Answering the Question – Why Did I Move to China?
They say you have to hit rock bottom.....
CW: Suicidal Ideation; Addiction
“Lori…LORI! What’s going on?” Nick asked, the worry in his voice rising.
I tried to calm myself down but couldn’t. Between ragged breaths I managed to spout out, “Nick. Don’t...know. Can’t…speak. Text.”
I hung up and opened my text messages. It took me six minutes to text: H E P L. I couldn’t even spell the word ‘help’ correctly. Nick called me back immediately.
“Lori, are you in physical danger right now?”
I was moments away from driving to the hospital and checking myself into the psych ward, but rather than tell Nick that, I stammered the word no.
“Listen, I’m coming over tomorrow morning. I will be there at 7 am. I’m coming. I’ll be there. Just lay down. You are okay. Try and sleep,” Nick instructed.
If I had not moved to China, I would have died. There’s no way to sugarcoat that fact, so let’s talk about it. I have given a lot of thought to how I might die over the years. I travel a lot, so dying in a plane or car accident seems statistically probable. If not that, then with the gun epidemic in my home country combined with the radical nature of how I taught sociology at my American university, let’s just say death by school shooting was also plausible. Any doubt I had about that one was quelled by the mass shooting that happened on my old campus in December 2023. Less plausible, but always an option in the back of my mind was the romantically dark notion of pulling a Sylvia Plath. In 2016, I danced with that darkness. It wasn’t the first time we danced together, suicide and I, and it wouldn’t be the last. It was, however, the only time I seriously considered checking myself in on an L2K, or 72-hour emergency admission hold, to prevent myself from actually go through with it.
I contemplated ending my life on a stifling summer night in late July, just one month before the start of my seventh year in graduate school, after a four-day Adderall bender “broke” my brain. I began taking Adderall in my senior year of undergrad and continued on throughout my six years in graduate school. In the beginning, I stole pills from a boyfriend until I was able to get a prescription for my fake ADHD from a doctor who didn’t look too hard at actual symptoms. I popped Addy like Skittles, taking 20 milligram pills by the handful. I didn’t need to taste the rainbow, as Skittles marketing promises because on Adderall, I was the rainbow.
For years, I was fearless. I was brilliant. I was limitless, but over time, the effects started to diminish. There were times when confidence gave way to crippling anxiety and productivity was replaced by paralysis, but not always…not consistently. That’s when I knew the day would come when this cognitive enhancer would no longer cognitively enhance. I felt that day coming for me like a stalker creeping in the shadows; I couldn’t see it, but I knew it was close. With every gulp of the pills, I would mutter, “Not today,” under my breath. Not today became the prayer, the mantra, I said three to five times a day for about a year until that one night in July when the Smart Drug gods simply stopped listening.
I was a fifth-year graduate student when I was asked by an outside member of my dissertation committee to co-edit a book of collected works about organized secularism in the 20th century with him and another professor. I would also be co-authoring two chapters in this anthology. I should have said no, but I didn’t. I was a pathological people pleaser who struggled hard with imposter syndrome, which made saying no impossible. A project like this would set me apart from other Ph.D. candidates. In my mind, I could not turn down this opportunity, but also, I had no fucking idea how to do what was being asked.
Fast forward one year to that fateful night in July 2016. Nearly all of the chapters in our book had been submitted, edited, revised, and resubmitted. Everything was ready to go…almost. Only one chapter remained – the co-authored chapter from me and my committee member. It was my responsibility to draft the chapter, but we were approaching our research from a historical perspective, and as a sociologist, I didn’t know how to write from a historical perspective. To make matters worse, I had exactly six days until the entire book was due to our publisher. I had been awake for four days trying and failing to write, and yet I couldn’t admit any of this to my co-author. I was the first person in my immediate family to graduate high school, go on to get a four-year degree, and have the moxie to attempt graduate school. I lacked the cultural capital that might have allowed me to navigate the terrain of academia with grace and know-how. Instead, I felt like an imposter in a room full of people who belonged, worrying every day that someone would see me for the fake I thought I was; someone who would tap me on the shoulder, tell me the jig is up, and escort me out of the building. So, I tried (and succeeded for the most part) to be a rockstar. My fear took me so far down the rabbit hole that I couldn’t see reality, couldn’t see reason or logic, couldn’t see anything but visions of people I wanted to be telling me that I don’t belong. All I saw was how asking for help would result in everything I had been working for going away. I lived in a state of heightened anxiety, crippling panic, and uninvited self beratement, and since I couldn’t admit defeat, I choked down more pills waiting for the brilliance to kick in. It never did.
The clock on our dingy yellow wall read 10:47 pm. The air conditioner was on its last leg from running day and night in the Las Vegas summer heat, and our sleezy landlord had yet to fulfill his empty promises of having it replaced. I sat at the table in a black camisole and bike shorts that I had been wearing for at least three days. Thick, humid air filled my lungs making it difficult to breathe. Sweat poured down my head and neck, keeping my matted hair wet. My heart raced uncontrollably from the 200 plus milligrams of Adderall I swallowed throughout the day. I couldn’t remember when I had slept last, but the auditory hallucinations hadn’t begun. No hearing music boxes or endless chatter in my ear that wasn’t there. No indication that it was time to stop and sleep. All I could do was stare at the Word document on my computer screen, and with glassy eyes, try to find some logical coherence to the jumbled paragraphs of nonsensical sentences that filled the page.
Every time I tried to type something, my brain went blank and fingers seized. Every thought was like a flash in the pan, there one moment and gone the next. I had many a four day stretch of working without sleep on copious amounts of ADHD stimulants, but never had I lost all ability to think or write. I sat in a pool of sweat and thought: I just need to take a break. Drink some water. Maybe eat a little something. I picked up my cell phone and made a call to my other chapter co-author, Nick, who had struggled with writing our chapter, so much so, that I had to carry his and my load. I was drowning in that moment, gasping for air, yet my first inclination was to pick up the phone and reassure Nick that he wasn’t alone.
Nick answered the phone, “Hey Lori…it’s late. What’s up? Is everything okay?”
“Uh…,” I tried to speak, but nothing came out, “Ni...I…help…can’t…,” I could only speak in broken sentences. This was another first. In all the years I was an Adderall addict, I had never lost the ability to speak. That’s when I realized the day I feared coming was finally here. I burst into tears and hysterics.
I was in a state of what I call cognitive paralysis, but what some experts in the field may better categorize as neurotoxicity. Regardless of the technical name, my no-shit, boots on the ground experience was this: I couldn’t speak in complete sentences, and I couldn’t write by hand or typing. I felt as if my brain had snapped, and I was terrified by both my inability to perform at the level people had become accustomed to and of failure. I couldn’t write the chapter, couldn’t tell my co-author, but what I could do was kill myself. In that moment, death was preferable to failure. I wanted to die. I wanted to die to avoid disappointing all the people who were counting on me. I would have tried to die that night if not for two things that stopped me. First, a practical problem – I didn’t have enough of the right pills to overdose, and I am too much of a coward to inflict actual pain on myself. Second, a moral problem – I couldn’t let Nick find me dead. I wouldn’t do that to my friend.
I got through that night and then the next day with Nick at my house. I was in and out of consciousness for 14 hours while Nick tried to write for me. He wasn’t part of this research, so as valiant as his effort was, it was unsuccessful. The following day I made the call to my co-author and lied. I told him I was in the hospital unexpectedly and would not be able to finish the chapter. I sent him the mess that I had “written,” and never answered another email from him again. Later that same day, I got in my car and disappeared to a trusted friend’s house in California. I asked this person if it would be okay to take a leave of absence from my graduate program. I wasn’t so much asking for permission as I was seeking external validation. If it hadn’t become clear yet, that is what was at the core of my Adderall addiction – the desperate need for external validation from people who mattered and those who did not. I grew up as the stepchild of a narcissistic pedophile, regarded as a problem by a biological father who didn’t stick around, by a stepfather who feigned innocence, and by a mother who wouldn’t leave her and her daughter’s abuser. I never learned how to love myself, never learned how to comfort myself, and never developed a secure attachment or stable identity. The overarching lesson I did learn in childhood was in order to get love, I needed to be perfect, like “100 percent on my spelling test” perfect because a test score of 98 percent resulted in me being sent to my room until I could figure out why I missed two points. For majority of my life, I was over reliant on the opinions of others to tell me who and how I was, and since I wanted to be good and accepted, I had to be perfect. Adderall gave me the power to fly as close to perfection as humanly possible, that is, until it didn’t.
To my question about whether or not I should take time off from my graduate program, my friend took one look at me and said, “If you don’t, you aren’t going to make it out alive.” Little did he know I almost didn’t. Little did he know just three days prior, alive is almost something I was not. I drove back to Vegas, submitted my leave of absence paperwork, and packed up my office not knowing what in the hell I would do next.
It was 6:45 am on a Tuesday morning about four weeks after a friend helped me move to Shanghai. The monsoon rain sounded like gun shots pelting the top of my grey umbrella. I was wearing short bright blue rainboots with a silver glitter bow. I had never owned rainboots in America, but my friend told me I would need them in China and helped me buy a pair on Taobao. We live in the very back of the lane in something called a “lane house,” amid a tightknit Chinese community. We were, of course, the only foreigners in that community. Everything about this place was strange, from the hanging laundry and lack of ovens to the scooters everywhere and cars parked on sidewalks. Yet I couldn’t explain how, in this strangeness, I felt at home maybe for the first time in my life. I walked in that monsoon rain to the entrance of the lane community and stopped. I turned my head to the left. Pause. I turned my head to the right. Pause. Then I thought: You’re actually doing this. You’ve just done something that most people you know never would do…never could do. You live in fucking CHINA! I carried those thoughts and a grin on my face with me, as I walked in my not high enough rainboots (rookie Taobao mistake) all the way to the South Shaanxi metro station to catch the subway to work.
There were a lot of firsts for me in China and a lot of lessons learned. In China, I learned how to validate myself instead of depending on others for accolades. I learned how to live alone. I learned how to save money. I took my first solo trip, walked away from a relationship or two that didn’t serve me, and learned to how end beautiful friendships when important people moved away. In China, I learned that most things are temporary and flexible. After seven years in Shanghai, I even learned that I could move to another Chinese city on my own, do all the necessary things like secure employment and a home, and surround myself with great people to do life with. In China, I learned that #Adulting is something I can actually do by myself and reasonably well. Through living here, I have come to accept that I am perfectly imperfect, made a choice to embrace my flaws, and learned that it’s okay to not be okay all the time. Living as an expat in China has given me the strength and assuredness to say, “No, thank you,” when suicide shows up with its dance card looking for partner. So, why did I move to China? I moved to China because I had to. My options were China or the trundle bed in my mother’s studio apartment. However, I stay in China because I choose to. China saved my life, and for that, I am forever grateful. 谢谢中国！
I just want to give you a silent hug.
This was heartbreaking and then inspiring.