How I Became an Impulsive Imaginer
In short, I was born this way. I have ADHD, but a lot of people would never guess it because I seem to lack the “Hyperactivity” built into the disorder's name. However, the truth is that ADHD exists on a spectrum, and I have the predominantly inattentive type.
It’s taken me literally decades to come to this (gradual) realization, to finally get diagnosed and begin treatment. In the months since my diagnosis, I’ve been constantly questioning whether it's even worth sharing. After all, everyone has their own problems, and the last thing I want is to bother others with mine. But recently I’ve been hearing a lot of troubling ideas expressed regarding adult diagnosis of ADHD[1] in particular, and after a lifetime of making myself smaller in order to avoid offending the sensibilities of so many sorts of people who seek to enforce their limited ideas of normalcy through ostracism and shame, I’ve decided I had better tell this part of my story to increase the visibility of a nearly invisible sort of neurodivergence that has profoundly affected my life (for better and worse).
If you find my tone striking, know these words that seem polemical appear so because of passion, because of a yearning to come to terms with the many reasons my disorder went undetected for so long, to share those reasons with people I have known and who have known me (including some I have wronged because of unrelated flaws), not to make excuses but perhaps to lay a groundwork for making amends, or for reconnecting with those I’ve disconnected from or failed to connect with in the first place, whether by accident or circumstance. Failing that, then at least I will offer my perspective in the hopes that it might ripple outwards and do some good, however small. Here it goes.
Before now I’ve been misdiagnosed by various doctors and mental health experts who–to be fair–were doing the best they could with the limited information they had. But they ended up treating me for symptoms (depression, anxiety,[2] narcolepsy, irritable bowel, etc.) instead of for the underlying cause, my ADHD, or indeed for other disorders entirely.[3] I’m not someone who mistrusts doctors or science, generally speaking, and I don’t blame anyone for failing to recognize this trait in me, because it has taken me decades to recognize within myself, and the many signs I displayed became clear only in retrospect.
To begin with, my early education was riddled with discipline, which quashed my outwardly hyperactive tendencies by compelling me to turn them inward. I had a kindergarten teacher who punished me for humming to focus while I worked, for stomping around joyfully in a new pair of boots that my mom bought me, for giggling during naptime, and probably for other things I can’t remember. But I do remember I was one of those kids who got a ‘red light’ on the behavior chart more often than not–I remember so clearly the public shame of it all–and I remember that my repeated punishment was my being made to sit alone in a room without other children in order to “think about what I had done,” which of course I failed to do because I could not comprehend my having done anything wrong.
Eventually I was referred to a child psychiatrist, who diagnosed me with depression because of my parents’ then recent divorce. He accordingly prescribed me an SSRI-class antidepressant, which certainly made me more docile and so seemed to ‘solve’ my behavior problems in class. But it did so by fostering a deep-seated apathy within me. And because I was an obedient and trusting child, who wanted more than anything to be ‘good,’ I took the medicine–the wrong medicine–and I kept taking it (under various brand names, in increasing doses) almost the whole time my young brain was developing, until I was 22 years old.[4]
Apart from public school I was made to sit in church for three hours every Sunday, where I was repeatedly reminded of the importance of being ‘reverent,’ which was in Mormon parlance essentially a synonym for still and quiet. On the weekends when I would visit my dad (who, in large part because of his own issues with substance abuse and untreated/mistreated ADHD, would spend most of the time during those visits asleep), I would often be left to entertain myself with my own thoughts, so I made a habit of daydreaming (which I still do frequently, as much as I can get away with).
I had difficulty making or keeping friends, not because I didn’t want to or try to but because I would interrupt people when they were talking or, more often, fail to listen fully. I’d start to chase or express some thought tangentially related to whatever they were saying. Or out of excitement I’d jump immediately to recounting some episode in my own experience in an attempt to relate (but of course this came off as one-upping). Even when I found the conversational thread, I would often fail to find the natural flow of words in the moment of speech, so I’d speak in incomplete sentences or express vague thoughts (which also gave people the impression that I hadn’t been listening).
I started to believe I was incapable of being ‘enough’ no matter how hard I tried. I could see and understand that my failures to connect upset people (in addition to all the times they would tell me directly), so I learned it was more socially acceptable in group settings to keep most of my thoughts and impressions to myself.[5] Over the years this led to people calling me ‘shy’ when I was really just quiet, calling me ‘cold’ when my stiffness was a forced habit I learned to conceal my real and–I was led to believe–‘unacceptable’ sensitivity,[6] telling me to get tested for autism, accusing me of thinking I’m better than others (which couldn’t be further from the truth), trying in any number of ways to ‘figure me out,’ and telling me I was an introvert though I truly prefer spending my time with others to spending it alone, in spite of all my difficulties.
Nevertheless, I sought solitude. I did this because I have always needed near-silence to work effectively (don’t think I’ve ever successfully sent an email in an airport or a crowded coffee shop), in order to spare myself the pain of connecting with people only in fits and starts, and to spare others the disappointment of sharing without being fully attended to. But even in my alone time I yearned for connection, and I dealt with this yearning in a lot of ways, some healthy (reading and writing poetry, seeing movies and plays, gardening) but many unhealthy. My efforts to escape from the endless chaos in my head, to escape from the persistent disappointment in myself for not seeing most of my many goals–always changing, ever emergent–through to completion, led me to years of substance abuse.
At various points over the past decade and a half I’ve run to alcohol, cannabis, nicotine, research chemicals, pornography, sex with strangers, binge eating, energy drinks, reckless driving, social media, television, online gaming, mobile gaming, shopping, even (unrequited) love. But I now see all of these attempts to escape myself as what they really were: failed attempts to cope with the daily, habitual self-denial I learned to practice from a young age.
I take responsibility for these failings, for the (now obvious) fact that every addiction has exacerbated my problems with attention, memory, time management, and connecting with others. I lied to myself in many ways, excusing my substance abuse as therapeutic and/or necessary to fit in. Worse, I have lied to, stolen from, and actively ignored people dear to me in support of my addictions. I see those wrongs as wrongs, choices I made that were harmful, inconsiderate, and inexcusable.
It almost feels wrong even to describe my struggles with addiction in an essay I’ve intended to be about my adult diagnosis with ADHD, wrong because I worry that no amount of ‘responsibility’s or ‘inexcusable’s will keep my sharing from seeming like a cop out. But I’ve come to know, after many failed attempts, that the only way to maintain my sobriety is to expect total honesty from myself, and the only way to be totally honest with myself about myself is to look at my life holistically, trying to understand my trajectory from a bird’s eyes view instead of burdened under the emotionalized weight of momentary problems. This is what sobriety offers me, and my diagnosis would not have been possible without it.
Now, you might be saying to yourself, “Everybody has social anxiety. Lots of people struggle with addiction. Who doesn’t have trouble finding the right words from time to time?” I grant these are human problems that, in isolated incidents, need not signify dysfunction. And frankly it would be exhausting to try to convince nonbelievers of the existence of a disorder that has been proven time and time again in the constantly growing body of scientific literature about ADHD.[7] Instead, let me just say that I have tried everything in my power to prevent a diagnosis I didn’t understand and therefore didn’t want. I’ve tried talk therapy, many different pharmaceuticals,[8] coaching, meditation, fasting, intense exercise, supplements (b12, omega 3, choline, taurine, magnesium, etc.), nearly suffocating scheduling, the pomodoro method, alternative sleep cycles, every productivity app known to man, self-help books, and more.[9] Even so, I have had several doctors doubt and/or deny this diagnosis because I’ve done well in school,[10] because I wasn’t diagnosed as a child,[11] or because (I suppose) they thought I was greedy for wanting more out of a life that has, admittedly, provided me with a preponderance of opportunity.[12]
But I have lost much, which I have chosen not to dwell on but must mention here. I lost most of my relationship with my father (which I am only now able to begin rebuilding because of the new understanding my diagnosis allows me). I lost or otherwise failed at countless other would-be friendships because I was perceived as careless, because I either never remembered or never let myself reach out. I lost so much time following pursuits based on the wants of others rather than my own passions, not believing I could seriously[13] write poetry until seven years after I began to love doing it, not acting at all until nine years after I was convinced not to audition for what might have been my first musical. I have lost objects of great emotional importance to me like my first wedding ring (and I have lost the second many times besides, though not yet permanently). I have lost my wallet so often that I have never had a debit card reach its expiration date. I have lost my phone so often that I have never finished a phone contract before I needed a new one. And on one occasion I lost my phone and wallet in one fell swoop in a foreign country, which meant I had to beg strangers (in Spanish) for bus fare to get home.
I have forgotten dates, deadlines, birthdays, and promises. I have almost lost a job for forgetting to lock the building as I left. I have not kept ANY job longer than 18 months, and no full-time job even 6 months. I have failed to finish most things I started–unless there were significant external pressures involved–including two plays, a few short scripts, several (aimless) epic poems, several short stories, a novel, a puppet musical, a five-part murder ballad, a rap album (yes, really), an album of Cavalier poems set to music, a year-long timelapse video of my childhood home,[14] and so on. These weren’t just ideas that I grew tired of (I still haven’t), they were real projects that I really did as well as I could and for as long as I could until whatever else (usually trivial) got in the way. Needless to say, I’ve grown very tired of hearing from relatives and mentors (however well-intentioned) that I can do anything I set my mind to because, while I never run out of projects I want to set my mind to, this also means I almost always end up setting my mind to some new project before the incomplete one I was working on gets finished.
So I won’t apologize for taking medication that finally helps me be a more functional, more generous, more fulfilled and more at peace version of myself. The medicine doesn’t make me high (believe me, I know what that feels like) and it doesn’t turn me into some superhuman robot, even though it is (and, to treat ADHD, must be) performance-enhancing.[15] Treating my ADHD allows me to perform many necessary tasks like organizing my email,[16] keeping up with daily hygiene and household chores, sending out poems for publication,[17] or reading a book and remembering where I left off after my cat inevitably distracts me. Most importantly, medication allows me to communicate in real time[18] with people I care about and really take in what they’re saying, to notice body language and/or little facial expressions that indicate how they feel, to validate their feelings without getting hung up on my words (or lost in my thoughts) or looking away toward the nearest irrelevant noise or twinkling light. Even with medication, I have a lot of work to do in terms of self-acceptance, in terms of building structure into my life that works for me, and in terms of learning to share my personality, ideas, and feelings with others in ways that are thoughtful and considerate. I fully intend to continue along that path, and I believe that I can because of the hard-won self-knowledge that culminated in my ADHD diagnosis.
For whatever reason, no one seems to doubt adults diagnosed with other mental health disorders, even though children can be and are diagnosed with those same disorders. ↩︎
There is an abundance of research that shows depression and anxiety (while they absolutely can exist on their own) are strongly associated with untreated ADHD. Anecdotally, the first thing I noticed after starting medication is that the incessant anxiety I have struggled to deal with for as long as I can remember disappeared almost completely. ↩︎
It would take another, longer essay for me to explain my many qualms with psychiatry as it is currently practiced in this country (where there are, I feel confident in guessing, more practitioners than in any other). Suffice it to say that misdiagnosis is not uncommon, and neither is mistreatment. I would never blame or shame anyone for seeking treatment, as I’ve clearly done myself. However, I might have gone about it differently had I appreciated the risks, which of course I could not as a six-year-old. ↩︎
Not so coincidentally, I stopped taking the SSRIs shortly after receiving my first adderall prescription (which I later stopped taking because the stigma against stimulant medications is so strong that I managed to convince myself that I didn’t suffer from a disorder which I do, in fact, have). To each their own, but the most depressed periods of my life happened on SSRIs, and my most memorable joyous moments have happened without them. ↩︎
I stuck to this habit so rigidly, in fact, that every long-term romantic partner I’ve had–including my wife– questioned at some point early on whether I even liked them or not. ↩︎
On one occasion I was even called “phlegmatic” (not wrong at the time, and funny in retrospect). ↩︎
One of the most supported findings regarding ADHD is its genetic heritability. It used to be split into two disorders: ADD and ADHD. My father was diagnosed with ADD as an adult back in the early '90s, though I remained ignorant of that important fact throughout my upbringing. ↩︎
If you name any drug prescribed for mental health, chances are I’ve taken it or one like it. ↩︎
I feel compelled to acknowledge that many of these efforts were helpful, particularly proper nutrition and regular exercise, as they would be to anyone who tries them. However, they did not and cannot cure a condition whose basis is neurological. ↩︎
Never mind that good schools provide immense structure by telling students what to read/do/think about and when, and they provide extrinsic motivation in a number of ways (the least of which is grading). I learned to tie my shoes because I wanted the piece of gum I knew I would earn. I learned my multiplication tables because I was promised a pizza party. I practiced piano because my teacher gave us points for practice which we could later spend on rewards, and I stopped playing piano as soon as she retired. ↩︎
Never mind the aforementioned stigma surrounding this disorder and the medication used to treat it, along with all the other factors that contribute to missing diagnosis. ↩︎
Never mind how much I have squandered or failed to recognize in the first place. And never mind how many of these opportunities directly relate to the immense support I received from other people along the way, primarily my mother, who I regard as nothing short of a superhero. ↩︎
Not the right word: “Businessmen are serious. Movie producers are serious. Everybody’s serious but me.” ↩︎
That lasted about 20 days, and only so long because I was very excited by the idea. ↩︎
A better term might be performance-permitting. Ask yourself: if you saw someone crossing a street with a broken foot, would you tell them their crutches were performance-enhancing? ↩︎
I had over 10,000 (mostly unlabeled and unread) emails in my inbox when I began the task, which seemed totally insurmountable to my unmedicated brain. And I still have 15,000 unsorted and unedited photos or videos (which doesn’t include the many I forgot to upload or otherwise lost along the way), but those will have to wait. ↩︎
A process that is painfully less engaging than writing them ↩︎
I make this distinction because I have long preferred written correspondence (obviously), both because of its tendency to stick around, providing a useful artifact for my faulty memory, and because it allows me to discover and divulge my thoughts from phrase to phrase, creating a sense of flow I struggle to attain in face-to-face conversation. I’ll also say here that I recognize how annoying footnotes are to many people, but I hope they serve in this essay to destroy any illusion that this work might exist/occur as one utterance, because the reality is that writing it has taken me many visits on many days. ↩︎