Joe Asks Writer Timothy Denvi About Adderall Use

all through his life. But the tragedy of how much effort he put out to, if we want to write about Trump, if you want to go after like Taibbi did about the financial institution, the way Thompson did it was to kind of wager time later for time now. And he talks about that. He says, What do you mean by that? Chemical speed, he says, doing dextran, being an alcoholic, instead of changing his life and his rhythms. He said, I'm wagering time later for time now. I'm using up energy or things that I might have by burning the candle so brightly at this instant, because I believe I need to go after these moments. And I later I'm not going to have it. But I'm making that gamble. I'm putting the card down right now. And I think that's terrifying. And I also think that he gave us brilliant writing over one of the most remarkable spans in American history because of it. That's a weird tradition in journalism, right? To destroy your body while creating your art. And I think there's a, according to my friends who are journalists, there's a big problem with Adderall today. And there's a lot of people that are using it to write and it's fucking speed. And, you know, you get addicted. I mean, Adderall makes everything in front of you closer. Have you done it? Yeah. So my first book was called hyper, a personal history of ADHD. So it's about being medicated as a child. You were medicated as a child? Like having pills forced down my throat, like also six when I took Ritalin for the first time. Fuck man. And I had a suicidal moment and like six years old. What? The first time. You were six. You wanted to commit suicide? I held like a butter knife to my wrist. I don't remember it, but yeah, I kind of remember it. But yeah, it was on Ritalin, which I've taken now as an adult. And I always feel startled when I'm on it. If I ever take Ritalin now, I'm like, what? I take it to write, like this world is incredibly painful. So I take Adderall now. And I take it to... How often do you take it? Every day. I take like 30 milligrams a day. Really? And I take it to go into a library. And this is what David Wallace-Wells was talking about, I think like two days ago on the show was, how do you read really shitty academic articles where you need the information from them? I'm not good at that. I'm not good at even making like a car reservation, like a car rental reservation. And so this world's going to be painful no matter what, but there's a functionality that Adderall allows. And it's always a wager. What Thompson writes about is whenever something is given, something else is lost. You never get anything for free in this world. Thompson understood that better than anybody. So with him with Dexadryd, I'm not going to say Thompson was hyperactive. I'm not going to go into that. But Dexadryd, Geiger was like, yo, you're breaking down. You're 26, you have a wife, you have a very small child. You're writing right now. You want to have your career go forward. You're not doing well. And Geiger was like, I'm a doctor. I had gone through med school. I'd been overwhelmed like you. Geiger ran every morning. He did other things, but he took Dexadryd. So he gave it to Thompson. And for that small period of time, it helped. I mean, for me, it's like, I'm not a good researcher. And maybe I would be now, but the only way I can write about something like Hunter S. Thompson, where I didn't know him, I had no experience with him, is to read everything that he's ever written or been written about him and then go out and interview people. And so effort is my only path forward. And what Adderall helps for me is to take the pain away of that effort. But it doesn't take it away. It shifts it around to other aspects and other parts of life. And I think Thompson, when he wrote, he who makes a beast of himself escapes the pain or gets rid of the pain of being a man, we don't listen to that. Like he was like, this effort is hard. He's like, I'm struggling with this effort. I'm trying to make these beautiful things. I always think of James Salter, a fiction writer, Aspen resident, wrote beautiful novels. He wrote his whole life till he was 90. His last novel was at 87. He wrote a memoir at 76 about being a fighter pilot, among other things, in the Korean War. Lyric, literary. He did it his whole life. He didn't burn out for a small period of time. He's the antonym to Thompson, I think, when it comes to effort and literary work. Right. Do you just take it for work? Yeah, I mean... You don't have like an issue that you need to take it for? I mean, I think that whenever we have something like chemical speed, whenever we have something like alcohol, whenever we have something that's not like marijuana, or at least marijuana cuts your mania, you know, like whenever we have something else, like alcohol or, I don't know, we need to ask the question, is taking the pain away and being productive through those, actually hastening your own doom? And I think with alcohol, it's very clear it is. I think with Adderall, it's more complex. I think if you do an amount of time release, you can make it work. How many Americans do that out of the percent that are prescribed? You know, I don't know, 10%, 20%. Like it's dangerous. How often do you take time off? I'd say maybe one or two weeks of every three or four months. And when you do that, do you feel weird? No, I just watch movies. I just don't do anything. It doesn't. I don't have any productivity. I don't produce. So the only way you produce is on speed? The only way I produce the way I want to right now is on speed. I didn't start taking it till 2010. Dude, it's crazy that we're talking about this because there's so many people like you. It's so common. How much of the work that we enjoy today, especially literary work, is written by people, journalistic work, is written by people that are on speed. But that's not new. I mean, that's what Thompson and Burroughs and Southern, like this has been, I believe that our American society, the situation I'm in, I have created a situation where I have too much work and it's my fault. I should not be trying to be a professor and also go report at Congress and also at George Mason in the creative writing program, you know, and also then be hosting like people coming out and also then like be trying to research something that might be my next thing. That's too much. And the way Thompson saw Dexedrine was that he could make reality match his effort. So there was no longer the limit. It was the American dream idea. If you just put out enough effort, you'll get it. And that's why I think he so brilliantly understood the toxicity of the American dream is that the effort is what destroys you. Just because you have a path with the effort to be rich or be successful, that doesn't mean that's a good thing. That's what will actually dismantle you is putting it out. And I think we forget that.