Monday, December 8, 2008

Library, 2:37 AM

It's an early night.  I'm getting ready to leave the library.  Happily, of course, but also with a twinge of nostalgia for those ridiculous nights last year that ended in sunrises and bagels with cracked-out friends.  

My friends are insomniacs.  I covet sleep, but I do love the honesty that comes out when its a little past 6AM and your friend is past out on top of the table and your other friend is taking pictures and your sleep deprived brain registers this as uncontrollably hilarious.  

I love the loss of control over your mind - ridiculous thoughts, utterances and acts.  

This is all incredibly unhealthy of course.  But having been weirdly responsible for once in my life, and completed my assignments in a healthy and timely manner, I miss the mad satisfaction one gets from staying up 'til sunrise immersed in Work.  The complete drainage of mind and body.  

I've never taken any so-called "work aids" here at school: Adderall, Concerta, etc. They are common place here, and I really don't have anything against them, I've just never indulged.  Once, during my senior year of High School I took 5 mm of Concerta with a friend to study for a Physics exam.  I highly doubt that it actually had any effect, aside from placebo.  I'm proud that I got through two conference weeks last year, and on my way to a third this year, without spending my money on friend's prescriptions.  I don't have any negative opinions of anybody else who has done this - the way these medicines are prescribed makes it easy to think that anybody could use them without fault - but I still love the knowledge that any work I have produced over the last year and half has come solely from my own force of will and mind power.  And that's not even to undermine anybody else's work!  It's just a nugget of satisfaction that I can take pride in.  

Now that I've said this of course, I'm probably going to start itching to try it.  That's the way of the addictive personality - and exactly the reason  I'm in Harm Reduction and not AA.  

But, I've strayed.  As the mind is likely to do at this time.  I love it.  

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