The Adderall Diaries is phenomenal. With jittery finesse and a reformed tweaker's eye for detail, Stephen Elliott captures the terrifying, hilarious, heart-strangling reality of a life whose scorched-earth physical and psycho-emotional dimensions no one could have invented - they absolutely had to be lived. By all rights, the author should either be dead or chewing his fingers in a bus station. Instead, he may well have written the memoir of an entire generation.

Half the reason I turned into a writer is you didn't have to show up anywhere. You could work naked.

I kept getting high to kill my shame at the fact that I kept getting high.

All my life I'd gone for women who were a little off.

I've always wanted to be a guy with a rec room.

I always tell myself, when I remember the non-stop self-generated hell party that used to be my life, I wouldn't be here if I didn't go there.

It's not like I was an alkie or anything. Alcohol is for cleaning needles