I was asked to share with you a little bit of what ADHD has been for me as an adult. It’s been a process, and it certainly has explained a lot!
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Disclaimer: We are not doctors, healthcare professionals, or mental health professionals. This post should not be construed as medical, legal, or professional advice.
Struggling as an undiagnosed teen and young adult
As a young person, I could see, and others could see, that I was extremely talented. I had lots of charisma and vitality and a real determination to do whatever I put my mind to.
And yet, along with all of the vivacity and beauty, there was also just the reality that I didn’t seem to be able to put one foot in front of the other.
So much work and potential for so little results
This often plagued me a great deal because I come from a family of hard workers and I work very hard. I don’t just try hard, but I also try to understand the principles and the ways to “work smarter and not harder.”
So you know having a bachelor’s degree, a master’s degree, educated, organized… how is it that I wasn’t able to do just basic tasks? Learning that I had ADHD gave a lot of insight into this.
How we figured out it was ADHD
Now that wasn’t an immediate process for me. However I think it’d be worthwhile for me to share that my wife – blessed woman that she is! – has been very patient in helping me with this.
She could see the telltale signs, and she could see it in our children, first and foremost. She could see it in them, as well in in myself.
Not lack of willpower
As we worked with our daughters it began to become increasingly apparent that, “Wait a minute here, we’re dealing with something more than a simple lack of willpower.”
That’s one of the great difficulties when it comes to any type of mental disorder or mental illness – it’s not clearly measurable. It’s not something that you can just take a quick look at and say, “Oh yeah, that’s exactly what’s going on!”
When it comes to behavior, it’s very difficult to be able to ascertain why and how things are happening.
Not defiance, not disobedience, nor simply childishness
I can recall that when our daughters were three years old, five years old, seven years old, nine years old…
It was very difficult for me as a father to be able to ascertain whether something was a willful act of disobedience, or whether it was a matter of childishness, or whether it was a matter of something else. We found that there was enough of this something else.
As we began to start digging into the materials, such as Driven to Distraction and other materials, it became really apparent that we had two daughters who have a deep, deep desire to do what is right, and who are willing to be corrected, and yet could not focus.
This wasn’t a matter of volition – this was a matter of actually having an impairment. Having something that was making it more difficult than the normal type of scenario. So we began to dig into this, and learn about it.
Not a matter of immaturity
I began to learn how to deal with my daughters effectively, according to not only their level of maturity, but also the aspect of ADHD. As I did, it became apparent to me that there was a lot of this that has been the case with my life and continues to be the case with my life.
What it’s like to have ADHD
If you’re reading this and wondering, “Is this just you reliving your life through your children? It certainly sounds that way.”
I wanna just give you a little bit of insight into what it’s like to have ADHD and why it’s hard to pinpoint it simply by watching a person.
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Severe energy shifts and mood swings
One of the things that I noticed most when I began to take medication was how steadying it was for my energy levels.
I have an incredible amount of energy – I always have. I don’t need anywhere near as much sleep as my wife does. I can power through quite a bit, and that seems to be a running theme with anyone who has the hyperactivity aspect of ADHD.
Stimming all the time
Ever since I was little, I used to drive my father crazy! I would be bouncing my knee in the truck, and he would think there was an earthquake! No, I was just bouncing my knee wherever I was!
I was bouncing my knee because I had so much energy. To this day, if I am not on medication I will be twitching. My foot will be twitching in the middle of the night.
It’ll drive my wife bananas because she can feel it. Now the good news is that we now have a king-sized bed.
That’s just a little hack for you married couples that have ADHD. A king-sized bed is NOT a luxury, it’s a necessity if you want to sleep in the same bed!
Unmanageable energy
I would have enormous spikes of energy, and the difficulty of trying to manage that much energy on a regular basis has been significant. It’s caused a lot of angst.
I compare it to having a fire hose that is being sprayed at your back right between the shoulders all day long. Because you know that you can’t just flip out! You can’t jump off the furniture and climb up the walls – you’re at a meeting or you’re in a class!
You learn by experience that you’d better you’d better you know manage that energy well.
However, if you’re in a public school, or you’re in a scenario where you just have to be seated, and you can’t get out and and do a lot in terms of energy, that makes it really difficult. You’re having to hold it all in.
Continued symptoms into adulthood
Again this is not a “five-year-old child” situation. This is the case for me where, at 39 years old, I need ways to get that energy out.
Notice: this is me, a father of six! I have lots to do, and still I can have heaps of energy, and it peaks, and it dives.
That’s another thing also that’s difficult about hyperactivity is, the way it works chemically. We all have ebbs and flows, but with ADHD you are on this roller coaster.
So when I am not on my medication, I can have enormous amounts of energy. Then, without any anticipation, without understanding it, at a certain point I can just crash.
Rollercoaster of highs and lows
When that is connected with mood and attitude and emotions, it can make for some very difficult days. It can make for some very difficult moments.
You can imagine how hard it is to understand your circumstances, when all of a sudden, you feel exhausted and you don’t know why.
With ADHD medication, the flow of energy has been significantly improved. Fewer high-highs, fewer low-lows. It just steadies to a more normal degree. So that’s personally been a big deal for me.
Easily overstimulated
A second thing that I find for ADHD as an adult is the ability (or without medication, the lack of ability) to deal with so much stimulus. With ADHDers, we take note of everything!
Those of us who have ADHD we do all or nothing a lot in our thinking and also in our perception. There’s so much stimuli and the ADHD brain has a great deal of difficulty sorting out the multitude of stimuli that is all around it. That’s both external and internal.
There is not the type of prioritizing that would be beneficial in being able to identify, “This needs to happen, and then this, and then this, and then this.”
While a person with ADHD recognizes that you have to have things like goals and priorities, it isn’t ready on hand. It feels like, and it truly is like all of these stimuli need to be taken and handled NOW. It’s living in the urgent all the time.
The train roundhouse analogy
To put it another way, imagine a locomotive engine round table.
You know those round tables that they have right next to the engine house, and the table moves and it picks up an engine and turns it around and puts it on a track? And then it moves and it takes another engine and it turns it around and puts it on a different track.
In the ADHD person’s mind, we can’t handle things one engine at a time. We have all the engines all needing to go all at once.
Sound board analogy
To put it the way that Penn Holderness says, when it comes to a sound board, all the switches are on. There’s no dampeners.
I imagine it must be really hard for people to understand what that’s like, but we see it ALL. And the only alternative to seeing it all, is focusing on one thing.
Hyperfocus or overwhelm
So it’s either, take it all in and try to sort all that, or focus to the exclusion of everything else.We can learn to do that – we do that naturally with hyperfocus. But we also can learn to do that.
I learned that if I wanted to get something done (prior to having medication) I just had to focus intently and work on something as if my life depended on it.
Relationship issues
That made it very difficult for my family. It made it very difficult for people, because I knew that if I didn’t focus, it wasn’t going to get done. And if it wasn’t going to get done there was going to be serious difficulties.
That speaks to two issues. That speaks to not only the ADHD, but also the post-traumatic stress that comes on account of living with ADHD in a society that needs things to be done its way, on time, or else!
I found it to be greatly overwhelming – just simply too much to be able to sort through what needed to be done. I worked hard – I am a hard worker.
Always in danger of a wreck
However, I could not find ways to be able to deal with the problem of eight engines needing to be at the station, and only one round table to move them there one at a time.
When all eight engines are coming at the same time, no round table is going to be able to handle that! There’s only one track on the round table.
If all eight engines are coming, no matter what, then you’re gonna have a wreck – and that’s what happens in an ADHD brain. You have a wreck all the time!
Even with the most patient of people, it’s hard to understand that. It’s hard to explain that, it’s hard to express that. So there’s mental overload.
How medication calmed my brain
When I began taking medication, I found that was no longer the case. It’s pretty amazing!
It’s not like there aren’t hectic times, or things to do. That’s just life! There’s always things to do. And of course being in a family, there’s always five things happening at once!
However that’s on the outside now, that’s not on the inside.
Everything is NOW
You see, before medication, I could be working at home alone, with no distractions, and still it’s a train wreck because all of these things are running at me at the same time.
Without medication, there’s just this sense that they all have to be handled now. There’s no way to tell it, “No, you can’t get on the track now!” But once I take medication, when I began taking it, that cleared up.
Some people would say, “That’s just obvious, that things can only be done one step at a time.” Well it may be obvious in a neurotypical brain, but it’s not in a neurodivergent brain like ADHD. I’m sorry, that’s just what it is.
The medication that I take for ADHD has helped a great deal with regard to recognizing that:
- Things can only get done one task at a time, and
- It’s gonna be okay.
I now recognize that it’s going to be all right if some stuff doesn’t actually get finished, because that’s normal. For some reason that just didn’t click, according to my biochemistry but now with the medication it’s much better.
Extreme focus
The third thing I want to mention is vise-like focus. Funny enough, the ADHD brain is not only easily distracted by all the stimuli around it, but it also lays hold of whatever is going to give it the biggest chemical kick.
So whatever it finds most interesting, whatever it finds most problematic, whatever it finds most dramatic, it will lay hold of that and it will hold on to it for dear life.
And by the way, that’s why a lot of us ADHD folks are “drama llamas” because if something is a problem, it’s huge. Our brain goes off of that – it gets a kick out of the drama.
Chasing stimulation
Don’t get me me wrong. It’s not that our character is ADHD, and ADHD is our character.
The reality is, we have problems, we make mistakes, we make poor choices, we do things wrong. Sometimes we do things wrong on purpose.
However there is also this aspect in which our brain is looking for a chemical kick, and conflict provides that. Hard, difficult, sad thoughts do that. Painful thoughts do that. A project or an idea that has us excited does that.
Ruminating thoughts
In the past, I’ve found that it would be so difficult to be able to get out of a painful thought. I could get wrapped into it, and orbiting around it, and just stuck there in this vicious cycle.
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The pain gives my brain a kick, and the kick makes me want more pain. And I’m not talking about necessarily something I’m doing physically to myself.
My brain could get ruminating on something – whether it’s a fear, or whether it’s a painful memory, or whether it’s an anxiety – and it can just get stuck there.
Or on a conflict, where I am just stuck on this conflict and I can’t let go of it.
Struggles with transitions
This can again interact with our lack of ability to handle transitions well, because we’re stuck on this item. It’s not even always something that’s pernicious. We might be really connected to something that we’re enjoying a great deal.
With my children who have ADHD, they’re fully focused – they’re all in on this one task even if it’s not their favorite task. They’ve got to put all their focus and attention in getting this task done.
So if they’re working on it and I’m going to give a transition to them, I need to let them know that we’re going to be transitioning. I’ll say, “We’re going to be moving on to this in five minutes, please be prepared.”
The vise-like focus makes it very difficult. You can’t just leave it alone. However, once I began taking the medication I found that there was the ability to regulate and take a breath.
So for example, when my child is doing something and it’s bugging the heck out of me, I can let that be. I don’t have to go after that. There’s this uncertainty, and it has me concerned. It’s hard but I don’t have to figure it out NOW – it’ll come with time.
Neurodivergence mistaken as immaturity
This is another aspect that can seem like immaturity. And certainly there are aspects of my life that have been areas of immaturity. Yet also, those various aspects can be helped or hindered by the way that my neurodivergent brain works.
For instance, every child has areas of immaturity in their physical body.
A child may not be able to do a slam dunk because they still have two more feet to grow and that obviously is not a disorder.
However, if the child is not growing, and it’s been three years and they’re eight years old, then we have something that we need to look into!
That’s where we have this issue of nature versus character.
My concerns about ADHD medication
Perhaps that’s been the greatest benefit for me in terms of ADHD and this whole situation of medication.
I had a lot of concerns about taking medication. I was really concerned that the better aspects of my ADHD would be washed away. I was afraid that by taking medication I would just be “doped up and dumbed out,” for lack of a better term.
I didn’t want to cease to be me.
I would rather be me with the difficult sides of ADHD than not be me at all. I was concerned that would be the case.
How ADHD medication helps me
But actually, it’s not altering in that way. It dulls the effect of ADHD. It helps the flow of my thinking, and it keeps me more balanced.
I still have the energy, and I still have the creativity, and my personality has been unaffected. So I’m really grateful for that.
Is ADHD medication a crutch or excuse?
I have to admit that I had concerns that I was somehow stuck on this crutch. Or that me having to take medication was an indication of my inferiority to others.
Obviously those aren’t arguments that are difficult to defeat. We all have areas where we need help, you know.
Medication is a tool
I have allergies, you have allergies. We have things that we need to take care of ourselves with, and medication is simply part of that process.
It’s not the only part. It’s not a silver bullet, but it’s also not some made up thing either. It’s a real thing that our bodies need in various cases and for various situations.
There are times when I can’t have medication. Right now I’m in between doctors, so I don’t have medication right now while I’m writing this, but I’m still productive. I’m not falling apart because I’m not on the medication.
Better awareness
So taking ADHD medication has been a help. Probably the biggest way is that it’s provided me with awareness.
I have the ability to recognize what my ADHD looks like. I can now see that there are things I can do, both in terms of medication, and also in terms of techniques and lifestyle changes – using both of those.
I recognize that this is what my ADHD looks like. It hasn’t all gone away and I don’t want it to. But when it shows up I recognize it.
Better regulation
For example, when I’m teasing my daughter, and I can see that maybe she’s not much for goofing off right now. I can observe, “I feel some energy, and I’ve got this temptation to do something more, but I should stop.”
So then I’ll leave the room because I need to go garden and get some of that energy out. That’s something that, in the past, I wouldn’t have been able to do.
But thankfully with the medication I can stop myself. I can actually see things and catch things a second or two, or even 10 seconds before, and adjust accordingly.
ADHD can be a gift
So anyhow, there you go! Thank you for reading. I want people to know that there is such a thing as ADHD, that it’s worthwhile, that it’s not something to be dismissed.
It’s not something to be afraid of, and it’s something that a person can be blessed by if they’re willing to learn and grow in the process.
You may also enjoy these posts:
- Adult ADHD: 3 ways it impacted me
- Marriage tips for ADHDers & their spouses
- ADHD Spouse Burnout
- Best ADHD resources for parents and teens
- ADHD Partner Burnout Recovery
©️ Copyright Brian Warren 2025.
