Paulette Crowley was in her early fifties when a chance remark from a doctor led to an ADHD diagnosis and a deeper understanding of decades of struggling with inner turbulence, anxiety, depression and alcoholism. She explains how mental health, addiction and neurodiversity are often linked, and how addressing the latter was like turning on a guiding light.
Dr Luci Falconer bent forward slightly, speaking softly. “Paulette, I strongly recommend that you investigate a possible diagnosis of ADHD.”
How rude. I’d spent hours with this Auckland-based clinical psychologist as part of my child’s ADHD screening. I wasn’t the one climbing out windows, unable to focus on a conversation thread. I was mum to a neurodiverse kid, not the problem here.
She explained that ADHD runs in families and is strongly linked to depression, anxiety and substance abuse. It might explain my struggles with both my mental health and addiction. Although I wasn’t keen on another serious label, I conceded I should examine myself through a neurodiverse lens.
A lifetime of turbulence
In primary school, I was the kid who got separated from the others for talking too much. I couldn't hold in anything I wanted to say – it was like trying to stop a sneeze. My childhood body was covered in scrapes and bruises from daredevil stunts. Feelings overpowered me like tsunamis. “You’re oversensitive”, I was told. “Focus. Apply yourself.”
I couldn’t get myself together. As a young adult on Auckland’s North Shore I lived in a dozen flats, started and stopped five tertiary courses and burned through a series of intense but short-lived romances and friendships. I chopped and changed jobs every few months and was a big disappointment to my parents.
By my early 20s I'd managed to establish a career in the media, but it ran hot and cold because I couldn’t perform consistently. I could knock it out of the park in high pressure situations but would collapse into entropy on humdrum days.
Wit, astute observational skills and an ability to rise to a crisis saved me from being a complete disaster. People either found me charming and delightful, or the most annoying person in the world.
My all-or-nothing-ness was most obvious with booze, food and cigarettes, all of which I used to soothe the storms in my head. By my late teens I had raging addictions, particularly with alcohol.
In my mid-20s, I lost a top job in the then all-powerful women’s magazine industry of the ‘90s, going from Ab Fab to unemployed in a heartbeat, and using that descent as an excuse for an epic bender. I was a sorry sight as I sat in a psychiatrist’s office for the first time. Like a stern high school principal, he lectured that I had depression and anxiety. I should never drink again.
But as I've written in a previous piece, I struggled to put the bottle down. Black moods, agitation and periods of paralysis were recurrent. My “outside” looked passable but was down to Oscar-worthy performances where I tried to demonstrate how valid I was.
Had I been drinking to self-medicate?
Ten years later, the realisation that there could be a biological reason fuelling my struggles couldn’t be ignored. I’d managed to stay sober for 10 years, but it hadn’t been easy. Maybe I’d been fighting against an unknown force in my brain for all of those years? Could it have been easier?
With the clinical psychologist's advice ringing in my ears, I asked my GP to ask for a psychiatry referral to investigate the possibility of me having ADHD. She wasn’t keen. “Yours is just a different way of looking at the world," she told me. "You don’t need treatment.”
Feeling dismissed, my rebel streak kicked in and I was determined to see a specialist. A few months later, I sat in front of a colourful psychiatrist in designer workout gear with big, blonde, blown-out hair. Distracted by her long fake nail tapping and eyelash batting, I tried to aborb the very serious message she was imparting in a sing-song South African drawl: I most assuredly had ADHD.
My experience with ADHD medication
I was reluctant to take medication for ADHD, but seeing the incredible change that meds made for my daughter, I too mounted the Ritalin horse, which took off like Phar Lap. At first, it was like riding bareback after years of struggling with an ill-fitting saddle – my medicated brain was calm, focused and reliable, far from my unmedicated state, which felt like having 30 radio stations on at once.
On Ritalin I felt like someone had finally handed me the remote, or the operating manual for my life. I could focus on work for hours on end. I wasn't overwhelmed by housework, life admin or social occasions. I felt a calm I didn’t know existed as a regular, reliable source of dopamine was administered to my brain every day, paradoxically by stimulant medication.
A few months in, the gallop slowed to a steady trot. I felt so ‘normal’, I questioned if the medication was still working. But looking back, I saw a steady flow of achievements. Projects were on track, some even completed. The long-term effect of medication was subtle but powerful.
Grief for what could have been with an earlier ADHD diagnosis and treatment hit hard. I learnt that my exhausting proving-that-I’m-worthy-and-normal performances were known as masking. Unmasking permitted me to become more authentic and freed up enormous amounts of energy.
The diagnosis also refuted my internal dialogue that I was bad, dumb, lazy and weird – I was just wired differently. I now belonged in a new tribe, rather than ostracised from the neurotypical one. It provided strong guidelines for what I couldn’t expect from myself and gave permission to forgive my addictive tendencies, which I reframed as a normal response to unmanageable symptoms from an unknown source.
Not everyone shared my newfound understanding, especially my non-neurodiverse friends and family. Some could barely restrain themselves from rolling their eyes when I shared my diagnosis. Others openly dismissed me with comments such as, “Everyone’s a little bit ADHD – no one’s got an attention span anymore”. That made me furious because my experience of living with ADHD has at times felt debilitating and unbearable. The feeling that you’ve been too much for too long never goes away, even when you present evidence to explain the way you are.
The biggest contributor to my newfound wellbeing
In recent months, my meds track has turned again. A separate health condition has meant I’ve had to reduce the Ritalin, meaning more adjustments of what I can and can’t do. Some ADHD symptoms have returned but I’m more confident in dealing with them now that my baseline has moved up from its former level of chaos. I’ve learnt that knowledge of my condition – and the increased ability to manage it successfully – is just as important as stimulant medication.
For me, exercise, quality sleep, nutrition, stress management, meaningful work and positive connections are all crucial in putting the brakes on my brain and getting the best out of myself.
At the very crux of my newfound wellbeing is my ability to happily embrace myself for who I am. That's brought me more peace than I've ever got from any pill, lifestyle hack or approval from others.
Waiheke-based Paulette Crowley is a journalist, focusing on health, and a registered mental health coach.
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