Author: Max Weidman
Our generation, for better or for worse, is not so apprehensive about sharing prescription pills. Once a female friend of mine proffered two Xanax as I stepped out the door towards a red-eye flight. She had never offered me drugs before; she did not ask any recompense. She must, I presume, have had some extra pills and wanted my flight to be a little more pleasant-for which, incidentally, I ought to thank her. It was ever so much more pleasant.
This story is, I imagine, a familiar one for many. Especially as exams and the like start to cast foreboding shadows, I’ve known more than one or two students who have resorted to buying their friends’ Adderall, Ritalin or Concerta. Considering that such pills have been available since at least high school, I admit to having made one such purchase myself-out of journalistic curiosity.
You will allow me, then, to enumerate some of the qualities of this particular form of “drug abuse.” One’s tedious work becomes more enjoyable. One feels a moderate sharpening of academic knives. The student’s focus doubles-it becomes doubly narrow, doubly intense. One might experience a loss of creativity-research papers are easy but big-picture synthesis can be impaired.
I gather from my friends with prescriptions that these effects tend to smooth out with longtime use. One girl told me a few years ago that her doctor had said something like “it gets to the point where you need to take ’em to feel normal.” This is just the kind of prescription oversaturation I’ve been told has come to signify my generation. We live both inside it and in constant fear of it.
There are several obvious reasons behind this. So-called “pharmaceuticals” are all over the place; not only are peers prescribed every pill in the book, but there are actually dozens of books on the market with pretty color pictures so you can safely identify and raid grandparents’ forgotten goodies. Furthermore, it is difficult to watch television without catching both an advertisement for a new drug and a denouncement of an old one, usually pot.
In one commercial I’ve seen, a guy makes a cocoon of marijuana while he’s a teenager and then steps out a fat, bald, pasty middle-ager. I, for one, have always believed that those ads are made by baby boomers who are actually just afraid of getting old-afraid of themselves and all the waste. Meanwhile I live the waste. In my generation, even the nerds (Seth Cohen) smoke grass. The lectures from above spiral off in so many absurd directions that most people my age have simply said “fuck it” and stopped listening.
Besides, the new sources of information belong to us. Errowid.com features dozens of articles, documentations of experience and discussions on any drug you can think of. Hypochondriacs have found a new tool in Webmd.com. Our drug use isn’t a reaction or a resistance-it’s a capitalist touchstone we have to rub like a Buddha’s belly just to fit in. It’s stupid that marijuana-among other drugs-is illegal, while methadone gets doled out at clinics. Those who don’t recognize the fundamental hypocrisy here probably aren’t worth trying to convince. Having taken this to heart, all drug use becomes relativized, which brings us back to uppers.
It was capitalistically inevitable that someone would develop a drug that made you want to work. While many are reticent to go out and obtain the easy prescription (we watch South Park, we know about these things) oodles get on the speed train when crunch time kicks in. In our tangled web of knowledge and experience, there are no more indications. We live in the rabbit hole and every colorful capsule screams “EAT ME (when such-and-such happens).” Besides, if our friends eat pills every day, then one or two can’t hurt. Plenty of straight-edge types pop Tylenol like M&M’S. Some of my friends even have prescriptions to smoke grass, which these same straight-edge types say makes you so stupid you end up running over cute little girls on pink bikes.
My point is only partially to justify those who decide to take Adderall when they have a 20-pager to write. Mostly, I want to point a finger at my generation and myself. We are all users, and I for one am trying to be more open-minded. I don’t want to wind up like lots of baby boomers I know-fat, pasty, bald and hypocritical. I don’t want to end up screaming, like Aesop’s stupid crab, “Do as I say.”
I’m not out to move ideological mountains. Your alternate convictions on the matters are probably just that. This piece is for the members of what I’ve called my generation, because we need to do some looking around. Whether over the counter or under, through coercion or defamation, we’ve all been pigeonholed and ordered into models of substance use that don’t even begin to describe our complex relations with “drugs.” Having been fed their pills and proclamations, we’re all some kind of junkie. So speak, Generation Me-do you feel like a junkie?
Max Weidman is a junior ECLS major. He can be reached at mweidman@oxy.edu.
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