Adult ADHD can devastate your life and the lives of those around you. Still, It amazes me how much venom and vitriol people regularly churn out against the very notion of ADHD. Comments I’ve heard recently include:
ADHD was invented by the working classes to avoid responsibility, sponge benefits, and get high;
ADHD was invented through the collusion of GPs with American pharmaceutical corporations;
ADHD is just another word for bad parenting;
Or – the mildest of them all, strangely – ADHD doesn’t exist.
ADHD is real, believe me. I speak from personal experience.
At the time I got diagnosed, in 2016, the house was a mess. I could barely see the kitchen floor for all the clothes that had gathered there, given my inability to put clothes away after they came out of the tumble drier. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to. The mess was simply invisible to me. It was the same for the kitchen benches. Mess everywhere, driving Emma crazy, but I was oblivious. And Emma, being disabled, wasn’t physically able to cover for me. I lost count of the times I found myself in the kitchen staring at the sink, wondering what I was there for. I discovered after receiving my ADHD diagnosis that Emma had been worried I was suffering from Early-Onset Alzheimer’s. I had worried about that, too.
I had dozens of projects on the go, all destined to change the world, so I thought, and, for whatever reason I couldn’t fathom, I hadn’t managed to finish one of them. Lots of hard work, lots of sweat and tears, but nothing was going anywhere. This is a bit of a problem when you’re self-employed. No money was coming in. We were in a crisis.
It eventually all came to a head.
On the Monday I didn’t head home from the office until 6pm, not really aware of the time at all. I was doing research and following up on leads and clues, jumping from book to book, and had been doing this all day. This wouldn’t have been too much of a problem, except I’m the only one in the house who drives, and I was supposed to have picked the kids up from nursery at 4pm. I had no awareness of this until I arrived home to find Emma at the door, almost in tears, on the point of calling the police and the hospitals. Apparently she had been calling my mobile phone for hours, and I hadn’t even noticed.
On the Tuesday I arrived back with the kids from nursery. Emma was in the car with me this time, just to be sure. I turned off the engine. Emma opened her door. The car lurched forward and slammed Emma’s shoulder as I quickly lunged to put on the handbrake, which I had forgotten. Emma hurt her shoulder, which would be bad enough for anyone, but with her particular disabilities it was an injury that would take 3 weeks to heal, under normal circumstances.
But circumstances were anything but normal. Exactly the same thing happened on the Wednesday. “Not again, Daddy!” shouts Aodan from the back, aged 3. Emma’s shoulder was now in a mess. It would take more than a month to heal.
I had been a ‘contender’. I had worked at an international level as a specialist in music and copyright, lectured at the University of California, the University of Sheffield, Ulster University, Loughborough University. I had worked at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC. I had given guest lectures at Harvard, UCLA, the University of Chicago, Indiana University. I had given keynote speeches around the world on leadership, culture change, and the transformation of organisational systems. I’d been put in charge of an international conference. I was a qualified personal and business coach. A poet. A songwriter. I’d secured capital infrastructure funding for community arts projects.
Now, though, my confidence was at an all-time low. I couldn’t make a cup of tea or tidy a floor. I couldn’t remember to pick up the kids from nursery. I couldn’t finish any project I started. I sometimes couldn’t boil water without burning the pot, or make toast without burning the toast. Or remember to apply for a job. And now I had hurt my wife. And might have hurt my kids.
As my wife and I sat down together that evening, the kids sound asleep in bed, Emma implored me to get help, expecting me to resist. I didn’t. Enough was enough. I needed help. So we booked an appointment privately, whatever it cost us, and got a diagnosis.
I was fortunate; I responded well to medication. I sat down at the dinner table for the whole meal on the first night, something my wife could not remember me doing before. I got my memory back. I finished many of the projects I had been sitting on for years, releasing 4 albums of songs, an album of electronic composition, and a book of poetry, all in the post-diagnosis period.
I was well enough to come off my medication in early 2024.
I’m keen to spread the word that ADHD is real, it can destroy lives, and it can be treated. I work with people who have an ADHD diagnosis, or with people without a diagnosis who think they might merit one.
ADHD is not who we are. But it is where we sometimes get stuck. We can also get unstuck. That’s what I help people to do.
If you’d like to arrange a coaching session with me, whether in-person or online via Zoom, please contact me by phone (028-91257950) or email (info@anthonymccann.com) and I will get back to you as soon as I can.