Saturday, October 21, 2006

adderall killed the internet star

Sorry my lovelies. My blogging motivation was somewhat sapped by skirmishes with various respiratory ailments. First to bat, a strange affliction of raspy cough and voice-loss, affectionately dubbed "larynchitis". Then the Santa Ana winds kicked up. This means that the typical breeze blowing in from the ocean gets mysterically reversed. Thusly, all of the smog, soot, and microscopic plant matter occupying the "inlands" of Southern California are blown westward and deposited into my left nostril.

Hoov is no stranger to allergies. During my time as an undergrad, and my tenure at the nerd daycare known as law school, I received allergy shots, two a week. Various and sundry allergens were the culprits - juniper, redwood, cedar, cats, various grasses, and (as the Fleeg will gladly recount) "bold thporth".

But I have no allergy problems on the coast, so I would presume that sand and palm tress produce no allergens to speak of. But then the Santa Ana's roll in, and the sensation is vaguely akin to having someone use barbeque tongs to pull out my pituitary gland via my right nostril (the left one having been obstructed as previously discussed).

And then, the impetus to blog has been additionally buffered by attempts to get my ADHD under control.

People have strange reactions when I tell them I have ADHD. So far there are two that seem to predominate. The slightly more frequent is the same reaction you tend to get from people after a break-up - after discovering that your former paramour had like, totally been all up on some other dude like, before y'all even broke up. It's the furrowed brow and the awkward hesitation, which is of course proceeded by, "Yeah... We all sorta knew that already, we just didn't know how to tell you."

That's what friends are for, I guess.

Then you have the second faction, whose members are no less affirming. They pinch up their faces like the Church Lady, and say something to the effect of, "Well, isn't that special? You made it through high school, college, and law school, and now you seem to have ADHD."

The subtext of course being, "You're a junkie, Hoov."

Get a clue, moron. This is Southern California. If I wanted drugs, I could bloody well get them cheaper than Adderall XR. Cuz they ain't makin' that junk in generic. Better ax 'umbody.

Yes, Adderall is an amphetamine - a Class II Narcotic. So it's like, really fancy speed. The XO of speed. Speed with the leather option and the GPS system. I got it! Hand-rolled speed from Cuban seed with a shade-grown Cameroon wrapper. Seven for All Speed. This week was the best LOST ever!

But, as you can see, it doesn't really work all that well.

Yes, I was diagnosed by an actual doctor. There are several ADD/HD tests out there (I'm told), but on this one, a score of 24 indicated a "strong possibility of treatable attention deficiency".

I got a 39. Hey, if it's worth doin'... it's worth overdoin'.

He put me on the next-to-next-highest dose, but I'm still considerably scatterbrained. However, it does make me not hungry and not sleepy. Not wired or buzzed or high-energy. Just not sleepy. I'll be up at 3 in the morning folding sweaters or something and think, "Hmm... Isn't there something I'm usually doing right about now?" And it's not so much that Adderall makes you lose your appetite, as it makes you forget that food even exists.

Martha will call me: "Have you eaten today?"

And I'll think, "Have I what?"

Peoples always be like, "Hoov, why do you call your mom "Martha"?

I call her Mom when I'm talking to her, but when I'm talking about her, Martha seems to come out. Don't the Spanish do something like that? Like, when you're talking to someone, it's "Hoov", but when you're talking about them, it's "El Hoov". At least that's what the Professor in my Minorities in Literature course told us. She was half-Spanish, but that class was all lame.

See? We gotta up that dosage.