ADHD: A Writer’s Curse or Advantage?

It’s five-thirty in the morning and I’m drinking black coffee (no sugar) to slow the racing thoughts in my head. I’m sitting at my writing desk, cluttered with my laptop, books, and journals filled with my hard-to-read-scrawl. My foot taps the floor like a compulsion. I squirm in my seat. Energy charges through my veins like static electricity. I arch my back. As the caffeine spreads through my brain, my excess energy decreases and my ability to focus increases. My foot stills. The distracting thoughts in my head fade. I concentrate on my screen, reading paragraphs I wrote yesterday, spotting awkward sentences and words that don’t fit. Finally, I am hyper-focused. Finally, everything around me blurs to a distant hum. Finally, I hunch over my keyboard, revise, and write.

(Dyslexia Is a Writer’s Superpower—With Help.)

Two and a half hours later, my shoulders droop with a satisfying fatigue. I stretch my arms over my head. I pad to the kitchen for another coffee. Devour crackers from a box while I envision the next scene. And watch my two dogs run around outside with a boundless joy that makes my throat catch.

Back at my desk for another 500 words to get to my daily goal of 1,000. I read the last couple of sentences I wrote. I don’t know what comes next. Words never flow easily. It would be simple to blame the dogs for stealing my attention, but they’re sprawled on their backs behind my desk, feet in the air, like furry dead bugs.

I contemplate the irony of me being a writer. Such a sedentary vocation for someone who can’t sit still. Except I love solitude, thrive on deadlines, and experience gut-clenching panic in large groups. Besides, when I’m interested in something, time slips away. It’s like I’m under a spell. I become immersed in my characters and setting. Until I’m not. Then, it’s as if a power button turns off in my brain, throttling my focus. I get jumpy, impatient, impulsive, emotional, overwhelmed, or completely zoned out.

*****

My mother begged the doctor for something to calm me down when I was a toddler and running her ragged with a manic energy. He prescribed a sedative, but my mother took me off the medication shortly thereafter, claiming it made me too lethargic. Books, she found, were the only things that seemed to calm me down.

“You never minded being sent to your room,” she recalls, wistful. “You’d sit and read, and I’d finally get some peace and quiet.”

These breathers were short-lived.

There was the time at the dentist, when I was around seven years old, with a mouth full of fluoride.

“Whatever you do,” he said, “don’t swallow.”

What would happen? I wondered. I vomited all over the place. That’s what happened.

Boredom and my enduring lack of impulse control were an especially bad combination. One Saturday afternoon, my friend and I were doing nothing at my suburban Chicago house. We were 11 years old and wanted to go to the mall to ogle cute boys. The problem was, my parents couldn’t to drive us.

“I know how to get there,” I said. “We could walk the same way my mom drives.”

“Sure,” she replied, trusting me completely.

I led her down my street, around the corner.

She balked when we hit the ramp leading to the Interstate 290.

“It’s the only way I know,” I said loudly, to be heard over the buzz of traffic.

I knew I’d screwed up as we walked along the highway’s shoulder, with cars and tanker trucks whipping our hair as they flew by.

A police car pulled behind us after we’d been on the Interstate a few minutes.

“What are you doing?” he asked, incredulous.

“Going to the mall,” I said, terrified.

“Get in the car, now!” he shouted.

Later, after the policeman drove us to my house, after my mother screamed at me until she was hoarse, I couldn’t believe how far I’d tumbled past acceptable behavior.

*****

It’s 10 o’clock in the morning. I’m still 108 words from my goal but restlessness is soaring in me like a fever. And my mood is dark after writing a battle scene. A little candy for the brain, I decide. A reality show that will take me out of my head for an hour. I head to the kitchen, where I keep my glasses, but can’t find them. Anywhere.

The thrum of my galloping heart pushes me to the edge. I lose my glasses with a startling frequency. Along with my keys and my phone. And my car. Seriously. I park in a crowded lot, get out of the car, and think about where I’m going, forgetting to note where I’ve parked. Once, I had to ask my mother to drive me around a mall until I located my car.

“Why do I keep losing my glasses?” I moan.

“Think backwards,” my long-suffering husband, Steve, suggests. “Did you have them on in the car? What about upstairs? Did you leave them in the bathroom again?”

I race around the house, upstairs, downstairs, into the garage.

What if they’re lost for good? I won’t be able to drive until I get a new pair.

“Found them,” Steve calls from second floor. “In the laundry room.”

I remember putting a load in before going to bed. I must have set my glasses down with the intention of picking them up when I finished.

Embarrassed, I put on my glasses and plop down on the sofa, thoroughly drained and frustrated.

*****

Growing up, it never occurred to me that I had a disorder. It was the 1970s, and—although hyperactivity was treated with a stimulant for the first time in 1937—the syndrome had since been overlooked. Thirty years later, in 1968, hyperactivity was included in the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) diagnostic terminology: “The disorder is characterized by overactivity, restlessness, distractibility, and short attention span, especially in young children; the behavior usually diminishes by adolescence.” Still, hyperactivity wasn’t commonly acknowledged by parents or doctors.

Looking back at teachers’ comments on my report cards, the signs of hyperactivity are undeniable—“talks too much…disrupts other students…doesn’t pay attention…trouble following directions…emotional outbursts when she doesn’t get her way…needs to take more time with her handwriting…impulsive…”

Towards the end of the fourth grade, I was summoned from the classroom by a teacher I didn’t know. She took me to another room, daunting with its emptiness. I felt small and scared. She explained that I’d been chosen for some tests. Immediately, I panicked. All the words of reproach through the years collided in my mind. I was convinced I’d been identified for being stupid. Tears gushed from my eyes. Snot dribbled from my nose. My shoulders heaved with shame. Once I started crying, I couldn’t stop.

I don’t remember if I completed the tests. What I do remember, is my mother’s face getting red and steamy when she found out I’d been chosen, without her knowledge, for tests to determine if I was gifted.

“This is exactly the kind of thing that pushes Shelly over the edge,” she said angrily to my teacher. “You can’t just throw her into a new situation.”

I was embarrassed for crying like a baby. I felt terrible for upsetting my mother. I was relieved when we moved that summer. A new elementary school. A fresh start. A chance to make amends.

But sometimes, when there’s something potent inside you, something you don’t understand and can’t control, good intentions are not enough. A few weeks into the fifth grade, my teacher devised a personalized strategy to encourage good behavior, a points system where I received a sticker if I made it through the day with appropriate behavior.

“If you go a whole day without interrupting other students,” she told me, “you’ll get a sticker.”

I wondered how a sticker would control the excitedness that spurted through me like hiccups.

“It will be fun,” my teacher added.

I was not convinced. I’d much rather be singled out for an excellent drawing, or the highest grade on a test, or climbing to the top of the rope in gym. Not for good behavior with stickers, the way we rewarded our dog with treats for sitting. I fought back tears, ashamed.

Teased by the other kids, I spent lunches alone, in the library, wholly engaged by spirited characters who made colossal mistakes, like Anne Shirley, Ramona, and Pippi Longstocking. Until the librarian decided I should be outside, breathing in fresh air, getting exercise. She was old and had clearly forgotten the anarchy that reigned during recess, when popular kids trounced those who were timid or different while teachers looked the other way. For the rest of the year, I hid in the bathroom, armed with a book, my lunch, and a crushing anxiety that felt like an inferno in my gut.

*****

I’m stuck and need a break. I check my emails and am overwhelmed by the staggering 11,868 messages in my inbox, most of which are unwanted from subscriptions I’ve neglected to cancel and publications I don’t have time to read. And I don’t have the energy to reply to the few important ones. Instead, I scroll through Instagram and click on a post from a woman who was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) as an adult. She says her life has improved 10-fold with medication. I’ve grappled with the idea of getting diagnosed for months but wonder if it’s too late.

If only I’d had the opportunity years ago, when we moved from Chicago to a small town in Ontario, the year I started high school, the worst year of my life. I knew nothing about Canadian geography, history, or the metric system. I had no organizational skills, no impulse control, and—after years of trying (and failing) to curb my energy—no self-esteem.

Lost, I found solace within a group of smart, unmotivated kids who smoked pot at lunch to escape the rules and stress of academics. With absolutely no thought about consequences, I started hanging out with ‘the stoners’ who readily accepted me without judgement. Then came alcohol. Cigarettes. Basement parties. Boyfriends, juniors and seniors. By December, I’d spiraled out of control, failing classes and staying out all night. Frightening my parents. Experimenting with acid. Living on the edge.

If I’d been diagnosed with ADHD before high school, if I’d been on some sort of medication to help me focus, if I’d had coping skills to compensate for my weaknesses, maybe my entry to high school might not have gone horribly wrong. Maybe. Except that I started high school in 1978 and ADHD was not identified by the APA until 1987. Moreover, ADHD wouldn’t be recognized as a disorder that affected adults as well as children until 1990.

By then, I’d miraculously graduated from high school, thanks to summer school and my aunt’s intervention of a self-esteem camp between my sophomore and junior years. I’d also hobbled through an undergraduate degree, in my usual chaotic fashion, switching majors three times, relying on other students’ notes after zoning out during lectures, and regularly pulling all-nighters to finish essays because of my penchant for procrastination.

Becoming an author had been my childhood dream. But my university grades were ordinary, plus I was intimidated by renowned writers such as Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, and Sylvia Plath. Then, I thought back to the most enthralling field trip I had as a child, to the Chicago Tribune. I applied and was accepted to a graduate journalism program. There, I discovered my affinity for researching and writing about new topics daily, and I liked the structure with word counts and deadlines.

Unbeknownst to me, I’d stumbled upon one of the best careers for someone with ADHD, though I’d never been officially diagnosed. In fact, I didn’t seriously consider myself as having ADHD until my nephew was diagnosed; I began drinking coffee when I discovered he was prescribed with a stimulant, and still marvel at how caffeine helps me focus.

After 20 years as a journalist, I pivoted to historical fiction where my ADHD has been a boon and a hindrance. My ability to hyper-focus on subjects I’ve chosen means hours of uninterrupted writing. Even my non-stop brain is a benefit when it comes to ideas for stories and problem solving. Then, there’s my hypersensitivity to emotional and physical stimuli, a tremendous advantage for digging deep into the emotions of protagonists and for creating authentic settings, plots, and characters that evoke all five senses.

Still, I face challenges from ADHD daily, and often feel as if I’m working against myself when I can’t sit still. I’m easily frustrated, perhaps the most impatient person you’d ever meet, in a vocation where instant gratification does not exist. And it’s a constant struggle to stay organized, a must for a writer who spends half her time doing research.

*****

Learning about ADHD has become a way to understand myself on a deeper level. An observation from Jane Adelizzi, PhD, a researcher and therapist, in ADHD: a women’s issue, stops me cold: “Girls with untreated ADHD are at risk for chronic low self-esteem, underachievement, anxiety, depression, teen pregnancy, early smoking during middle school and high school.”

Except for the teen pregnancy, I relate to every single word in this statement. It’s a synopsis of my life, whittled down to one skin-prickling sentence. I can’t help but think how my life would have been easier with medication or therapy. How it’s been a constant struggle for me to behave within acceptable norms for girls, women, and mothers.

My quirks became glaringly apparent as I grew more self-aware with age. I joined a moms and tots group after the birth of my first daughter. Once, while planning an outing to a farm, I heard my voice rise above the others, oversharing with too much eagerness. I recognized the derisive looks the other moms exchanged. I felt their scorn in my bones. And I knew that, to fit in, to avoid ridicule, I had to shut my mouth. I was constantly on guard, repressing my feelings and censoring my words. From then on, I’ve compared myself to other women, always coming up short.

Worst of all, I was inexcusably short with my kids. As they got older, they were embarrassed by my exuberance. Often, they told me I took up all the air in a room.

Now, I wish I’d been able to control myself better as a parent. I wish I’d sought a diagnosis and had done whatever was necessary to tame my emotions, to be more composed. By the time I was 40, I was diagnosed with depression, one of the most common traits in women with unidentified ADHD.

*****

Should I seek professional help now? I scroll through Instagram, moved by women who’ve confronted their ADHD. I take in my chaotic desk and think about how long it takes to focus before I can write. And I would love to permanently curb my hyperactivity which brings out the worst parts of me. The things I don’t like about myself—compulsive overeating. Constant disorganization. Exhaustion in social settings. An intensity that drives people away. Fidgeting.

But this same hyperactivity is also what drives me to dig deep, to find the truth, to write, and to finish what I’ve started. And coffee does provide a fleeting remedy. My head spins with symptoms that make me feel both untethered and stuck.

*****

Steve appears, asking for my receipts. It’s tax season.

I evade his probing gaze so he can’t see that I forget where I put them. On a whim, I open the top drawer of my desk. I exhale. “Here you go.” I hand him a bunch of crumpled receipts.

He looks at me, incredulous. “What’s this?”

“Receipts.” I straighten. “Wait. There’s more.” I scramble out of my chair and empty the outside pocket of my backpack. “These are for pens and the three keyboard covers I had to buy because I keep wearing off the ‘E’ and the ‘R.’”

He smacks his forehead with the palm of his hand.

I hurry to the desk in the kitchen and go through the pile of magazines and bills. There they are, receipts for travel for my next book. Creased but legible.

“These are the last ones,” I say, triumphant.

He shakes his head. “What about the envelope I told you to use?”

I return to my office and rummage through my backpack and find the plain white envelope, with RECEIPTS printed in bold letters. “I forgot about it.”

He looks at me. “Your system isn’t working.”

“I never said I had a system.”

“You need one.”

“I know.”

“So, what’s your plan?”

My foot starts tapping. I wriggle in my chair. I spot an Instagram post from My Lady ADHD: Getting an ADHD diagnosis is like opening up a beautiful new world, where you finally have compassion for yourself.

“Take the dogs for a walk,” I announce, “have another coffee, then call my doctor.”