CHARLOTTE GILL: ‘I’ve been told I have ADHD but I DON’T think it’s a disorder… it’s just who I am’

It felt like someone had finally found a lost piece for an unfinished puzzle. Or cleaned a pair of dirty glasses so that, when pushed up to one’s eyes, the world around became wonderfully clear.

Before this I had lots of stereotypes about ADHD that didn’t include me. Weren’t ADHD types annoying and hyper? The children of neurotic American parents?

To be blunt, I considered it diagnostically as not so far away from having hay fever – a small thing you didn’t need to make a big deal out of.

I certainly didn’t feel as though I fitted into the ADHD category. On social media, people with it claim it’s the reason they’re always losing things, forgetful and have a messy bedroom. I, on the other hand, had columns in newspapers, got a First at university and often handled all the bills in shared flats. In many ways, things were good. But I had also lived with a sense that something was wrong with me from a young age.

A sequence of events – mostly friends being critical of certain aspects of my personality – and a bit of judicious Googling led me to seek a diagnosis last year. Despite my preconceptions, I’m glad I did.

The label of ADHD gave me an answer as to why I found certain things so challenging when others seemed to do them with ease. It has also meant I was prescribed medication, which has made a big difference.

But my ADHD diagnosis is something I’ve decided not to broadcast widely until now – partly because I know how many people see those with ADHD: as silly, attention-seeking middle class people looking to excuse underachieving and poor behaviour. But mainly because I wanted to take time to contemplate what it meant for me.

I have come to some conclusions. I am not a doctor or expert, but I speak from experience and think these things need to be said.

There’s been a lot discussed about the boom in ADHD diagnoses in recent years, particularly in adults. Between 2000 and 2018 there was a 20-fold increase in men and a 15-fold increase in women with the condition, and nearly a 50-fold increase in ADHD medication prescriptions, according to a University College London study published this year.

It’s now thought to affect three to four per cent of the working-age population, with a male-to-female ratio of roughly 3:1.

The researchers suggest that ‘increasing awareness among patients and clinicians’ is making it more likely people recognised their symptoms and got a diagnosis, which makes sense. But there have also been recent reports of Cambridge students faking ADHD diagnoses to get more time in exams, and an undercover BBC investigation in May that suggested private clinics were doling out diagnoses at the drop of a hat to anyone willing to pay.

I’m also aware of the claims that it’s become almost trendy to have ADHD. There are social media influencers with millions of followers who post almost exclusively about having the condition, and celebrities – from Paris Hilton and Robbie Williams to Sir Richard Branson – have revealed they’ve been diagnosed.

In October, psychotherapist Philippa Perry was forced to apologise after saying in an interview that ADHD was a ‘buzzword’ that had taken over from bipolar disorder as the ‘fashionable’ condition to have. She added: ‘It’s social contagion that drives this… You can’t sit still. That doesn’t mean you’ve got ADHD.’

So what is it, then? According to the NHS, ADHD is ‘a condition that affects people’s behaviour’ making them ‘seem restless’. Adults with it ‘may have trouble concentrating and may act on impulse’, and have difficulties ‘with organisation and time management, following instructions, focusing and completing tasks, coping with stress…’

I’d say this is right. But given how common ADHD is, I tend to think it’s not necessarily abnormal or even a disorder at all – with the caveat that some people do struggle more than I do, and have not had the same level of support.

ADHD was once thought to be something that only affected children and they just grew out of. It’s now known that isn’t the case – it’s life-long. But that makes me believe even more strongly that those of us with ADHD are just a variation of normal.

Sometimes I feel we’re like a breed of dog, struggling because the world values the characteristics of another breed more highly.

Children are told to be good at sitting still and listening, and they are expected to be competent and interested in the same things.

Workplaces encourage long stints at a desk. Anyone who contravenes these norms is ‘a problem’.

So how does it affect me? Well, I have long been frustrated, for one, by the fact I hated reading, which I now know is classic ADHD.

This goes back into my childhood. Despite having the motivation for it, as well as encouraging parents, I could barely make it through a page of most books. Listening? It was just as hard, more so in fact. When I was seven, my teacher asked my parents for a meeting where she brought up my poor attention span. It was the beginning of multiple visits to educational specialists to see why I wasn’t the same as the other children.

One of the first tests was to make sure I wasn’t deaf, as my listening was that bad. But my ears worked fine. Looking back now I see that, like many people with ADHD, the hyperactivity was all in my head.

My school reports were littered with warnings that now look like big red flags for ADHD – I was ‘prone to daydreaming’, ‘distracted’ or worse, ‘disruptive’ in class. I was good at art, but bad at everything else – I felt like the school dunce and I was always bottom of the class.

Another sign was that I hated going to bed, feeling more energetic as the day went on. My mum has told me that when once collecting me from a holiday kids’ camp, I was the only child still awake and raring to go.

On Sunday nights before school, unlike my three younger brothers, I was always wide awake at 11.30pm.

But it wasn’t all bad. As I found reading so difficult, I turned to writing, producing dozens of stories. I invented clubs and started my own school band.

After I performed the worst in my year at 11+ exams (made more horrifying given I went to a nice private school), I became terrified that I might ‘fail’ secondary school. It was the wake-up call I needed. I became focused and competitive. When people complained ‘you don’t listen’ I started to think about how I could learn to.

As I got older I got better at managing – especially thanks to my secondary school, which had a rich curriculum. I joined two choirs and went on to get my Grade 8 in singing. I played hockey, appeared in drama productions and started a school newspaper. I thrived on being busy and relaxed by painting and drawing. I was a far cry from the child who once had meltdowns when presented with an 11+ maths paper.

Still, I regularly fell asleep in the middle of classes, because of never going to bed at a sensible hour. And I wasn’t good at controlling my emotions. It was as if someone switched a dial from zero to ten.

There was a Katy Perry song called Hot N Cold that teenage me particularly related to. In it she sings: ‘You’re yes then you’re no, you’re in then you’re out, you’re up then you’re down.’

I felt it was good way of describing my moods. One day I could be utterly evangelical about a new hobby or person, only to tire of it or them a few weeks later. Similarly, sometimes I would feel very cheerful only to decide an hour later that the world was going to end.

The idea that I might have ADHD started several years ago after an exchange with a particularly blunt friend. We were both aspiring authors, but he had finished his manuscript, unlike yours truly – who had about ten of them, all a third-completed. ‘It’s because you have no concentration span,’ he said.

And while he was at it, there was another home truth: ‘You talk about yourself too much.’ This one hurt, partly because it wasn’t the first time someone had said this to me.

I felt dreadful. It wasn’t that I was uninterested in other people – far from it. But they were right, I did often find myself going on to friends about things I’d done that day and then zoning out when they did the same in response.

Was I just an awful, self-absorbed person? What was wrong with me? I searched Google for the answers, asking things such as: ‘Why do I talk about myself too much?’ It suggested ADHD.

But how could I have it? By this point I was almost hyper-organised, running my life as a military operation, published in papers and certainly no one talked to me like the ‘dunce’ kid at school anymore.

The crunch came a few years later when my parents said they read an article about ADHD which, well, sounded like me.

I booked myself a (very expensive) private appointment and received a formal diagnosis. I knew by that point, from my research, that you could wait years to see an NHS specialist – and I was impatient.

Afterwards, part of me wanted to tell everyone in the world about my diagnosis. But I worried what people might say.

The irony wasn’t lost on me: I’d spent the first decade or so of my life being told I wasn’t normal, and desperately trying to be so. Now I had some sort of explanation as to why, I knew I’d face the accusation that I was simply wanting to be ‘interesting’ or ‘different’.

And that’s why I needed time to think before speaking up. To be honest, I’d rather ADHD wasn’t called ADHD at all. It makes it sound like a mental health condition, such as obsessive compulsive disorder, also known as OCD, rather a personality type or way of being, which is what I think it is.

In my experience, people diagnosed with it tend to be creative, often very ambitious – perhaps because we feel the need to prove ourselves – energetic and sociable.

Paradoxically, my difficulties reading was, I believe, the making of my journalist career. I know how to engage the most reluctant pair of eyes on the page.

I’m now on Elvanse, or lisdexamfetamine, which is a stimulant. It seems counter-intuitive but it works at improving focus and attention. But I’ve noticed in ADHD forums online that there’s a tendency for people to claim the drugs are a miracle cure, which they aren’t. Taking it feels a bit like having a battery put in.

It does not, as it can be assumed, alter your personality.

In terms of non-medical management of ADHD, I avoid booze and force myself to do lots of high-intensity exercise.

But the benefit of medication is increased productivity. Nowadays I do finish things, having composed songs and written two scripts this year.

I’ve also read a fair few quite substantial, serious books and really enjoyed them.

Still, I’m not totally smitten by the tablets. There are on-and-off shortages of ADHD medication, and when I recently was unable to get my prescription I felt exhausted. So it’s a double-edged sword. But thanks to treatment I do find it easier to listen to friends when they tell me about their day.

Do I talk about myself less? You’ll have to ask them. I really hope so.