Euphorically Alienating

"Any actual amount of time spent under the influence is hard to describe, because time passes very quickly. It's a euphoric drug, but also an alienating one."

***

"More than anything, Adderall simulated the enthusiasm that a good teacher naturally stokes. For three years my brain, normally so recalcitrant, became my will's devoted vehicle. But there's a downside to a drug that makes everything interesting. By the end of junior year, I still had no idea what I liked or was good at. This past fall, when my senior year started, I took a break from the drug—at first because I couldn't find any, and then because I refused it. It took these four abstinent months to realize that I was not supposed to be electrified by everything I learned in school; that some of it had a vaccinating purpose, so that by trying a little now and reacting badly, I could fend it off later.

Finals period without Adderall passed slowly and pleasantly. It turns out that the feverish moral imperative to work was an effect of the drug, not a cause. I lingered over my reading and drank coffee to stay awake. There were no more ecstatic Joan-of-Arc-in-the-library experiences, no more imagined channeling of dead literary critics—but this, I suppose, is appropriate when what's at stake is only a 15-page essay on Jane Austen, double spaced."

from Kickstart My Heartin N+1, by Molly Brown