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“God help us…”

Most people don’t believe in ADHD.

    AD/HD Inattentive Subtype

  1. Six or more of the following symptoms of inattention have persisted for at least six months to a degree that is maladaptive and inconsistent with developmental level:
    1. Often fails to give close attention to details or makes careless mistakes in schoolwork, work, or other activities
    2. Often has difficulty sustaining attention in tasks or play activities
    3. Often does not seem to listen when spoken to directly
    4. Often does not follow through on instructions and fails to finish schoolwork, chores, or duties in the workplace (not due to oppositional behavior or failure to understand instructions)
    5. Often has difficulty organizing tasks and activities
    6. Often avoids, dislikes, or is reluctant to engage in tasks that require sustained mental effort (such as school work or homework)
    7. Often loses things necessary for tasks or activities (e.g., toys, school assignments, pencils, books, or tools)
    8. Is often easily distracted by extraneous stimuli
    9. Is often forgetful in daily activities

    2. AD/HD Hyperactive/Impulsive Subtype

  2. Six or more of the following symptoms of hyperactivity/impulsivity have persisted for at least six months to a degree that is maladaptive and inconsistent with developmental level
      Hyperactivity

    1. Often fidgets with hands or feet or squirms in seat
    2. Often leaves seat in classroom or in other situations in which remaining seated is expected
    3. Often runs about or climbs excessively in situations in which it is inappropriate (in adolescents or adults, may be limited to subjective feelings of restlessness)
    4. Often has difficulty playing or engaging in leisure activities quietly
    5. Is often “on the go” or often acts as if “driven by a motor”
    6. Often talks excessively

      7. Impulsivity

    7. Often blurts out answers before questions have been completed
    8. Often has difficulty awaiting turn
    9. Often interrupts or intrudes on others (e.g. butts into conversations or games)

(American Psychiatric Association: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association, 1994.)

Then they meet me.Ohhh, now I get it…!
Yeah. Now please shut up and go away. Only the introductory lesson is free, sorry. Come back next week for our Ritalin™ special and get a free spin in the Distractadome™ May not be combined with any other offer. Virtual Deficit, LLC. takes no responsibility for any negative social consequences that may result from the residual effects of our programs. Free after $50 mail-in rebate. _Haha, suckers._

“Elinor saw nothing to censure in him but a propensity of saying too much what he thought on every occasion, without attention to persons or circumstances. In hastily forming and giving his opinion of other people, in sacrificing general politeness to the enjoyment of undivided attention where his heart was engaged, and in slighting too easily the forms of worldly propriety, he displayed a want of caution which Elinor could not approve.”
-Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

There is no way to diagnose AD/HD without a frame of reference.
There is no value judgment, just a comparison and then an observation.
Right?
Right.
An impaired ability to parse culture
Individual A is an aberration, though they belong to an identifiable sub-group with defining characteristics

Read
I stare at words
Ticks and scratches with hats and feet
Marching my eyes
Dart laughing behind, voices
Whispers, phone
Screaming, Slash
the pages, Drown
it all in Muted
rage.

The old VHS tape clicks into motion—rotational to lineal to magnetic to image.

The air is filled with echoes of deep past—I feel reverberations, but this video is my primary source. The camera settles on a fidgety boy of about five years that is not me, happiness and innocence bubbling from his grinning face. He begins his joke while my parents film and chime in at the appropriate moments and feigning just enough surprise. But only one eye is ever on this boy, for their attention is demanded by a more awesome force: ME.

There is a cartoonish blur; a body, celestial or earthly it cannot quite be told, streaking across the background. Light is faster but sound is not far behind, the words rattled off form a blur of their own. One parent’s voice splits off to the side, and we hear a stern, embarrassingly simple instructing only barely clinging to a distant pleading, to desperate God help us and our hellion of a child. The first boy completes his joke, delivering the punch-line twice, this time getting it right.

There is a disconnect between intention and behavior. Between your perception of your behavior and its perception by others. Between your perception of others and others’ expectation of your ability to perceive them.

I am five, in Kindergarten, and it is still two long years until my meetings with the school counselor, Mrs. Whiteside. Her kind dark brown face, one of only two among the lily-white faculty, and perhaps a dozen more among the 500+ students—heard first as a firm yet gentle rapping on the classroom door. Out I go, excited to be missing class, boring class. Mrs. Whiteside is slow and deliberate, but it is okay; she brings calm to my rough seas. She gives me blocks to fit together, pictures about which to tell stories. At some point the visits stop, and my parents tell me somehow (though I have no memory) that I have been diagnosed with ADHD. Their bookshelves sag with newly purchased tomes espousing the best way to “deal with your hyperactive child.” 15 years later my girlfriend will find these books on the shelf in our tv room and giggle in delight. I smile with a strange sense of pride in my hellaciousness (and repossessed “otherness”).

If life was a board game, and you had a different set of rules, what would happen when you tried to play with others? What would they think about you? About your intentions? About you as a person? Where does personality end and disorder begin?

I’m sitting in a Starbucks™, my eyes are fixed on the trail of ink left by my rhodium nib. My ears dart back and forth, from the the Starbucks™ brand Musak to the clang of a nearby cellphone. “A dysfunctional group, or a core group…” A meeting. A child eating, a cookie. A barista laughs, “It really is!” he chortles. “A life coach” “Cause I know a lot of people who are stuck…” Tamborines, the scent of coffee, the buzz of refined sugar and amphetamine derivatives dancing their dance with my neurons. My savory soup of neurotransmitters churning away inside my braincage. The pungent air holds the snarl of coffee. I’m wondering how the corporate bozos at Starbucks calculated that this “music” would make anyone want to buy coffee. It makes me want to buy an ice pick and a smile. Everyone else is writing more than me. not really, but my brainvoice is telling me so. I snarl, and with a wimper it retreats back into the damp cave from whence it emerged. The grind of beans splintering floats above the din. It isn’t quite a din. the music continues. How many cycles do I waste on hating it? How many process moments — bits of ethereal phytochemical liveliness? My mother wishes she could ask them to turn it off.

“Do rock climbers dream of falling or flying? Do hyperactive kids dream of solitude on a granite mountain? Or do they dream of this: dancing and laughing, surrounded by friends, the mountains a distant mirage?”Michael Shay, “Are We Distracted?” from In Short, Kitchen and Jones, Eds.

Michael Shay is distracted by his 8 year-old ADHD son, who is not me, but happens to be scaling an 80-foot sheer face of granite with reckless abandon. He was also distracted when, at two, his son began displaying his climbing proclivities by scurrying up a 50-foot spruce at the playground.

Why do we climb? To escape this world, with its hard chafing edges; to conquer the ultimate contain-er… gravity.

Attention; alertness, awareness, mindfulness, presence of mind, intentness, advertence, heed.

Individuals with AD/HD are often severe underachievers.

AD/HD has been associated with certain personality traits that can be seen as other defining “symptoms”: High energy, creativity, alternating extreme empathy/unempathy, strong sense of intuition, trouble/frustration making self understood…

Someone once posited that ADHD is a genetic remnant from our primal hunting days. Hyper-vigilance. Obviously, this person did not have Attention Deficit (Hyperactivity) Disorder. Michael Shay used his experience with his 8-year-old ADHD son to intuitively reject the Hunter Hypothesis, on the ground that impulsiveness is not beneficial in such a context: i.e. Charging head-first into a herd of mammoths without forethought. But this misses the point almost entirely. Would he send an 8-year old non-ADHD kid out hunting? Surely not, at least if he was worried about impulse-control… Every child is impaired (undeveloped) in this regard, the ADHD kids just fall behind in their development (and may never fully catch up). While impulsiveness is at the core of what it means to be/have ADHD, in the hunting context, it is the much more bland distractibility that would be our downfall. Here’s how it would really go:

Me go hunt now. Oooga oohoooh.
…Uh, tiger! I go other way… nice birdiees me smell boar, yes, mmmm. Me hungry.
(boar tracks! follows them…).
Ooh, flowers! Pretty flower! I pick some. mmm smells nice, Me make bouquet.

At this point the story takes on a familiar theme: insert Little Red Riding Hood, except instead of finding a wolf posing as my grandmother, I would return to the tribe with no food—but a very nicely styled 1/2 bouquet of flowers (got distracted), and some pretty rocks. Maybe I shot a bird, but forgot to bring it home. That would be my last time on hunting duty.*

Confidence, self-evaluation, judgment. The inner editor. The inner critic. Impatience. High levels of impatience. No ability to wait to see how things turn out. Why bother? We’ve seen this movie before; we know how it’ll end…

*Part two: Village elder is furious, throws rocks and flowers into fire pit. Flowers are incinerated. POOF. Rocks slowly crack apart, turn red, and start to ooze. One of the children notices, and is pulled back by his parents before he can lose a finger demonstrating the effect of molten copper on human flesh. ADHD was the true source of copper discovery.

“Neurology offers a biological explanation which distinguishes between the ‘maladjusted’ child and the AD/HD child.”(Rafalovich, 411)

There is a look that I have grown to recognize; one that creeps up mid-conversation and fills me with dread. It says “Ok, I hear you. Uh, yeah. Okay. I get it already”. It says “Why is he still talking?“ It shows a polite disinterest, a rising level of conversation-fatigue. My mind floods with questions: How long have they not wanted to listen? How do I rescue the situation? Why aren’t they interested? Was it the way I was explaining things? Did I say too much? Too fragmented? Too much detail? Too tangential? It only happens at parties, or at dining hall.

Attention: The span thereof. The ability to regulate and allocate the necessary attentional resources. Impulse supression; the ability to resist extraneous stimuli and retain task focus.

AD/Hyperactivity has several real-world manifestations beyond is theoretical murkiness, and perhaps more importantly, its skeptical appeal. Some of these effects are blatant and thus find remedy (for the lucky ___ %) in panaceaic medicines such as Ritalin™ and Adderall™.

Over 70% of all individuals diagnosed with AD/HD are also diagnosed with a related disorder. Depression. Mood Disorders. Conduct Disorder. Depression.

Depression: A rotting twine’s torsion, that one impossible organ deep within my chest where the feelings lie. lay. lye. lae. lae man lay-man serviceman. its spiny tendrils slowly killing cells, one at a time-mechanically tightening with each breath. In come the happy pills-Boom. Everything goes

Enter the blessed ones
Methylphenidate methyl a-phenyl-2-piperidineacetate C14H19NO2 Molecular weight: 233.31. Bioavailability: 11-52% when taken orally. dextro,levo-methylphenidate 50:50 racemic mixture: Ritalin® (Ritalina®). dextro-methylphenidate: Focalin. Also Concerta® (time-release), Metadate®, Methylin®, Rubifen®.
Adderall 25% Dextroamphetamine Saccharate 25% Dextroamphetamine Sulfate 25% Amphetamine Aspartate 25% Amphetamine Sulfate. Amphetamine 1-phenylpropan-2-amine C9H13N

“Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity disorder is a neurobiological disorder. People with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity disorder tend to have inordinate amounts of trouble maintaining attention-discipline, may be impulsive, and especially at younger ages are often hyperactive-uncharacteristically so for their age and level of development.”

disorder: lack of order, our minds are disordered–we like to think they have thier own unique order.

This, the age of doom and destruction, the failure and betrayal of humanity by reason and modern progress—now the innovators are brought into the folds. We, the “thinkers outside the box,” are the prophets of the 21st century.

No-one has yet to recruit AD/HD-ers outright, and perhaps they never will, but we can dream…

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The old VHS tape clicks into motion—rotational to lineal to magnetic to image.

The air is filled with echoes of deep past—I feel reverberations, but this might as well be my primary source. The camera settles on a fidgety boy of about five years, happiness and innocence bubbling from his grinning face. He begins his joke while my parents film, chiming in at the appropriate moments and feigning just enough surprise.

Then there is a cartoonish blur; a body, celestial or earthly it cannot quite be told, streaking across the background. Light is faster but sound is not far behind, the words rattled off form a blur of their own. One parent’s voice splits off to the side, and we hear a stern, embarrassingly simple instructing only barely clinging to a distant pleading, to desperate _God help us and our hellion of a child_. The first boy completes his joke, delivering the punch-line twice, this time getting it right.

I am five, in Kindergarten, and it is still two long years until my meetings with the school counselor, Mrs. Whiteside. Her kind dark brown face, one of only two among the lily-white faculty, and perhaps a dozen more among the 500+ students—heard first as a firm yet gentle rapping on the classroom door. Out I go, excited to be missing class, boring class. Mrs. Whiteside is slow and deliberate, but it is okay; she brings calm to my rough seas. She gives me blocks to fit together, pictures about which to tell stories. At some point the visits stop, and my parents tell me somehow (though I have no memory) that I have been diagnosed with ADHD. Their bookshelves sag with newly purchased tomes espousing the best way to “deal with your hyperactive child.” 15 years later my girlfriend will find these books on the shelf in our tv room and giggle in delight. I smile with a strange sense of pride in my hellaciousness (and repossessed “otherness”).

This, the age of doom and destruction, the failure and betrayal of humanity by reason and modern progress—now the innovators are brought into the folds. We, the “thinkers outside the box,” are the prophets of the 21st century.

No-one has yet to recruit AD/HD-ers outright, and perhaps they never will, but we can dream…

AD/Hyperactivity has several real-world manifestations beyond is theoretical murkiness, and perhaps more importantly, its skeptical appeal. Some of these effects are blatant and thus find remedy (for the lucky ___ %) in panaceaic medicines such as _Ritalin_ and _Adderall_.

And some fade with age. Even the ADHD’d young man who is hyperactive to the highest order will not ‘run and climb about’ when ‘expected to be seated.” Just as even the most docile, obedient child cannot reasonably be expected to remain seated and rapt for more than a short while. And so we can appreciate this creature’s developmental nature…

Our brains have certain structure designed to act as an inhibitor over the other, more ‘creative’ functions. We are constantly parsing, permutating, impulsing, repulsing to and from, against, forward, with and to the world around us. But something acts to prevent those most ludicrous of impulses—c’mon, I know you have all had them—from taking actualized form. Usually.

But what if such a structure were missing? Or only half effective? What then…?

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Inner Peace Through METAL (early draft)

NOTE: This is an early draft of this essay

>heav–y |ˈhevÄ“| adjective ( __heav–i–er , heav–i–est__ )
1. of great weight;
– (of a class of thing) large of its kind : heavy artillery.
– weighed down; full of something : feeling weighed down by weariness
2. of great density; thick or substantial :
– not delicate or graceful; coarse
– (of the sky) full of dark clouds; oppressive : a heavy thundery sky.
3. of more than the usual size, amount, or force; doing something to excess
4. striking or falling with force : a heavy blow to the head | we had heavy overnight rain.
– (of music, esp. rock) having a strong bass component and a forceful rhythm.
5. needing much physical effort :
– mentally oppressive; hard to endure : a heavy burden of responsibility.
– important or serious : a heavy discussion.
– (of a literary work) _hard to read or understand because overly serious or difficult._ [hard to listen to…]
– feeling or expressing grief : I left him with a heavy heart.[^heavythes]
[^heavythes]: New Oxford American Dictionary, 2nd Edition.

>me–tal–lic |məˈtalik| adjective
1. _a metallic sound_ : grating, harsh, jarring, dissonant.[^metalthes]
2. Harshly resonant : _the strange metallic note of the meadow lark, suggesting the clash of vibrant blades_ (Ambrose Bierce)[^metaldict]

[^metalthes]: Christine A Lindberg, ed., The Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p576.
[^metaldict]: American Heritage English Dictionary, 3rd Edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin (1992).

* * *

It all began some time between the third and fifth grades. I seem to remember things from this period by grades, if at all. Each year is divided by that one major change—moving to the next level in school. There is no clear beginning or end. I saw the music video for the Smashing Pumpkins’, Tonight, Tonight and was, for some reason, struck by it. Logically, I went out and bought the CD, _Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness_. I wouldn’t understand the title of the album for at least five years. At least, I wouldn’t know that I’d understood the title. Was I an angsty 4th grader? Was I _weighed down by weariness_, my heart _heavy_ with the troubles of the world? What about this melancholic, harsh music appealed to me, not even in my the clichéd dark teenage years? The meaning is a bit hard to miss when you hear the music. The album was released on October 24, 1995; so I was around 10 years old. Which is like, third grade, right? I always have to recount from the beginning to figure that out. So I bought the CD, a double album, despite the fact that the one song I knew was nothing like anything else on the album. Yet I don’t remember realizing that, or particularly caring at the time. But the songs I listened to most where the heavy ones. Like the buzz-sawing, Zero; the crushingly distorted Bodies; the ever-classic, Bullet With Butterfly Wings, with the timeless chorus, ”Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage“.

* * *

It was 4th grade. I lived in a nice town, went to a decent school.

I was fast. Real fast. The fastest in the school. We played touch football every day at recess, and I’d run for the hail mary, churning past the helpless defense. this was before puberty passed me by and took everyone else with it, leaving me small and athletically irrelevant.I had a classic crush on a girl in my class named Claire.

My ADD was still not quite under control; the social waters chilled as I unwittingly alienated myself from peers with exuberant abandon. It wasn’t active, aggressive animosity; just a general distancing and idle, abrasive needling, teasing.

The boys I played football with had figured out my little secret and so, naturally, they felt it appropriate to use this information for their own enjoyment.We were walking out to the football field one afternoon; the teasing banter continued to rain. I’d long since realized the futility of defending myself, so I tried with equal futility to ignore. But I am my father’s son, and my mother’s father’s grandson; our blood boils hot and boils fast.

* * *

>Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.[^burnt]
[^burnt]: T.S. Elliot, “Burnt Norton,” No. 1 of _Four Quartets._ Published online by Tristan Fecit, at http://www.tristan.icom43.net/quartets/norton.html (June, 2000)

* * *

Time blurred; I see myself struggling with forces I do not, can not, will never comprehend. I turn and face the one who’d started the joke, he’d just launched a flippant jibe into my flank, took it a bit farther than the rest. He was down, on the ground. Both of us were reeling, my world had distilled into an edged clarity and a breeze cooled my neck. One punch to the gut, as I watched, a spectator to my own actions.

I helped him up, both of us in equal disbelief. Maybe I apologized. Maybe I told him ruefully that _you did ask for it, didn’t you_.

* * *

>From our lives’ beginning on
We are pushed in little forms
No one asks us how we like to be
In school they teach you what to think
But everyone says different things
But they’re all convinced that
They’re the ones to see

>So they keep talking and they never stop
And at a certain point you give it up
So the only thing that’s left to think is this

>_I want out–to live my life alone
I want out–leave me be
I want out–to do things on my own
I want out–to live my life and to be free_
–Helloween, “I Want Out” (_Keeper of the Seven Keys Part II_, 1988)

* * *

My friend bought it. Someone brought it into school on their discman. I was addicted. So I bought it. _Smash_ by The Offspring. It 0wn3d me. It still does.

>ad–dict–ed |əˈdiktid| adjective : physically and mentally dependent on a particular substance, and unable to stop taking it without incurring adverse effects [^addictdict]
[^addictdict]: New Oxford American Dictionary, 2nd Edition.

* * *

>Music can be understood as an emotional communication system, and it is essential to learn to understand the communication of the social group to which one belongs. It has been said that most social groups have a certain style of music. If we want to belong to a group, we need to understand their emotional communication, which is partly found in music.[^recreat]
[^recreat]:Oliver Grewe et al., ”Listening to Music as a Re-Creative Process: Physiological, Psychological, and Psychoacoustical Correlates of Chills and Strong Emotions,“ _Music Perception_ 24, no. 3 (February 2007).

* * *

There are several major rock stations that are receivable over FM radio broadcast in the Greater Boston Area. Each tries desperately to define itself as THE definitive source of rock in the area, no matter how similar their mindless blathering DJ’s, or commercialized programming. But it was a start. And WAAF isn’t so bad. Or wasn’t so bad.There is no commercial metal radio in Boston. Yet the metal scene is far from dead in Boston’s rougher blue-collar ex-urbs. The western cities of Worcester and Springfield are world-famous for their propensity to churn out solid metal acts. So I moved on to a private mini-prep-middle-school (the only school that could keep my ADD ass in line), a climate where working-class music like metal is alien and strange. So I spent those years listening in isolation to crappy alternative rock/Hard Rock radio.

>Starting from widely divergent perspectives and serving widely divergent conclusions, most scholars of metal have interpreted the music as an expression of the frustrations of the blue-collar young in a de-industrializing society that neither requires their labour nor values their presence.[^bluec]
[^bluec]:Berger (1999), p169.

* * *

>in–tense |inˈtens| adjective: extreme, fierce; exceptional, extraordinary; harsh, strong, powerful, potent, overpowering; passionate, vehement, fiery, spirited, vigorous.[^intdict]
[^intdict]: The Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus, OSX Edition.

It’s little coincidence that I made the transition from dabbling in distorted guitars to immersion in mainstream hard-rock, and eventually, to full-blown heavy metal during middle school. Middle school was a stinking sulfurous hell on earth. A bastion of privilege, entitlement and pestilent wealth. And now I was small; I’d gone from 75 percentile to 25 percentile in both height and weight, and into a world where it mattered more than ever.

By 8th grade, I found myself with one real friend, and more than one enemy whose favorite pastime was to remind me of just how many friends I didn’t have. They were bigger than me, so no quick punch to the gut was going to solve anything.From punk (Offspring) and grunge (Nirvana) to hybrid nü-metal (Sevendust) and gothic industrial (Marilyn Manson), my music darkened with each passing year. Then I went to Art camp. And METAL anticlimactically entered my orbit. There was an animal magnetism to these harsh, strangely beautiful sounds; from the grim solemnity of growling death metal, to the epic and fantastic bombast of its more cheerful cousin, Power Metal.

>ep–ic |ˈepik|
1. noun: a long poem, typically one derived from ancient oral tradition, narrating the deeds and adventures of heroic or legendary figures or the history of a nation.
2. adjective: of, relating to, or characteristic of an epic or epics :
– heroic or grand in scale or characterThe quest for inner peace through metal had begun.[^epicdict]
[^epicdict]: New Oxford American Dictionary, 2nd Edition.

* * *

>Liner notes introduction: As a servant of light and defender of life, I’m proud to invite you all to the furthest horizons to fight united against astral chaos, the primordial enemy of the planetary wisdom. So relax your body, relax your mind, turn your speakers up and enjoy the virtual odyssey…–Luca Turilli (_King of the Nordic Twilight_, 1999)

* * *

It was my first real experience in romance, at summer camp the summer before 9th grade (I was 13?). Me and said girl’d been “going out” for about a week, I’d just been informed of the ending of our little arrangement by one of her friends. The important part of the story is that, devastated, I returned solemnly to my bunk, crawled in bed shoes clothes ‘n all, and fetched my disc-man and Marilyn Manson (c’mon, it was the closest to metal that I had). My friend stopped by and asked if I was alright. I said _sure_ and he left. I laughed out loud, sardonically, _of course I’m not ok, I’m lying in bed at 7pm listening to Marilyn Manson…_

* * *

>But metal cannot be conceptualized as a mere steam valve for psycho-social pressures… The notion of perceptual agency is at the heart of the death metal participant’s ideology. While much of metal in general and death metal in particular is energetic and aggressive, the musicians I spoke with were quick to disabuse me of the misconception that metal is merely angry music. Saladin explained that metal was about exploring all the emotions that hold a person back in their life.[^steamvalve]
[^steamvalve]: Harris M Berger, ”Death Metal Tonality and the Act of Listening,“ _Popular Music_ 18, no. 2 (May 1999), p173.

* * *

>One day you’ll live in happiness
With a heart that’s full of joy
You’ll say the world “tomorrow” without fear
The feeling of togetherness will be at your side
You’ll say you love your life and you’ll know why
–Helloween, “Future World” (_Keeper of the Seven Keys Part II_, 1988)

* * *

Jesper was 16, I was 14. When you’re 14, 2 years is a bigger proportion of your life than it would be to me now, at 22. By exactly 4/77 times. Don’t ask me why that is important, it just is. So Jesper was from a band called IN Flames, from Sweden. I would later learn that Sweden is the second most metal country in the world. Though he was from Pennsylvania. He had long dark brown hair and a dry, caustic sense of humor. He owned a stunningly shaped guitar: a red Gibson SG. _Why is the shape of a guitar so important?_ So Jesper started a band and recorded a song with them. I tagged along and gained my eventual nickname, ”roadie“. The next summer Jesper showed up with a CD and a story. The opening song on the CD, was their song in a strange new form. Gone were the clean luke-warm vocals and mellow interludes. The guitars were thicker, harsher, and the only voice I could hear was all but demonic. Of course he had used the same main riff from the song he recorded the previous summer. There he was in the liner notes, Jesper Strömblad. But the picture didn’t quite fit. The Jesper Strömblad in the liner notes had long blonde hair and was… a different person. Our Jesper told us about the strict Swedish laws — that prohibited minors from publishing music, thus forcing the band to use a stand-in for the photos (and live shows? So he could goto school or something?). In any event, it’s unlikely I believed him then. I believed parts. I wanted to believe. I also don’t remember when, exactly, the illusion dissolved and he shed the identity of Jesper, but at some point he resumed his identity. But never lost that aura. He now sings for a leading death metal band in England. Or so he says.

* * *

>I’d sign – a contract with the devil
I’ve tried – for so very long
I’d die – to become immortal
that’s why I sing this song
Am I a wannabe? – have I no dignity.
I’d give up all my life, to be…
In the book of heavy metal —— METAALLLL!
In the book of heavy metal
-—Dream Evil, ”The Book of Heavy Metal (March of the Metallians)

* * *

A Guitar tech tests a majestically evil-looking guitar while the crowd mills about, joking, posturing awkwardly, cheering on the tech sarcastically. The venue is small. Dingy would not be an understatement, and we can feel that we are in gritty Worcester, Massachusetts.

The crowd is filled with an unusual assortment of people. They are mostly men, and mostly white. The air is thick with the dropped R’s of anti-suburbia. Some have girlfriends or wives by their sides. The whiteness of the crowd is accentuated by the blackness of their attire; black shirts, black jeans, black jackets, long black hair. There are a few latinos, and one black man. Maybe. If he is there, people come up to him with curiosity and congratulations for upending the stereotypes of those who revel in subverting stereotypes (yet never really escape them).

* * *

>While it is not clear to me if the motivating power of death metal is generating a vanguard of energetic youth or drawing artistic and creative youngpeople into a trap of naive individualism, I believe that the political significance of musical sound is rooted in the meanings that the participantsconstitute and the consequences of those meanings for the participants’ lives and the larger society.[^motpower]
[^motpower]:Harris M Berger, ”Death Metal Tonality and the Act of Listening,“ _Popular Music_ 18, no. 2 (May 1999), p175.

* * *

10 more minutes of standing, shuffling for a better spot, and fighting valiantly to protect the spots that are already had. A restless whisper rises throughout the room, it is not clear where it starts, or to what it refers. The stage is now dark. Necks crane and eyes strain to make sense of the fresh, shifting darkness. The shapes on stage begin to congeal into outlines, and the murmur of the crowd grows louder.

The music begins with a soft, symphonic scape of oscillating synthetic tones. The darkly peaceful chords weigh down on the restless bodies, which grow quiet.

_tss… tss… ts ts ts_ ___tsh___

* * *

>Not merely a continuous stream, our experiences of the possibilities of the near future and the certainties of the immediate past exist simultaneously with the experienced events of the hair’s present. All experience exists, therefore, not in the infinitely thin present of the traditionally conceived now, but in a temporal thickness that Husserl called the living present. This living present is the temporal window of the phenomenal world, the arena within which experience transpires. The halo of possibilities that constantly lurk before us in the future are referred to as protentions, and experiences that have just passed through the now-point are referred to as retentions. Within this living present, experiences exist for us as numerous facets synthesised together, dynamic gestalts moving from protention to retention.[^168]
[^168]: Harris M Berger, ”Death Metal Tonality and the Act of Listening,“ _Popular Music_ 18, no. 2 (May 1999), p168.

* * *

six taps of a hi-hat later, the destruction begins.

* * *

Metal. I can qualify it endlessly: Death, Black, Power, Progressive, Avant Garde, Symphonic, Viking, Doom, Folk, Nü, NWOBHM (New Wave of British Heavy Metal), Pagan, Christian, Shred, Neo-Classical. It becomes absurd if it wasn’t already.
What remains when the modifiers are removed?In my current context, one where metal is an extremely strange and alien concept, most of the people with whom I interact don’t see much of that emotional core. Finding out that I <3 metal can come as a bit of a shock for those who don’t already know a bit about me. But we all have our ways to excise the demons the world inspires within us. So I wonder, is that all this music serves to do? Does my love for metal extend beyond the realms of negativity?

* * *

How seriously do we take it? Alexi Laiho, possibly the most gifted songwriter in the metal world today, is a clown with a guitar as he admits during their epic live DVD in Stockholm, “So you see, basically we’re a bunch of fucking idiots… [proceeds to launch into a passionate stream of typically brilliant, pummeling, yet melodic face-melting metal].”

Poise and hubris in extreme. Superlatives ‘R Us.

>Death be not proud,
though some have called thee mighty and dreadful,
thou art not so.
–Children of Bodom, “Follow The Reaper” (_Follow The Reaper_, 2000)[^deathproud]
[^deathproud]:(quote originally from John Donne, [“Death be not proud, though some have called thee”](http://www.bartleby.com/105/72.html))

* * *

__Art appeals to an us that is raw, emotional.__

>Shattered hope became my guide
and grief and pain my friends
a brother pact in blood-ink penned
declared my silent end

>Naked and dying under worlds of silent stone
reaching for the moonshield that once upon us shone.
–In Flames, “Moonshield” (The Jester Race, 1996)

__A certain bleak cynicism. A morbid fascination with the dark, undesirable; a simultaneous familiarity with their emotional counterparts from a life of alienation and depression. A need for personal reality corroboration, art metaphors reflecting and reaffirming perspective validity.__

Raise your hand, your fist in defiance proudSlay the armies of static grey plastic descending

Blood rains, floods low-lying poor as the rich gawk from above

_In the metal universe, there can be no pleasure without acknowledging first the pain._

>bru–tal |ˈbroōtl| adjective: savage, ferocious, wicked, ruthless, sadistic; heinous, abominable. antonyms: gentle, humane.

* * *

_Up next, on Melting Point Radio, “This Week in Metal History”. But first, here is a Maiden classic, “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”_. I toggled off the mic and spun my chair around to where my co-hosts were crouched over a laptop, busy scouring wikipedia for worthy events. _Ohhh, 1945: The firebombing of Dresden?_ I scowled. Could I deny it was not, indeed, metal for an entire city to be incinerated in an immense firestorm? Did this not epitomize the kind of bleak, cynical world view typified by [some of] our beloved music? But the music lifts my spirits, I am blissfully unaware of the words being scrawled across the airwaves. Yet I am unnerved to associate my beloved metal with such a tragic injustice, for fear of it seeming an endorsement of such a horror.

* * *

End of serious 2.5 year relationship with basically no prior warning. Destabilization imminent or already occurring. I lay on my bed in the holistic organic hippie house and listen to my numbness as my stereo spins up to speed. My face defrosts into a demonic grin as the opening track’s blistering harmonized scale runs washed over me, connecting somewhere deep wounded within.

>Spiraling into depression
Spiraling into depression

>Still you cannot bear all this pain
Still you cannot bear to walk away
Darkness still rips silently within
Still you cannot bear all the shame
…

I listen to ___Buried in Oblivion___ by __Into Eternity___ in its entirety

  1. Splintered Visions
  2. Embraced By ‘Desolation’
  3. 3 Dimensional Aperture
  4. Beginning Of The End
  5. Point Of Uncertainty
  6. Spiraling Into Depression
  7. Isolation
  8. Buried Into Oblivion
  9. Black Sea Of Agony
  10. Morose Seclusion
…
>Alone in your circle of despair
Your dreams are discarded
Clinging to a sterile existence
Self-pity and lingering grief
Depleted and beaten
Depleted and beaten

* * *

When people reach college, or college age, it seems their perspective reaches a critical openness. The introspection becomes transcendental. I would never feel right saying _I needed more_, but I certainly wondered _is this it_?

* * *

I’d be lying if I said I don’t enjoy the look on people’s faces when I announce that I listen to death metal, _wait, what? But… you’re not…_ ___head explodes___ In this new context difference is gold, who wants to wear a generic label, fit the mold? _How many hippie buddhist metalheads do ___you___ know?_

* * *

Does music satiate the same urge, the same hunger, as spirituality? I heard a sermon in a Mongolian Evangelical church where the pastor lamented the youth’s finding God in ”fun“ things. He used music as his prime example and mimed it out for the crowd, hands cupping imaginary headphones and head bobbing to an imaginary disco beat, he grinned absurdly and continued the service, ”Xogjim sonsdog…!“ the service concluded with the parish band resuming their places on stage and leading the crowd in yet one more enthusiastic round of Jesus-loving song. But their needs were being filled by the Jesus part, not the music, right? Then why are there Christian death metal bands?

* * *

>Some have eyes but still can’t see
Their plastic noise is anything but music to me
Mechanized and computerized
Switch off your brain and make sounds that dehumanize.
–Kreator, _Love Us or Hate Us_ (Extreme Aggressions, 1989)

* * *

I discovered Buddhism; the un-religion; the anti-ism. I saw in it the intense introspection and honesty that I’d been forced to learn through years of social self-discipline, trying to learn the unwritten rules of society for which my brian found itself less than ideally suited. Yet there was also a belief in the ultimate power of human compassion to counteract our toxic egos and thought-demons. I felt a fit with my not un-ironic mix of cynical optimism.

Can I be Buddhist — live a life filled with compassion and happiness, and listen to Death Metal?

* * *

Music is cathartic; it allows one to virtualize the expression of emotions without the usually requisite associated experience. Thus pent-up anger is released when exposed to violent/angry music — as the mind sees the musical stimulus as violence in sonic form, allowing the listener its cathartic effects while avoiding its anti-social tendencies (that is, violence).

_But now I am a metalhead_. Metal is not therapy, it is part of who I am.

* * *

I step through the doorway; the shrine room swallows me in darkness glowing with dim fluorescent tubes, mounted bare to the wall. My eyes adjust to the cool light and suddenly I find myself face to face with a scowling demon — its face twisted in agony. Beneath his feet were tiny people, frozen in their desperate dash to escape his thunderous ego-crushing step. Then it hit me, all at once, in one contained _this is metal_ thought.

* * *

_The music excises the demons; so without the demons, can there be meaningful music?_ ___Isn’t it all about the music?___

Art is communication. An artist encodes a message, an image, a feeling, _whatever_ in a medium which is then transmitted to the consumer who decodes the art. Good art conveys the message, or conveys _a_ message, or makes the consumer _feel_ as though a message was communicated to them. Art acts as a mirror, we appreciate that which tells us what we already know. For metalheads, the music acknowledges the darkness of the world; it is dark, but that is ok.

>It’s not the music, but the feelings of the people we hear playing that are important to us… it is not the music as a physical stimulus that manipulates our moods, but it is using the music as a communicative offering to influence our feelings in a re-creative process.[^recreat]
[^recreat]:Oliver Grewe et al., ”Listening to Music as a Re-Creative Process: Physiological, Psychological, and Psychoacoustical Correlates of Chills and Strong Emotions,“ _Music Perception_ 24, no. 3 (February 2007).

* * *

>[The great Tibetan yogi Jetsun Milarepa] lived in utter solitude, in caves and isolated mountains. His clothes were very poor; he had no nice clothes. His food was neither rich nor tasty. In fact, [for a number of years] he lived on nettle soup alone, as a result of which he became physically very thin, almost emaciated. Now, if you consider his external circumstances alone, the isolation and poverty in which he lived, you would think he must have been miserable. And yet, as we can tell from the many songs he composed, because his mind was fundamentally at peace, his experience was one of constant unfolding delight. His songs are songs that express the utmost state of delight or rapture. He saw every place he went to, no matter how isolated and austere an environment it was, as beautiful, and he experienced his life of utmost austerity as extremely pleasant.[^reasmed]
[^reasmed]: The Venerable Thrangu Rinpoche, [“The Reason We Practice Meditation”](http://www.rinpoche.com/reason.html).

* * *

>The tonal dimension of music and the meanings that emerge from it are constituted by the subject’s active, perceptual organization of the sound in time.[^tdimen]
[^tdimen]:Berger (1999), p161.

_This is negative space — clusters of machined rips, lip-biting silence punctuates the in-between waiting spaces drawing pulling the ear into false-comfort, tension to be_ __delivered__ _by the protending riff._

Would Buddha listen to metal if it touched his soul? Wouldn’t it, by definition, not touch his soul? Were I to become a Buddha, would it cease to have meaning to me?

* * *

Metal

down

beats

Gods stomping, stampeding, galloping across aural scapes–malevolent keyboards synthesize towards anticipation — _and recreate the virtual stimuli that would have instilled such unease._

* * *

>What is the meaning of a wrathful Buddha? We see all these wrathful images of Buddhas (gesturing around the temple). But in truth wrathful Buddhas have nine qualities. Their bodies are wrathful, heroic, and frightening. Their voices are laughing, threatening, and fierce. But mentally they are loving, peaceful, and powerful. Like all enlightened beings, their minds are peaceful, compassionate, joyful, and wise. If a being is wrathful on the outside and also angry in its heart, then it is a real monster — not a Buddha. Wrathful Buddhas look wrathful for a purpose: for pacifying, for taming negative forces.[^Tulku]
[^Tulku]: Tulku Thondup, “Tulku Thondup’s Talk in India 2003.” http://www.khordong.de/Engl/News/Tulku_2003/tulku_thondup_2003.html (2003)

* * *

One distorted chord. 1 and 5. Hold.
Channel the choas and oppressive rumble of terrible empty space, of aural impartial chaos, the only God in a world of cellular automata. Carve and channel this dark force through air. Contained and executed sonic chaos.

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Inner Fire (Thread 4 of Metal Manifesto)

One metal cliché I find hard to subvert is

In what capacity do the blue-collar jobless and I, a rich suburban college kid, find emotional common ground? If metal is the realm of the frustrated, angry, working class — then what the hell am I doing there? There’s a reason no-one in my hometown, high-school or college shares my taste in music; there must be.

It was 4th grade.
I was fast. Real fast. The fastest in the school. We played touch football every day at recess, and I’d run for the hail mary, churning past the helpless defense. this was before puberty passed me by and took everyone else with it, leaving me small and athletically irrelevant.

i had a classic crush on a girl in my class named Claire.

My ADD was still not quite under control; the social pressures mounted as I unwittingly alienated myself from peers with exuberant abandon. It wasn’t active, aggressive animosity; just a general distancing and idle, abrasive needling, teasing.

The boys I played football with had figured out my little secret and so, naturally, they felt it appropriate to use this information for their own enjoyment.

We were walking out to the football field one afternoon; the teasing barter continued to fly. I’d long since realized the futility of defending myself, so I tried with equal futility to ignore. But I am my father’s son, and my mother’s father’s grandson; our blood boils hot and boils fast.

Time blurred; I see myself struggling with forces I do not, can not, will never comprehend. I turn and face the one who’d started the joke, he’d just launched a flippant jibe into my flank, took it a bit farther than the rest. He was down, on the ground. Both of us were reeling, my world had distilled into an edged clarity and a breeze cooled my neck. One punch to the gut, as I watched, a spectator to my own actions.

I helped him up, both of us in equal disbelief. Maybe I apologized. Maybe I told him ruefully that _you did ask for it, didn’t you_. Then the principal concerned strolled over, he was outside that day, and asked my _pal_ if he was alright, he said _yes, he’d just fallen down_. Face was saved.

~

It’s little coincidence that I made the transition from dabbling in distorted guitars to immersion in mainstream hard-rock, and eventually, to full-blown heavy metal during middle school. Middle school was a stinking sulfurous hell on earth. A bastion of privilege, entitlement and pestilent wealth. And now I was small; I’d gone from 75 percentile to 25 percentile in both height and weight, and into a world where it mattered more than ever.

By 8th grade, I found myself with one real friend, and more than one enemy whose favorite pastime was to remind me of just how many friends I didn’t have. They were bigger than me, so no quick punch to the gut was going to solve anything.

I discovered heavy metal.

From punk (Offspring) and grunge (Nirvana) to hybrid nü-metal (Sevendust) and gothic industrial (Marilyn Manson), my music darkened with each passing year.

Then along came METAL. I felt an affinity to it all, from the grim solemnity of growling death metal, to the epic and fantastic bombast of its more cheerful cousin, Power Metal.

The quest for inner peace through metal was in gear.

–

When people reach college, or college age, it seems their perspective reaches a critical openness. The introspection becomes transcendental. I would never feel right saying _I needed more_, but I certainly wondered _is this it_?

Metal is a quick fix, not a sustainable, holistic process or way of life.

I discovered Buddhism; the un-religion; the anti-ism. I saw in it the intense introspection and honesty that I’d been forced to learn through years of social self-discipline, trying to learn the unwritten rules of society for which my brian found itself less than ideally suited. Yet there was also a belief in the ultimate power of human compassion to counteract our toxic egos and thought-demons. I felt a fit with my not un-ironic mix of cynical optimism.

_But now I am a metalhead_. Metal is not therapy, it is part of who I am.

I’d be lying if I said I don’t enjoy the look on people’s faces when I announce that I listen to death metal, _wait, what? But… you’re not…_ ___head explodes___ n this new context difference is gold, _who wants to wear a generic label, fit the mold?_

How many hippie buddhist metalheads do ___you___ know?

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We Are Distracted by Michael Shay

I just found an essay on ADD in one of our books for class (In Short). Craziness. It’s kinda similar to the one I wrote, but from a very different perspective. This piece was a father writing about his 8 year old son, Kevin. My piece has the son writing about himself (Of course, mine’s fictional… right? :-D). Shay has crafted a wonderful depiction of the conflicts a parent experiences when raising a kid with AD/HD. He illustrates the real impacts that AD/HD has on Kevin’s life, and how he copes. and his imagery is fantastic, but he misses one subtle, but vital point about the ‘mechanics’ of AD/HD (at least as I know it. The thing has no definition so we could just be talking about two different conditions! But the rest of his story fits…) In the second paragraph, he writes about Kevin scaling a Colorado rock face:

We look up and Kevin never looks down. It would break his concentration, interrupt his communion with the rock, I think. To concentrate is everything for Kevin. He can’t do it for extended periods of time unless he is under the influence of Ritalin, a drug that helps him control his hyperactivity inspired impulsiveness. Right now, as he climbs toward the sharp blue Colorado sky, the Ritalin, a central nervous system stimulant, is working on my son’s brain…

None of this is really explicitly wrong (of course, I don’t actually know what it’s like for Kevin, but I assume this is a more general take on AD/HD. What Shay is doing is saying that a.) Kevin has trouble concentrating, generally b.) In order to concentrate for long periods, he needs Ritalin, and then c.) He’s taking Ritalin while rock climbing, which presumably allows him to resist the “hyperactivity inspired impuls[e]” to look down. I take issue with this last bit. I’m pretty sure that Kevin needs no Ritalin to climb those rocks. In fact, I’d be surprised if the parents could get him to look down even if they tried. People with AD/HD seem to have a hard time focusing, generally. But it’s really more a problem of controlling the focus. It’s easy to focus on something that one enjoys, since there is no coercion necessary. The problem arises when you put the kid in a classroom and try to get him to do schoolwork, or whatever. Suddenly he’d rather watch the bird out the window, or whatever else he can find that’s more interesting than the work he’s been tasked with (which isn’t hard, obviously. Especially since AD/HD seems to lend itself to intense curiosity (being interested in everything.

The rest of the piece is spot-on, and pretty cool. He addresses the stigma that comes with being labeled as “ADHD”, the different theories on what AD/HD actually is (and isn’t) and how to treat it. And then he ends with two segments that fit together beautifully; Shay shows himself as a loving father who truly wants his son to be happy in the world. The penultimate section contrasts the times when he hopelessly watches Kevin fall into loneliness and isolation, with those when he swallows his worry that Kevin might fall from the sky, as he flies away, up a rock face or into the tallest tree… The final paragraph is the strongest segment of the essay, and asks some profound questions about the nature of Kevin’s dreams, are they of falling or flight?

VI. TO FALL…
Kevin never has fallen. when he was two, he climbed the highest trees in the park near our Denver home. Fifty-foot-tall pines and spruces. The first time he did this, he looked down at me and yelled, “You worried, Daddy?”
“Yes!” I said, which seemed to please him.
So what if he falls? Randy, Freeman and I watch him climb and it occurs to them because Randy says, “Does this worry you?”
“Yes,” I say, “It worries me.” And it thrills me too. I’ve seen him all alone in the playground because the mothers won’t let their kids near him. I’ve seen him mark time in his room, usually because he’s been restricted in some way because he’s had trouble at home or on the school bus or in the playground.

VII. TO FLY…
Do rock climbers dream of falling or of flying? Do hyperactive kids dream of solitude on a granite mountain? Or do they dream of this: dancing and laughing, surrounded by friends, the mountains a distant mirage?

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Enter the Blessed Ones

NOTE: This piece is from last year, posted here for posterity and for the time when I eventually resume working on it. For now, check it out if you’re curious, but by no means feel obligated. Feedback is always welcome, of course.

Date of last revision: 1 November 2006

There is a look that I have grown to recognize; one that creeps up mid-conversation and fills me with dread. It says “Ok, I hear you. Uh, yeah. Okay. I get it already”. It says “Why is he still talking?“ It shows a polite disinterest, a rising level of conversation-fatigue. My mind floods with questions: How long have they not wanted to listen? How do I rescue the situation? Why aren’t they interested? Was it the way I was explaining things? Did I say too much? Too fragmented? Too much detail? Too tangential? It only happens at parties, or at dining hall.

Attention deficit? But I have no shortage of attention, if anything there are times when it is in excess! Yet there is some truth to this, as researchers have consistently found AD/HD to be linked with inefficiency in the allocation of attentional resources.

Attention: The span thereof. The ability to regulate and allocate the necessary attentional resources. Executive brain functions. Like the CEO of your brain, but wait, he’s a drunk! Where’d those papers go? What do we do now? When do we do it? What do I do? Which do I do? where who why when what… {//… kernel error. overload}

Continue reading “Enter the Blessed Ones”

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Creative Non-Fiction v2 (work in progress)

There is a look that I have grown to recognize; one that creeps up mid-conversation and fills me with dread. It says “Ok, I hear you. Uh, yeah. Okay. I get it already”. It says “Why is he still talking?”. It shows a polite disinterest, a rising level of conversation-fatigue. My mind floods with questions: How long have they not wanted to listen? How do I rescue the situation? Why aren’t they interested? Was it the way I was explaining things? Did I say too much? Too fragmented? Too much detail? Too tangential? It only happens at parties, or at dining hall.

Attention deficit? But I have no shortage of attention, if anything there are times when it is in excess! Yet there is some truth to this, as researchers have consistently found AD/HD to be linked with inefficiency in the allocation of attentional resources.

Continue reading “Creative Non-Fiction v2 (work in progress)”

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Creative Nonfiction First Full Draft

[Dining Hall Conversation piece (forthcoming)]

[study about facial recognition and AD/HD (forthcoming)]

[Sorting piece (forthcoming)]

Attention: What you are focused on — how long you can maintain that focus — Hey, come back here! And how much control you have over it [see this post with more material on Attention (that stuff is not yet in my own words however)]

Imagine a television set that represents your mind, the current program is your state of focus. If you are concentrating on doing laundry, that’s the channel you’re watching. The picture is vivid, the lines sharp — and you are able to interpret (mostly) without issue the elements of the images before you. Now, you hold in your hand a remote control. Your remote is of normal shape, size, color, and composition. Its face has two buttons; one for channel up, and one for down (and maybe some numbers? Sure, why not! (That way if you’re watching one thing you don’t have to go through all the other channels sequentially)). Even better, you have one button for each channel… This is no ordinary remote control, no siree, this has the latest technology so every time some new “opportunity” for focus enters your radar, up pops a new button. Now your average human being watches one channel, then maybe changes to another channel by pressing a button, and then when that program is over they change to a different channel, or wait to see what’s on next, and so on and so forth.

Continue reading “Creative Nonfiction First Full Draft”

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Creative Nonfiction Continued: Attention

Attention: What you are focused on — how long you can maintain that focus — Hey, come back here! And how much control you have over it [see this post with more material on Attention (that stuff is not yet in my own words however)]

Imagine a television set that represents your mind, the current program is your state of focus. If you are concentrating on doing laundry, that’s the channel you’re watching. The picture is vivid, the lines sharp — and you are able to interpret (mostly) without issue the elements of the images before you. Now, you hold in your hand a remote control. Your remote is of normal shape, size, color, and composition. Its face has two buttons; one for channel up, and one for down (and maybe some numbers? Sure, why not! (That way if you’re watching one thing you don’t have to go through all the other channels sequentially)). Even better, you have one button for each channel… This is no ordinary remote control, no siree, this has the latest technology so every time some new “opportunity” for focus enters your radar, up pops a new button. Now your average human being watches one channel, then maybe changes to another channel by pressing a button, and then when that program is over they change to a different channel, or wait to see what’s on next, and so on and so forth.

AD/HD inattentive subtype
The remote is broken. The channel up and down buttons are sticky — sometimes they get stuck. Your TV changes channels indefinitely. Or even better, other times they don’t work at all. You’re sitting there watching a program vital to your social survival such as “What your spouse did today” or even “What cars are coming at you at 70 mph on Soldiers Field Road during Rush Hour”. Suddenly a new program pops up, “Watching a seagull circle overhead” or even “Zone out and think about something else” (always a classic)

So, your TV just freaks out and changes the channel once it sees something it likes. You mash the buttons on the remote desperately; maybe you manage to switch it back– but only briefly, before you notice it’s happened again.

You’re lost in the program forever. Seconds become hours become days… waiting for boredom to breathe life back into your remote, allowing you to seize control once again.

Enter psychostimulants
Methylphenidate methyl a-phenyl-2-piperidineacetate C14H19NO2 Molecular weight: 233.31. Bioavailability: 11-52% when taken orally. dextro,levo-methylphenidate 50:50 racemic mixture: Ritalin® (Ritalina®). dextro-methylphenidate: Focalin. Also Concerta® (time-release), Metadate®, Methylin®, Rubifen®.
Adderall