We humans are neophiles; we’re drawn to whatever’s new. This anxious curiosity may have saved our lives when we lived as hunter-gatherers, but in the digital age, it’s mostly just exploited to keep us checking our phones. Even the most …
How ADHD became a luxury label
Josh’s mum finds it hard to understand him. At school, her son is puppyish, friendly: a 12-year-old who still has the excitability of a primary school child rather than the jadedness of other Year Eights. But at home, his mum …
Adderall is not an identity
It’s 2am here in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and I’ve just finished writing 7,500 words of corporate marketing copy. I then turn my attention to this piece. But my attention is glitching. So I do something I haven’t done since I took …
Who decides if you’re mentally ill?
Abby walks into my office, sits down, and tells me she has been struggling with “sex addiction”. When I ask about this, she tells me of sleeping with a handful of people in the past few months at college. I …
Mental illness doesn’t make you special
Marianne Eloise wants the world to know that she does not “have a regular brain at all”. That’s her declaration, on the very first page of her new memoir, Obsessive, Intrusive, Magical Thinking. The book catalogues her experience of a …