bunk bed is blocked off by blanket shapes), but Jason and Calta are sitting on the floor, as usual, watching something on the television. 

“Oh boy it’s cold in here,” I say after I open the door and a gush of wind hits me. 

“She’s just smoking. What’s up?” says Kane. Calta turns her head towards me, nods, then turns back and blows a swirl of thick white smoke out through the open window. 

“Remember when you said you might, you offered me Adderall?” My voice is meek. 

Kane laughs. 

“Yes, you said you don’t take ‘em everyday so could I please have one, I gotta hammer out three papers.”

“Due in the morning?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Sure. But I’m not taking responsibility if you freak out on them,” says Kane as he opens his desk drawer. 

“Of course I won’t, I promise,” I assure him. I take the pill and make a break for it. 

Feb 2, 11am

I never sinned on purpose. I always want simple things, innocent things, reasonable things, but stuff seems to get crooked somehow when I’m not looking. 

I liked it. It feels like my head is poking out into sunshine after eons under the dark, murky waves. I’m breathing oxygen again. I bounce off to class, homework done, notes crammed, two cups of instant coffee in me and zero hours of sleep. Sleep is for the dead, for the weak, for the irrelevant. I’ll sleep someday. 

I change gears quickly. Everything is sharper almost instantly, shot through clear glass, the razor edge of a blood burn. I skip my meals all day and plow, plow through the backlog of homework. I sent out several emails, apologizing, making excuses and lobbying for full credit on late work. It’s still February, there’s still time for the timeline to shift correctly back to breakneck pace, militant calm and control. 

Feb 3, 5pm 

It’s buffet time again. The crowd is good today. By now we’ve fallen into a comfortable pattern, with a comfortable collection of people. Like planets shifting in the night sky, we fall into place, regularity assumes as we get familiar with schedules, classes and the lullaby inbetweens of free time. Kane, Ian, Alice, Sean, Kyle, Will and I gather at our usual table. We’re talking about the calculus class we’re all taking, a requirement for graduation. We all have different times and days, we miss each other narrowly, but complain and howl about differentials all the same. 

“Revati, what the hell are you eating?” asks Kyle. 

I poke my food with my fork, fingers gripped tightly to avoid trembling. “Just what I want to. That’s the best thing about a buffet, dude.” 

The menu reads: garlic chicken, fried tomatoes, lentil salad and butter noodles. Along with that, there’s the daily things: soda, two kinds of ice cream, various fruits and breads. Our dining hall is one of the best, people come from all over campus on the good days. They release the menu schedules every week like combat announcements. Some days are sewage, so we pick and choose when to go down there. All the other dorms are more central to campus so on those days we wander out in the cold, noses buried in our coats, for sign of life elsewhere. I often walked the ten minutes down to the Five Guys, teeth clenched, for their Cajun fries. It’s the first restaurant where I eat alone. Practice the art of being with myself. It’s easy to ask for takeout, grab the brown paper bag and settle in front of the TV for an episode of Seinfeld that turns into hours. Instead, I go down there and sit down and watch students trail in and out. Five Guys is a theater of transience. The after school students come in for a quick bite, replaced by the pre-gamers before they hit one of the most popular bars in town, right across the street. I watch the friend groups with hungry eyes. I’m still adjusting to having friends in daylight. Where we traverse public spaces together, outside of the classroom. It’s unreal. I’ve been to the library with my friends, I’ve smoked with them on cold park benches and walked home drunk under the moonlight. Living in proximity is so casual. It stuns me. Some days I’ll stumble downstairs to the dining hall with sleep blurred eyes and talk to a friend, also in pajamas, as we sip our coffee. I learn things about them. I learn that Ian drinks four energy drinks a day. I learn that Alice sleeps with two yellow blankets. I learn that Madison does laundry on Mondays and Sean reads dime novels in the back stairwell lounge. We weave in and out of each others’ lives deftly, catching the glimpses of bad and foul and comforting and elegant. 

So this becomes a problem when the paranoia kicks me in the guts. 

Feb 5, unknown

Three nights of no sleep. Things are beginning to get away from me. I know exactly what is going on. I haven’t taken my meds since the night I took the Adderall and my senses are opening. You’re going to crash, my friends say. They’ve never seen me like this before so I don’t pay any attention to them. I know what this is. As the medication drains out of me, my senses flood in. From all directions. I can hear birds chattering to each other in the nest outside my window. There are more colors in the sky, colors I’ve never seen before. I try hard to memorize them. People’s auras are showing up again. I stare gleefully, trying to make observations about them. They glow blood red, hell green, violent white. I don’t know what’s what, but it’s fun to watch them swirl through people’s faces like a bathtub draining. People whisper about me and I, always ready for battle, stare back and try to give them the evil eye. 

I tried to tell Ian about all this last night, but he wasn’t understanding. 

“You have to go to sleep. You’ve been up for too long. Anybody would freak out. It’s normal. No, there’s no auras, no they’re not talking about you.” 

I can tell he was getting freaked out and leave in a huff. It was embarrassing, must not be seen like this. I change into dark clothes, nighttime clothes and I take my white eyeshadow and paint my face with war paint. There’s war coming and I’m going to beat the slump this time. People are dying like flies and dumbing me back down under antipsychotic stupor is exactly what they want, so I’m doughy and useless, and exactly what I’m not going to do. 

8:32pm

The phone buzzes from where it was laying face down on the carpet. I turn it over with my foot. I’m sitting on my desk chair, facing the door. I cannot, under any circumstances turn my back to it. Something might crawl in. It’s Cal. He’s on to me. He’s been calling incessantly over the last few days. My texts have been evasive and sharp. He’s always proven to be a mole, so succinctly turning on me when I need him most. 

I stare at the screen with tight lips as his name flashes across the screen. Cold dread sinks into me when the call drops. A text lights up the screen. I can’t read it, but I can sense the threats in it. I grit my teeth and call him back. 

“Hey Rush.” There’s an immediate stench of worry in his voice. 

“What?” I snap. 

“Are you okay? Your texts are weird. And you’re not picking up my calls.” 

“I’m just busy, busy bee, lots of work to do, places to be saved and not to be burned, I meant it.” 

“What? Rush, you sound very strange. Are you having an episode?”

I laugh. “Right into it, huh? You’d make a fine detective, sir.” 

“Have you taken your meds?”

“Have you taken your meds?” I laugh loudly. 

“Rush.” 

There’s a bump at the door and my eyes widen as I see footsteps darken under the crack. I hold my breath for a second. 

“Rush!” 

“What!” 

“Please tell me what’s going on, I’m here for you. Remember, I’ve always been here for you, I always listen to you.” 

“Yeah, yeah.” I wave him off, already distracted by the strange guy outside my door. “Look, I gotta go, I’m late for this thing, so I’ll talk to you later, haha.” I catch the laugh in my throat.

“Okay, give me a call when you get home, okay?” 

I tap the red button to end the call. I miss the days of landlines, when you could slam the receiver. That was satisfying. 

“Come in,” I said, even though no one had said anything. 

The door creaks open and Gillian stands there, grinning ear to ear. 

“You look like the cat that ate the cream, or licked the cream, or whatever, you know I’m saying, I mean.” 

“Alright, you’re not busy right?” 

I don’t quite remember where I met Gillian but seeing him makes me miss him immediately. 

“Not really. Mmm, depends on what you say.” 

“We’re going to a party.”

I calculate for a second. “But it’s Wednesday.” 

“Yeah, and?” 

I scowl. “Don’t you have shit to do?” 

“You don’t get hangovers.” 

“I have an early class.” 

He grins again. “I know you’re not sleeping anyway.”

“Good fucking point. Hang outside and I’ll dress. What’s the vibe?” 

He nods for a second, eyes dark and inky. No aura on him. He’s always been a strange kid but I feel like I know him well. I’m losing track of who I meet where. Parties and classes, with introductions and this and that and I never ever stop to listen. “Um, it’s kinda underground. Do comfy but cute.” 

I shake my head. “Ugh, that’s worse than like if you said nothing. God I can’t stand that screaming outside.” 

“It’s a college town, ok,” he says as he saunters out. 

I know myself well and it’s best to dress for combat always. Who knows what kinds of things you run into. By now, I’ve perfected my wardrobe. Some kind of feedback snarls in my head when I open the closet. Doors have a habit of doing that. I force myself to make my decisions quickly. Sparkly black tank top that’s never failed me and…I search far and wide for good pants. It’s despairing as the din gets louder. Gillian raps on the door once. You pull yourself together. I pull on a pair of dark blue jeans. I’ve only recently started wearing jeans, in an effort to camouflage myself with the humans, so I test them out by practicing some of my kicks. I strap on my combat boots, lace them real tight and grab my jacket. 

It’s cold outside as we march down the street, but not cold enough for them to shut up. I watch bats and things fly between trees, sounds of hissy bullets colliding with each other. 

“Where the hell are we going?” I ask when we stop at a red light. I dance a little jig in place, worried by the cold and the teeth. 

“Ok, there’s this crazy metal band I’ve been wanting to check out. They’re super underground, only perform in the middle of the week, changes locations all the time.” 

We go through a part of the town I’ve never been to. We go south for a while, all the way until the university buildings give way to student housing, standalone buildings with dirty lawns and acres of red solo cups. It’s very nice to be out of the clustering heat of the dorms, without the drum of heartbeats surrounding me, suffocating me.