The Adderall Diaries by Stephen Elliott Page B

for a writers’ workshop at Reed College. Every day I read work by my ten students and we sit around a coffee table discussing their essays. One woman says she’s an abuse survivor, another writes about a car crash she survived but in which her boyfriend died. One writes about doing her MFA in New York and how one of the students stole a story idea from another student and published it in a book. A man from Iowa says the class is really just an excuse to visit his grandchildren. He’s seventy-four years old and once ran for Congress. One morning he asks if anyone read the local paper. “This young woman,” he says. “She was killed over in Iraq. Shot by a sniper. Now her two kids have no mother. And we’re sitting around talking about where to put a fucking period.”
    As part of the conference I give a reading at an outdoor amphitheater with rows of white wood benches leading up to the Gray Campus Center. It’s a quiet evening with fifty students and faculty sitting patiently while I read an essay about Lissette carving “possession” in my side. She spelled it wrong, leaving out one
s.
The metaphor was too obvious. It was like Jim Morrison dying in the bathtub or Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts. It meant exactly what you thought it meant.
    In Los Angeles, Bearman had told me I needed to find a new story. I had written four novels based loosely on my life and multiple personal essays. “Listen,” he said. “Stick to Hans and Sean and keep yourself out of it.” My friend Kay encourages me to write something accessible, and to keep a journal for the rest. “Write something that people want to read,” she says. “Think of Dave Eggers. He wrote a book about himself and moved on to other things.” Twelve years ago, when I was hospitalized following my overdose, my friend Louie came to visit me. He said, “You better never write about this.” He was trying to distinguish between being a real human being and someone who only lives on the page. I didn’t even consider myself a writer then, though I wrote all the time.
    I was in the hospital for eight days after my overdose. My body was covered in strange boils and for most of my time there I could barely move. I had a stroke, or a seizure. The doctors didn’t know and didn’t seem to care. My troubles were self-inflicted.
    I checked out early, returning to the room I rented on the third floor of a large house near the university, walking with a limp. Suddenly I noticed how yellow the walls were, and how the roof rose at a sharp angle, cutting the space in half. I stopped eating. I lost twenty-five pounds. I couldn’t focus and I began to have panic attacks, which I hadn’t experienced since I was in the group homes.
    Soon after leaving the hospital I began to fantasize about getting a gun and going to the lake and putting the gun in my mouth and toppling back into the water. I would kill myself just like Kurt Cobain had two years earlier. But it was winter, and I worried that the frozen lake would keep me alive and I would be rescued somehow. It was all I could think about. A month after I was out of the hospital I showed up back at the emergency room and told them what I was going to do. A resident gave me some Klonopin and sent me home. The next day I enrolled in a drug treatment program.
    My friends think I’m a happy person. And in a way I am. But I’ve been sad a lot too. When I’m sad I don’t want anyone to know. I try to hide it, even from myself. I read books on depression. They all say to take your meds; it’s a matter of finding the right cocktail. But the authors also talk about recurrences, shifting dosages, sleeping ten hours a night, and losing all interest in sex. It’s only recently that I’m realizing I’ve been depressed all my life. I run from it like a fire. I could stand under a thousand spotlights, publish a million books, and it wouldn’t change a thing.
    At the end of the Portland conference I stand outside the main hall with one