So, I was recently diagnosed with ADHD, (at the age of 35). I'll be prescribed medication, but that can't happen until lockdown is relaxed a little. Here's some thoughts/reflections I've had since taking the idea I had it seriously.

I've not planned this thread: my thoughts are going to go where they're going to go [insert obvious joke here]. But I hope it might be useful for someone, and if you ever want to talk/ask anything, my DMs are open.

Firstly, twitter is one of the things which forced me to take it seriously. I have joked for as long as I remember that 'I probably have ADHD hahaha,' but have rarely dug much deeper than that. This was perhaps, in part, due to a worry about medication.

It was also, probably, because ADHD has significant overlap with 'normal academic ways of working'. Things academics joke about incessantly include procrastination, getting distracted, task avoidance, etc etc.

So I could always tell myself the ways I behaved were 'normal'.

But I read people with ADHD - and some academics in particular - talk about their condition, and about how medication helped them. This made me take the idea seriously.

If you're trying to get diagnosed in the UK then my understanding is that different healthcare trusts have different criteria. A friend who's a GP in a different region said they are strongly discouraged from doing ADHD referrals for adults.

She advised stressing how much it affected me at work. Which is tricky, because since I've stopped being 'an academic', work is one area where my ADHD doesn't affect me so much: having a clearer working day, clearer expectation-setting, and clearer/more regular meetings with...

...managers has been an *enormous* help. Still, I do freelance work, and this is one area I massively struggle. At any given moment I am toying with:

-Writing one of the 3 novels I have planned in my head
-Writing some short fiction
-Doing something with @out_woods
-Finishing the album I have 99% finished and has been sat on my computer for 3+ years
-Reading something from the ever-growing reading pile
-Allotment landscaping

I often can't choose: instead I play Mariokart, dick around on here, or focus on a task I know I can complete (I find cooking, food shopping and housework quite soothing often).

Or I choose one of them, hit a bump and immediately beat myself up for choosing the wrong thing (if I was doing X I'd have completed abc by now!!).

I remember when I came across the Helsinki Bus Station Theory: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/feb/23/change-life-helsinki-bus-station-theory

It is everything I don't do, and as I wasn't feeling fulfilled, I instantly decided my inability to 'succeed' was because I ignored it. (What/whose criteria for 'success' I was using here, I don't know).

Aha! This is why I never made it as a cricketer, with my band, as an academic, why I've not written a novel yet, why I never got *that* good at piano, etc etc.

And there's probably some truth in this: I give up on things too easily, have little determination, despise things that don't come naturally, and have a tendency to laziness.

But also, looking back now: fuck that theory! There's no single route to being successful, and no single criteria for 'success'.

Anyway, I was talking about diagnosis. From the off the NHS staff I've met have been great. The GP understood late diagnosis is a thing & pushed for me to get a referral. She didn't focus on things I feared she might (i.e. it only matters if it affects work, relationships)...

But it was slow. Five months from GP appointment to diagnosis (which came after appointments with mental health nurse and a phone consultation with a psychologist).

All along, I felt quite empowered whenever the focus was on ADHD. I've done tickbox/quantitative exercises when seeking help for depression and found them thoroughly dehumanising: I resented them, and felt they captured nothing of what I felt.

But that wasn't the case for ADHD, at all. I felt, finally, as if 1) I was being understood; 2) I could connect quite disparate aspects of my personality.

But it was also exhausting: not least because I repeatedly had to answer general mental health questionnaires. I can understand why, but blimey, they take it out of you (and my mental health has been pretty good for the last couple of years).

I played to the (perceived) audience a little: dropped in things about how I felt it was harming my ability to earn money (not untrue, but also not what I'm massively concerned about). But generally I was able to be myself and be taken seriously.

My friends were also an enormous help. I spoke to a few, and they 1) told me my feelings and experiences were valid, and I should trust them; 2) I should seek help if it was what I wanted; 3) some of the things that may be linked to ADHD make me 'me', and are positive.

One even said my incessant hair twiddling is 'endearing' (I think he was lying), and another claimed my tapping wasn't really that bad (I think she was lying, too).

Bizarrely, lockdown has been quite good for my ADHD, I think: I don't feel so much pressure to make every minute I'm not working 'productive', and so don't beat myself up if I'm struggling with some reading on the labour theory of value, or articulating something with @out_woods

This is absolutely something I need to hold with me: it's not just the ADHD that's the problem, but ideologies of productiveness/work.

That's more than enough for now: I might tweet the odd thought occasionally. But before wrapping up, I want to say how supportive @DrMarieThompson has been. She's taken me seriously and supported me all along, and as I've learned she's learned too.

I wouldn't have sought this help without her though, and her patience/wry refusal to let me use it as an excuse for leaving 486,107 things out of the cupboard when cooking has been invaluable. She's the best.