ADHD?: Life on Ritalin

Once I was on the drug, my grades actually improved. I got nothing but straight As and found myself in the “accelerated reading program”. I learned how to type without looking at the keyboard and could do it faster than all the other children. Second through fourth grade made me feel like the sky was the limit. I was a voracious reader, devouring every book in the Narnia series, every Three Detectives book, every Hardy Boys (and even some Nancy Drew), every Choose Your Own Adventure, Sherlock Holmes, The Iliad and the Odyssey, and just about any other book I could get my hands on. I religiously kept a daily journal, and I was soaking knowledge up from teachers like a sponge.

Here’s the thing, though. My first grade teacher’s personality made it a particularly tough year for me, and a lot was happening in my life as it was. For example, first grade was the year I got glasses (My eyes have since corrected themselves). I was so embarrassed by it, I kept my glasses concealed in my pocket, and the teacher singled me out and forced me to put them on while the rest of the class watched. I put them on briefly and removed them, trying to act “cool”, but she made me take them out and wear them for the rest of the year.

Just from that exchange alone, it’s plain to see I was a nervous kid who cared very much about what other people thought of me. I was intimidated by the huge, four-story tall brick-and-mortar 1800s grade school that I would have to attend. On my very first school day, I was frightened of even entering the building. I lingered in the entryway for quite some time with my fingers death-gripped around the door handle. A teacher finally found me and had to coax me further in so she could guide me to my classroom. I arrived well after class had already begun, to a bit of laughter (at my expense).

My first grade teacher used to get me mixed up with some of the other more naughty kids, and sent me to the corner many times when I didn’t deserve it. She even made me stand alone in the classroom’s dark, creaky, 1800s closet on numerous occasions. She was generally an angry teacher, which doesn’t make for a good first grade experience. She was the one who pressured my mother about ADHD, but I later learned that she had pressured a lot of the other parents about this, too, in an effort to make the boys more ‘docile’.

My second through fourth grade teachers were all wonderful. I found myself enjoying going to school for the first time, and felt fully engaged. I was never falsely accused of doing something another child had done in those years, and never once got sent to the corner … or closet. Of course, my parents figured that meant the Ritalin was working. I remember my mom being so excited about my report cards, and my dad saying stuff like, “I guess those pills really do work.” But, as I moved on through the grades, I started getting upset at this notion. I started to resent those pills. The pills didn’t earn those grades, after all, I did. And I wanted them to see that.

In fifth grade, I was pretty miserable. My homeroom teacher, who was constantly stressed out, cornered me and accused me of plagiarizing a story I’d written for a contest. I poured myself into that story after getting inspired by the book Dear Mr. Henshaw. (If I were older and wiser, I would’ve taken the accusation as a compliment, but kid me couldn’t handle it very well.)

Ironically, the book that won first place that year was a direct copy of The Brave Little Toaster, I kid you not. They even traced some of the copyrighted artwork and the girl’s mother helped her color it in.

The kids were more cruel that year, such as the time a bully stole my journal and read it aloud to the class. The entry was about a secret crush I had, and the girl was so embarrassed by it, she never spoke to me again. Then there were the times the teacher halted class and forced me to clean my desk in front of all the other children. My former best friend was ditching me to play with my younger brother because I was becoming a “nerd”, my math teacher was almost as awful as my first grade teacher, and … all this and more was adding up. I was getting depressed.

I know many children had it far worse than me at that age, but for whatever reason–and perhaps the pills were partly to blame–it was getting to be a bit too much for me.

Each day at school, my teacher would single me out and make me go to the drinking fountain in the hallway in order to take my Ritalin. She would even go as far as to make sure my palms and pockets were empty and pill-free when I returned. (Her excuse for patting me down like that was this whole thing about how drug-dealers allegedly liked to crush up Ritalin and sniff it. Nevermind the odds of me coming across a drug-dealer on the third floor of a castle-like grade school in a small town during the five-second trek between my classroom and the fountain were practically nil, or that I wasn’t the type of kid that would even have the guts to sell pills to a druggie in a million years.) I guess I was so frustrated, I started throwing the pills in the trash bin next to the fountain instead.

To this day, I wonder if I made the right decision. I’m forever cursed to wonder how much of my school performance can be attributed to the lack of Ritalin vs. bad teachers. To further muddy the water, that same year, I got hit by a truck while on a 3-mile cross-country run with my father (I was not in the street, it was the driver’s fault). I wound up with a concussion and a puncture mark in my skull. How much of my school performance could be attributed to that? Or perhaps I was subconsciously trying to do worse at school to seem less “nerdy” in a vain effort to regain my best friend? Anything’s possible.

At any rate, my grades did plummet that year. Instead of As, I was getting Bs and Cs. The gifted program warned my parents that I wouldn’t be able to attend the following year unless my grades improved.

Coincidence? Or could the pills really have had something to do with it?

From that point forward, I began to hate school, a hatred that has continued even to this day. I wouldn’t get straight-A’s again until my third year of college. I even had to retake the first two years’ worth of classes in order to repair my GPA. It felt like I had to learn new outside-the-box ways to tackle school and re-train my brain to handle it, whereas in those early years, it all came naturally to me. Same with writing. Here I am, trying to retrain my brain to “handle” writing. But when I was a child, it was never a struggle. It all flowed naturally.

None-the-less, my body was rejecting those pills … for reasons beyond my comprehension. I wasn’t just being a brat; I was detecting something wrong to the point where I was compelled to throw those pills away.

Of course, I didn’t tell my parents I was throwing expensive pills in the trash, so they assumed the pills had simply stopped working. And I didn’t always throw them away. I just knew I didn’t want them to get mad at me, and I didn’t want them to connect my falling grades with the lack of Ritalin. But they soon stopped the prescription, anyway.

It was mainly because my personality had changed too much. My mom later told me I was walking around “like a zombie” and wasn’t myself anymore. They realized I had grown depressed, but they couldn’t pinpoint why. At the parent/teacher conferences, they tried to figure out whether or not I was getting too bored in class, or what else might be going on. It was always the useless “Your child is very intelligent, but…” and “If only he would apply himself” lines from my teacher.

Years later, my mom revealed that they stopped the prescription after a particular day when we went to the park, and I seemed so depressed that I didn’t want to play with any of the other children on the playground, or even get up from the picnic table. Honestly, I have to hand it to her. That was good parenting.

Little did I know, we were about to move away. The small town I grew up in and all the friends I’d ever met were going to vanish from my life. And nothing could’ve prepared me for sixth grade, which was going to be far, far rougher than first or fifth ever was. But that’s a story for another time.