Inevitably, once I was finally diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), the gutter press concluded that actually it was a totally made-up condition and that the numbers having it were increasing dramatically. As ever, this was a total lie. Growing numbers are being diagnosed but the numbers are not increasing. People like me – and I hope this doesn’t sound too self-pitying – have always known that there was something different about the way our minds worked, or often didn’t in my case, and just had to muddle on the best we could. My parents, more specifically my mother, knew there was something wrong or different (it was both, actually) since I was packed off to see a child psychiatrist by the age of 12 and diagnosed with clinical depression maybe a decade later, but maybe ADHD hadn’t been invented at the time.
By the time I was assessed, paying a fortune to private health parasites and vultures for the privilege, I was already into old age, miraculously having got through school and a working life with no real successes, by learning techniques and cheats to avoid being found out. This is me:
- Easily distracted or forgetful
- Finding it hard to organise your time
- Finding it hard to follow instructions or finish tasks
- Having a lot of energy or feeling restless
- Being very talkative or interrupting conversations
- Making quick, often reckless, decisions without thinking about what might happen as a result
- All the usual shit that goes with ADHD (and much more)
Now, I learn there are drugs that can effectively treat the condition successfully and, according to new studies, reduce the risk of substance misuse, suicidal behaviour, transport accidents and criminality, which are apparently linked to common ADHD symptoms such as acting impulsively and becoming easily distracted. I must admit that I have rarely misused ‘substances’, felt suicidal, been involved in transport accidents or engaged in criminality, but the general list rings true in every single way. So, it’s time to take the drugs, right? Wrong.
GPs will happily prescribe anything for physical health conditions but when it comes to mental illness and neurodiversity, it’s very different. I take medication for many of the things older folk tend to acquire and that, I have been told, is a reason why my antidepressants have been cut by 50%, very much against my will, with the inevitably damaging consequences, and my GP won’t give me anything for the ADHD that has fucked up so much of my life and still continues to do so.
After my diagnosis, I immediately made an appointment with my GP and asked what help would be available. If he had opened the surgery door and pointed me towards it, shouting ‘NEXT!’ he could not have been more blunt. I heard him say: “You’ve got through life somehow in one piece. I’ve got nothing for you here, no therapy, no drugs Now fuck off and enjoy the rest of your life.” He may not have used those precise words, but I knew what he meant.
I regard my treatment as being nothing less than ageism. Someone very close to me has also been diagnosed with ADHD and been prescribed the relevant treatment and it is working. They are young so a clinical judgement has been made that they deserve effective treatment whereas I don’t deserve it because I am not young. I haven’t died of it – yet – so I should be able to keep buggering on with a motor attached to my brain and the shadow of a black dog hanging over me. What a life.
I’m lucky, really, just frustrated. I so much want to feel better than this. I know I have said that before that I know my black dog and my ADHD well and it would feel strange to not have them hanging around, but I’d still rather they be euthanised so that my twilight years can be spent with something resembling a ‘normal’ brain.
A good news story that brings hope to many just makes me feel bad again. Hope turns to no hope yet again. My advice to anyone would be this: don’t get depression, don’t get a neurological condition because if you do, you will soon come to realise that when someone says, “It’s good to talk about your mental health/condition”, you know that’s right but for many of us that’s not enough. No one with a physical health condition would be treated like this. The truth is nothing has changed.
