Introduction

For a while now, I’ve been complaining about my attention span slowly shortening and trapping me inside myself. In previous blog posts, I think I made that point very clear.

The trouble I was having recently prompted me to considering giving Ritalin a try. And so this fine morning I decided to do just that. Getting hold of it was easy, as my brother has a prescription.

I took a single 10mg Ritalin dose at around 08:30 shortly after waking up. What mostly scared me was having read that Ritalin might cause psychosis in some individuals. Those claims were probably bogus. And at any rate, no psychosis here.

Since I had today off, and I need to study for my exams, today was the natural choice.

Every few minutes, whenever I was doing something significant or changing tasks or so on, I made a note of it including a time stamp.

The experiment

08:34 - I took 10mg of Ritalin. The minimum I have around the house. My brother takes 10mg every day 20mg slow-release every schoolday, and so I realized that it can’t be that bad if I took one on this specific occasion. (Health-wise.)

08:43 - So far I don’t believe the effects have kicked in. I feel just about the same.

09:10 - I realized that there’s no way the pill hasn’t kicked in yet, and so I’m going to try to sit down and read a book and see what my experience is.

09:50 - I came back from reading for a straight 40 minutes. I could have even went on for another 40 minutes, but eventually gave up. It seems like the pill is definitely affecting me and I certainly feel less restless. I would however like to check my brother’s complaints regarding not being able to laugh, a certain numbness. [note: I stopped because I reached the end of the chapter.]

I feel no urge to actually go to eat. I feel physically hungry, but no real urge to go eat. This is probably part of the pill’s influence on me, I presume.

I read with great concentration, unlike anything I’ve had in the past few months. Kind of sad, considering that I am on Schedule II drugs. I found myself analyzing the characters and deducing a lot about their behavior, personality and so forth.

10:15 - I just finished watching an episode of Futurama. Concentrating was easy, and I did not switch focus back to other applications all the while. I paid close attention to the movie, and my sitting posture was in fact proper.

I feel slightly strange around the chest and upper back. Though I believe this is because I’m not used to actually sitting up straight for this long (~40 minutes at a time). At the moment I’m still keeping the same posture with relatively no effort. The only thing which distracted me was an alert from Growl, telling me that somebody had sent me a message.

In other words, the only distractions out there were really just external stimuli. Otherwise, keeping a clear mind is ridiculously easy.

Although the jokes in Futurama usually fit my taste, I only laughed very briefly, and very often although I did get the joke I remained for the most part unaffected.

Now I think I will attempt to rewrite my social anthropology paper, as I’ve been putting it off for a long time now.

11:06 - I have been working nonstop on my anthropology paper since the last report. This is absolutely remarkable. I did not feel the need to check my email or see who is online. I’ve been working without any music in the background either, which is rare and remarkable.

I have decided to take a short break, although I could probably go on concentrating like this for a long time.

I don’t think I was ever this productive in years - and since I am doing IB now, and this draft is long overdue (it’s an internal deadline thankfully), this is most definitely working for me.

11:13 - I forced myself to go to the kitchen and have something to eat. While I am feeling physically hungry, mentally I don’t feel like eating anything. I had some cucumber, but even that was forced. My interest in sex is very low at the moment, that is to say that I can’t even take the slightest interest in it. And although I would experiment and try to find interest in it, I simply find myself doing something mildly uninteresting, but at least I can pay attention to it.

If this is what normal people are like the whole time, only now do I begin to understand how bad my disability actually is.

11:23 - It’s noteworthy to say that it feels as if time goes much faster. I start writing something, and the next thing I know I’ve been doing so for two minutes without even knowing.

12:03 - I finished watching another episode of Futurama. Again, no real distractions. Although the window is open and I live right above a major artery in the area with a high traffic volume, the noise didn’t seem to bother me a lot.

I’m still hungry, and I think it might be affecting my concentration. I will force myself to eat something and have a glass of water.

Maybe I’ll finish another chapter in the book.

12:19 - I worked on the draft for a while more, considering to go down to 7-11 to get me something to eat. I might as well do that, but before that I need to make a phone call.

12:38 - I called my dad and talked to him about how it feels to be under the influence of Ritalin. My brother takes 20mg, but for some reason we also have 10mg. That said, I caused no harm by taking that pill.

My appetite is coming back to me, and my hunger is worse than it was before. My concentration is fluctuating. Anyway, I’ll go get me something to eat and see what I can do with my time afterwards.

Since the pill should affect me for about 3-4 hours, it probably wore off already.

12:56 - I’m done eating. I’ll try to sit down and read a book to see whether I can actually do it. While eating I started recalling all sorts of songs, which would usually happen to me a lot during the day, and in retrospect it didn’t seem to occur to me back when the pill was still affecting me.

Strangely enough, I only checked for new online messages maybe 3 times. Usually I would end up checking for new messages every 10 minutes or even more frequently. This is surprising, especially now, as I am waiting for a reply from a certain person.

I’m still in two minds about taking Ritalin, and I will have to talk to a professional about it. I was also never actually diagnosed with ADD. Weird, I should say, because I have the exact same symptoms.

The urge to listen to music, which was not present a while ago, seems to bother me now.

Conclusion

Yes, it works. I’m pretty much done with all the work I had to do, and I managed to do things which otherwise I would never have done without great amounts of willpower.

At the moment of writing this conclusion, I’m doing about 3 other things.

I’m considering very seriously to go get a prescription of my own and starting to take it on a regular basis. Or maybe just for exams? Or something, I don’t know.

I still haven’t really felt any depression or aggression or any of the reported side-effects. Maybe to do with taking only 10mg and not 20mg.

Interesting to see how the length of the notes changes over time. From the very brief ones in the beginning of the experiment to the later, longer and more descriptive notes later on.

Maybe the reason why I was never diagnosed as having ADD is because instead of doing something else physically other than working I would just think about something else and look as if I’m still working. Happens to me a lot that I start reading something, think about something else, and come back to the text not actually knowing what I was doing the whole time.

As I said before, my attention span is at an all-time low. It comes and goes with waves, productivity that is.

It comes and goes in waves.

Tagged as: add, concentrate, experiment, life, pills, productivity, ritalin

Yes I know, this is old news, getting organized did not make me happy. I thought it would, but I was wrong. Now I’m both unfit for society and at the same time creatively challenged. Creatively challenged, and I do mean that. There does seem to be a certain state of mind that “Adi is a creative person”, but really, I haven’t really created anything.

It’s also to do with not being able to sit down still. I should probably be taking ritalin, but apparently it was never prescribed to me for other reasons. Maybe to do with my Tourettes Syndrome, as my mom once said or otherwise. I do certainly believe that it should have been.

My attention span is very short even when it comes tasks I otherwise enjoy doing. Getting myself away from stimulants doesn’t seem to help much as I just get bored and start thinking all sorts of stuff.

It’s horrible. I come up with amazing hypotheses about human nature, the universe, etc. and yet they all boil down to just being plain dangerous. Dangerous thoughts.

When I sit down to write about those things however, I end up, again, losing concentration, disinterested, unmotivated or otherwise just at a general lack of things to say after some point.

Trying to sit down and force myself to write this post is in itself a challenge.

Last night I found myself wandering around town for about two hours. I was trying to make myself walking into gay bars, to no avail. If there’s nobody pushing me, it’s not going to be done, period. Even if I want it, need it, or otherwise - if there’s no person to directly tell me what to do - I just won’t be able to make myself do it.

I guess to some extent it was also for my own sake, going to gay bars (or trying for that matter) but the main idea was to try to complete my social anthropology paper, which requires me to do fieldwork.

Maybe it was a poor choice of subject, but I couldn’t think of anything else. I ended up choosing something which:

• I know I should have done
• Which I don’t do on a regular basis

or otherwise

• which I’ve never done
• and which I wish to do

The problem is, I walk up there, and the moment I see the door, I do a 180 and retrace my steps.

That’s when it occurred to me, that I really have a serious problem. An emotional block. A fear of crowded places. Something about them, and I wish I knew what it is, makes me feel subconsciously incompatible and neglected, and in turn I will resort to confining myself somewhere away from “real live people.”

I had a vague notion that I can’t walk into those places on my own and therefor tried to ask a friend for help. She accepted, and so we were supposed to meet with two others at Nørreport station, 20:00. Terribly early, even for me. But then again, they just wanted to check the place out. As long as I walk through the door, fine by me. I can make a few notes, write some paragraph and come up with something to fit the data like a good Pith-Helmet wearing anthropologist.

I practically ran to Nørreport, and surprisingly enough, arrived on time.

Funny thing is, the moment the little yellow LEDs around the door opening button, I received a message saying: “I’ll be late.”

Be late, I don’t mind.

Another person came at that point. He was actually on time. He told me, in these very words, “when [she] says she’ll be there at 8, she means she’ll be out of the house at 8.” And there’s your problem. While I’m rushing to get my things together, make sure I catch the bus on time and so on, she simply did not care.

That was not the time to get angry, not yet. The rest came, 20 minutes late, and we started walking towards “Dunkel.” On our way there, we saw Jailhouse and Masken. Unfortunately, Dunkel was closed.

Now, instead of being - excuse me for using this word in the same sentence with those irresponsible children - practical; they went back to Nørreport station to see “the others.” The others were of course more irresponsible teenagers with alcohol problems.

I couldn’t stand it any longer, and at Gammel Torv I simply made the decision to just go on my own and try to do some fieldwork somewhere.

And that’s how I ended up on the streets for two hours.

I eventually gave up and decided to just start walking aimlessly, ending up on Kultorvet, as that friend who originally wanted me to go out finally managed to get in contact with me. I took the plunge and laid the cards on the table - which I don’t do very often. I said that I have a problem, that if I don’t get pushed to do things I just won’t do them, and that I need help. Quite literally, I asked for help. To be perfectly honest, it doesn’t happen very often that I actually ask for help and not imply it or otherwise.

“Just come to the Austrian Bar.” She explained me how to get there, and I went.

Of course, they won’t let me get in, having only my diplomat ID and not much besides. Not much I was willing to show at any rate. I tried calling her, to no avail. 15 minutes later, she walks out voluntarily without me being reaching her phone (not because I wasn’t trying).

The next 30 minutes we spent switching between arbitrary modes, goals and targets:

• “Where’s Person X?”
• “Where should we go?” (my opinion was of course not taken into account)
• My pleas to have someone push me around
• Dealing with the bouncer over at Retro

The resolution about where to go after long sessions of argument was of course: No resolution.

This whole absolute failure in management, organization and fucking common sense made me think. I would have been doing just that had it not been for the fact that I now knew how to organize myself. I could no longer fit in the group because I simply could not stand the lack of authority and structure as well as the general mood of indecision.

I don’t actually belong with them, I figured. Will I ever go out again? I might as well, but probably not with these guys, and most certainly not with a group of more than 3 people including myself.

It’s not that much fun unless you drink. Problem is, I can drink at home and get 3 times more work done than by hanging out with these guys. I genuinely hate society.

Ridiculous how I managed to write this thing. Problem is I’m supposed to do about five other things at the moment.

I really like to have control over who I’m actually around. There are certain people I dislike, and simply don’t want around me. This definition somehow comes to include pretty much all of the people I know with the exception of suppose 3-5 people.

I need a holiday, I need the company of certain people (one in particular), I need to get away from those I don’t like.

I know I can’t lock myself up in some wrench down in Jylland with all the people I want to be around, and that’s exactly what bothers me. When it so happens that I ask for help, nothing happens. It’s all the same whether or not I take part in it. I’m not committing suicide just yet, I still have a book to write, whenever I get down to doing it, and there’s maybe one person out there whom I promised I won’t do just that, and I, unlike some people, do keep promises.

Tagged as: annoying, emotional, experiment, friends, life, party, productivity, society, sociology, story, waste-of-time