I haven’t got a companion, kids or a safe dwelling. I trashed my alternatives and I’ve poor abilities relating to funds, time and managing stress. And now I lastly know why, says KATE SPICER

‘Good luck with your difficult life,’ says my Dad, rather sadly, as he hugs me goodbye. He’s being empathetic and kind in an old-school octogenarian kind of way. But I can sense the disappointment that comes with it, the sense of me always arriving with some drama or problem.

‘I’m fine. Don’t worry Dad. My life’s not difficult,’ I cheerily call back to him, conscious of the sadness in his voice.

As I walk to my car in the glorious cold winter sunshine, I think for a millisecond: ‘What’s he talking about? I’m 56 years old. There is nothing wrong with my life!’

But then I’m at the car. The key fob has been broken for ages and it takes minutes of faffing to get the door open. Inside, the seats are caked in muddy pawprints and strewn with detritus: books, multiple shoes, a dress I’ve been meaning to get repaired for months.

The petrol gauge is ‘squeaky bum’ low. There’s a smear on the windscreen from my dog’s nose that obscures my vision in a certain light, which has also been there for months. I haven’t worked out how to use the in-car entertainment system installed by the previous owners, despite owning the car for nearly a year, because there is never any time for such trivial concerns. I’m always late.

‘You’re always late,’ people say to me with weary irritation. Or furious expletives, if it’s my ex-boyfriend.

‘I’m not,’ I say, thinking of the one time I wasn’t late and resolving never to be late again.

‘You are,’ they say, and the fact that I can hammer out this familiar little script would suggest they’re right.

I’m tired of it. I’ve spent decades thinking, ‘What’s wrong with me?’ I have tried and tried to get my act together. And still do – except now I view myself through the lens of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or ADHD.

It was last year that I was given an official diagnosis, but it’s only now, as 2025 draws to an end, that it has truly sunk in.

This is who I am. This is how my brain works.

Increasingly, such a diagnosis is met with scepticism. Some critics say it’s the medicalisation of personality, or a get-out-of-jail-free card. One commentator summed up the prevailing attitude by describing people who think they’ve got ADHD as ‘just confused by life’.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting’s recently announced inquiry into the rising demand for mental health, ADHD and autism services has sprung from a similar sentiment. Apparently he is ‘concerned’ that ordinary stresses and feelings are being ‘pathologised’ and that neurodivergence is being ‘over-diagnosed’.

And it’s not just children who are being diagnosed at ever-greater rates: referrals for ADHD assessment among the over-45s has increased by 400 per cent in the past five years.

The cover of the British Medical Journal recently asked if the UK should follow plans in Sweden to start de-diagnosing ADHD so that only the most severe cases receive treatment.

But I can assure you, I am not using my diagnosis as an excuse.

I am disappointed with the way my life has turned out. Discovering I have a brain that struggles with emotional regulation and has less control when it comes to stress and impulses has not felt like a badge of honour. I’d love never to mention it. I’d rather be perceived as a bit rubbish than have ADHD. It’s embarrassing.

But what my diagnosis has been is a relief. Armed with a bit of knowledge and some medication, I have at last been able to navigate my life more effectively.

I do get where the anti-ADHD brigade are coming from. Before my own diagnosis I was one of those dismissive people too. But I was also desperate for an answer to my problems.

When my 15-year relationship came to an end in the summer of 2024, my now-ex was infuriated by me. His top three complaints boiled down to: bad with money, dangerously impulsive and horribly messy.

That sounds unkind – and it was – but it wasn’t totally inaccurate, either. For decades, I’d wondered what was wrong with me. Why haven’t I got a job, a pension, savings, children?

Why am I so fractious? ‘Stop jiggling your foot,’ the ex would say as he tried to get to sleep. A petty concern on a par with clutter, perhaps, but the two hour-plus ADHD assessment is an adding-up process. Clutter and restless legs are the least of it.

Because, yes, there was much more: I drank too much, took drugs, smoked cigarettes, spent money I didn’t have on things I didn’t need. There was endless faffing about. There were times I’d fling myself at danger in ways I can’t bring myself to contemplate privately, let alone publicly here.

Why did I behave the way I did?

My boyfriend, having fallen out of love, saw only the worst of me. And I saw it, too.

Years before, a poker-faced Swiss psychiatrist I was interviewing about his expertise in drug rehabilitation methods coolly suggested to me that I might benefit from an ADHD assessment. I’d ignored that suggestion, then. Now, as I look back at the consequences of me being me for a lifetime, I’m glad I finally took his advice.

And in the summer of 2024, I was given what seemed like the answer to all those questions: I have ADHD.

ADHD is driven in large part by dysregulation in the brain’s dopamine networks. Dopamine is a crucial hormone for the regulation of behaviour, and impacts the likes of focus, organisation, motivation, impulse control and memory. If you don’t have enough dopamine, finding the motivation to do things is tricky. The body is designed to find balance. Thirsty? You drink water. Hungry? You eat. Not enough dopamine? You’ll try to find some somewhere.

It was at boarding school that my capacity for chaos first emerged – in drinking binges, smoking, disordered eating, and a desire for adventures that were not going to win me a Girlguiding badge. I’m lucky not to be dead.

University saw an escalation of that, despite all my friends being ‘nice’ people. There was no bad crowd: I was the problem.

Until quite recently, I’d go out with friends to the cinema or for a sensible dinner, we’d say goodbye, and then – I honestly don’t know how – I’d still be out on the town while they were cleaning their teeth and getting ready for bed.

Walking home through the city at dawn never struck me as dangerous (still doesn’t). Climbing a cliff face in flip flops, hopping in a taxi with an ill-advised stranger – nothing I did ever seemed risky to me.

Men were not a problem to find, but there was always a problem later on which meant we did not work together. Perhaps I’d be better off with my two wild hounds – another of my dysregulated brain’s impulsive boo boos.

‘Don’t get a second dog,’ everyone said, ‘and especially not a second Podenco.’ You, too, may mull the consequences of impulsivity when you’re crouched in the woods, head in hands, screaming with frustration because they’ve forgotten what ‘come’ means again and you’re the owner of a wonky brain hardwired for meltdowns.

Some of my dopamine quests have been jolly wholesome. Completing the week-long desert race called the Marathon des Sables in my late 30s was a surprise given how poorly organised I was. I swam from Asia to Europe across the Bosphorus. I’ve completed Olympic-distance triathlons, despite what my grandmother called my ‘rackety life’. Sport met a need, and I honestly hoped it might cure whatever the hell was wrong with me.

But none of my dopamine-seeking antics have been as continually problematic as procrastination.

Procrastination is linked to dopamine because the brain’s hunger for it will favour things that give a quick reward – a cigarette, a little look at Instagram, even mopping the floor or baking a cake – over the delayed but far greater gratification of Getting Stuff Done.

Added to that is a constant internal monologue, which goes like this: ‘Why can’t I get this right? What the hell is wrong with me?’

For years I sat in therapy droning on and on, trying to make the self-criticising voice go away, and not understanding why it wouldn’t. I just wanted to get on with life and get ‘better’. Now I realise it is an ADHD trait.

Those stimulants I was so fond of shut the internal noise off. ADHD medication does the same thing, and when I found the right dose, a soothing calm descended like a blanket of muffling snow over my racing thoughts. My brain was quiet.

Having ADHD is like being the human equivalent of flat-pack furniture but without any instructions: you might pull it together but it’ll always be a bit wonky. Or a car that is missing second and third gear. I usually do get stuff done, eventually, but often only with exhausting and unpleasant amounts of stress driving me on.

ADHD lives are not doomed by any means, but they are certainly more difficult. Dr Mine Conkbayir, who is the host of the I’m ADHD! No You’re Not podcast (along with her husband, the comic actor Paul Whitehouse) has the condition.

Her day job is consulting on how to educate young kids who are neurodivergent. There are very high rates of ADHD in our prisons; men and women who took, as Dr Conkbayir calls it, ‘the well-trodden school-to-prison pipeline’.

Some people take the opposite view and call ADHD a superpower, but there’s no way I would ever use that nauseating expression. Yes, billionaires like Richard Branson and Bill Gates have it, as do comic geniuses like Stephen Fry and Armando Iannucci. But for the vast majority, it’s a huge inconvenience that invites chaos into their lives.

Last weekend, at a friend’s 60th, I sat next to a man with a famous surname. He admitted to me he occasionally pinched his child’s Concerta, a drug prescribed for ADHD. It is a brand of methylphenidate – a stimulant which increases the availability of dopamine. ADHD is an inherited condition and, though he hadn’t been assessed, he told me: ‘I definitely have it.’

This man’s life has been both ridiculously privileged – Eton, Oxford, copious connections at high levels – and at the same time characterised by a sequence of erratic and rash choices and failure. The success he’d had was despite himself. Now imagine that messed-up kid, but with no advantages in life.

I have never stopped working. I am not a problem to society – I pay tax (though I always file late and, if I was more productive, I could pay more). But I have caused problems to others. Working late one night, during one of my few short forays into corporate life, I set fire to my corner of the office by accident.

I’ve plugged away at fixing my focus and taming my wilder emotions. I’ve tried it all, from supplements and wacky diets to acupuncture and extreme exercise regimes.

When I had to write a couple of books in 2018, I was so sick of my weapons-grade procrastination that I sought illegal treatment in the hope that it would help. It involved taking a very big dose of psychedelics – the South American hallucinogenic drug ayahuasca – which I would not recommend approaching with anything but huge amounts of caution and research.

It did work. Two nights of utter misery curled in a foetal position in a dreary Scottish village hall seemed to reboot my wonky brain and bought me six months of emotional peace, confidence and usefulness. Both books were bestsellers.

I wonder how many more I might have written had I not had ADHD, or had I been (legally) medicated earlier.

Today my day-to-day life is fairly wholesome. I eat healthy food, exercise, drink less, try to create routines for myself – all of which combine significantly to lessen ADHD symptoms.

The medicine I take is not without its issues. It’s a stimulant, and if I get the dose wrong, it makes me ratty and anxious. My sleep can be diabolical. But my appetite for drink is gone – all I fancy these days is the odd glass of wine with food.

I get up and start work without falling into repetitive patterns. I remember to pay my parking tickets on time.

But dopamine-seeking decisions have long-term consequences. Multiple studies have shown reduced life expectancy in those with ADHD, with a decrease of between four to nine years for men, and six to 11 years for women. What lowers this life expectancy is not the physical symptoms of ADHD itself but the consequences of that lifelong rush to the next dopamine fix.

For years, all I wanted so desperately was to have some control over my impulses and moods. It was always ‘Tomorrow I’ll be a better person’. This year I’ve acknowledged the reality of having an ADHD brain and what it’s meant for me and my life. That there is no tomorrow – this is as good as I get.

My ex told me, in the way you do in those brutal break-up arguments, ‘You’re useless and you always will be’. I don’t believe that in any handwringing, ‘poor me’ sense, but I totally took his point. I am useless at certain things – completely useless.

I’m sorry not to have kids, grandkids, a secure home. I live in a rented house. Maybe someone will give me a mortgage one day, but maybe, due to my credit rating and age, they won’t. I am precariously self-employed.

You can’t undo the past – but I do feel regret and frustration that I trashed my opportunities and I still have poor life skills when it comes to finances, time and managing stress. Some days a basic capacity for dressing still seems to elude me. Why did I buy a leather shirt and some ridiculous teenage hip-hop jeans when what I have long needed is sensible clothes to wear for work?

But I’ve got masses to be grateful for and happy about. I don’t feel self-pity, and I’m not depressed.

My old agent once said to me, ‘I never want to work with someone with ADHD ever again, they’re a nightmare’.

He wasn’t talking about me, but I can see why he said that. People with ADHD are many things. Late. Chaotic. Messy. Emotional. Unfiltered. Over-sensitive. Chatterboxes. Noisy. Naughty. Frequently talking over people. They are also statistically far more likely to lose the car keys, go to prison, commit suicide, have addiction issues, get divorced, struggle with relationships and be abused.

So Dad was right. I’m going to admit that ADHD can make life a very specific type of difficult. Naysayers calling that ‘confused about life’ is not just factually wrong, it’s cruel.

Five things that make ADHD worse

By neuroscientist David Cox

Approximately five per cent of the UK population are living with ADHD. And as research into the diagnosis improves, there’s been a far greater focus on managing symptoms rather than simply medicalising the condition. Here are the five things that can make ADHD worse…

1. A nasty divorce

A painful break-up, changing jobs, becoming a parent, or coping with the death of a relative or friend… people with ADHD find it far harder to adjust to major life changes, says Blandine French, a psychology researcher at the University of Nottingham, who lives with ADHD herself.

Research shows that the ADHD brain finds it much harder to cope with changes due to what neuroscientists describe as deficits in executive function. This affects their ability to manage emotional upheaval and make decisions at the same time, and is why people with ADHD thrive on routine and predictability.

What to do: ‘You can’t anticipate how grief is going to affect you,’ says Dr French, but you can create a key support system of people you can rely on, whether it’s family or friends who can help you adjust to these transitions.

2. Teatime treats

One of the problems with eating foods high in sugar is that they can impact blood glucose levels, causing rapid spikes and crashes. This creates a feeling of lethargy and exacerbates some of the issues with motivation and focus which many people with ADHD struggle with.

‘It all creates a vicious cycle, especially combined with poor sleep,’ says Professor David Daley, an applied psychology researcher at Nottingham Trent University.

What to do: If you’re hungry, try and stick to whole food snacks such as a handful of nuts or dried fruit.

3. More than one coffee before midday

‘A bit of caffeine is OK, but a lot of individuals with ADHD are very impulsive,’ says Daley. ‘They’re inattentive and so they find it harder to monitor their behaviour. So it’s much easier for them to have 3-5 cups of coffee.’

The consequence is that the caffeine overload can make it even harder to concentrate and exacerbate impulsive decisions.

What to do: Only have one cup of coffee before midday. Sticking to decaffeinated coffee is also an option, but Daley also says it’s important to be aware that even some relatively healthy drinks such as green tea and matcha can have fairly high levels of caffeine which can accumulate. He advises anyone with ADHD to stay away from all energy drinks, many of which have extremely high caffeine concentrations.

4. Doom scrolling at night

Research suggests that at least a quarter of all adults with ADHD report issues relating to insomnia and daytime sleepiness, which exacerbates issues relating to attention and motivation. According to Daley, this is because the ADHD brain doesn’t switch off at night in the same way that it does for neurotypical individuals. One of the key reasons is that in ADHD, the production of the sleep hormone melatonin is delayed so it doesn’t start being secreted until much later in the evening.

What to do: Try to limit screen time at night, and restrict gaming to daytime hours.

5. A hangover

Daley says that some of the symptoms of a hangover – from issues with attention and focus – essentially mimic ADHD, which acts as something of a double whammy for people living with the condition. ‘If you already have problems with sustained attention, being hungover is just going to make that harder,’ he says.

What to do: Daley suggests strategies which make it easier for people with ADHD to keep track of their own consumption. ‘Simple things such as only having a small wine glass when you’re drinking, or leaving the wine bottle in the kitchen,’ he says. ‘So if you’re on your fourth trip to the kitchen to refill your glass, it’s creating that reminder that you’ve had three glasses already.’