I once took a huge number of No-Doz trying to get the same effect as adderall.

At about the two and a half hour mark I was driving through downtown Chicago toward my home, just openly puking on myself. I’d puked so many times I had finally stopped trying to pull over and open the door. I just needed to get home.

Home meant I could run a hot bath and huddle in it, rocking back and forth. I figured I’d be okay.

Then my fingers started to tingle and go numb. That scared me, so I called 911. Managed to get my boxers back on before the EMTs arrived and hauled me out into an ambulance.

At the hospital, they gave me a gown and a big cup of charcoal smoothie to drink. They wouldn’t release me until I’d had a psych eval. The shrink told me it looked like a suicide attempt. I told her no I was just trying to get high.

I remember saying “You know that feeling when you just have to get high on something?” She looked at me like I had two heads.

For the walk of shame/relief home, they found me a pair of blue scrubs that were comically small. Like they barely covered half my butt.

Discharged me and I walked home through the warm summer night, swerving like a drunk man, pausing every block do so to puke a stream of black sludge into the bushes.

It was fucking ridiculous and it turned me off of caffeine pills.