“My Life as an Amphibian,” a weekly column in ATTR on my personal development as a communications professional in Silicon Valley. Journey begins in 1999 — a couple of years before the dotcom bust. This is the third installment. Subject: my brief chemical romance.

In my last installment, I wrote about an exceptionally accomplished ADD doctor who plied his trade in Silicon Valley. I call him the Colonel of Silicon Valley — he bore a striking resemblance to the KFC icon — and I may have been his last patient. When I first saw him (in the Spring of 2009), he had already retired, and was only taking calls by special appointment. I got one of those appointments, and it changed my life. But not until I struggled through the hellish experience of following the Colonel’s first orders. The good doctor was not just my Colonel. In a most profound way, he was also my Virgil.

Again, this was 1999, and my stop at the doctor’s office was part of a transition to an entirely new career. I had just closed the final chapter on my second career — the theatre — and I was readying myself for what I was hoping would be a more lucrative — if not happier — life. As I said before, the small-professional theatre business is not really a business at all; it’s more like charity (though there are some amazing exceptions). Practically everyone I was meeting back then was getting work as part of the vast, sprawling marketing machinery that drove the first Internet boom. Some folks I met clearly had talent. Others clearly didn’t. I realized that it couldn’t be that hard to land a decent job, even if I didn’t have any direct relevant experience. But something also told me that a check-up was in order. I had noticed over the years that it was becoming increasingly difficult for me to muster the energy required to get through a normal workday. I was managing my life, but at great physical cost. At some point, a theory emerged: I had ADD. Over the course of several visits to the Colonel, that theory was confirmed.

This is where I left off in the story, and it was just before I acted on the Doctor/Colonel’s instructions to try two medications: one for ADD (Adderall) and one for what the Colonel called “mild depression” (Zoloft). Leaving the cozy comforts of the doctor’s office — with all its benign-yet-medieval contraptions — I realized that the prescription was an A through Z (or alpha through omega) of medical comforts. I wasn’t looking forward to it.

Why? For one thing, I wasn’t a drug person. Like many people of my generation, I had sampled recreational drugs — but less as a lifestyle choice, and more as a rite of passage to growing up. With the exception of alcohol, my body has never taken well to drugs. I suffered so much of my childhood with an unbelievably long hay-fever season — beginning early Spring, ending late Fall — because I hated the loopy feeling induced by antihistamines, and later, when the new class of hay-fever drugs came along, the jumpy mania of pseudoephedrine, or Sudafed. The problem I had with drugs was as much physical as it was psychological. With drugs, I really didn’t feel like myself. Yes, it’s hard being me – there are easier jobs, I am sure — but I prefer it to the alternatives.

But with the Colonel’s clear-eyed optimism, I was ready to make a small change in my life. And he provided encouragement.

“Giovanno … ”

“The thing is, the experience … for my patient … was unusual. Bright lights, everywhere, was out of the ordinary for this guy.”

I couldn’t tell if that was a warning or a promise. But for several days, I thought about this guy, an early visitor to the Colonel’s bunker, imagining him as a pale, withdrawn, techno-geek — perhaps like the folks in the Valley I would soon call my associates — who couldn’t quite get with the recreational drugs when they were fashionable , but who got electric with the new class of pseudo-speed drugs, like Aderrall. The Colonel was quick to explain when he ran down the list of ADD treatments.

“It’s a bit like speed,” he said of Adderall.

I immediately recalled my childhood bout with hay-fever drugs, the one that started with anti-histamines and ended with pseudo-ephredrine. Clue: any drug with the suffix “drine” is speed.

“Why would you want speed for ADD?”

The Colonel smiled. “It helps you focus.”

Well, that sounded good … almost. It was not like I had trouble focusing. In fact, I may have had the opposite problem, of hyper-focusing on specific tasks, making it cumbersome to focus on others. And I was especially intrigued about the “bright lights” comment. It was an odd but perhaps appropriate appeal to someone who was simultaneously diagnosed with ADD and depression.”

“OK,” said I, not convinced, but excited.

***

Over time, I evaluated the drugs on the basis of three experiences.

On my first night with Adderall, my wife and I dined quietly, table for two, windowside at an upper Haight restaurant that was kind of a haunt for us. Wasn’t conscious of it at the time, but I may have selected the location — and the table — to test the Colonel’s “bright lights” theory. My wife may have understood this, too.

“So?,” said she looking past me, across the table, through the window, the corner of Haight and Masonic.

I quickly thought — at one time, this was the recreational drug capital of the world. But my experiment wasn’t recreation.

“Well, truth is, things do look brighter. But I can’t tell if I am really experiencing this, or if I am simply talking myself into it.”

We kept talking. I felt good that she understood. The drug was taking effect, for sure, but the nature of the effect wasn’t clear. Also didn’t help that I had also taken my first dose of Zoloft, the anti-depressant the Colonel described, which presumably came with no bright-lights effects, but which was obstinately designed to make you more cheerful or accepting with whatever situation you were faced — a breakup, a job termination, sitting windowside at a Haight/Ashbury restaurant, tripping on the traffic lights and storefront neon. We kept talking, and drinking, until the moment I felt the Colonel’s insight came true.

“I see them.”

“The bright lights.”

It was like — as the Colonel had attempted to describe — standing before a retail electronics storefront and watching a hundred TV screens simultaneously projecting loudly, colorfully, brightly. But I wasn’t standing before a retail storefront. I was in my neighborhood restaurant, and instead of talking heads bobbing busily inside their screens, I was being assaulted by living heads, people babbling at their dinner tables. It was a novel experience — never had anything like that before. But it was not entirely unfamiliar. As the natural light — the sun — started to do down the city, a limousine pulled up alongside the curb by my window. Couldn’t believe my eyes, but out stepped Mayor Willie Brown, escorted by two — two! — beautifully dressed ladies. He was wearing a fedora. I turned to my wife, confirming what I saw, as the mayor turned the corner, angling toward the front entrance. He would we be dining with us, along with the other bobbing heads. And it was then I understood what was familiar.

In an ancient edition of The National Lampoon — a favorite of mine as a child in the 60s — a writer parodied what it was like to take a trip on LSD — a drug that is wildly visual — at a time when our most prevalent visual icons were commercial. He reported what it was like spending a crazy night with the Pillsbury Doughboy, Mr. Peanut and his entourage. I thought, “I’m spending the evening with Willie Brown,” loving the moment, but knowing something was not quite right.

***

The second experience came soon after. After several days of “bright lights,” I began to slip further and further in the wee hours of the morning, reading, watching TV, browsing the Web (we said that back then). I couldn’t get to sleep.

I set up an appointment with the Colonel.

“Hmm… that’s odd, ” said he. “I prescribed a pediatric dose.”

“Well, perhaps we should cut off the Zoloft, and see how the Adderall takes alone.”

That sounded right. I was enjoying the lights too much to cut them off, despite the late nights and somnambulant days.

***

Which brings me to the third experience.

Shortly after I started with the medication, I took my first job in Silicon Valley. It was at a then-very-hot PR agency, where I was one of ten men in the company of 50 women. It was, to put it mildly, a big culture shock. But with the help of the Big A, I found myself fitting in. But something was not right.

One day, in the midst of some serious Big A boost, I saw myself float above my body as I approached a tall, blonde, politically conservative colleague. Someone I deeply respected, but someone with whom I had almost nothing in common. It might be normal for many people to walk up to a relative stranger and make small talk. But for me — I am squarely on the “I” side of the first quadrant of Myers-Briggs — it’s an unnatural act. And although it was a completely acceptable, socially-positive, team-building gesture, I couldn’t help but judge it as fake. I went back to the Colonel.

“Hmmm.” At least one “m” longer in his prefatory pause.

“Both drugs?

I reminded him that I had cut off the Zoloft. He wore a worried look as he searched for a suggestion. The sun was setting, and the room had a somber glow.

“Guess you can stop. But I suggest you don’t.”

I may have returned a few times after that, but gradually I weaned myself from both the medication and the therapy. For better or worse, I decided it would be better to continue in the Valley as myself , without the aid of anything that the Colonel prescribed. Except of course for the weird memories, the non-medical advice, and the crazy-but-beautiful technology in his office; like the small contraption with the trigger and the colored bulbs — the one that got me so excited about my never-to-happen career as a fighter pilot. I’d spent so much of my life taking a stand against small medical dependencies. Didn’t see how technology might distract and seduce me with other lights.