After taking a gulp of water, M. opens a new Word document, inhaling deeply. He begins to write a sort of Introduction or Author’s Note:

‘This is to be my first real poem. No *******, cheesy rhyming or painfully forced verbiage. I am now only a seeker of truth…’

M., having just crushed two Focalin pressed pills, rolls a five-dollar bill and proceeds to insufflate, pausing momentarily when the line is halfway finished; he exhales before immediately finishing it off. His sinus burns fiercely. There is something masochistic about his preferred method of ingestion w/r/t pills. And but with a sudden albeit expected (in fact, M. was utterly beholden to it) rush of vitality, M. spends the next ten minutes finishing his half-page poetic manifesto [sic] (which term he actually wrote as a heading. “Poetic Manifesto”, that is), before beginning what he considers to be the first stanza. He likes that the location of the beginning of his poem is ambiguous. And so he begins thusly, consciously avoiding conventional rhyme scheme, instead opting for what he considers to be abstract.

‘My first poem, ostensibly an attempt at catharsis, was in fact a failed expression of my latent desire to be accepted. For today it’s a poem and last week a novel; tomorrow I’ll ferociously ******* some fashionably obscure, formidably pretentious prose [sic]. Consuming all but absorbing nothing…’

If he is to discover vicious truths [sic] in his writing, he cannot hold anything back. He thinks of a double-entendre using the word ‘blunt’, but decides not to employ it. Perhaps yesterday. Suddenly, M. begins to ruminate on his poem from the day before, which had earned him the opposite of acclaim from his peers. He must simply do the opposite of what he had done before! When he resumes writing, M. eventually begins to subconsciously fall back into the 12-syllable AABB rhyme scheme of his yesterday’s poem.

‘…Perhaps the following phase will stick for more than a wretched week.
Why have I wasted words on wan, vapid, wheezing lines
Of sickeningly phony, sophomoric, pseudo-sentimental ****?
Surely you see the salient theme,
That from which I hide,
Refusing to acknowledge life’s flaccid, tan **** as it floats in front of me,
Beckoning me forth,
A one-eyed, furiously fetid viper...’

M. chortles at his alliterative stanza’s ending. ‘This is how I write,’ he mutters to himself, maintaining a straight face. He writes without pause for nearly an hour. He is pleased.

‘…A generalist—that’s what I tell myself I am,
Because simply knowing a few facts,
Even for forty or fifty fields,
Is surely worthy of that
Respect which is given to those men and women
Who earn it by grinding away
At that which determine the sycophant vermin
Is worthy of lifting a lash…’

Hours pass. The poem approaches two thousand words in length. After taking a truncated cigarette break (the break, not the cigarette, was truncated), M. continues where he left off.*

‘…Believe you not for a second the frost-bitten-phallus,
That Freudian façade [sic],
The false faces I display to fake friends
Whose frequent fornication
Fills my mind with fossilized fleas,
******-spiritual formication [sic]
For which there’s no vaccine…

…Once I’ve come down from the mountainous apogee atop which I sit,
Calmly surveying the ever-receding landscape through the lens of fleeting euphoria
Which, fading faster always, gives way to—no, I will not say it—I refuse to legitimate her lies.
As I descend with increasing speed,
specters of judgment torment me into insanity…
    
B  r  e
a   t  h
     e  ;

...this feeling I simply cannot bear—
their sirens threaten to burst my eardrums.
Although it’s undoubtedly pathetic,
I can no longer lie to myself;
I desire the approval
of those specters
who haunt
m-
e
...’

M. begins to hyperventilate, panicking at his embarrassment at publishing such a bad poem the day before. He grasps his heart, which is beating out of his chest. The fear of cardiac arrest simply increases his anxiety. Laying down on the ****-carpeted floor, M. attempts to meditate, imagining this to be how it might feel to do TM on *******. Minutes then an hour pass.
Suddenly, a much-welcomed epiphany presents itself to M.; as if it fluttered through his window and hovered, eerily still in the way that only hummingbirds can be, just in front of his face. So obvious does it seem (the epiphany) that he begins to laugh maniacally in the pitch of a female voice either pre-pubescent or near-dead; a kind of

YEE!    

YEE!      

YEE!    

HEEEE!

HE!

HEE!                      

HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

sound.
After minutes of uncontrollable mirth, M. holds his abdomen and makes the lugubrious [sic], delirious noises of tired suffering. After a few more YEE’s and HEEEE’s escape, he begins to regain control, trying not to focus on what he’d realized w/r/t futility as it relates to shame, but certainly ensuring that he won’t forget. M. sits in his chair with a old-man grunt, the sort of noise over which wives divorce their husbands.
He sips water.
M. opens a new document and begins to type:

For what do we write, we talentless wretches?
To publish some
gooey garbage
in hopes
that some fleet of demonic tween-age sociopaths
adopts our work as part of the canon of cuntiness?  

Not we, the veritable “un-poets”,
Our haphazardly-conceived writing stinks,
No, it reeks of fetid, smegmatic phalluses;
Of a ****** of maniacal madmen,
Blue-balled after an abysmal night/morning
Tossing crumpled ***** of money
At Patti’s plump-lipped, positively putrid-looking

&&&&               *****               &&&&

In an I-95 truck stop;
“Taste **** and *****
At Trucker Tom’s ***** Taphouse
                                        Where friends meet
                                            and literally throw money
                                              into syphilitic snatches.”

We write for the duty of identity,
We who might be found with a serious face on,
Writing rhyming, rhythmic,
quasi-**** lines of lead-heavy, snobbish lifeforce-larcen.
The sort of **** that keeps you from getting up in the morning.

But of course we are writers, as sure as the sea
Is blue, the day is long, who daresay that I am wrong?
And he who
doth [sic] dare,
I point to that long
******* I posted
ere the day began.
There lies his evidence though it belongs in the can.

attention problems you say?
well it's no wonder
our lives are dominated by screens
that keep appearing like pop-ups
and have you ever lived in a city?
it's hard not to be distracted
by thick framed pointless glasses
and whatever might be bobbing beneath those skirts
and we are the iced coffee frappamochalattechino generation
so it makes sense that we can't sit still
and when all of the information
in the known universe is just a google away
then why would we pay attention in school?
adderall
focalin
ritalin
*******
****
****
speed
what's the difference
it's all about medicating regulation to stop the second guessing
even when it rains we see the pitter patter
of each individual droplet
splashing
on each individual street
from west coast
to the orients
and when people can quote more commercials
than books
then where is the surprise?
let the adhd be
stop telling kids to stop day dreaming
it's the only thing that might save them
from later life mid-life crisis screaming

She was the better me.
And I knew it.
No one could distinguish the difference.
No one cared to.

As a shy daydreamer in my early years,
I was transformed into a quiet machine.
Finding it even more difficult
To branch out to others,
And make friends.

I was never confident in myself before,
And i wasn't even when i was medicated.
She was better than me, but not in everything.

Although,
She is quick to tempt me
As i recede from this medication that has made me into the robot that my teachers praise me for,
The lack of confidence rises.
She ****** and prods me and convinces me that every word i say,
Is unimportant.

"These are only ramblings." she tells me.
"Nobody is listening to what you say anyways."

I swear to you,
I believe every darned word that she seeps into my skull.
The medication me has always been the **** job of my brain.
The better, more popular version of me.

And although I continue to pass my classes with outstanding grades,
Without my medication,
It doesn't feel the same.
She knows.
And i know.

But I have been her for eight years.
And i am ready to say goodbye.
She lingers still,
Waiting for the return
That i will not give her.

I remember when all of my answers fit inside a pill
Extended release, 30mg, tiny little white beads shake around loudly
like the panicked thoughts in my head
The amphetamines would run through my blood stream hungrily
looking for neuron receptors to prey upon,
sitting like crisp, new, heaven-scented virgins, fresh meat for the taking.
They'd disguise themselves as endogenous,
as if the body and the brain naturally made this happen,
wanted a gushing current of dopamine to start pouring out
of every synapse, wave after wave of artificial pleasure,
euphoria, focus, mania, sweeping me off of my feet
into a world run by pharmaceuticals. In my mind,
problems literally could not exist - the chemicals taking over
my midbrain would not allow it. Palms sweaty, heart pounding,
pupils dilated, I would be taken over by chemically-induced content-ness, a happiness high. And that was all I wanted.
Wrestling with addiction isn't fighting if you want it.
I was never fighting with Adderall, Ritalin, Vyvanse, or Focalin,
I was avoiding them: you cannot truly fight the ones you love.

And then I stopped wanting them.
They sat in my drawer untouched for days, weeks, months.
I found better pleasure centers that went beyond
the ventral tegmental area, the dopamine super highway present
in every human brain.  I found meditation, I found dancing,
I found friends, I found yoga, music, incense, singing
bubble baths with scuba masks, picking apples in the rain,
smelling the sweet thick scent of flowers in the spring time
the taste of fresh pineapple on a summer day,
the crackling sound of golden leaves crunching beneath my feet.
These were answers to questions in the deepest parts of my soul
that went untouched by man-made substances inside a prescription bottle.
I felt like I had finally awaken in my life, I had finally arrived
in this moment: fully, freely, confidently and full of love.

People told me I'd be an addict forever, I thought I would always
be haunted by the demon voices that lived under my bed
when I was alone and unguarded. But here I am, the real me,
the dark, thick, medicated sludge covering my true self
has been wiped away completely, like snow melting off of flowers.
The only part of me that is upset is the part that knows that
the four final papers I have will not write themselves. But none of
that seems important anymore. Mostly, I am relieved. I am free.
I feel like I conquered a terminal illness, a fully recovered brain
cancer patient that never touched chemo and kept all their hair.
Who knew all the answers I thought were in a pill
were always right in front of me, in the now,
in the constant, colorful kaleidoscope of present moments
happening to me that I was ignoring.
The answers were inside my Self all along, all I had to do
was stop thinking, look closely, listen carefully, and trust deeply.

Since then I've taken a lot of Ritalin, Paxil, Welbutrin, Effexor, Focalin, etc...

I've also studied deeply in the philosophies and religions.
But somehow cheerfulness kept breaking through.

                          - Leonard Cohen in London