I was on the bus to work the other day and I must have been bored because I decided to answer one of those online questionnaires about ADHD in adults instead of ignoring it. I think it was on Facebook. Question 1) Am I easily distracted? Well, yes. 2) Am I often late? 3) Do I frequently forget appointments? Yes and yes.
By the time I arrived I had signed up for something called Impulse brain training. And within a few days I knew for sure that I had been bravely suffering from undiagnosed ADHD for decades. I was half-trapped in the trap of adult ADHD – although I didn’t know it yet.
I asked my brother and some friends what they thought and instead of laughing they nodded sadly. They too had seen the online tests and it was all true.
Mark Wakefield read tantalizing stories about the calming effect of the stimulant Ritalin and the amphetamine Adderall on the ADHD brain
In fact, they were pretty sure they all had ADHD. All brave sufferers, it turned out.
I’d read enticing stories about the calming effects of the stimulant Ritalin and the amphetamine Adderall on the brains of people with ADHD. Given the high and growing demand for and nationwide shortage of the medications, I began to wonder how I could get my hands on some.
The trap didn’t just close in on me because of a news story I saw last Friday: “ADHD Drugs Significantly Increase Risk of Heart Disease in Adults.” It was like waking up on an operating table, about to undergo an unnecessary operation. How did I get here? Why was I even considering the nasty drugs? Why have so many other adults done the exact same thing?
Not so long ago, ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, as it is called in full) was a childhood disorder. There was something wrong with the brains of those boys in class who couldn’t concentrate and were jumping around in their chairs.
Now there are many perfectly normal adults who are taking medicine away from their GPs, leaving the poor, very much alive boys with no medicine at all.
And suddenly there is a huge cheer from charities all ‘raising awareness’ of ADHD in adults and a thriving city of clinics in the W1 district of London offering private Ritalin prescriptions – with (almost) no questions asked.
But it’s all bullshit, right? Yes, some adults are disorganized and distracted. We work, we have children, some of us are chaotic, but that’s character, not disease. Our short-term memory has been revived by Apple Inc, but that doesn’t mean we have ADHD.
In fact, it is precisely because ADHD does not occur in adults that it has become such a frighteningly successful industry.
The worried wealthy have money to spare for drugs and personalized brain training plans. Just type the letters “ADHD” into a search box and you’ll see for yourself. It’s like blood spilling into the water around Amity Island. The sharks start circling almost immediately.
For younger generations, it’s online influencers. The ADHD hashtag on TikTok has over 20 billion views; and #adhdawareness has almost a billion. And views mean money, of course.
#ADHD delivers clips and survival tips – sexy babes in a hot mess, and not just an explanation for your unreliability, but a general excuse. Are you always late? Do you let your friends and family down? Don’t worry! Don’t worry! That’s just your ADHD. There’s nothing you can do about it. Only a fascist would take you to task. For older adults, the sharks come in the form of tests and then bespoke life plans delivered to your inbox – thanks Impulse! – all for just (let me see) $39.98 (£30) a week. (Argh! What was I thinking?)
The tests are now popping up everywhere, on every web page I visit, and I am amazed at how quickly they turn self-pitying curiosity into a confirmed diagnosis in a few quick check-box steps.
1) Find out if you have ADHD. 2) What is your ADHD type? 3) How to deal with your unique ADHD type. A little bit of sidestepping, a little bit of a sunk cost fallacy and Bob’s your direct debit.
All the age-old scams are at work in the adult ADHD scam. An article in Time Magazine, which was of course not skeptical, noted that about half of the ADHD TikToks made claims so vague that almost anyone could sense they applied to them.
TikTok creator Katie Sue lists some signs of ADHD, including “mysterious bruises,” “coming across as flirtatious,” “having low self-esteem,” or “forgetting about food until it goes bad.”
“If you don’t like doing homework, you have ADHD.” Or “If you daydream in meetings, you probably have ADHD.” These are the so-called Barnum Quotes, named after the showman PT Barnum, whose slogan was, “There’s a loser born every minute.”
The NHS is so overwhelmed by the rise in adult ADHD that they’ve set up a new taskforce – and just as I was reading about it, an advert for yet another clinic appeared: ‘The letter you see here defines your ADHD type! Only adults with ADHD can solve this problem!’ But even once you’ve cut through the chaos, it’s surprisingly hard to leave adult ADHD behind.
‘Mary, we’re sorry to see you go! Why did you cancel? Did you forget your personal plan? Take back control of your life! Don’t let ADHD hold you back. Claim your plan and get up to 20 percent off! Make that 50 percent… 75 percent!’
One of the many charities set up to combat the ‘stigma’ surrounding the condition is ADHD UK. The director of ADHD UK, Henry Shelford, almost sounds as if he is threatening adults who deny its existence.
“It is chilling to see so many people forced to hide their neurodiversity for fear of stigma and discrimination,” he says.
Creepy? Forced to hide? How can it be creepy when it’s highly uncertain whether ADHD even exists in adults, and when tests done on adults with self-reported ADHD have largely shown them to be perfectly neurotypical, lacking the characteristic mental patterns found in children diagnosed with the condition?
Another charity, ADDitude, says that if adults with ADHD have family members who ‘mistakenly believe that only children can have ADHD’, it is best not to contact them and simply cut them out of your life.
Hold on to these relatives, I say, because they are almost certainly right.
- This article previously appeared in The Spectator.
