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 learned 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 screen and realized 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 sixteen-year-old, I still looked to my mum for the answers.
I was given a series of questions.
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 sweater 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!
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 forty-eight 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 meant everything. 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 booklet 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.3
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 count as reading a book. Pfft, 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 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; 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 7:30 a.m. with breakfast the pill popping began. When the bell went for recess at 11:30 a.m., round two was underway, and when it was home time, I would walk past the bubbler (bubbler is what us Australians call a drinking fountain, but you know that if you live in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, or parts of Wisconsin), 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. As a result, I lost a shit ton of weight, which as a sixteen-year-old girl gains you a shit ton 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.
OK, let me unpack that for you guys.
Vegemite is a spread that you put on toast. It must be applied to toast ONLY after the butter has been applied and has melted so much that the once-crunchy toast now runs the risk of wilting due to the amount of said butter. DO NOT try Vegemite on its own. If you do, we can’t be friends.
Milo is a chocolate crunchy delight that you add to milk, miss the shit out of it, then chug it.
Zooper Doopers are icy poles and come in such flavors as fairy floss, candy, and your childhood. That’s only if you had a good childhood; if not, I’m sorry for being inconsiderate.
Ritalin was a lifesaver 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 t
elling 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, you win some, you lose some. Turns out he didn’t know I had ADD; he was just a prick. I didn’t mind being 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 story line 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 behavioral 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 was needed so much through my life (ohhh, yes, that’s another little nugget to keep you sexy little bookworms reading). If I was 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; instead, I knew that I was a little different, and different is interesting. Different is the tits!4 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 smart-arse, but I could also concentrate long enough to let someone finish what they were saying and then come back with a kick-arse 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 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 epicenter of it. I noticed from a young age that I had the type of personality people either loved or loathed. 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. (Lollies = candy. You know that, right?) This was when I realized 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 and 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 twenty years later and expect the same outcome, then you’re an idiot. I continued on for a few years drug-free. 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 2018 US tour 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, it was 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 curb, 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 bandwagon 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.
3 See www.healthyplace.com/adhd/adhd-children/what-is-add-and-adhd-add-adhd-definition/.
4 Ritalin changed my life at sixteen, because I was given the space by my parents to be a kid for sixteen years. School was fucked for me, but I had sixteen years to be a kid and sort my shit out. Putting kids on drugs because they can’t sit still or because they are a bit naughty and talk back to the teacher can be dangerous. Give them time to properly fuck up and be kids.
The One about My Dad
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.
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 lasagna, I just want to try some.
Dad: Well, I do want a whole lasagna. 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.
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?
Me: Yes, Dad, we get it.
Dad: But the bartender meant he has a drink called a grasshopper.
Me: Yes, Dad.
Dad: But what the bartender didn’t realize is the grasshopper had his own unique name.
Me: DAD! FUCK.
Jackpot!
Neville 1, the Barber daughters 0.
He’s Always Ready First—ALWAYS
When we were kids, if Mum said we were leaving the house at 6:00 p.m., at 5:45 p.m. Dad would be sitting on the couch with the car reversed out of the driveway, air-conditioning running, cooler bag of lemon, lime, and bitters,5 and a nice bottle of white wine for Mum. He would wait patiently for her as she figured out what perfume to wear from the collection he had bought her over the years, and for Olivia and me, who were fighting over whose acid-wash drop-waisted skirt was whose.
When we paraded down the stairs at 6:05 p.m., Dad would always greet us with a compliment. “You look lovely, dear,” he would say to Mum. “You look lovely, girls,” he would say, continuing the compliment. Then we were in the perfect-temperature car and off!
My dad is solid like a rock, always there for anyone and always happy to tell you a dumb joke that you will roll your eyes at, then excuse yourself from the conversation to go to the toilet and record the joke in your phone so you can recite it to your friends later at the pub.
He was an only child and lived in the same house from the day he was born to the day he and Mum moved in together. Dad lived on a dairy farm, and when the local milk carrier would come by at 7:00 a.m. to pick up the milk, he would also pick up Dad and take him to school. The school was so small that on a number of occasions the principal would call Nana Rita to make sure Dad was going to school that day, as no one had turned up and they needed him there to keep the school open. He was four.
As Dad got a bit older, he would ride his bike to and from school along a dirt track every day. Once he got home from school on a Friday afternoon, he wouldn’t see anyone apart from his mum and dad until he was back at school on Monday morning. If a car went past, the family would go onto the balcony to watch the big display. He kept himself busy, no dramas, no complaints.
Challenge Accepted! Page 3
