High Stakes Every Day: Ritalin, Trust Cultures, and Relational Sovereignty in Philippine Academic Life with ADHD
Listed in
This article is not in any list yet, why not save it to one of your lists.Abstract
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.
