Challenge Accepted!: 253 Steps to Becoming an Anti-It Girl. Celeste Barber
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!
Working the room.
@kyliejenner
I’VE NEVER REALLY ASKED MY DAD if he wishes he got an official diagnosis and subsequent medication, because I think I know the answer. ‘I’m fine as I am, Princess. If I can last this long without it, then why would I start now?’ Well played, Neville, well played.
My dad is everybody’s mate; everyone loves a bit of Neville Barber. ‘Nifty’, as he’s affectionately called. If he’s not making you laugh, he’s laughing at you not laughing.
There are three certainties about my dad.
1. He Doesn’t Share Food
Dad: If you want some I’ll buy one for you.
Me: No, Dad, I just want a bite.
Dad: Well, I’ll buy you one and you can bite that.
Me: But I don’t want a whole lasagne, I just want to try some.
Dad: Well, I do want a whole lasagne, that’s why I bought it.
Me: Are you serious – you’re not sharing with me?
Dad: Deadly.
And with that he will set up a barrier around his food, made up of salt and pepper shakers, sauce bottles and glasses, while firmly holding a knife in his hand as a weapon.
2. He’s the Originator of Dad Jokes
Neville Barber’s go-to joke:
A grasshopper walked into a bar and the barman said, ‘Hey we have a drink named after you.’ And the grasshopper said, ‘Really? An Eric?’
And that’s it, that’s the fucking joke. But it’s not about the joke, it’s about the joy he gets in telling it. He doesn’t usually tell jokes to make you laugh, he tells jokes – well, to me and my sister anyway – to annoy you. If he knows he’s onto a winner he will repeat it over and over, breaking the main rule of comedy: ‘Don’t treat your audience like idiots.’
Dad: Get it? The grasshopper’s name is Eric?
Us: Yes, Dad, we get it.
Dad: But the bartender meant he has a drink called a grasshopper.
Us: