Thread by @HoarseWisperer

With @yashar having opened this conversation with his story, it seems I owe it to the dialogue to add my own.

I was married and in my late twenties when I first self-diagnosed as having ADHD and then added the formality of having that confirmed.

1/

twitter.com/i/moments/1100…

At the time, I was an untreated, high-achieving young professional in a position of authority.

I was your typical adult ADHD case in many ways. A tangle of accommodations and adjustments with areas of outsized success and outsized challenge.

2/

A girlfriend at the time had been assigned to work on a communications campaign for an adult ADHD treatment and had been reviewing a “You might have ADHD if you...” check-list.

She said “Ya know, this sounds like you...”

And she was right, it very much did.

3/

Until then, I had internalized and processed the curious mix of attributes that come with adult ADHD as just “me”.

I could consume vast quantities of information and be laser-focused on a task for hours... and could forget to get my dry cleaning until I was out of shirts.

4/

Computers have a defined “processor speed”. They have a set rate at which they can effectively run.

It’s possible to overwrite the rules though and fool the chips into running faster though.

That’s called “over-clocking” and, for me at least, ADHD is a lot like that.

5/

Just like with computers, it isn’t a debilitation per se. It doesn’t prevent function. It improves function in some ways and harms (or makes more difficult) functioning in other ways.

I’d rather spend six hours learning a new subject than call the eye doctor.

6/

The CEO of JetBlue has long talked about his ADHD. He was the first person I had heard describe it as a mixed bag that he not only didn’t see as stigmatizing; he saw it as core to who he was and many of the things he liked about himself.

It’s a blessed curse of sorts.

7/

I envy people who can do the mundane like moving the laundry from the washer to the dryer without it feeling like rolling a boulder up a hill of variable steepness.

Yet, I’m also happy with and proud of the myriad downstream benefits of a life spent overclocking.

8/

I’m a voracious consumer of information and that consumption has populated a pretty robust mental index (I’d like to think, at least).

I parse new information and complexity quickly.

That’s been professionally helpful.

I’m very much not the guy to plan your wedding.

9/

I can learn the ins and outs of a new industry or issue with less mental effort than it takes to get my car inspected.

At its best, that’s managed down with strategies and adjustments.

At its worst, it’s exhausting. Unchecked, it is draining in ways hard to describe.

10/

The weight of undone things - whether a million small things or a single, massive unstructured thing - sits on my shoulders more heavily than it likely would on yours.

The tasks are not hard. Getting the car out of park can be extremely hard sometimes.

11/

I originally saw no reason to seek diagnosis or support for two reasons:

1) I was high-achieving by conventional measures. A senior person in a large company at a lung age. I wasn’t “debilitated” in the world’s eyes.

2) Stubbornly held beliefs about treatment.

12/

I viewed treatment and medication as the things you do when you cannot function without them...

...when your very maximal effort and determination are still not enough to get you all the way to coping.

13/

I viewed turning to medication for most mental health challenges that way...

...as if things like depression and anxiety were mountains to be surmounted with skill and will.

Then a loved one fell into deep depression and was treated and I grew up a bit.

14/

I realized that they could have likely endured and muddled through and struggled and toiled... and gotten through untreated.

But, why?

There are no bonus points awarded at death for having made our own lives worse and own struggles harder.

15/

Subconsciously, I had wanted to hold on to the idea that the my strengths of guile and coping and will were so impressive, they made me able to overcome my weaknesses.

16/

In reality, I was choosing to make certain rocks bigger than they needed to be to prove things that no one could see to people who weren’t watching.

I was choosing to make aspects of my own life harder for no goddamned reason.

17/

So, I had my ADHD confirmed and was prescribed Adderall.

Oh. My. God. This won’t make much sense to y’all but, lord, it was glorious.

It felt like being in a room with six radios playing and someone finally turned down five of them.

It made the world quiet.

18/

It changed nothing about the things that I proudly think make me, well, me.

It made many of the things I could do without easier.

I wish I had done it easier. My academic and early adult lives would have been so very different.

19/

Most importantly, they would have been easier... and as a result, happier.

I thought I was earning the Force of Will merit badge. I was merely making my own life harder at an expense visible only to me.

20/

Beneath Yashar’s thread, a slew of people have weighed in with their own stories. I saw many of the people I’ve automatically gravitated to on Twitter sharing their own “yup, me too...” confessions.

I’m both tickled by that and unsurprised.

21/

Us ADHD people are good company. We just might show up in clothes we had to wash twice because we forgot to put them in the dryer and had to wash them again.

We can probably hold a conversation on whatever you want though. We’re interesting in our imperfection.

22/

I have a love/hate relationship with my ADHD.

I would not be who I am without it and while I’m intimately acquainted with my flaws, I happen to like who I’ve arrived at in this phase of my life.

23/

Man, the granite boulder of starting things sometimes, that I could do without.

On balance, I think I’d take the ADHD though. I’m not sure who I’d be without it.

24/

We are only stigmatized by things we allow to carry a stigma.

I choose to accept no stigma from ADHD - nor should we accept a stigma of any other mental health challenge.

We were created to be exactly as we are.

And so this is me. And I’m happy with that.

25/25

p.s. forgive the typos. Editing is one of those things I care not to do.

It’s only a boulder if you feel compelled to try to move it. It’s rock art if you’re happy letting it sit where it is.