I felt as though ADHD was something that I had my whole life. I was in my late teens when conditions like ADD and ADHD were being talked about in society and I had always related to the stories describing what the symptoms were. So I would joke about it and express to friends, family, and colleagues that if I messed up it was due to my ADHD.

It wasn’t until my mid thirties that I started to notice the true effects of ADHD in my personal and professional life. The impact that it began to have showed up in strange, nondescript ways. I wasn’t even aware of them in the moments and my coping mechanisms were clear signs that I had been attempting to remedy these symptoms through routine and behaviour rather than medication. Still, I didn’t take it a step further to actually see a doctor about this until a couple years later.

Inadvertently I managed to achieve plenty. I feel as though I rocketed through life’s milestones at a record pace. I’d set a goal and I’d achieve it, hyper-focusing on the vision, and accelerating through the execution of the plan. My routine kept me straight, mostly. Up at 5:00, coffee (Caffeine really helped), hit the gym, pre-workout (more caffeine please), finish up and shower, get to work. Blow through my daily tasks in record time, automate most of them so all I had to do was start the queue when I arrived. Then I was free to dial in on what really interested me.

I’d learn, absorb information, I was addicted to it. I’ve now learned that learning releases dopamine, so the more new information I could consume, the better I felt. New skill acquisition was fun, but once I learned a new skill, or most of it, I had to move on to the next thing. Sitting still on refining and mastering a skill was not interesting to me.

Then my life was flipped upside down and the vision that I happened to have engrained in my head, the end goal that I was hyper-focused on…. disappeared.

This was such a strange feeling, I’d describe it as isolating. My partner and I split up after 16 years of being together. Almost half of my life, all of my adult life, was derailed and I needed to figure out what to do next. This part is difficult regardless of being neurodivergent or not, but with ADHD it upset my routine. Shortly after that a global pandemic locked us all in our homes. Needless to say this was rough, but necessary.

During isolation I was dealing with strong emotions and still trying to stay productive and work. I was thankful that I had work to distract me, along with daily meetings to connect with all of my staff. It was in this isolation that I started down the rabbit hole of psychology. A topic that I hadn’t ever crossed, simply because I didn’t think it was directly applicable to my professional life. Everything I learned was novel, very satisfying. I absorbed behavioural analysis and started to understand trauma and found myself running through past events in an effort to empathize with the people I had interacted with. I began reading more about how we create our own reality and with every interaction we have, we are able to interpret it with intent. The more we practise assuming positive intent the more natural it becomes, and soon there is nothing that anyone can say to you to trigger you.

Anyway, it was in this rabbit hole that I re-discovered the symptoms of ADHD. Only this time I could sit with it and internalize the connection that I felt. I understood more about neuro pathways and the role of dopamine and serotonin. I had always known about these chemicals, but I wasn’t aware of their specific roles.

I laugh now, but I have to attribute a huge amount of my ability to identify these symptoms of ADHD to TikTok. The algorithm works. When ADHD content scrolled into my FYP it resonated. The algo picked up on that and started displaying more of of it. It wasn’t long before I was reflecting on all of my past behaviour and attributing a reason to why I did the things that I do.

Some of the examples are:
– Leaving things sit in my line of sight, otherwise they don’t exist.
– Never closing a tab on my browser because I need to remember to continue what I was doing.
– Setting 30 alarms to remind me of tasks because… if I don’t they don’t exist.
– Masking during interactions with people, sort of like autopilot while I think of more interesting things.
– Showing up to events extra early so I can stop remembering when to go.
– The painful waiting mode I go into when I have an afternoon appointment.
– The inability to prioritize a list of tasks as they all consume the same amount of energy.
– Starting projects that never get finished mostly due to the lack of dopamine release.
– Constantly tapping, humming, or bouncing my legs in order to stay stimulated.
– There are plenty of others, but I think I’ve expressed the point

Now, I had plenty of reasons to talk to a doctor about ADHD and I booked an appointment. I had to fill out some questionnaires and answer some questions in an in person visit. It was overwhelmingly apparent that I did in fact have ADHD and so my doctor prescribed me one month of treatment so I could see how it effects me.

I was very curious how this would impact my life, and so I was very excited. I then spent my entire weekend deep diving into everything I could find about my new medication while I waited for the prescription to be received by my pharmacy, and then filled.

I remember the first day I started it. I had to ramp up the dosage over a couple weeks, one pill for 7 days, 2 pills for 7 days, and then three pills for 14 days before I went back in for a checkup.

The first day was pure bliss. I remember just sitting in my chair, absolutely quiet. I didn’t have anything running through my brain, I didn’t have the urge to need to do anything. I could just, be. Calm is the word that I best summarizes the feeling, although it doesn’t fully encapsulate the feeling. This feeling was so new, that I didn’t really know what to do with it. The buzzing in my head was gone, I could read and process an email with out having to re-read it again and again. It was a lot to process and I spent time reflecting on how life changing this could potentially be. Something that I noticed, and it’s sticking with me, is that this newfound ability to allow my attention to be focused on one specific thing opened up my empathy. I went to the theatre with my kids to watch a movie and it was like I was IN the movie, not just a third party observer. I had never felt that as strongly as I did then. I was able to feel the characters emotion, without it being diluted with 7 other things that I was thinking about. Empathy is at an all time high.

After my 7 days of a single pill I was excited to up the dose. Two pills was just as dramatic. Conversations with people were immersive. I was paying more attention and I wasn’t distracted by things happening in the background. I wasn’t jumping into peoples dialog or trying to finish their sentences. I felt more connected to the people around me.

Alright, after 7 days on the medium dose, I went to the full dose. The feeling was less dramatic, as I’d discovered so much already, but the observations of those closest to me were very dramatic.

I was no longer hyper fixated on things or tasks, and I could calmly enter a room or situation without reacting immediately. I am able to respond to situations with intention. I don’t feel like I’m constantly waiting for people to keep up with me when I’m doing or explaining something. I can articulate my intention clearly and coherently, without skipping or glossing over the steps I took to arrive at my conclusion. I am able to take the time to observe where other people are at before jumping in and overwhelming them with an information dump.

All-in-all I am much more intentional, in both my personal and professional life. Anxiety is at an all time low, and I am deeply processing a lot of things that I was never truly capable of processing, simply because I couldn’t sit still long enough to think about them. Even writing this post… I likely would have never finished it if I hadn’t been treating my ADHD. I love to write but I usually stall out around the 800 word mark and have to push myself to continue the story, after many hours of procrastination.

I only just started treating my ADHD and the effects have been transformative. I am very excited to continue this journey and see what other transformations I will observe. My mood, outlook, and my view of myself have all been improved. My interactions with my children, family, friends, and colleagues have all been enriched. I experience far less anxiety and as of this writing, I am more aware of who I am to others during the interactions that I have.

Before I finish this post, I would like to mention that I don’t see ADHD as a disability or sickness. I use the word treatment above but not in the context that it’s an ailment. More like it’s a bike that shifts gears automatically and very quickly with no way to slow it down. The bike works great, better than most when you need to get from point A to point B, its just when you use that bike on a path with other bikes, it can cause problems.

I love that I have ADHD because it’s made me who I am today. I wouldn’t have it any other way honestly. But being able to experience the “bike path” how everyone else does is very powerful, and allows me to recognize just how special it is.