Living With ADHD
Some ramblings to get my own thoughts and feelings out there as I navigate this chaotic life.
Introduction
Let’s have a chat about ADHD. Most people have heard of it but not everyone knows what it is. Today, I’m going to speak about my own experiences as an individual struggling with it (and believe me, it’s a struggle).
For full context, I am currently unmedicated. My reason for this? I had a bad experience on sertraline where every day blended into the same shade of grey and I lost my passion for writing and art, therefore, in my eyes, I lost my identity. It’s a part of myself that I’m unwilling to risk losing again. Besides, I’ve been unmedicated for thirty-two years — I’m used to this all by now. Honestly, if I had to choose between my hectic, frantic creativity and the ability to lead a ‘normal’ life (as close as my neurodivergent self can get to it), I’d choose the former each and every time. Please note that’s just my opinion based on my own experiences and not backed up by fact in any way, shape or form. What works for some won’t work for others and vice versa. But that’s why I’m hesitant about mental health medications of any kind. Not against them — just hesitant.
ADHD is a weird and wonderful thing. It’s an absolute superpower but it’s also a kryptonite. What do I mean? Well, first off, let’s establish what the condition is.
ADHD stands for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. It’s a mental health condition, most commonly diagnosed in childhood and yet, somehow so many adults are living with the condition undiagnosed and don’t even realise it. It’s my hope that maybe someone will read this, think ‘hey, that sounds like me!’ and realise they’re not the failure they tell themselves they are.
ADHD in adults is characterised by a list of symptoms. The common ones are impulsivity, chronic inability to organise themselves, inability to focus on tasks, restlessness, anger issues, mood swings and inability to handle stress. I’ve chosen these most common ones because they’re the ones I struggle with most — otherwise, this article would go on for ages.
Chronic Inability To Organise Ourselves
This was the bane of my life for so long. I honestly have no idea how I survived high school, let alone college and then university, but somehow I did. For full transparency, I’ve always been an overachiever academically. I’m one of those ‘go big or go home’ type people. If a task is worth doing, it’s worth doing right, but it also comes with second-guessing myself, rereading instructions ten times and then reading them again just to make sure I didn’t miss anything, and of course, the dreaded chronic imposter syndrome.
Imposter syndrome is big. Of course I’m going to doubt myself — why wouldn’t I? On paper, I shouldn’t be able to do half of the things I have achieved. I’ve often berated myself for being lazy when the truth is, I just don’t have the mental energy for basic, everyday tasks. I get it. Trust me, I do. It sounds like an excuse to get out of chores. I know.
Speaking of chores actually… The bane of my existence. There was a time when my fiance thought I was happy to sit in my study like a pig in muck, surrounded by chaos and dirty plates, etc. He later realised it drives me insane. I can’t focus at all when my workspace is messy and yet, the simple act of tidying it up takes an entire day for me. Why? Simple. It’s that ‘go big or go home’ mindset.
You see, I can’t just tidy the desk. No. I need to blitz the entire room. So why can’t I just blitz the room? It’s a monumental task for someone with ADHD. My quick five-minute tidy turns into me going through old sketchbooks and jotters, getting distracted by my old musings, finding old books I want to reread, deciding I might as well deep clean everything while I’m at it. Oh, and those dirty dishes? Well, if I’m heading to the kitchen, I might as well scrub the floors and — wait, why am I in the kitchen again? Huh, that’s weird. Back to the study because now we’re gonna move all the furniture and run out of energy in ten minutes so everything gets left half-done.
Yeah, it’s a nightmare. Can you imagine living like that? I don’t have to imagine. It’s every single day for me.
Another common theme, especially through university, was sobbing over how my peers had their little neat notebooks full of organised notes and Post-Its and highlighted passages and I had absolutely nothing. I wanted that so badly. I wanted to be organised and in control, yet, despite my hectic chaos, I came out with a higher grade. It’s bizarre to me, but I’ve always been the same way.
Yes, I genuinely cried over my peers’ notebooks. I wanted what they had. I wanted that sense of normality that eluded me and still does to this day.
I’ve spent so much money on notebooks and every time, it’s the same script: today is the day! This is it! I’m gonna turn my life around!
It never happens.
Impulsivity
The amount of times I’ve made snap purchases and knowingly left myself unable to pay debts or bills is astounding. Why do I do it? Simple: I’m after that dopamine hit. And as soon as I click ‘process payment, I’m flooded by a wave of guilt and regret. Often, I’ll even forget I’ve ordered something until it arrives in the mail and whoosh — there’s that dopamine rush again. It’s addictive and, at times, destructive. But it’s not limited to spending habits.
In my youth, I was a party animal. If you’ve ever seen the TV show, Skins, then you know what I mean. I was a scene kid — underage drinking was rife, and we had a toxic culture where the meaner and more ‘random’ you were, the cooler you were. I didn’t even have to try at the ‘random’ part. My brain was an incoherent jumble of fifty million open web tabs with unrelated ideas. But, in a sense, the sheer chaos of scene kid culture spoke to me on a spiritual level.
There was a period in my life when I was addicted to attending shows and concerts, where I was drinking almost daily and somehow still told myself I didn’t have a problem. When I was drunk, I had no filter. I was the crazy friend who’d suggest going on midnight hikes through the local woods or gatecrashing other parties. I didn’t care. Genuinely, if a friend had suggested ‘hey, let’s jump off the Kilmarnock viaduct and go swimming!’, I’d have been the first (and probably only) one to get excited and immediately tear off towards the bridge with no regard that such a jump would have most likely been fatal.
I was always chasing that thrill, that one morsel of dopamine, to make myself feel happy. As I grew older, I found that same rush in other things. MMORPGs is a big one. I also find it in my writing. The biggest dopamine hit I ever had was writing the final word of my first novel, My Animus. I can’t even describe the overwhelming emotions I felt in that moment, the relief, the joy and the earth-shattering sadness that it was all done and dusted (well, my first draft, anyway). It was a milestone for me. It felt better than graduating. Why? Because I’d set my own goal and achieved it. I’d seen a project through to the bitter end. Whether the novel is any good is another discussion, but that fact is, I did it.
It was addictive. I wanted more.
Going back to my time as a scene kid, I was pretty popular, both on Myspace and in real life. I’d get recognised at local gigs and it felt good. The problem was, despite my large friend group, I also had a reputation for being ruthless. I’d drop friends as quick as snapping my fingers for the tiniest perceived slight against me. The ironic thing is, most of these ‘slights’ weren’t digs or jabs at all but I let my RSD (rejection sensitivity dysphoria — we’ll get to that later) get the better of me and I ruined so many friendships and relationships over it.
The thrill-seeking part of ADHD is strange because it also comes with heavy anxiety. Sure, we’ll do something stupid in the moment, but then we’re gonna spend the next three weeks worrying ourselves sick over our actions. Was it worth it for that one crumb of happy brain juice? Maybe.
Inability To Focus On Appropriate Things
One of my biggest memories from high school isn’t my academic achievements or how I fell in love with Scottish history or English literature. It’s not even the time I proved my S5 art teacher wrong by getting one of the highest marks in her class (she continually told me I was a failure and would be lucky to scrape a low C — I got a high A). No. It’s none of that.
It’s the time in S2 English where I accidentally upset a teacher and was made a fool of in front of the entire class.
I was obsessed with The Lord of The Rings during this time. The latest movie, The Two Towers, hadn’t been out for long and I’d already seen it in the cinema five times. I’d fallen head over heels with Tolkien’s creativity.
Our regular English teacher was off that day and we had to move into a different classroom, with one of the other teachers taking our class for the day.
This guy had a screensaver of the water horses from the first movie. Even back then, I had a love for CGI that would later lead me to my university course. I couldn’t take my eyes off it.
He noticed this and made me stand up, telling me to recount what he’d just discussed with the class. In my neurodivergent way, I apologised for my eyes being on the computer screen and I repeated his lesson, word for word, because I had been listening. I just couldn’t keep my attention focused on the blackboard. In hindsight, he probably took this as sarcasm, but in my mind, he asked me to repeat it and that’s what I did.
He then asked me if I liked his screensaver. I nodded and got excited, explaining how it was the scene at Loudwater and how I was almost at that part in the book. I was a bookworm as a kid — I loved reading. If I saw a movie that was based on a novel, you bet your bottom dollar I was gonna hunt out that novel and devour it.
Somehow, this upset the teacher greatly, and he made me stand for the rest of the session. It was bizarre then, and it’s even more bizarre to me now, knowing that I had been listening, but that wasn’t enough. So I had to stand with the eyes of every other student upon me, feeling guilty over something as stupid as looking at a screensaver.
In hindsight, I should have just kept my mouth shut, pretended I hadn’t been listening at all, and took the punishment excersise (writing ‘I must pay attention in class’ one hundred times). If I’d done that, I’d have forgotten about the entire incident and yet, more than a decade and a half later, and I still feel ashamed about it.
Moving on to college, I studied HNC and HND Visual Communication. I don’t know why, because I never particularly enjoyed the course, nor did I intend to pursue a career in graphic design. I was a chronic procrastinator, often late for classes, and somehow I came out of both years with a high A pass in the Graded Units.
When I finally got to university, I switched it up a bit and applied for Computer Games (Art & Animation). I got in first try with my art portfolio and sitting crying when I read the acceptance email. It was overwhelming. I was happy I’d got a place, but I was absolutely terrified of what was to come, knowing I’d thrown myself in the deep end and was about to embark on a journey with zero experience of 3D.
Well, somehow I came out the other end with a 1st class Honours degree. How? I have no idea. But it’s a theme in my life — flying by the seat of your pants and somehow making top grades even though you fully expect to fail everything. I don’t know how I do it but remember I mentioned ADHD could be a superpower? I can learn new skills really fast and keep the information.
For presentations and group projects, I’d always take charge. Why? I don’t know. My professors would always comment on how ‘confident’ and ‘focused’ I was during those sessions, but the reality? I was screaming inside and on the verge of another meltdown. Sure, I could go up and talk about my work for ten minutes and be as cool as a cucumber, but the moment I sat back down? Hands shaking. Emotions surging. It’s not the first time I’ve excused myself to go to the bathroom just so I could have a private meltdown in peace. Masking is a beautiful thing, but it’s exhausting.
Even when I write my novels, I make it up as I go along. Sure, I’ll have a loose outline of a plot. I know what happens at point A and I know what happens at point C. But point B? I have no idea. It’s whatever comes out of my fingertips as I write the chapters.
I can’t even stick to routines. The amount of times I’ve downloaded (and later deleted) habit tracking apps or time-management tools is insane. None of them works for me. It’s frustrating, but it’s something I’ve had to learn to accept. I can’t change who I am and I can’t change how I work.
If you give me a task, I might seem lazy — I’ll be sitting spinning idly in my chair while I fidget and get distracted by random news articles on the internet — but you can relax because I’ll have the task done when my hyper-focus kicks in. I did an entire year’s worth of dissertation in two weeks for this exact reason. I can’t control when it happens, but when I get a hyper-focus, I’m unstoppable. Until that happens though? I’m honestly kinda useless.
A hyper-focus is when we finally get into the zone. When the world fades to oblivion and nothing else exists other than our task or our project. It could be something simple, like chores, or it could be something monumental, like working on a novel. For myself, I’ll lose track of time. I’ll forget to eat, sleep, drink water — I’ll forget everything other than what my brain decides to lock onto. I used to scare my group project peers when I’d randomly pull an all-nighter and come in the next day with a month’s worth of work produced in less than six hours. And the kicker? It’s always quality work.
But until that hyper-focus decides to kick in? I can’t focus on anything. I can’t plan. I can’t even remember what I had for dinner the day before. Appointments? What are those? What time am I working tomorrow? Oh, it’s the same time as every single other morning. Where’s my keys at? Wait, my bankcard! Oh god. Disaster. Panic. Meltdown.
So you understand why I say ADHD is both a superpower and a kryptonite. It either works for you or it works against you. There’s no in-between, in my experience.
Restlessness
Gosh, if I had a quid for every time a report card used this exact phrase: ‘would exceed if they just applied themselves’ or ‘too easily distracted’. I’d…well, I’d have a quid for every year of school. And the absolute irony of this being brought up consistently while I was already overachieving…
I’ve always been a fidgeter. I can’t help it. If I’m not bouncing my leg, spinning in my chair or biting my nails and fingers, I’m rubbing my thumbs against my fingertips because it’s soothing. I can’t help it. My body always has to be doing something. I even struggle to fall asleep at night because lying still drives me crazy.
Even when I was a kid, I’d do weird things. One I distinctly remember was, if I had to turn around three hundred and sixty degrees and I turned from my left side, I had to repeat the same motion but turn from my right this time to balance it out. It makes no sense. It was impulsive. If I didn’t do it, I’d get antsy and upset, like the universe was against me now. Even if I’m tapping my fingers, it has to be in sequence. 1–2–3 left. 1–2–3 right. Repeat.
And yet, for someone so restless, I can’t be bothered leaving the house most days. I don’t want to go out and travel. I’m happiest in my little bubble.
Anger Issues and Mood Swings
This is one I only recently even became aware of in myself.
I’ve always been moody. I can’t deny that. But the way I become moody has always felt weird to me. Sometimes it swoops in out of nowhere and there’s no trigger for it but I can feel my mood suddenly drop and darken. The best way I can describe is it like a dark blanket of fog rolling in over the moors. You see it coming (or in this case, feel it), it lands and then it moves on.
When I became aware of this feeling and realised it was a mood swing, I began politely stepping away to calm down for ten minutes. Up until that point, I’d face the storm head on and lash out at anyone unfortunate enough to get caught up in my rain. No one deserves my ire. It’s a me problem. Yet, I’ll be completely honest — I can’t control it either. It’s like trying to wield lightning to become Thor– you’re only gonna hurt yourself.
I get tipped off by the slightest things and I mean the slightest things. Maybe someone speaks over me on Discord because of voice delay or bad connection. Maybe someone gets to the queue faster than I do. Maybe I’m trying to write something and someone keeps trying to talk to me, either face to face or that constant ‘ping’ of Discord notifications is like a wasp buzzing in my ears.
I fully believe this was a factor in my reputation for having a ‘mean streak’ in my youth, a ‘bad temper’ or being a ‘loose cannon’ even though I’d never dream of using those terms to describe myself. I was like a flame. I’d flicker and dance as I spread creativity and joy to my friends, but don’t get too close when the flames lick higher. One false step and that little match will become an inferno.
No one should feel like they’re walking on eggshells with me. It’s something I’m actively trying to work through and, so far, removing myself immediately from a situation when I feel that fog roll in has worked tremendously. I know the signs. I can feel it creep in. I also know that lightning never strikes in the same place twice and the storm will move on. Give me five, ten, fifteen minutes and I’m good. I’m back to ‘me’.
The worst offender for triggering this rage is, as I said, if I’m in the middle of a writing or drawing hyper-focus and someone tears me out of it. To be clear, to take me out of it, you really need to be pestering me constantly or sitting down in the room with me to attempt a conversation. Checking in on me to see if I’ve eaten or stayed hydrated isn’t enough to take me out of it. But once that hyper-focus is gone, that’s it. It’s not coming back. I can’t flip a switch and suddenly I’m back in the zone (I’d be too powerful if that was the case).
I mentioned RSD earlier. Rejection sensitivity dysphoria. It’s an awful thing to live with. Every slight bit of criticism, no matter how constructive, hurts deeply, like a knife wound to the gut. Each time someone goes quiet on me, I assume the worst. My world can feel like it’s ending just from a ghosted message.
It’s funny how I mentioned my friends walking on eggshells earlier when I often feel the exact opposite — that I’m tiptoeing over shards of glass trying to avoid their ire when the reality is, there’s no ire there to begin with.
It’s hard. I can’t cope with my own emotions and when they get too much, cue yet another meltdown. It’s exhausting and it’s not like I don’t know I’m flawed — I’m my own worst critic — but hearing those same thoughts and feelings from other people, especially those closest to me, wounds me deeply in a way that’s almost unhinged, if I’m completely honest.
I had an incident almost a decade ago where someone posted my art on an anonymous forum and pretended to be me, acting incredibly arrogant. They, of course, gave links to all my socials. I was immediately bombarded with death threats, messages telling me to off myself, that I’d never amount to anything, that all my projects were trash and needed to be burned immediately.
I listened. Most other people would have been wounded but would have picked themselves back up after a few weeks or months. I didn’t. I stopped drawing entirely for two years, swearing I’d never pick up a pen again. It wasn’t just my ego that was hurt — it was my soul. I live for creating. Whether it’s in the form of a novel or a comic book or even just some character designs, it’s my passion. To have that suddenly ripped from me was earth-shattering. I never did find out who posted the thread but I assume it was one of the people I called my ‘friends’ back then. A collective of people who, sadly, turned out to be a nest of vipers devouring each other behind the scenes.
I still get nervous when I post anything I’ve made online, no matter if it’s to the public or just to show a close friend. The scars run deep and they’re horrendously difficult to overcome.
Even the simple act of creating my Wattpad account and this Medium account took me weeks of mulling it over, doubting myself, wondering if it was worth the risk of baring my soul to the world. But the more I thought, the more I realised that if even just one person can read my words or my stories and get enjoyment, then it’s worth it. It’s all worth it.
Inability To Handle Stress and Emotional Disregulation
Just the other night, there was a last minute change of plans.
I was told at around 10pm that I was needed to cover a shift at 7am. No one else could save the day apparently, even though I told my boss I’d been drinking because I had four days off in a row. I wasn’t expecting to be called in and certainly not with such short notice.
Cue an absolute meltdown.
Within seconds, I was ranting to my fiance, getting myself worked up to the point I burst into tears, tearing through the apartment to grab a quick shower, angry because I’d been hyper-focused earlier and not had dinner yet and now I had no time and oh gosh, everything was a disaster and my world was ending.
All because of a simple message: Hey, I need you to cover tomorrow. Is that okay?
It’s embarrassing. It really is. And yet, this happens every single time something changes last minute. I had no plans for the morning of that shift. I was merely going to have a long lie, maybe play some Oldschool Runescape, chill, recharge my batteries. And yet, being asked to forsake that sent me into such a frenzied state that I left myself utterly exhausted.
At the time, I was mortified even venting to my friends about it because I was so overwhelmed and sometimes it genuinely feels like no one understands. But they do (to some extent). I have no doubt my friends are sympathetic — if they weren’t, they wouldn’t keep my around.
But in times like this, the darker side of my ADHD rears it’s ugly head. It’s the living nightmare, the constantly feeling overwhelmed by everything, the panic, the constant state of lowkey stress, never being able to fully relax.
I got my shift sorted, by the way. Another member of staff was happy to take it (bless his heart). So in the end, my meltdown was for nothing. As always. I always know they’re for nothing and yet I can’t help them. I know it’ll happen again and again and it’s just something I have to accept about myself and live with.
Closing Thoughts
Sometimes I do wish I could just be ‘normal’ but then I realise that everyone’s normality is entirely different. My fiance, for example, has expressed that he wishes he had a fraction of my ideas. By comparison, I wish I could just focus on chores like he can — he makes it all look so easy.
And sometimes I wonder, if this is the price I have to pay for my creativity, is it worth it? One of the reasons I picked up writing again was because I would get so many random ideas in my head that I’d get headaches if I didn’t try to write some of them down. I used to hate this, but now I’m starting to realise it’s a blessing.
I’m a constant work-in-progress. As a person, I’m undergoing countless iterations and changes, and that’s okay. I’m slowly accepting myself as neurodivergent, and the more I realise I’m not alone, the happier I’m becoming.
If my chaos is the price to pay for my ideas, so be it: it’s a price I’ll gladly keep paying.
