throne.
Mum did most of the talking during the appointment, and I was asked a lot of questions. Even as an outgoing 16-year-old, I still looked to my mum for the answers.
Q: Do you find it hard to concentrate?
A: Can you please ask me again, I wasn’t concentrating.
Q: Do you find it hard to read, write and spell?
A: Know, not raly.
Q: Do you think you have a short attention span and are easily distracted?
A: Sometimes, but— Hey, did you just see that bit of lint fall off your jumper onto the floor?!
Q: Are you constantly in trouble at school for being slow to start work, and for never finishing anything?
A: Not telling.
After the appointment, the doctor asked me to wait outside while he talked to my parents about what steps to take to ‘move forward’. I think he just needed to see what sort of drugs he had on hand, as I needed that shit in my system stat!
So, I sat back out in the waiting room, chilling with five-year-olds who called me ‘lady’, and not really thinking too much about what had just happened. The doctor’s office door was left open; I think he wanted to come off as a cool doctor who appeared approachable while prescribing drugs that keep overweight truck drivers awake for 48 hours. I could hear the entire conversation.
Mum: We don’t want her to change.
Doctor: These drugs won’t change her, they will help her.
Mum: Good. We know she is full on and loud but we like that. Her personality isn’t a problem, it’s her struggling to concentrate that is making things hard for her.
Dad: How long do you think that fly has been trapped in there?
Doctor: Ritalin doesn’t alter personalities, it will just help her focus.
Mum: OK, great, I just want school to be easier for her.
Dad: Do you think the fly has family who are worried about its whereabouts?
Mum: Neville!
Dad: Sorry.
Mum: We will commit to this medication only if it helps her to feel better about being herself.
Doctor: I really think this is the best option for Celeste, it will only have a positive effect.
Mum: OK, great.
Dad: I’m hungry.
I’ll never forget that conversation. As a loud, full-on, average-looking girl, the fact that from a young age my mother was so passionate about me being me was the world.
I also think about that fly.
When we got home I was straight into the drugs, and they were good, they were so good. They kicked in straightaway, which is what you’re looking for in top-shelf gear. I sat on the couch, opened a manual on ‘Living with ADD’ and read a paragraph out loud to my parents. It went a little something like this:
Childhood symptoms of ADHD include poor impulse control, hyperactivity (i.e. cannot sit still), difficulty focusing on immediate tasks, and inability to pay attention to instruction. Children with hyperactivity-impulsivity often have difficulty forming and maintaining friendships and receive poor conduct evaluations due to their inability to behave appropriately in school. These children seem to disregard common social courtesies by repeatedly interrupting conversations and speaking out of turn.*
I looked over and Mum and Dad were crying. It must have been such a validating moment for them as parents, knowing that they had made the right decision, and the results had been immediate.
‘I can’t believe you just read that, you have never sat still long enough to read anything, ever,’ said Mum through tears. Turns out reading the first page of The Baby-Sitters Club then skipping to the very back page and skimming the last paragraph doesn’t clarify as reading a book. Pft, technicalities.
* * *
We went camping every year with a group of family friends. There were six families in total, all of us knowing each other to varying degrees. In one of the families both parents were teachers. They were strict, and I don’t think they really liked kids, which is fair enough. Kids can be shit, especially when they are all together in a classroom and they hate you.
On the camping trip before the diagnosis (sounds like a blockbuster movie: ‘Coming this summer, The Diagnosis, starring Celeste Barber and Winona Ryder’), I was being an arsehole and my poor parents were at their wits’ end.
My mum confided in one of the teacher parents: ‘We are going to get Celeste tested for ADD, I think it will help if we can possibly get her onto some medication.’
To which the teacher parent responded out of the side of her mouth while looking around to see if anyone could hear her: ‘Leave her with me for six months and I’ll get it out of her.’
This broke my mum’s heart. Turns out not only kids can be arseholes, but some teacher parents on camping holidays can fit pretty comfortably into that category too.
After the sweet, sweet Ritalin started flowing through my hungry veins, life got SO much easier. I could actually sit still and concentrate. I had one and a half tablets three times a day and it was a routine that I fucking loved. At 7.30am with breakfast the pill-popping began. When the bell went for recess at 11.30am, round two was under way, and when it was home time, I would walk past the bubbler, throw down the final hit for the day on the way to the bus and, Bob’s your uncle, I’m a fucking scholar.
Ritalin suppresses your appetite like nothing else, so I was never hungry and, as a result, I lost a shit tonne of weight, which as a 16-year-old girl gains you a shit tonne of respect (sad face emoji).
Breakfast would consist of a chocolate milk and a Cheesymite scroll. (Anyone outside of Australia needs to get onto these, they are a bread roll baked with cheese and Vegemite, and coupled with a warm Milo they have the power to make all the bad feelings stop.) Did I mention I have the palate of a seven-year-old?
Lunch was a Zooper Dooper, and then I was done until dinner, when I would pick at whatever my mum had made.
* * *
Ritalin was a life-saver for me; however, I didn’t tell any of my friends, and I only told one teacher when I started taking it. He wasn’t even a teacher of mine; he was the year coordinator and I was happy telling him, because I didn’t ever see him. I didn’t want to be looked at as sick. Different, sure, I like people thinking I’m different; but not less than. I was petrified of anyone knowing I had ADD, let alone having to be on a drug for it. I remember one time thinking the cat was out of the bag when a weird-looking guy who I was friends with said he liked me, so I told him a dick joke to get out of awkwardly telling him I wasn’t interested, and he was so pissed off that he started scream-singing the Jackson Five’s classic ‘ABC, Celeste has got ADD!’ at my face, in front of the surfer boys at school, who all thought it was hilarious. But they also laughed at my dick joke so, you know, swings and roundabouts. Turns out he didn’t know I had ADD, he was just a prick. I didn’t mind been called names but I was sure that everyone knew I had a ‘learning difficulty’. It was exhausting being so secretive about it, so I turned it into my secret superpower. By day (unmedicated) I was just loud, disruptive, quick-witted, sassy and opinionated, but by night (medicated) I was loud, disruptive, quick-witted, sassy,