Drugs

Anyone who reads these rants will know that I have adult ADD, which means that when it's really important, I have the attention span of a fly, and when it's not really important, I can get lost in whatever I'm doing at the exclusion of the really important things.

For example, I have a meeting at 10 tomorrow with some big name TV producer... an IMPORTANT meeting. It takes 20 minutes to drive from my place to my office. And I can guarantee that 25 minutes before the meeting, I'll decide that it's a great time to clean out the inbox on my home office PC, which is, of course, much more than a 5 minute job.

Now the rational part of my brain just beats me up and tells me I lack self discipline. The other parts of my brain gang up on it, and point out that as four doctors have now reached the same diagnosis, then that's an awful lot of medical school to contradict. The rational part of my brain is right, of course, but hey... this is the 21st century... a wonderous time when any notion of self responsibility is about as quaint as black and white TV.

So I get to blame ADD, and thanks to the miracles of modern diagnostic medicine, I have the brain scans and psych profile tests to back me up.

Adult ADD, of course, can be a great gift. We "see" stuff... usually the stuff happening in the background of life, while the things right in front of us sometimes pass quietly by. For example, if I met you at a party, I'll remember the watch you were wearing, and that you had a scar on your wrist, but I won't remember your name, no matter how much I enjoyed your company. It makes driving interesting too... I'm much more likely to notice the "We Close" sign on the door of the Chinese restaurant I just whizzed by, than I am to notice the red light ahead. And trust me... you don't want to accept my invitation to play "white horse" on a drive in the countryside, because even though I'm driving and you have much more time to look around and find white horses behind farm houses or at the back of some paddock somewhere, I WILL win, because my ADD guarantees that I'll spot that damned horse first.

It also confers boundless creativity, because the breadth of stuff that we do see means we're more likely to think outside that tired proverbial square.

The downside, though, is that I suck at personal organisation, and frequently forget even the most rudimentary things. It can get so bad that I'll spend 10 hours, like I did today, on some meaningless programming task, while there's a whole bunch of invoices that haven't been sent out.

In other words, if Rome was burning, I'd decide it was a good time to practice the violin.

Therefore, occasionally, I need to resort to some very cool and extremely hard-to-get drugs to centre me a little. So hard-to-get that the prescription needs to be signed off by some faceless bureaucrat in Canberra, just to make sure I'm not getting three prescriptions at once from three different psychiatrists. (Regular doctors like Dr J can't prescribe it, which is a bummer).

You see, Dexamphetamine has a very high street value, and I'm told that it can deliver quite a kick if one doesn't actually "need" it. I was "warned", when I got my hands on my first 'script, that a simple $20 bottle of pills has a street value of around $1500. Strange advice to give someone suffering from mental disease, but hey... at least I know I have a guaranteed alternative income source if the business ever falls down.

Sadly, I don't get the kick. For me, dex just creates clarity. I'm told it does that by simultaneously speeding up one part of the brain, while slowing down another, so for a few days after I start taking stuff, the world can be a very interesting place indeed.

The downside, I know, will be a loss of some of life's colour for a little while. I just won't "see" quite as much next week as I did last week.

The upside is that I might remember to pay the electricity bill, buy a new toothbrush, and actually go out and see a client or two.

AND... Dex is a fabulous appetite supressant, so I can expect to shed more than a few kilos in the process. Ah well. If that's the price I have to pay for being a functioning human being, then I guess I'll live with it for a while.