"Everybody is a little ADHD"
ADHD, and autism, allow us to think outside of the box. To question, to experiment, and stray off the well-trodden path
Do you know the feeling when your to-do list is so long that you don’t really know where to start, and end up not starting at all? When simple things – a visit from a friend, or a broken washing machine – are so distracting that you can’t do any work for days before and after? Your internal monologue is more like a classroom during recess. There’s a million things on your mind, none of them keep your attention for longer than a split second, and a paralysing anxiety is already looming in the back of your head.
In the age of deadlines, hustle culture and social media, I’m pretty sure there are very few among us that don’t know what I’m talking about. At times it's almost ecstatic. Most often it is debilitating. Luckily, for most people, it is an anomaly. Like a headache, or a low-energy day.
I’ve lived with it, day in and day out, for thirty-seven years. Exactly a year ago, I was diagnosed with ADHD.1
This morning, at the suggestion of my doctor, I have experimented with upping the dose of my medication.2
Before googling my prescription, I had no idea that ADHD meds are often used or, should I say, abused, as “study buddies” – performance-enhancing substances which enable students to cram for hours before an exam. This leads to the negative perception of ADHD medication and, subsequently, to the common misbelief that ADHD doesn't exist – or, rather, that it exists and everybody has it. Only, some like to cheat, and they make their life easier by doing drugs.
Popping pills to study is nothing new. Back in the seventies, one of my aunts managed to leave Poland and enrol at a university in the UK. For months, she worked, she studied, she partied – all of that while sleeping four hours a day thanks to “supplements” provided by her flatmate. Years later, when the awareness of illegal drugs in Poland increased, she realised that she had probably been doing amphetamine. Luckily for her, she only stayed in London for two semesters. Back home in Warsaw, the “supplements” were not available.
I guess it would be kind of fun if my meds made me stay up all night. A friend’s friend recently tried her son’s ADHD medication, just to see what would happen. With a pounding heart, she cleaned the whole house until dawn — completely different to what it does for her hyperactive child. Thanks to the prescription, the boy can finally sit through a meal. Attending school is somewhat less of a problem. He will have a shot at getting an education, and living a normal life.
As for me, after taking two pills instead of one this morning, I’m feeling quite serene. I could make a cup of tea and sit in the garden. I could have a nap. But I can also control my impulses, which means I will do neither. I will also not go to the fridge just to see if something has changed there since the last time I opened its doors. I will not fire up Instagram, or YouTube. I won’t call my mum. I won’t chat with the friend who is staying at my house. I won’t start random research into something that could become the subject of my great novel.
Instead, I will just sit here and calmly write my Field Note. #mindblown
ADHD, or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, is a condition most easily explained as a deficiency of dopamine – the neurotransmitter known as the reward and pleasure hormone, and crucial for executive function. Time management, multi-tasking, emotional regulation – all these are largely dependent on the correct levels and responsiveness of the brain to dopamine.
To give a simple example, tasks such as washing the dishes, making and eating food, or taking a shower are all quite challenging for me. As they don’t result in an appropriate release of dopamine, they are simply not on my radar. Without employing some management techniques – such as writing a detailed day plan, which reminds me that, in fact, I do require sustenance – I am likely to ignore them. While many ADHD-ers experience binge eating, I have the opposite. Often I only realise that something’s off when I am faint from hunger.
While it doesn’t seem like much of an inhibition, having to “manually” override my system to stay on top of, well, everything that isn’t at present the object of one of my special interests, is quite taxing. Taking medication allows my brain to find sufficient reward in the mundane. And while it is probably only a zen master who can find actual pleasure in washing the dishes, most brains produce enough dopamine to allow their owners to do the deed. Without meds, my brain’s interest in clean places is zero – and it is just the tip of the iceberg of my problems.
Still, a recent meteoric rise in ADHD diagnoses makes it seem like just a fad, or perhaps a product of our times – especially as we were all trying to manage personal and professional lives without leaving our homes for months at a time, without any certainty about our personal and collective futures. Under such strains, even the most organised and responsible brains were likely to crumble, leaving their owners in a heap of ADHD-like symptoms. But it is, in fact, impossible to say whether the disorder became commonly overdiagnosed, or rather simply exposed during the pandemic. Most likely, it is a combination of both.
Despite the increase in awareness, and even a potential fashion for ADHD (and the meds used to treat it), neurodivergent conditions such as autism and attention deficit disorders are nothing new. We still don’t know what percentage of the population is really affected but it is estimated that up to 10 percent of American children present with some form of ADHD. Much like its comorbid autism, ADHD is a spectrum of traits which makes it especially hard to define, diagnose and treat. The level of support that an affected individual requires can also vastly differ but, the more I think about it, the more I am certain that being neurodivergent is actually incredibly normal.
This is far from saying that “everybody is a little ADHD” – a phrase much hated by most neurodiverse people as it invalidates our experience and demonstrates a glaring lack of education. What I mean is that in every population there must be a substantial proportion of neurodiversity – simply yet another form of diversity which makes any group smarter as a collective. Instead of viewing these conditions as anomalies, or worse yet, diseases, we should think of them as different skill sets.
It is an extrapolation based on approximately zero science, but I often wonder if in pre-modern societies, the neurodiverse individuals were those who became shamans and healers, treading the border between this world and the other. ADHD, and autism, allow us to think outside of the box. To question, to experiment, and stray off the well-trodden path. Many of us may need assistance in our day-to-day lives – therapy, meds, or even disability support – but society must stop framing neurodiversity as a problem and, instead, see it for what it is: a natural and collectively necessary part of the human experience. Yes, we might struggle to regulate our emotions, to feed ourselves, or to keep a nine to five (enter here an infinite list of other tasks that are impossible or near-impossible with ADHD), but we are the creatives, the entrepreneurs, the activists. We often make good friends, good parents, hell, even altogether good people but, in order to thrive, we need society to acknowledge that our needs differ from those of the neurotypical majority.
Most of us don’t make particularly good team players, but nobody lives in a vacuum – without a greater awareness and understanding of ADHD in general, I would not be able to understand it in myself. (I am, in fact, AuDHD: both autistic and ADHD, which make for a rather exciting combo.) Now on the proverbial path of discovery, I can learn how much I want to bend myself to the rules of the neurotypical society, and how much I want to attempt bending the neurotypical society so that it becomes more diverse.
This note was written over two years ago. At the moment, I am so wrapped up in WBF 2025 prep, house improvement (I might one day actually have a functioning kitchen!), and trying to write my novel (and, notice that I wrote “trying”…) that crafting a whole new essay feels a little out of reach. So I hope you enjoy this one, and soon I will be back with more musings on all the things we find fascinating: our weird AF brains, gender, literature & sports. What a combo. I wonder if you need to have ADHD yourself to see any sort of connectivity between my diverse (and not all over the place) interests.
With love,
Zof.
Another footnote. (No comment, ok? As in, comment, but not on the fact that I’m writing a second footnote after having said bye to you in the previous one. I actually couldn’t take the meds because of weird side effects on my cardiovascular system. So, yes, I’m rawdogging it. (And, thank you, gen Z, for making this an acceptable metaphor for things other than what our parents thought it meant.)