by Luke A Lawton

I use meth to treat ADHD. Go ahead, laugh. It doesn’t bother me, I don’t care what you think. If you want to know why I use meth to treat ADHD, it is because it works. Ever wonder what Adderal or Ritalin is? According to a study published by the National Institute of Health, Adderall and methamphetamine are “almost identical in structure”. And don’t ask it – I already know what you’re thinking and the answer is coming up.

I’ve suffered from this god awful condition as long as I can remember.   In school, teachers would say “If Luke would just slow down and check his work, he would be a straight A student.” and the report cards would always say the same.   School came very easy and I never studied.   I graduated second in my class and that was after failing one semester of chemistry after an unfortunate high school arrest.  

School was easy, but finding my wallet, my keys, my books or anything else for that matter was not.  I always had 1000 projects going (and still do for the most part) and never finished any of them.  In my adult life, I’ve come to understand the nature of my problem is not lack of intelligence, nor is it a poor memory.   My mind is so active that I simply cannot pay attention to what the rest of my body is doing.  I’ll be caught up in a firestorm in my head – plotting and planning and designing and snap back to reality to find myself in a physical place of which I just arrived with no recollection of getting there.      About 20,000 times per day I unknowingly set down my phone and have no idea where it is.   Not because I don’t remember where I set it, because I didn’t have the knowledge of where my hand put the fucking phone in the first place.. Simply put, I do not have the capacity to pay attention to myself under certain circumstances.

Which brings us to the question that you didn’t ask – why not use legally prescribed Adderall instead of illegally procured methamphetamine?  Here are a few reasons:

• I have been trying to get medication for over 20 years and have been unable to do so.
• It’s cheaper and easier to get.
• It works better than Adderall.

You’re probably wondering how I know that it works better than Adderall if I’ve never been prescribed it. And to answer that, I have gotten it several times on the black market and done comparisons. Given the choice between the two, I of course would choose legally prescribed Adderall.

I have had ADHD meds prescribed to me, but here is how it goes – doctors have to try non-addictive choices first – and I get that. The first one they try is almost always Welbutrin (I’ve been on that many times) which does nothing for me. Then they try anti-depressants (I’m not depressed, I have ADHD). I’ve been on Cymbalta which was HELL. Getting of it took 6 months of tapering off and I had electrical shocks in my head during the whole process. Then once I was on Strattera and valium, xanax and klonopin which seriously made me crazy. So crazy that I ended up in medical detox in the hospital for 30 days. Not a fun experience. The medical world has failed me here.

Recently I decided to try the legal route of the doctor again. But ran into a road block – the shrink won’t see me until I get ADHD testing done and literally the only thing my health insurance doesn’t cover is ADHD testing. I could get a sex change and they would cover it, but not ADHD testing.

So there you have it.

San Francisco is a pretty screwy place.   You can’t buy cigarettes in drug stores, you can’t buy Menthol cigarettes anywhere (something about targeting black people), plastic straws are illegal and so are plastic bags.   It’s not uncommon to see a naked dude walking down the street and people who ride public transportation are seen to be of a higher intelligence that those who drive.  It’s beautiful and filthy, accepting and intolerant,  and sweet and sour.

The city does a lot of things wrong.   One thing it’s doing right is how addiction is viewed and how drug addicts are treated.   On more than one occasion, I’ve been in a situation where I was searched and where the police found a pipe with shit in it or a little baggie.  In all cases (except for one, and that was because the officers were not from San Francisco) said paraphernalia was returned to me and I was told to go on about my merry way. No judgemental comments, no tickets, no warnings, nothing. Why? Because the San Francisco Police have been trained that drug addiction is something to help, not lock up. Can you imagine being stopped by the police and when they noticed you had a sniffle being handcuffed? Having a drug addiction is no more of a crime than having a cold.

Now if I would have been dealing those drugs, then yes – my ass should have been arrested. But don’t spend your time telling us run of the mill average everyday addicts that it’s a disease when we’re trying to get clean and arresting us when we’re not. And if my addiction isn’t causing me or anyone else harm, just leave me the fuck alone.

How many jobs have you been fired from in your lifetime? Me: Zero. How much money do you make / year? Oh $60,000 – are you just successful? This meth addict is pushing $200,000 / year and that is 100% legal activity that money’s coming from – a job with benefits paid for by my employer in their entirety. Now the next time you get drunk and run over your neighbor’s garbage can sit back and tell me my life is unmanageable. Or when you walk down to get your disability check because you’re so fat you can’t work or just too plain lazy to get a job don’t forget to stop to call and tell me that I’m a fucking burden on society.

Better yet, next time you get the fucking flu just go right to the police station and turn yourself in – we don’t want your kind roaming the streets.