Why Aren’t We All on Adderall?

What if I were to offer you a cure for boredom? Let’s say it’s a pill. I don’t mean a pill that would magically make your life exciting; I mean a pill that would cause you to stop wishing that your life were exciting, to rejoice instead in the tedium of day-to-day existence and never aspire to anything more. Would you take it?

Before you say no — before you protest that your life is exciting, thank you very much (yeah, yeah) — let me reiterate the sheer joy this pill would bring you. You wouldn’t simply resign yourself to a lifetime of undistinguished monotony — you’d be delighted by it. It would give you deeper satisfaction than anything you’re doing right now.

Still no?

This question was not on my mind when I asked my friend Chucky to spare me an Adderall or two. I wasn’t thinking about the rest of my life; I was thinking about the rest of my week. It was one of those unusually fruitful periods that the freelancer occasionally enjoys, and after three straight weeks of nonstop typing, I was officially too bored to continue, even though I still had several hours of raw footage left to transcribe. I needed the money, but at this point I was so bored with the assignment that I would almost rather get evicted from my apartment than put on those headphones again.

“This is exactly the sort of thing that Adderall is for, right?” I said to her. She gave me two.

I took the first pill, put on my headphones, laboriously began to type. Half an hour went by and I was no less bored. So much for the placebo effect, I thought, disappointed. So much for the pharmaceutical industry—

And then it kicked in.

I could feel it, physically. It was like a light that started out as a glow in the pit of my stomach, beamed upward through my spine and into my brain, and then streamed out in every direction until I was illuminated like a saint in a medieval painting.

I didn’t think of this image at the time. I paused with my fingers over the keys, thinking, This feels like…it feels like…like…it’s like… I couldn’t come up with a single word. Moreover, I didn’t want to come up with a single word. All I wanted to do was type type type, mindlessly, flawlessly, endlessly.

And so I did. I typed ten pages. I typed twenty-five pages. I typed forty pages. I purposely went back and re-listened to passages I’d heard perfectly well the first time, just so I’d have an excuse to type them out again and again and again. Holy shit, I thought. Holy fucking shit!

It wasn’t what I’d expected at all. I’d thought I would feel more awake; it was more like I was dreaming. I’d thought I might get jittery, but I’d never felt such serenity in my life. I’d thought I would work faster than usual; instead I found myself purposely slowing down, drawing the work out, savoring it, taking an almost erotic pleasure in every little detail. I’d thought I would be willing to do something boring; I never guessed I would be ecstatic to do something boring.

Was this how people with Adderall prescriptions felt all the time? Why wasn’t everyone in the whole world immediately given Adderall at birth? All the world’s problems would be solved!

Hating to tear myself away from the transcript for even a second, I managed to send a brief text to Chucky: “HOLY SHIT THIS ADDERALL IS AMAZING THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!”

She texted back: “no problem try not to transcribe in all caps though”

The church bells outside chimed three o’clock, four o’clock — and the next thing I knew, I’d typed fifty-five pages and it was seven o’clock. I couldn’t believe it. I had to meet a friend for dinner, but I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to see her. I didn’t want to eat, I didn’t want to laugh, I didn’t want to talk about my love life or my writing projects, I didn’t want to do anything for the rest of my life but sit here and type. Why had I made that dinner date? Why was I always trying to fill up my life with people and conversation and sex and thoughts and words, words, words?

Suddenly it seemed to me that we all spend our entire lives in a state of crushing, all-consuming boredom, that every decision we make is an attempt to stave it off. We work boring low-paying jobs, hoping they’ll lead to less-boring work in the future; or we work boring high-paying jobs, hoping we can then afford less-boring leisure time. We drop out of college and sleep with our bosses and pretend to be secret agents at the grocery store — what a waste of time! What a farce! I saw now that you could never escape boredom, any more than you could outrun a fireball. You had to embrace it, to bask in its warmth.

I took the second pill. By now it was the second day, hot and humid; sweat was dripping down my skin, which felt like little bugs crawling all over me, and my shoulders were stiff and my feet were numb, but nothing could make me move.

This could change my life, I was thinking. Now that I had the alchemy to turn boredom into rapture, I could go back to college. Heck, I could go to grad school. I could take up exercise. I could work at the supermarket, or the DMV, or the airport — someplace where I’d get paid to sit in the same spot doing the same glorious thing over and over again for the rest of my life. If I never took breaks to eat or sleep, I’d make so much money! I’d make so much money that I could…I could…

I kept drawing a blank when I tried to imagine the rest of my life. Or to imagine anything at all: I could barely remember what imagination felt like. It was as though that part of my brain had turned to ash. Was this what absolute contentment felt like? Yes, it must be!

I got up to go to the bathroom and glanced at myself in the mirror. I looked different, though at first I couldn’t exactly tell how. Was I prettier? More mature-looking? Yes, that must be it!

No, wait, it was just my eyes. Had they always been so black? Weren’t they usually blue?

It didn’t occur to me to go on the Internet to see if pupil dilation was a side effect of Adderall. It didn’t even occur to me to wonder about it. I was through with wondering and wonderment. I went back to my desk and typed sixty pages, seventy pages, eighty pages, and finally ninety pages. Ninety-one pages in ten hours: I was done.

I wasn’t relieved. I was ready to panic. What would I do now? Shit, what would I do when the Adderall wore off? How would I ever work again? How could I possibly go back to my normal state of constant boredom?

I had to text Chucky and ask her for more. No, wait, I couldn’t just flat-out ask her — I couldn’t let her think I liked it too much, or she wouldn’t give me any. I had to play it cool. I texted “how can i ever repay you?” in hopes that she would reply: “It’s no trouble at all! In fact, come over now and I’ll give you fifteen more!”

Instead she texted back: “$6, take a break, and don’t get addicted”

Addicted? Easy for her to say, with her prescription and her unlimited supply! She just wanted to keep it all for herself. Fuck that selfish bitch, and fuck this stupid socialist nanny state for requiring a prescription! It had to be a conspiracy to make us buy things, to keep us bored.

This was what I thought all night as I lay awake in bed, grinding my teeth, unable to sleep. The nirvana I’d briefly achieved gradually faded into memory; in its place was mounting boredom, coupled — weirdly — with mounting excitement. I had so many thoughts, so many ideas, so many plans for the future that my imagination couldn’t contain them all. I had to write them down.

Then I was sitting up in bed, writing, daydreaming, fantasizing, remembering and noticing and wondering and wanting and needing and feeling — all the things that come, for better or for worse, with a lifetime of boredom.

Photo by cursedthing