My eyes sag, and I feel the exhaustion weighing on my muscles. I make the conscious decision to carefully pull off the next exit and park in front of a drug store.
I take out my cellphone and walk inside.
“I need you to prescribe me Adderall,” I into the receiver. My loafers clap against the tiled floor and the attendant gives me a narrowed look. With my black slacks and white button-down, I look better suited for Wall Street than some drug store off a freeway.
“No.” Frederick doesn’t even hesitate. “And next time you call, you can lead with hello.”
I grind my teeth as I stop in front of the boxes of decongestants. Frederick has been my therapist since my parents’ divorce. My mother’s words: I can hire someone if you need to talk. So I spent weeks combing through potential psychiatrists to give the whole “talking” thing a go.
Frederick was on the college fast track, and I met him when he graduated med school at just twenty-four. He had this air about him. He was hungry for knowledge, and that kind of passion was lost in the other thirty and forty-year-old shrinks that I had interviewed. So I chose him.
He’s been my psychiatrist for twelve years. I would call him my best friend, but he constantly reminds me that friends can’t be bought. He earns a staggering sum from me every year, and I overpay for these moments—the ones where I call him up at any hour of the day and he gives me his full undivided attention.
Our last session, we discussed Scott Van Wright, and I tried （rather poorly） not to call the producer names like I was seven and spitting on a bully. But I think I may have used the words “fallible, conceited human bacteria” when Frederick asked me what I thought of him.
Thankfully psychiatrists have an ethical duty to keep secrets.
“Hello, Frederick,” I say, trying to keep my tone even. He’s the only person who has seen me at my worst. Broken. Unusable. But I like to keep those moments as infrequent as possible. “You can call the nearest pharmacy in Philadelphia. I’ll pick it up there.”
“I can, but I won’t.”
I let out a long breath as I scan the shelves. “This is not the time to be obdurate. I’m late as it is.”
“First, calm down,” he says, and I hear rustling on the other end. Papers shuffling around maybe. He likes to take notes.
“I am calm,” I say, layering on the complacency in my voice for further effect.
“You just used the word obdurate,” Frederick refutes. “Usually you just refer to me as a stubborn swine. Do you see the difference?”
“Don’t patronize me.”
“Then don’t patronize me,” he rebuts. Normal therapists shouldn’t be this argumentative, but I’m not a normal patient either. “You remember our conversation right before your freshman year at Penn?”
“We’ve had many conversations, Rick,” I say casually. My fingers skim over two different brands of nasal decongestants. I check the labels for the ingredients.
“The conversation about Adderall, Connor.”
I clench my teeth harder, my back molars aching. Before college, I told Frederick that if I ever came to him for Adderall to deny me the prescription. No matter what. I wanted to succeed in college on my own merits. Without stimulants or enhancers. I wanted to prove to myself that I was better than everyone else and that I didn’t need a goddamn pill to do it.
“Things have changed.”
“Yeah, they have,” he agrees. “You’re in your first year at grad school. You have a long-term relationship with a girl, and your mother is preparing to hand over Cobalt Inc. to you. And now you have to deal with a reality show. I fully admit, Connor, you’re able to juggle work and stress better than ninety-nine percent of people on this planet. But this might be humanly impossible, even for you.”
This isn’t the first time he’s told me that I’m taking on too much, but I don’t have a choice. I want everything. And if I work hard enough, I can have it all. That’s always been how my life runs; I refuse to believe this is any different.
I grab the decongestant with the highest milligram dosage of pseudoephedrine and then walk further down the aisle towards the caffeine supplements.
“I agree, it’s not humanly possible. At least not without losing some sleep. And going through my day, like a body without a brain, half-coherent and lazy-eyed, is not an option for me. I need stimulants.”
“What happened to never succumbing to frat boy tricks?”
“Guilting me? Really, Rick? Isn’t that a little low for you?”
“You’re the one that told me to use whatever means necessary to talk you out of it,” he says. “There was a time in your life where you’d rather jump off a bridge than take Adderall. I know things have changed, but just think about that for me, okay?”
I stare at the caffeine supplements, trying to unbury an alternate path. But I see none. To have it all, I must sacrifice something. That something begins with sleep.
“If you don’t prescribe me Adderall, then I’ll be purchasing pure ephedrine on the internet,” I threaten. Buying pills on the internet is dangerous. I can imagine all the other unknown, untested ingredients accidentally laced in them.
I’m smarter than Frederick, and he’s aware of this fact. A long time ago, he made me agree to be honest to a fault. To never manipulate him.
I won’t. Which is why this isn’t a bluff.
“What are you taking right now?” The tone in his voice has changed considerably. It’s tempered like his syllables are carefully placed. He’s concerned, and I don’t ask how he knows I’m grabbing medicine off a shelf.
He’s had twelve years inside my head.
“Decongestants and 5 Hour Energy.” I bring the items to the counter and the attendant rings me up at a sluggish pace. I have to show my ID for the decongestants, and she gives me a long, harsh stare. Yes, it’s a little suspicious buying these items together. But I’m twenty-fucking-four. Not a child.
“That’s a trick that teenagers use to get high, you do realize this?” Frederick says over the phone, still trying to convince me to stop.
I take the paper bag from the attendant and leave the store, the bells on the door clinking together on my way out.
“I’m driving,” I refute. “I can either take stimulants or cause an accident. Would you like a four-car pile-up on your conscience?”
“How long have you been awake?” he asks.
“Isn’t that the question you should have started with?” I uncap the pill bottle and toss a couple into my mouth and wash them down with a swig of the 5 Hour Energy.
“Start answering me straight or I’m hanging up on you,” he says sternly. I roll my eyes. Frederick has his limits, even with me. I lean back in the car seat, waiting for the pills to kick in to where my eyelids don’t feel like lead.
“37 hours.”
“So you broke two of your rules tonight.”
“I haven’t taken Adderall yet.”
“No, but you took something.”
I don’t say anything. I wait for Frederick’s obligatory advice that arrives about now.
“You have to give something up,” he tells me. “And it shouldn’t affect your health. So start looking at things in your life that aren’t necessary.”