Modafinil

Adderall, Modafnil, Vyvanse, I’ve used them all at different points. 

Modafinil is the safest. So it feels the least good. The least my interior jigsaw’s missing piece — the least making sustained focused effort possible and sometimes even pleasant.

The Modafinil use started in college. I had sleep issues. More accurately, wake issues, since high school, but in HS I only needed half my brain anyway.

In my senior year of high school I rigged my schedule so that I was a “Teacher’s Assistant” for 1st and 2nd periods (8AM and 9:30AM) — abusing the goodwill of teachers who liked me, knowing they wouldn’t care if I stopped coming. 

I had more important things to take care of,  they assumed, I assumed they would assume, so they weren’t really surprised or upset when about halfway through the first quarter I stopped showing up for the morning classes.  

I was, uh, doing College Stuff. I was being the Vice President of the Senior Class. Finishing an application for a Scholarship. Something important. I don’t know. But thanks so much, Mr. D. Mrs. H. 

The truth is I could no longer wake up. I could not fall asleep either. I was behind bars. And I was completely straight edge, never an inkling of any recreational drug use in my life. It must have been the screens.

I’d sleep for like 10 hours at a time and still wake up tired. My mom would just let me sleep. She loved me too much to interfere. My sisters tried to wake me a few times — I even told them to, but they stopped trying because apparently I would say really mean things to them in my half-awake stupor to make them go away. I have no such memory, but I believe it. 

I slept through exams. Group presentations. I let so many people down. I couldn’t tell how everyone else did it. How people had it in them, to live a full life. Wake up in the morning, be a real person and stretch your consciousness from dawn to dusk and into the night and do it all again the next day every fucking day?

But in college, there was no way out. Sometimes it happened that the classes I “needed” that semester were only being taught at, say, 9 AM and I “needed” to be there to keep my grades high and so instead of sleeping through them all and not getting straight A’s I found friends with fake ADHD prescriptions (they’re all fake to me) and bought a considerable stash of Modafinil using Venmo and took them As Needed. 

Of course, they did exactly what I needed them to do. Keep me awake. They kept my eyes open. 

I never told a soul. Nobody. Zero people. I met so many people in college. I made so many great friends who I’m still in contact with today (That is a Lie). I told exactly no one about my amphetamine use. I wasn’t writing back then, so I didn’t even tell myself.