Issue 10, Semester 1, 2019 ANONYMOUS I get up at 7:00am. As usual, I haven’t slept anywhere near enough, maybe four or five hours. Realistically, that’s entirely my fault. Once again, I didn’t plan out my week properly and was left rushing to catch up on assignments and readings late into the night. I make myself a coffee before I shower and have another one immediately afterward. If this isn’t one of the months I’ve quit smoking then I’ll have a cigarette or two. If it is, then I’ll apply a patch and chew some Nicorette gum. Either way, by the time I’m out the door, with a sandwich in hand for breakfast, my blood is already swimming with caffeine and nicotine, and I’m riding another wave of blood pressure and heart palpitations throughout the day. When I arrive back home in the evening, I still have a good six hours of work ahead of me. Exams are around the corner, essay research has not yet begun, I have work tomorrow morning. I quickly do the math in my head. My poor time management has screwed me again, there’s no way I can get everything done with the sleep budget I’ve allocated myself. With a sigh I reach for the bottle tucked at the back of my dresser and dry swallow another white tablet.
The drug I’ve just taken is modafinil, a wakefulness agent prescribed for narcolepsy sufferers and US Air Force pilots on extreme fatigue missions. In Australia it’s illegal without a prescription, however as with most pharmaceuticals in the age of globalisation, it’s surprisingly easy to order from Amazon with a third-party courier service to redirect shipping. The dose will keep me alert for about fourteen hours, after which I’ll have to balance myself out with a dose of Melatonin ordered from Taiwan. In three days, it’ll be Saturday, during which I can probably afford the necessary twenty or so hour comedown and system crash that I’m setting myself up for. Until then, I’ll have to walk a tight rope between these two medications, rationing out my sleep so as to maintain the effects during waking hours. The effect is a bit like running a car on a near-empty radiator. I’ll be alert and mentally stable, but by the end of it my mind will feel like a whipcord of dry nerves, my neurons scraped raw by chemical overclocking. It’s unsurprising that I’ve managed to stumble my way into this destructive habit. During my time at university, I’ve collected chemical addictions like they were Pokémon. During my undergraduate I rotated through weed, ADHD medication and anti-psychotics, sometimes to keep myself running, other times just out of curiosity. By the time I started law school, self-medicating to sustain the costs of continuous and high-pressure mental work seemed natural. At the end of the semester I’ll tell myself that I’m putting an end to it. For a few weeks I’ll exercise more, try to eat healthily, cut out caffeine and keep a sleep diary. Within a month I’ll miss a deadline or stay up late too many nights in a row and find out that I still have a few tablets left, just for emergencies. Drug abuse is nothing new in the legal profession, or among tertiary students. I know that I’m not the only one, or even in a particularly small minority; there are quite a few of us at MLS. Sometimes we swap or sell our respective drugs at parties. Usually I keep my habits to myself or share them with my housemates when they’re struggling with shift work. Law students aren’t even close to the worst offenders. One of my friends studying medicine has just started her residency at Royal Melbourne Hospital. She compensates for twenty-four plus hour shifts with yoga and amphetamines. I know that sooner or later I will have to seriously look this problem in the eye, but as with everything in my life these days, any serious attempt at self-care or improvement is measured in the currency of time, and I simply don’t have enough of it to keep myself off the pills for good. Every week I feel myself burning a little more. The tablets don’t stop that, but they make me at least a little bit fireproof. Anonymous is a former JD Student. If you are reading this article and need support please reach out to those close to you or seek professional help via one of many available resources such as: Beyond Blue 1300 22 4636 Lifeline 13 11 14 Headspace (under 25yos) University of Melbourne Counselling and Psychological Service Melbourne Law School Wellbeing and Academic Support
Three Things
14/5/2019 03:31:20 pm
1. You sound like you need help to manage your life. Get it. Maybe take leave from your job / studies if you can to get yourself back on track.
Sweet summer child
14/5/2019 03:49:48 pm
Oh boy are you going to be in for a shock when you join the profession...
brruhhhh
14/5/2019 03:50:05 pm
Bruh its modafinil, not meth... its a bit savage to say op ain't a 'fit and proper person' because of some narcolepsy medication.
Not the point
14/5/2019 06:31:14 pm
I don't think the point is that modafinil is prone to destructive abuse in the same way that heroine or meth is. The issue in terms of whether the OP is 'fit and proper' is that they're cheating. They're using a stimulant not available to the general population to gain an advantage in their degree.
Clarification
14/5/2019 08:22:29 pm
My concern is genuinely just OP’s welfare. If non prescribed (or other) drugs are being used as a means to cope / self-medicate, that puts OP at risk in a professional and personal sense.
Lucas
14/5/2019 10:12:08 pm
This kind of "frank" advice is the type that's far more likely to exacerbate any underlying shame/insecurities/personal problems than to fix it. If you're going to give advice of the "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" variety, recognise instead that it's far more useful if you offer practical steps and pathways to affect that advice, rather than shaming the person about: 1) not getting the help they may need, 2) jeopardising their career prospects, and 3) claiming that they aren't even thinking of their own well-being, and are putting other people in harm's way
Chill
14/5/2019 10:27:34 pm
All I said was
I recommend censorship
14/5/2019 04:40:24 pm
Do we need to know how to get modafinil easily?
Anon
14/5/2019 05:30:08 pm
[Content warning: mental illness]
Julia
14/5/2019 09:43:46 pm
If you are reading this article and need support please reach out to those close to you or seek professional help via one of many available resources such as: 14/5/2019 11:09:31 pm
Hi Julia - thank you for raising this point. We acknowledge our oversight and have amended the article to include the helplines and services for anyone who needs support. We will make sure to keep this in mind for future articles.
You’re joking
15/5/2019 12:44:56 am
Don’t bother using any of these services, they are all shit.
JUST STOP
15/5/2019 10:13:56 am
You are literally the problem.
Dexy-champ
15/5/2019 06:28:22 am
I took dexies like a fucking champ at law school. I stopped the day of my last exam, and am now a lawyer (it's been a little over 2 years since I graduated). I can honestly say I've never felt tempted to take dexies or other "PEDs" in the profession -- law school pressure is unique and very different to what you'll feel when you make it to the other side.
Great but
15/5/2019 11:23:42 am
Great that you’re proud that you’re a cheat.
Sick of the clear ableism
15/5/2019 12:01:56 pm
DEXY-CHAMP didn't state whether they had a valid prescription for the pills, so please don't able-splain and declare someone a cheat.
Person of unknown ability
15/5/2019 01:34:58 pm
Did you just assume his/her/xir ability?
I have narcolepsy and ADHD
15/5/2019 03:27:20 pm
I'm a law student who's had ADHD and narcolepsy type 1 from a young age. Parts of my brain never developed and the neurons that keep other people awake die too quickly in me to do anything useful. It also means my condition is incurable, as there is currently nothing that can replace the loss of brain cells. Comments are closed.
|
Archives
December 2021
|