High Stakes Every Day: Ritalin, Trust Cultures, and Relational Sovereignty in Philippine Academic Life with ADHD
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This article offers a reflexive autoethnographic account of stimulant-reliant academic life in the Philippines, using daily Ritalin use to explore the institutional, ethical, and relational dynamics of functioning with ADHD in higher education. Mobilizing the notion of “high-stakes scaffolding,” it reflects on how stimulant use enables academic participation while exposing the demands of compliance and normative productivity. Anchored in five conceptual themes, the piece advances a situated ethics of neurodivergent survival—foregrounding care, ambivalence, and relational agency in navigating structurally ableist academic environments.
