i felt like dying last week. and in a way, i guess a part of me did.
my psychiatrist, the one with the gentle and lyrical accent, saw me for an emergency appointment mid-week on the sixth floor of a work share building. there were no receptionists to check me in or a nurse to have me fill out forms. a single security guard sat in the corner with his lunch while watching videos on youtube with his phone. the air was cold and sterile but i could still smell the deli meat. the security guard nodded to me and asked if i was here to see the doctor. i managed to whisper yes and he told me he would go get him. my hands were shaking. i felt like i wanted to collapse. my psychiatrist came out in a stiff suit jacket that had sleeves that were two inches too short and ushered me down the long hallway to his office. he thanked me for coming in. he looked concerned. his office was so bright, i just wanted to close my eyes. the brightness was excruciating. i told him, a little jokingly but more serious than not, that my mom and brother 5150’d me to my mom’s house the night before. they gave me no choice. my sentences were rambling and jumbled with pauses, a string of words haphazardly put together - i told him i was sorry, i haven’t been speaking much and my brain was foggy and cloudy. i told him i made the mistake of telling my mom i wanted to jump off a parking garage and so they took that as a sign that i could not be trusted to stay home alone. so at 7:30 pm, i made the hour drive so my mom could supervise me for the night. i told him i feel so bad, i feel so sick, i have never felt so depressed, i want to die, i feel like i’m not even alive. he listened quietly and carefully. his brow was furrowed, he crossed and uncrossed his ankles, he looked into my eyes. he told me i’ve developed an addiction to stimulants. he told me he’s seen this before. how did this happen? he told me i was now at a junction in my life and this was no longer about having difficulty focusing or concentrating, this was no longer about an attention deficit, this is now about how the rest of my life will play out. i sat there, quiet, feeling ashamed and embarrassed which felt like two different things.
he asked me how many i would take. i’m only supposed to take 3-4 every day, i was taking 8. sometimes 9, sometimes i thought about taking more but was worried how it would affect my supply. he gently reminded me how i was only supposed to take 2 per day but with my insistence, i had emailed him and told him i needed to take 4 per day which he had hesitantly agreed to. now here we are. he asked me what i wanted to do - it’s your choice and you need to make it. i thought of my dad. i thought of what it would look like if i kept feeling like this until….until what? he told me i would have to detox. he told me my withdrawals would be bad for about a week. he told me if i had any more thoughts of hurting myself, i needed to go to the emergency room. he told me i would be okay. he told me he was doubling my prozac. that should help. the extra 20 mg had the comfort of a safety blanket or a reward for my willingness to give up my adderall and i felt even more sick for being so grateful and desperate. he told me that my brain can’t handle amphetamines like someone else could. he asked if i had my stimulants on me. i nodded. he asked for them so i gave them to him. the orange plastic cylinder tinkled with the robin egg blue pills as they passed from my hand to his hand. he said it was my because of my genes. i thought about that. my genes. but like i said,
i am my father’s daughter.
i didn’t mean for things to play out this way.
the first time i took adderall, jeremy told me i had never been more inquisitive in my life. it made me feel special, for some reason. that somehow, i had harnessed a new super power of inquisitiveness. the way he said it made me feel like it was something i did not possess before. it made me feel that there were aspects to my personality that were hidden underneath it all, waiting to be let out, waiting to be discovered and appreciated and all i needed were these little blue pills to shed some light or rather, illuminate.
but the truth is, it’s more complicated than that. the truth is, i became infatuated with how quickly my heart would race, how a thin sheen of sweat would build up under my arms and on my chest from the energy coursing through my body and i began to take that as something life affirming, how i would begin to feel my body and my mind becoming more and more awake as the minutes ticked by, how suddenly i would have what felt like endless energy to engage with people, to be a more talkative, brighter, inquisitive, cheerful version of myself. and the ugliest truth of it all was it made me feel empty, the feeling i relished and got the most high from. appetite was not a thing. hunger was not real. now, the only thing i was hungry for were things that weren’t so tangible or could not be consumed in the literal way. the comfort i felt from not needing to consume, to not be hungry, dwelling on my emptiness felt holy. when i gave my doctor my half full bottle of adderall, i hesitated only because i knew the emptiness, the lack of hunger i began to cherish, would feel like the greatest loss.
on my second day of my detox, i found a prescription bottle with 8 pills of adderall in a tote bag that i had stuffed in my entry way closet. i looked at it and wondered what i should do with it. i desperately wanted to take it, to keep it, hide it in my old candy box where i keep small things i consider trinkets and treasures. i told myself i could take one a day and it would last me 8 days and even if i didn’t feel the high i was so accustomed to, maybe at the very least, it would help me feel empty again. maybe one pill per day would continue to help me be reliant only on water, a latte and dry frosted mini wheats.
i texted viv that now that i can’t have it, i don’t know what i will do without it. now that i can’t have it, i want it so badly. but i didn’t take it. i left it in my tote bag.
the next morning, i sat on my fire escape and texted my mom. i found more adderall and i want to take it so badly but i won’t. i promise. my mom had been texting me every morning, calling me if i didn’t answer her texts within 10 minutes, encouraging me to come stay with her while i worked through any withdrawal symptoms but i refused. the thought of trying to manage my mom’s feelings while managing mine made me feel more selfish and more hopeless than i was already feeling. i felt so much shame of being here, in this situation. the shame i felt of being an adult woman who was contemplating suicide, who could not get out of bed, whose mom and younger brother had to take care of was overwhelming. i knew amphetamines were addicting but for a woman who is 34 years old to become to dependent? it felt embarrassing, humiliating even.
my mom texted me and told me i am strong! she was proud of me! i read her words and didn’t feel anything. what was strong, what was there to be proud of? i told her i would take them to kaiser, viv offered to go with me but after i said it, i couldn’t bear the idea of getting dressed, getting in my car and driving to the pharmacy.
i thought of my psychiatrist, sitting in front of me, crossing and uncrossing his ankles. not out of nervousness, but almost as a way to help him choose his words carefully. i thought of the word junction. i thought of my dad, again. when i was fourteen, my mom told me my dad was addicted to painkillers which would be the start of other addictions. i didn’t really know what that meant but i cried feverishly because i knew it meant something awful, something that could lead to something destructive and more so, something that shouldn’t happen to well functioning adults. i am my father’s daughter in more ways than not. when i see my mom, i don’t see myself, i see ethan. when i picture my father’s face, i see myself in him more than anyone else in my family and that is something that has always scared me. now that i am older, i see that my father and i are so similar in personality. i am not proud of this. i am not happy about this. but my ability to be destructive and selfish, my desire to soothe by choosing harm, the searing anger i would feel throughout my body, my false sense of fidelity…his genes more intertwined than i thought with the very fabric of who i am.
i flushed the pills down the toilet.
i told viv i felt very girl, interrupted.
each day felt harder than the last, rolling waves of soul crushing hopelessness flooding my body, and endless feeling of doom and emptiness, my heart and head so heavy i felt like i could not bear it, long night drives with my windows down wondering what will fucking cure me, what will make me feel better but knowing it was not love, it was not anything anyone else could give me, knowing that the only way out was through, knowing that it was only myself that could get myself out of this, the revolting knot in my stomach twisting and unfurling it’s pain throughout my entire body.
yesterday was the first day in these treacherous few weeks where i began to feel the lightness in things again. i took a shower, i did my makeup and went to the legion of honor wearing black silk and linen. viv face-timed me as i walked through the exhibits and i answered, whispering to her. it was the first day without a lingering headache, without the feeling of being crushed by anhedonia, without stomach pain. she told me i had my brightness back. she asked me how it felt to kick addiction’s ass.
i sat at the museum cafe with a latte and a slice of almond orange cake. i wondered how this one slice would affect my body without adderall. would i gain weight? would my ribs become less visible?
i forced myself to finish the cake. bite after bite after bite.
a server came by and asked if i was done and i smiled and said yes.
i thought about taking myself to lunch to cotogna after the museum but i couldn’t bring myself to do that. i thought about having a glass of wine or two with a big salad and my book, cosplaying as a young divorcee, a woman who takes leisurely long lunches at the beginning of the week with no care in the world. but i couldn’t. slowly, the feeling of hopelessness and sadness came creeping back into my body and i felt like i needed to go home.
so i did.
but with the windows rolled down, smelling the foggy air of the city, it made me realize with hopefulness that it’s one day at a time and i’m here and i’m okay and i’m figuring it out and i’m trying my best and what is life if it is not messy and complicated and full of grieving yet bursting with happiness and romance and yearning and vanilla lattes and good butter and crusty bread and pained laughter and good cries and heartbreaking ones too? what is life without the good, the suffering, the beauty, the joy, the ugliness, the misery, the warm sunny days, the smell of chlorine on a hot summer day, the unexpected laughter, the cold glass of water, the feeling of not surviving but clawing your way through??
what is life without us?
“Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That's the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.
And you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You'll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others.
And once the storm is over you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about.” —Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
Dear Ethaney, I thought this excerpt as I was reading your substack. Sending you love & light always. Stay strong & remember that this community– that you single-handedly built– is here for you, and is proud of you.
thank you ethaney for sharing so much intimate beauty, sending all the love xx