This entry has been revised for the DoA series. Originally written on July 18, 2014.
As a few of you know, I recently decided to make another attempt at getting off of my ADD meds. As of today, I am officially past the two week mark—and things are definitely getting easier.
There’s still some general fatigue/lethargy, some minor acheyness, etc. I’m also encountering moments of depression, irritability, or simple emotional vacancy. Overall, though, I feel okay. And compared with previous attempts to quit, okay is pretty damn fantastic.
Considering that dextroamphetamine is only three atoms short of meth, I feel lucky to be able to make the progress I have toward becoming independent of it. It also makes me worry about all the people we prescribe these hardcore medications to with little understanding of all it implies.
I don’t want to pretend that the answers are simple, but I have an overpowering sense that we’re miss-stepping with how we think of the issue. When the requirements of the system are such that many must choose either to be torn apart by the system or to become amphetamine addicts so they can fulfill the system’s implicit requirements, maybe it’s not the people who are dysfunctional.
Like canaries in the mine shaft, there are simply some of us more sensitive to all that’s toxic in this world, and for that we are dismissed as sick or broken, prompted to change so we can better fit between the teeth of the Leviathan. In the end, it’s a story we’ve swallowed so fully that we don’t think to question it. But that’s just it. We aren’t broken; we are simply injured as we navigate through broken spaces. We aren’t sick. The world is sick. We are the symptoms.
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