Alright, so I have a friend, his name starts with an O so we can call him Big Joe, because that sounds silly to me right now. I have another friend, who's name starts with a J, so we can call her Lil' May. Because I said so. So Lil' May is apparently afflicted with that terrible, completely rare and valid condition called ADD. Or ADHD. I never really figured out the difference. Basically, she has some kind of attention deficit disorder. Apparently. So she was kindly and mercifully prescribed a little amphetamine called Adderall. It looks like this, at least the form she was given:
The actual pills are smaller than the ones on your screen, thankfully, otherwise they'd have a hard time being swallowed. I don't know about earlier, but now they're apperantly flavored... it's like eating a little berry capsule or something. You may be asking yourself "what?" So let's discuss what an amphetamine is. I've known this for a while, but it's interesting that today's topic in health was exactly different forms of drugs, including amphetamines. Amphetamines, or alpha-methylphenethylamines (now you can tell I'm ripping this from Wikipedia, I would never figure that naming shit out), are a form of stimulant. A stimulant is a drug that increases levels of body and brain functions, inducing greater focus, more energy, less fatigue, and a loss of appetite. Doesn't sound too bad. Note however that meth is just a stronger version of this stuff, so yeah. Not too bad.
Brainifically, the drug induces some changes in numbers of chemicals produced, particularly dopamines, the little things responsible for pleasure. Other chemicals with ridiculous names are norepinephrine, an adrenalin-like thing, and serotonin, which is too complicated for me to write about a lot at 3:41am, but apparently it controls the digestive track, but some extra serotonin controls appetite, sleep, and mood. So you can see how this stuff changes someone, obviously. It's amazing that a few milligrams of a substance in a body of about 60 kilograms (if the whole pill was an active ingredient, me taking those two would give me a 1/3000000 concentration of the stuff (if you had 30,000 dollars, and spent a cent of that, you'd spend as much of your money as there was Adderall in my body between about 12:50pm and 3:15pm yesterday)) can produce such noticeable effects.
Back to Lil' May and Big Joe though. So Lil' May has a mind for business, and besides selling much more respected articles such as the female hemp plant, she decided she has no need for her Adderalls and sells those too. Big Joe now, he has a lifestyle of never having a sober weekend, or even work-day after school-time is over. Big Joe likes to try new things, and one day he noticed that I had two little adorable pills. Actually, that's wrong. Fuck me if I ever figure out how he found out I had tried Adderall in... oh, late January maybe? But he had, and he grew immediately interested. I explained to Big Joe some of the nice calming effects the pills had on me, and prior to that, the extreme horniness I felt that led to my hand becoming my make-out partner as we watched a Health video on the cardiovascular system. Big Joe was very excited.
We made a deal and I got Big Joe two pills. Taking them, he later announced that it was some "hot shit" (he probably said something different, but that's okay). Ever since then, Big Joe has been Lil' May's number one customer in Adderall, except my best friend, who owes Lil' May in excess of $60 for the little attention-boosters. Well, today/yesterday, he ordered a nice sum of 8 pills (luckily not 881), giving me 18 dollars (each pill goes for $2 from Lil' May), with 2 for myself. I go to Lil' May, seeing her before Division, and quickly purchase 8 pills. Thinking a few seconds more about it, I decided, "what the hell" and got two (I hope the inconsistencies in using numerals and words bothers the living bacteria out of you) more with the spare $2 from the 18 and $2 I happened to have on me besides that.
I kept the pills for the next two hours or so, and finally stragetically popped both at the beginning of my 7th period class, Italian. This would have the effects kick in during 8th period Health, which I found to be a good period to be not completely there in. Come 8th period, I could barely sit the fuck still. My fingers kept twitching and all. The entire period we had an assignment involving reading about drugs and answering questions about them. For the first time the Adderall actually helped me in work instead of distracting me, and I found myself ZOOOOOMING (with that many O's) through the assignment like there's no tomorrow (or as if it was going to be graded, which it wasn't (on the note of tomorrow, I suppose I am in yesterday's tomorrow now)). I felt the need to laugh at the amphetamine section of the book, especially when it told me all the nice reasons I should not abuse these drugs (which, like all drugs, are obviously fatal at first dose).
The effect continued into my 9th period (last class), American Literature. I honestly forgot what we did there but I mostly talked to some of my friends and had a blast, due to the increased good chemicals in my brain (that was a reference to Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions, by the way. You should go read some Vonnegut, best damn author out there, simultaneously with Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman). After 9th, I decided I did not want this extremely pleasant experience to end, so I called up Lil' May (who had cut the last few classes she had) and took her up on the 6 Adderalls she owed me for various favors. Of those 6 I used 2 today/yesterday, popping one right after meeting her outside the Arts Building of my school. I met up with some friends of mine after a failed math team practice, and we proceeded to sit in a hallway for about an hour and, in retrospect, actually do nothing. Which was loads of fun.
To my great stress, it was soon time to leave at 4:30pm (which is, coincidentally, almost 12 hours ago now), so off we go on the Brown Line. Well, three of us, the others (seven of us total, so four of them) had other means of getting home. We however took the Brown Line. Come Paulina, my first friendly gets off. Then the other chap and I exit on Irving Park. He walks to the street on which he lives, at which point he turns. I was really enjoying our conversation, however, so I accompanied him home due to a sudden panic at being alone. However, at his house, we had to split, and so my fear became reality. It really wasn't that bad though. As I waited for the bus back on Irving Park Road, I popped my fourth and final pill. 80 milligrams now. Although I am Polish, having lived in America for so long, I consider myself American. Therefor, I'd now like to show some patriotism and show you an artistic expression of the American Flag:
Also, circled in yellow is what I had and probably still partially have in my body. I had never taken more than three Adderalls in a day, and the last time of any dosage was at least a month and a half ago, so my tolerance was once again next to none. Four Adderalls, I found and am still finding out, have much longer, harsher effects than two.
I got home, and decided to be calm. About five minutes later I couldn't stand it, due to a sudden OCD that had developed in me. I failed to mention earlier, but by now I absolutely HAD to have at least two people texting me, otherwise I'd start panicing. This time I HAD to put on loud and cacophonous music, with songs like "Tastes Like Kevin Bacon" by iwrestledabearonce, "Endzeit" by Heaven Shall Burn, and "But The Nuns Are Watching" by the masters of comedy, I Set My Friends On Fire.
Screaming along at violent, throat-hurting levels, I decided that I need to listen to Nine Inch Nails' The Fragile, a beautiful masterpiece with angry noises in it. Doing this, I decided that I do, in fact, have an appetite, and as fast as I could heated up some of yesterday's (Tuesday's) seafood pasta, filling three cups of orange juice as it microwaved. I had a seat in my room, on the floor, in front of my (admittingly sexy) speakers, turned up to a comfortable, ear-fucking volume of 23 (out of 30), or that much louder than a vacuum cleaner. For reference, volume 8 is easily audible during the day with all those background noises outside my window.
I just sat there, eating what seemed like an endless pasta bowl, and screaming/moaning along to Trent Reznor singing/yelling/talking/moaning about his frail, wretched existence. My mother called to my dismay, telling me her phone has nearly depleted the number of lithiom ions on the negative side of its battery's electrode (basically, the damn battery died). My mother then told me to kindly bring her her charger, not being aware of how much damage this was causing to my new, OCD-run train of thought. Sitting there for 20 minutes more than I should've, I eventually gathered the necessary equipment (socks, shoes, iPod) to carry the charger the enormous two-block distance between our apartment and her job.
Not quite tired of Nine Inch Nails, I put on The Downward Spiral at the beginning of my walk, expecting to then finish at home through better-quality speakers then screwed up, cheap, brandless earphones. However, I soon discovered the intensity of something playing less than an inch from your ear drum (which I haven't heard in a while, due to both my iPods being impractible to use unless you hold down the earphone jack the whole time, which I was doing) is quite pleasurable, especially with an intense, dense album like The Downward Spiral. I did not want to stop, and therefor walked around my neighborhood for an hour, ending up at home just as Trent was addressing his sweetest friend in "Hurt".
Damn, this is getting quite boring. I'ma skip to the part where I planned to go to sleep, followed by Big Joe telling me over AIM that he had, in fact, taken all 8 of his pills at once, and was now joyfully dancing. So here I was, in my PJ's, contacts off, in my bed, listening to more NIN, texting a rather nice girl I wouldn't at all mind dating, as well as Big Joe. I expected to fall asleep in the middle of a conversation as usual, which, not very courteous or pleasant to me, is an efficient method of sleeping. This did not work. I found that every single thing I did had some sort of negative effect on my comfort and sleep-readiness. My mouth was exceedingly dry, so I drank some orange juice, and found the weirdest sensation in my stomach of fluid moving around. I rolled on my side, no. On my back, no. Belly, no. I got too hot, so I lowered my covers. Now I was too cold. Everything had a bipolarity and both poles were dead-set on murdering my sleep.
Soon I felt sweaty and hot and figured I might in fact just have a fever. On the girl's suggestion I went to make some tea, but instead made some cocoa. Having drank this, I went to the bathroom to urinate and defecate, and found both pissing and shitting hugely beneficial in reducing my fever-like symptoms. The milk also helped reduce my hunger, at least for a while. But perhaps due to not-completely-gone effects or the OCD need to text, I still could not fall asleep. By about 1:30 both my chatting buddies were asleep, despite assertions minutes earlier from both that they were "not tired at all" and "awake to the fullest". I turned on The Downward Spiral again and sang and screamed and moaned along, this time hearing different noises because of the different audio delivery.
Finishing that album at about 2:30, I was at a loss of what to do. I was once again hungry, so I went and made more cocoa. I then torrented Broken, also by Nine Inch Nails, which hugely goes against my policy of buying actual albums, ESPECIALLY from my favorite band, but I had that urge to listen to it. So I did soon, the torrent being done in about 5 minutes remarkably. The end of the record occured around 3:40, by which time I had started writing this entry. Jesus, I've been typing this for an hour now. If it sucks, I'm sorry, I have a temporary case of insomnia and frankly don't give a fuck because nobody's gonna read this stuff ever except me, or at least not for a LONG time. I now have about 100 minutes till it is time for me to wake up and take a shower, followed by getting ready for school. I don't get why I get up at 6:20 if school begins at 8:50. Oh right, the train takes... well no, the train takes about 35 minutes. Actually, as I had done before, I could wake up at 7:30, skip the shower, do all the essentials, and still leave the house at 8 and comfortably make it to school.
Jesus Christ, what do I do now? I still have time to kill. I'll go check my Facebook... nothing new. There's an amazing 4 people in idle chat mode. I don't want to talk to them.
Goodnight. Or goodmorning. Wish me luck on functioning properly today.
UPDATE: Having looked at this post soon after posting, I realized that these paragraphs are huge and unseemly and the images sucked in being where they should be. I fixed the images but fuck no am I rewriting/editing all this stuff. It's 5am! As it is getting lighter outside, it is now officially Thursday. I think I might've said Tuesday earlier. I frankly don't care.
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