When they prescribed me Adderall again, I wasn’t addicted anymore. That part of my life was over, or at least it felt that way. I didn’t think about how I’d quit or what it had taken, because I wasn’t ready to pick that apart yet. But taking it again forced me into a question I couldn’t avoid: how do you reconcile needing something you were once addicted to.

Life without it had been worse than I wanted to admit. I could go to work, have conversations, finish some things, but never without friction. Focus slipped away constantly. Everything felt slower. It was the kind of constant, low-grade difficulty that wears you down. When I went back on Adderall, it wasn’t a dramatic choice. It was quiet, deliberate, and I decided from the start I would take it exactly as prescribed. I have kept that promise ever since.

My brother never got that chance. His doctors refused to prescribe him Adderall because of his history with opioids, as if they were the same drug or the same danger. He needed it. If we’re being honest, he needed the opioids too, for his pain. It was the same problem I had faced, needing the thing you were once addicted to, except in his case he was denied.

That denial sent him looking for something else. He found propylhexedrine, an over-the-counter stimulant that is harsh, dirty, and incredibly dangerous. He took it for years. In 2016, at twenty-eight years old, his heart gave out.

I still have my prescription. I still take it every day. And I’m still here.