Taken from Joe Rogan Experience #1264 w/Timothy Denevi:
All through his life but the tragedy of how much effort he put out to if we want to write about trump if you want to go after like taibbi did about the financial institution the way thompson did it was to kind of wager time later for time now and he talks about that he says do you mean by the chemical speed he says doing dexedrine being an alcoholic instead of
Changing his life and his rhythms he said i’m wagering time later for time now i’m using up energy or things that i might have by burning the candles so brightly at this instant because i believe i need to go after these moments and i later i’m not gonna have it but i’m making that gamble i’m putting the card down right now and i think that’s terrifying and i also
Think that he gave us brilliant writing over one of the most remarkable spans in american history because of it it’s a weird tradition and journalism right destroy your body while creating your art and i think there’s a according to my friends with journalists there’s a big problem with adderall today and there’s a lot of people that are using it to write and it’s
Speed and you know you get addicted i mean adderall makes everything in front of you closer have you done it yeah so my first book was called hyper my personal history of adhd so was about being medicated as a child you were medicated yeah i like having the pills forced out my throat like also olya six when i took weirdal in for the first time and i had i had a
Suicidal moment and like six years old wow the first time you were six you wanted to commit suicide i held like a butter knife to my wrist i don’t remember it but yeah i kind of remember it but yeah it was on ritalin which i’ve taken now as an adult and i always feel startled when i’m on it if i ever take it ritalin now why do you like no i i take it to write like
This world is incredibly painful so i take out a role now and i take it – how often – yeah every day i take like 30 milligrams a day really and i take it – i take it to go into a library and this is what david wallace wells was talking about i think like two days ago on the show was how do you read really shitty academic articles where you need the information from
Them i’m not good at that i’m not good at even making like a car reservation you know like a car rental reservation and so this world’s going to be painful no matter what but there’s a functionality that adderall allows and it’s always a wager or thompson writes about is whenever something is given something else is lost you never get anything for free in this
World thompson understood that better than anybody so with him with dexedrine i’m not gonna say thomson was hyperactive i’m not gonna go into that but dexedrine like geiger was like yo you’re breaking down like you’re 26 you have a wife you have a very small child you’re writing right now you want to have your career go forward you’re not doing well he and geiger
Was like i’m a doctor i i had gone through med school you know i did it i’d been overwhelmed like you gauger ran every morning you know he did he did other things but he took dexedrine so he gave it to thompson and for that small period of time it helped i mean for me it’s like i i i’m not a good researcher and maybe i would be now but the only way i can write
About something like heteros thompson where i didn’t know him i have no experience with him is to read everything that he’s ever written or been written about him and then go out and interview people and so effort is my only path forward and when a tyrell helps for me is to take the pain away of that effort but it doesn’t take it away it shifts it around to other
Aspects in other parts of life and i think thompson when he wrote he who makes a beast so himself escapes the pain or gets hurt the pain at bingham man we don’t listen that like he was like this effort is hard he’s like i’m struggling with this effort i’m trying to make these beautiful things you know i always think a james salter fiction writer aspen resident
Wrote beautiful novels he wrote his whole life till he was 90 his last novel was at 87 he wrote a memoir at 76 about being a fighter pilot among other things in the korean war lyric literary he did it his whole life he didn’t he didn’t burn out for a small period of time he’s the antonym to thompson i think when it comes to effort and literary work right um do you
Just take it for work yeah i mean you don’t have like an issue that you need to take it for oh my i mean where we were i think that well whenever we have something like chemical speed whenever we have something like alcohol whenever we have something that’s not like marijuana where at least marijuana cuts your mania you know like whenever we have something else
Like alcohol or adderall we need to ask question are as it is taking the pain away and being productive through those actually hastening your own doom and i think with alcohol is very clear it is without a role it’s more complex i think if you do an amount of time release you can make it work how many americans do that out of the percent that are prescribed you
Know i don’t know 10% 20% like it’s dangerous how often you take time off i’d say maybe one or two weeks of every three or four months and when you do that do you feel weird no i just watch movies you think i just don’t do anything it doesn’t i don’t have any productivity i don’t i don’t want to reduce so the only way you produce is on speed the only way i produced
The way i want to right now is on speed i didn’t start taking it till i’m 2010 dude it’s crazy that we’re talking about this because there’s so many people like you it’s it’s so calming how much of the work that we enjoy today especially literary work is written by people journalistic work is written by people that are on speed that’s not new i mean that’s what
Thompson and burroughs and southern like this has been i believe that our american society the situation i’m in i have created a situation where i have too much work and it’s my fault i should not be trying to be a professor and also go report at community and also at george mason in the creative writing program you know and also then be hosting like people coming
Out and also then like be trying to research something that might be my next thing that’s too much and the way thompson saw dexedrine was that he could make reality match his effort so there was no longer the limit it was the american dream idea it must put out enough effort you’ll get it and that’s why i think he so brilliantly understood the toxicity of the
American dream is that the effort is what destroys you mmm just because you have a path with the effort to be richer be successful that doesn’t mean that’s a good thing that’s what will actually dismantle you you know it’s putting it out and i think we forget that
Transcribed from video
Joe Asks Writer Timothy Denvi About Adderall Use By JRE Clips
