Читать книгу Challenge Accepted! - Celeste Barber - Страница 9

The One Where I Discovered Ritalin, My Childhood (Not So) Imaginary Friend

I COME FROM A SMALL FAMILY; it’s just the four of us – Mum Kath, Dad Nev, my older sister Olivia and me.

My parents are such a great team. Mum has a short fuse and Dad loves nothing more than ticking her off, in a loving way of course. Mum is really creative: she has run three successful interior design businesses, and at the ripe old age of 62 decided to start up her own soy candle brand, Flame Candles, supplying wholesale candles to shops across the country. My dad is the handiest and cleverest man in the world. He is funny and patient and can fix anything. Between them they have built two houses – Mum designed them and Dad built them – had two daughters, and put a lot of effort into naming their pets as though they were a barren couple and their pets were all they had. When I was born we had a silky terrier, Phoebe Josephine, then we got a schnauzer, Lucinda May, followed by another silky terrier, Bronte Isabella, and Mum is currently treating her second schnauzer, Clover Lee, like a misunderstood genius child.

Liv and I were lucky kids; we never went without. We had our own rooms, we could eat cheese whenever we wanted and, when we were annoying – and our parents sent us outside because we were being too loud – we had enough outdoor area to whip sticks at each other without doing any real damage.

I wasn’t really great at school, it just wasn’t my thing. Every now and then I’d pretend I had slipped into a deep coma, so when my dad came in at exactly 6.55am EVERY. SINGLE. MORNING to get me up for school, I would squeeze my eyes shut and go as stiff as a board, behaviour commonly associated with coma patients, so I wouldn’t have to go to school.

I just kind of hated the idea of it. I struggled academically, I couldn’t concentrate, I was bored easily and I just wanted to do anything other than having to stay still. Turns out I had ADD, and the small private Catholic school on the Far North Coast of New South Wales didn’t have that on their syllabus.

I love making people laugh – at me, with me, whatever. As long as people are laughing because of me, I’m happy. At school, I was the perfect scapegoat for my mates, who liked to stuff around, and also a good victim for teachers to unleash on.

English, PE, Science – basically any subject that didn’t require a microphone – were my least favourite. I remember Science was the most painful.

We had to line up outside before each Science class. All our bags had to be left outside, so we would get our books out and walk in single file past our teacher, who was standing at the door to see if she was happy with how we were standing. If she was satisfied with our posture, we were allowed into the classroom.

I was usually at the back of the line with my two unsuspecting partners in crime, Sean and Doug. They would have their stuff all ready to go, especially Sean – he was a really smart dude who Doug and I would playfully tease to make ourselves feel better.

On this one day, as I’ve always been a clusterfuck, I was probably asking to borrow a pencil from a girl who was already annoyed at me, and not listening to anything being said to me. As we were filing in, Mrs Science put her arm up in front of me. I thought she was looking for a high five, or at very least a fist bump, but I soon realised this wasn’t the case. She was ‘dealing with me’.

‘I’ll just get you to wait outside, Celeste,’ she said, without making eye contact.

‘What for?’ I protested.

‘We could do without the distraction today.’ And with that she closed the door.

The rest of the class had already filed in, including Sean and Doug, and I watched them longingly, much like the way Rose looked at Jack when he slipped off the door in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean at the end of Titanic.

I was so embarrassed, but because this soon became her standard practice, I learnt how to channel the shame.

But really. Distraction? You think not allowing me into the classroom, and leaving me outside with everyone’s bags and a wall of windows in which EVERYONE can see me, would stop me from being distracting? I guess not all scientists are smart.

For a comedian, being sent out of class before it even started due to the risk of being distracting is like Bill Cosby being given free Rohypnol and a private suite at The Plaza. If I had an unobstructed view of Sean and Doug, then shit got really real.

For these kinds of impromptu performances, I had a few standard gags that were my staples. The elevator travelling down and pretending to be pulled offstage were my go-to gags; they always got a laugh. Pretending to be attacked by a bee was another crowd-pleaser. Or, if I could get someone’s attention while Mrs Science had her back turned, then I’d mime asking them a question though the window, and when they responded I’d mime, ‘I can’t hear you.’ It brought the house down.

The main attraction was my disappearing act. When Mrs Science turned around to see what everyone was laughing at, I’d jump on the ground out of sight, buried in everyone’s bags. Eating people’s unattended food was the payoff.

I wasn’t a naughty kid; I was too scared to be naughty. I was just loud – loud and funny – and most of my teachers didn’t dig it. But I was OK with it. If anything it helped me. It helped me work on being a funnier lady, a stronger lady and a more resilient lady.

Being diagnosed with ADD (or maybe it’s ADHD, I can’t really remember, I wasn’t paying attention) was the greatest thing that could have ever happened to me – well, that and getting tickets to Janet Jackson’s ’98 Velvet Rope world tour. (People say Rhythm Nation was her greatest album, but I’m telling you The Velvet Rope had everything: badarse beats, haunting ballads and enough Auto-Tune to turn any of the straightest ladies gay.)

I always had the best intentions. I would organise to study like a boss. My parents had set up a study area for my sister and me, and I’d get my pens out and put them alongside my school books. My calculator was in prime calculator position, and I’d even write up a study timetable, using every colourful pen at my disposal. Red for Maths, pink for Drama, and then I didn’t care about the rest. The timetable would be stuck on the wall directly in front of me.

I’d have a lovely glass of room-temperature water ready to go, and I’d pick up my pen, keen to get my study on, then … that would be the end of it. I’d be distracted by something, anything. The dog walking past, an unfolded towel in the corner of the room, my mum sneezing from the neighbours’ living room, anything would catch my attention and I’d be out of there. This, my friends, is what they call in The Biz ‘classic ADD behaviour’. I had all the best of intentions of sitting and doing work, I was even excited about buying all the stationery and desk accessories, but I just. Couldn’t. Do. It.

Mum and Dad took me to see a specialist when I was 16, in the hope of getting answers. Even though I totally had boobs and had been bleeding monthly for approximately two years, I still had to go to a children’s doctor. The waiting room was full of toys and copies of Spot the Dog. There were posters on the wall featuring the letters of the alphabet, with pictures next to them: A for Apple, B for Butterfly etc.

As I went through the letters, enjoying the distraction from the doctor smell of the waiting room, they all seemed to make sense – yep, K is for Kite and L is for Lion – until I got to Y. Next to the letter there was an unassuming photo of a boat. A blue boat with white bits. The word under it started with Y, but I couldn’t figure out what boat starting with Y was spelt like that. I turned to my dad and asked, ‘What’s a Yak-a-Hat?’

The receptionist looked over her desk with an ‘oh, bless her, this must be a hard struggle for you, Dad, having to deal with such a challenging daughter’ look on her face. Dad looked at me, and through tears of laughter said, ‘It says “Yacht”.’

‘Well, why the hell isn’t it spelt properly?’

‘Good question, Princess, I don’t know.’ My dad’s my biggest fan – well, just behind my mum, who is a close runner-up to my sister.

If the doctor had overheard this conversation it could have saved my parents a lot of money in doctor’s fees, as he would have given me the tablets right there on the spot and I would have been on my merry way, feasting on Ritalin sandwiches.

When I went into the appointment, Mum, Dad and I sat in three chairs that were all in a line. My chair was closest to the doctor, as I was the main event. Here is where I learnt that ADD is hereditary and is commonly passed down to the child by the dad.

Holy shit, didn’t this make sense?! My dad and I are exactly the same! I wondered if this information would upset him. I looked over to him and saw that he was focusing on a fly that was wedged between the glass window and flyscreen, and realised he’d probably be cool with me being the heir to that particular throne.

Mum did most of the talking during the appointment, and I was asked a lot of questions. Even as an outgoing 16-year-old, I still looked to my mum for the answers.

Q: Do you find it hard to concentrate?

A: Can you please ask me again, I wasn’t concentrating.

Q: Do you find it hard to read, write and spell?

A: Know, not raly.

Q: Do you think you have a short attention span and are easily distracted?

A: Sometimes, but— Hey, did you just see that bit of lint fall off your jumper onto the floor?!

Q: Are you constantly in trouble at school for being slow to start work, and for never finishing anything?

A: Not telling.

After the appointment, the doctor asked me to wait outside while he talked to my parents about what steps to take to ‘move forward’. I think he just needed to see what sort of drugs he had on hand, as I needed that shit in my system stat!

So, I sat back out in the waiting room, chilling with five-year-olds who called me ‘lady’, and not really thinking too much about what had just happened. The doctor’s office door was left open; I think he wanted to come off as a cool doctor who appeared approachable while prescribing drugs that keep overweight truck drivers awake for 48 hours. I could hear the entire conversation.

Mum: We don’t want her to change.

Doctor: These drugs won’t change her, they will help her.

Mum: Good. We know she is full on and loud but we like that. Her personality isn’t a problem, it’s her struggling to concentrate that is making things hard for her.

Dad: How long do you think that fly has been trapped in there?

Doctor: Ritalin doesn’t alter personalities, it will just help her focus.

Mum: OK, great, I just want school to be easier for her.

Dad: Do you think the fly has family who are worried about its whereabouts?

Mum: Neville!

Dad: Sorry.

Mum: We will commit to this medication only if it helps her to feel better about being herself.

Doctor: I really think this is the best option for Celeste, it will only have a positive effect.

Mum: OK, great.

Dad: I’m hungry.

I’ll never forget that conversation. As a loud, full-on, average-looking girl, the fact that from a young age my mother was so passionate about me being me was the world.

I also think about that fly.

When we got home I was straight into the drugs, and they were good, they were so good. They kicked in straightaway, which is what you’re looking for in top-shelf gear. I sat on the couch, opened a manual on ‘Living with ADD’ and read a paragraph out loud to my parents. It went a little something like this:

Childhood symptoms of ADHD include poor impulse control, hyperactivity (i.e. cannot sit still), difficulty focusing on immediate tasks, and inability to pay attention to instruction. Children with hyperactivity-impulsivity often have difficulty forming and maintaining friendships and receive poor conduct evaluations due to their inability to behave appropriately in school. These children seem to disregard common social courtesies by repeatedly interrupting conversations and speaking out of turn.*

I looked over and Mum and Dad were crying. It must have been such a validating moment for them as parents, knowing that they had made the right decision, and the results had been immediate.

‘I can’t believe you just read that, you have never sat still long enough to read anything, ever,’ said Mum through tears. Turns out reading the first page of The Baby-Sitters Club then skipping to the very back page and skimming the last paragraph doesn’t clarify as reading a book. Pft, technicalities.

* * *

We went camping every year with a group of family friends. There were six families in total, all of us knowing each other to varying degrees. In one of the families both parents were teachers. They were strict, and I don’t think they really liked kids, which is fair enough. Kids can be shit, especially when they are all together in a classroom and they hate you.

On the camping trip before the diagnosis (sounds like a blockbuster movie: ‘Coming this summer, The Diagnosis, starring Celeste Barber and Winona Ryder’), I was being an arsehole and my poor parents were at their wits’ end.

My mum confided in one of the teacher parents: ‘We are going to get Celeste tested for ADD, I think it will help if we can possibly get her onto some medication.’

To which the teacher parent responded out of the side of her mouth while looking around to see if anyone could hear her: ‘Leave her with me for six months and I’ll get it out of her.’

This broke my mum’s heart. Turns out not only kids can be arseholes, but some teacher parents on camping holidays can fit pretty comfortably into that category too.

After the sweet, sweet Ritalin started flowing through my hungry veins, life got SO much easier. I could actually sit still and concentrate. I had one and a half tablets three times a day and it was a routine that I fucking loved. At 7.30am with breakfast the pill-popping began. When the bell went for recess at 11.30am, round two was under way, and when it was home time, I would walk past the bubbler, throw down the final hit for the day on the way to the bus and, Bob’s your uncle, I’m a fucking scholar.

Ritalin suppresses your appetite like nothing else, so I was never hungry and, as a result, I lost a shit tonne of weight, which as a 16-year-old girl gains you a shit tonne of respect (sad face emoji).

Breakfast would consist of a chocolate milk and a Cheesymite scroll. (Anyone outside of Australia needs to get onto these, they are a bread roll baked with cheese and Vegemite, and coupled with a warm Milo they have the power to make all the bad feelings stop.) Did I mention I have the palate of a seven-year-old?

Lunch was a Zooper Dooper, and then I was done until dinner, when I would pick at whatever my mum had made.

* * *

Ritalin was a life-saver for me; however, I didn’t tell any of my friends, and I only told one teacher when I started taking it. He wasn’t even a teacher of mine; he was the year coordinator and I was happy telling him, because I didn’t ever see him. I didn’t want to be looked at as sick. Different, sure, I like people thinking I’m different; but not less than. I was petrified of anyone knowing I had ADD, let alone having to be on a drug for it. I remember one time thinking the cat was out of the bag when a weird-looking guy who I was friends with said he liked me, so I told him a dick joke to get out of awkwardly telling him I wasn’t interested, and he was so pissed off that he started scream-singing the Jackson Five’s classic ‘ABC, Celeste has got ADD!’ at my face, in front of the surfer boys at school, who all thought it was hilarious. But they also laughed at my dick joke so, you know, swings and roundabouts. Turns out he didn’t know I had ADD, he was just a prick. I didn’t mind been called names but I was sure that everyone knew I had a ‘learning difficulty’. It was exhausting being so secretive about it, so I turned it into my secret superpower. By day (unmedicated) I was just loud, disruptive, quick-witted, sassy and opinionated, but by night (medicated) I was loud, disruptive, quick-witted, sassy, opinionated and could concentrate for longer than 0.05 seconds. Now, if that isn’t a storyline for a new Netflix show, I don’t know what is.

A friend of mine has been advised by teachers that she look into getting her seven-year-old son put on Ritalin. She’s freaking out. The first question I asked was, do these teachers go on camping holidays and generally hate kids? After she assured me they didn’t, I told her that I think seven is way too young to be going on any sort of behavioural medication. Kids are flat out trying to sit still for an entire five-minute episode of Peppa Pig (aren’t we all!) let alone six hours a day listening to the same teacher talk about numbers and letters. Of course they are going to get bored, child! (spoken in RuPaul’s most sassy voice). I’m a little torn with the timeline of my diagnosis – part of me thinks if I were diagnosed earlier, school may have been easier. But then I think if I was on the drug from as young as seven I wouldn’t be as resilient as I am. And that resilience has been needed so much through my life (ohhh, yes, that’s another little nugget to keep you sexy bookworms reading). If I had been medicated from a young age, I would have thought that I was just normal and that everyone was on drugs, or some sort of ‘help me learn’ stimulant. But because I started later than what is considered ‘normal’, I knew I wasn’t normal, I knew that I was a little different and different is interesting. Different is the tits!^* It didn’t stop me from getting into trouble. My mum’s concerns that the drug would change me were unfounded, as I was still a loudmouth and smartarse, but I could also concentrate long enough to let someone finish what they were saying to come back with a kickarse comment, instead of interrupting them.

I thought once I left school I would never get into trouble again, except from my nana, who always had a problem with my posture. But I was wrong: getting into trouble still happens to me in my adult life. I seem to attract it – not the getting-bashed-up or having-drug-dealers-feel-me-up kind of trouble, just if there’s naughty shit going down, or someone is going to make an arse out of themselves in public, I’m usually at the epicentre of it. I noticed from a young age that I have the type of personality that people either love or loathe. I don’t look for it, it just happens.

* * *

In my early twenties I started taking an antidepressant, Zoloft. I can’t remember why I went on it; I think as I had just graduated from drama school and a lot of emoting was involved I thought I was broken and needed to be medicated. I remember feeling a little bit weird mixing Ritalin and Zoloft. I wasn’t just feeling weird about it emotionally and metaphysically but I was literally feeling fucking weird. I was having anxiety attacks and struggling to string thoughts together that didn’t involve negative self-talk coupled with a lot of hysteria.

Api and I had been dating for about six months and we were having a fancy breakfast at a fancy café in Sydney when I had a major panic attack. I felt like the poached eggs were out to get me and the overpriced coffee was sitting on my chest like a pregnant pig. I couldn’t breathe or talk. Api didn’t miss a beat; he took me home, fed me lollies (not a euphemism), and avoided direct eye contact. This was when I realised that Ritalin and Zoloft weren’t the cocktail that I had hoped for. I went to the local shrink located next to an animal rescue – so I trusted him with my life – as my usual shrink had an appointment with her shrink, in Mexico. I told him about my weird feelings, asked him what ‘metaphysical’ meant and he said that I was ‘the least depressed person he had met’ and suggested I come off the drugs and see how I go. I started this process, which is very similar to pushing shit up a hill with a sharp stick. It’s horrible and, at times, hard. Turns out if you try something 20 years later and expect the same outcome then you’re an idiot. I continued on for a few years drug free. Then, when a close friend died, my world fell apart. I decided that I needed to go back on Zoloft and I have been on it ever since. Leading up to my US tour this year I wanted to try to go back on Ritalin because I felt as though my workload was getting on top of me, and I was a grade-A clusterfuck and wanted to get my shit together. I spoke to my doctor about the effect Ritalin has on adults and if it’s OK for adults to take Zoloft as well, or if the drugs still aren’t friends. I was advised that mixing the two still wasn’t an awesome idea. So I tried again to come off Zoloft in preparation for Ritalin, in the hope of falling back into the awesome routine I had established as a teenager.

Turns out that wasn’t to be the case – I know, I’m as shocked as you. Trying to come off antidepressants while planning a US tour, looking after two young boys, moving one teenage stepdaughter out of the house and another one in, writing a book and dealing with dying friends and parent–teacher interviews is dumb dumb dumbity dumb. I thought I was onto it and the bottle of wine I was consuming nightly wasn’t self-medicating; rather, an easy alternative. When I talked to a friend about my new hopes for Ritalin coming back into my life and kicking Zoloft to the kerb, he politely and smartly reminded me that I’m fine as I am, and that I should just continue being a clusterfuck because everyone who knows and loves me has accepted it. That I should just get on the acceptance band wagon and keep on keeping on and stop trying to shake things up.

So that’s what I’m doing. I’m just accepting what I’ve got and getting on with it.

Scholar Celeste Barber mid-Ritalin as a Senior. St Joseph’s College, Banora Point, 1998. No big deal!