Neurodiversity
“Oh - you didn't get the smart one, then?”
On ADHD
I didn’t answer. I’ve got what I suspect that person would have called “the distracted one”. Although as anyone with ADHD will tell you, when we’ve gone down the hyperfocus rabbit hole, good luck trying to distract us. You just have to cross your fingers whatever has our attention is something we wanted to work on, not something that caught our eye an hour or two earlier.
So what is ADHD? If you run through the list of symptoms with anyone who is undiagnosed, you will find most people in this distracted age are pretty sure they’ve got it. At least a bit. So rather than try and be diagnostic, here are a couple of ideas of what it feels like from the inside. Ferrari engine, bicycle brakes - this is the somewhat overused one I hear a lot - it describes the way your brain runs and runs and runs, and just won’t stop. But my preferred one is this:
- A neurotypical brain is like an orchestra with a conductor at the front. You talk to the conductor, let him know what you want to do, and he taps his baton, the musicians jump to attention and music ensues.
- In an ADHD brain, the conductor is asleep at the front and the musicians are all having a go at playing what they think they should as best as they can, but it’s all out of time, the wrong volume and in the wrong key. You’re running around in the orchestra trying to convince a few of the musicians to line up and play together for just a few minutes so you can get something done.
Elvanse - my treatment - is a very targeted stimulant. It doesn’t kick like caffeine, in some ways it’s remarkably subtle, but it lands perfectly for me; it wakes the conductor.
The diagnosis
4th April 2025. I lost my Dad. I don’t know the exact time he died. I do know we were allowed to visit outside normal hospital hours by this point, and on this particular day I was heading in with my mum and my sister at about 11am. Parking was hell, and if we could get in before things got really busy, so much the better. I do know we were likely in the car when it happened as he had only just passed away when we arrived. I think we surprised the staff a little as this was earlier than our normal visiting hours and we made it to the door of his room before they caught us. I remember a small picture of a white dove hanging from the door handle to his room. They took us to one side to talk, but it’s one of those moments when you know what you are going to be told before they tell you.
This....... was hard. My Dad and I weren’t particularly close, but as a very good friend of mine pointed out, trauma and grief are different things and I think both were surely in play to different degrees. And honestly, I was tired like I’d never known. Tired from the last few weeks with Dad, tired from months of work on a long, complex deal in the office, and tired from producing and directing a show that had recently closed. I needed a rest and to shut myself away like I have never needed to before. Thankfully, my boss very kindly authorised the break. After the funeral, I stopped. For a whole month. This was the longest break I’d had in over 25 years of working, and I had everything around me under control to the point where I could just shut my door and rest.
Week one......
Week two......
Week three......
It was Tuesday morning of week four, at about 5am. I remember it most distinctly because I’d been up for an hour. The feeling eating away at me was that I only had a few days of this long and generous break left and in truth I was still exhausted. At this point, I’d not been in work for over three weeks, so it couldn’t be work stress. My theatre commitments were all under control, and we were a good month or more past the funeral - I am sure there were still issues there, but even so. Why wasn’t I recovering?! Then something my Mum had said to me a year earlier randomly surfaced. No idea why. She’d asked out of the blue one day - do you think you have ADHD? The thought had never occurred to me, but someone she knew had been diagnosed and there were some similarities in our behaviours. I read a bit more about it and it seemed worth looking into, so (at some expense) booked in to see a psychiatrist the next morning.
This was May.
Treatment
It took until August to get the Elvanse prescribed for reasons I won’t go into, but basically, when you’re asking for what is essentially low-dose speed, it turns out they like to check things.......
I will never forget the first morning I took it. I went down to Richmond to a private chemist to collect it...... and got the meds at 10am as soon as they opened. This was a 20mg dose for week one, and 30mg for weeks two to four before potentially going to the full 50mg in month two. The instructions from the chemists were clear - this stuff can really damage your sleep, so start tomorrow and take it shortly after waking. I nodded, left the shop, walked around the corner just out of sight, and took my first dose - it was 10:15am on Saturday morning.
I’d read every thread on Reddit. Every blog post and website I could find. I’d asked every LLM I could lay my hands on about what to expect and what people’s experiences were, which generally caused it to freak out as I was asking about prescription medication. I jumped on the 65 bus heading home, playing on my phone. I wasn’t sure what I expected really - this was a small dose and I was a big guy. And I’d tried all sorts over the years. Some helpful, some less so. But all fairly......lightweight in terms of how they hit you. The bus worked its way back to Ealing as I played on my phone; it was clear - 20mg - it was the starter dose, it had done nothing, but then what did I really expect........
I got off the bus near my flat and put my phone away. And stopped. Everything was quiet. Like......properly quiet. There was nothing. Nothing going on in my head. Nothing pushing me forwards, just because....... No inner voice, no narrative. Nothing. Just sun - it was warm......and the wind on my skin - I remember that most distinctly - like I could suddenly be the hair on my arm as the wind moved through it. And everything was just very quiet and still......and peaceful.
Was this how everyone else experienced the world?!
I walked the short walk home from the bus stop to my flat, very calmly, very quietly, with no agenda, no fuss, no urgency......just there. And I cried.
