Un-scientific report on the possible side-effects of ADHD medication for people searching ‘will stimulants make me a different person’ on Reddit
I stopped thwacking tree stumps
with axe-handles. Gravity got a little better.
Closer to Mars, maybe. My laundry laundered,
my hair got softer. I couldn’t make sandwiches
half the time still, but I’d sit on the kitchen floor and eat bread
and cheese and plant-based turkey slices. I flossed
when I was out of toothpaste. Life focused components
instead of wholes. I remembered my overstuffed keyring
like a bright-eyed Adderall poster girl. Words came
when I needed them: blackberry, archipelago,
fanciful, sky. I became a competent little bonsai
grown from a finger of the gargantuan, slow-moving
pine I used to be. Not looped in hard wire
or sheared, necessarily. Just more meticulous.
Rooted in rich earth and low-down air
instead of groping at far-off rocks.
Zoe Reay-Ellers is the proud EIC of the best dish soap-themed mag worldwide. She owns twenty plants and is currently an undergraduate student at Cornell. Her work has appeared in a number of places, including Stone Circle Review, HAD, Ghost City Review, and JAKE. You can find her on twitter and bsky @zreayellers.
