ADHD AND ASPERGER’S – MY STORY

ADHD and Asperger’s – My Story

I was 51 (b.1970) when I was formally diagnosed with ADHD and Asperger’s, so as you might imagine it was all a bit of a shock for a middle-aged fart! I’ve always been a bit of an outlier amongst my peers, an oddball if you wish, but there have always been environmental reasons that I thought could explain it. I will be writing in more depth about these at some point in the future, but some brief examples of this are:

• Raised in Hong Kong from the age of 2
• Boarding school in rural northeast England from 11-16
• Completely different cultural reference points to most of the school – ‘white foreigner’
• College of FE to do a vocational HND instead of Uni, not usual for the privately educated
• Embarked on a career as an analyst with an oil company in my late 20s with no degree, just a grade D ‘A’ Level in Politics
• No real roots anywhere

Education history

This can simply be summed up as a lifetime of reports riffing on a theme of ‘plenty of potential, really clever, if only he’d stop being lazy, get his finger out and apply himself!’.

I don’t remember too much about the actual academic side of my primary school experience in Hong Kong, I just remember it being a simple, joyful period of my life. Due to HK’s international flavour, it was such a melting pot of diverse people and I loved it. In HK I never really experienced bullying, and the only racism that I had encountered was mainly within the 4 walls of my own home  (old-school colonial superiority in nature). In terms of academic achievement, I took and passed several entrance exams for a half dozen or so schools in the UK, all of which were the type of test that tends to measure aptitude, and basic literacy and numeracy, so no revising involved, just turn up and shoot from the hip.

Boarding school was a completely different story. The northeast of England felt like a grey, depressing place to 11-year-old me and I struggled to fit in from day 1. Some people thrive in that environment, I have to say I was not one of them, though recent diagnoses go a very long way to helping me to understand why. There were other dynamics at play at the time in the way the school was being run, but the purpose of this blog is not to open that particular can of worms. I’m sure many people had a great time there and thrived because of their experiences, and I am delighted for them and wish them well. Educationally it was my first exposure to the ‘joys’ of revision and exams, sheer torture for me. I left that school with a handful of O’ Levels.

6th form college had none of the stifling straitjacket of boarding school and they let us go to the pub which started a love affair with booze that we’ll come to later. The college was more of a university learning format, i.e. do it yourself, which I was absolutely useless at. I relished the comparative freedom, and finished with another couple of O’ Levels and an A’ level, Grade D in Government and Political Studies.

My time at a West London College of Higher Education should have been spent doing an HND in Hotel, Catering and Institutional Management. This was not a shining success, mainly because the Student Union Bar was by the entrance and I rarely managed to walk past that. This was in large part because I was working there as I had fallen out with my parents over money and refused to submit to their demands to communicate with them weekly by post in return for subsistence. I also discovered girls. I left after the 1st year with a food hygiene certificate, though it might have been a more mutual parting than I remember.

Since then I’ve tried a some professional qualifications, but no course has survived 1st contact with an exam board!

Mental health history

Since my mid 30s I’ve been aware of having mental health issues, but I was not accepting of this. On reflection I can now see that I have struggled with my mental health since my teens. When I was under a great deal of pressure at work in 2008 I was unable to find my way through the issues and in some way convinced myself that if I admitted to having a problem with stress and an inability to deal with it, it would be ‘game over’ for my career. To compound matters at the time I refused to accept a GPs diagnosis of depression for some of the reasons that you commonly hear, eg sign of weakness, stigma. As a result I didn’t deal with the situation and it led to my leaving by mutual consent after 10 years, so as far as strategies go, that one really sucked!

That 2008 depression diagnosis never left the back of my mind but I only really started to acknowledge the possibility that I might have an issue with my head in my late 40s, and with the help of an excellent counsellor I was quickly diagnosed with PTSD. We then spent 12 months working through that. Coming to terms with it and dealing with the underlying issues that were troubling me was the 1st proper step in the journey that I am on.

Alcohol issues

I always liked a drink, actually I always liked several drinks. Some days I could have nothing to drink which was a real challenge (FOMO!), but more often than not I would get wrecked, and on the occasions that I found myself in the space in between it was because time, money or the booze had run out. I might be out with people and go home in a relatively merry state, but once the front door closed the fridge or drinks cabinet door would open and I would carry on. I’d drink alone at home, or I’d drag whoever I was with at the time into my boozing so I didn’t have to admit that it was just me. It was only when I heard someone talking about exactly this pattern of drinking on TV one time (First Dates) and they described it as their alcoholism that I stopped and thought about it, realising that not all alkies needed a scotch with their cornflakes.

With 20/20 hindsight I realised that I was mentally addicted to alcohol, as opposed to physically, and that I probably partly resembled the ‘high-functioning alcoholic’ type. Once I admitted this to myself, I thought about it for 4-6 weeks, then told my wife what was on my mind and set a plan in motion to stop. That process started in September 2019, and I decided to give myself a decent chance at success by waiting until Christmas and New Year were out of the way, so I set about drinking the house dry and on 1st January 2020 I stopped drinking and have not touched a drop since. One of the most important realisations was that I could never go back and try ‘just one’, for me it was really a case of all or nothing.

I recently heard a quote which I have been unable to track down in full, but it was stated that it was from Kurt Vonnegut, ‘it’s only when you get sober that the big questions come up’.

I can safely say it is one of the very best decisions that I have ever made. If anyone else recognises this story and wants to stop, I recommend Dr Allen Carr’s ‘Stop drinking now: The original easyway method’.

Ongoing issues

Even though I had processed the issues that led to PTSD and stopped numbing my mind and hiding social awkwardness with alcohol, I still felt that I wasn’t functioning as I expected to. The analogy that I use currently is that I have a car with a great engine and fancy new wheels, but it doesn’t matter how hard I hit the accelerator, the power never transmits through to the road and I just limp along.

In late 2021 I became aware of TV presenter Mel Sykes doing the media rounds talking about her recent diagnosis with Autism. I read up on her situation and diagnosis and decided it didn’t resonate with me, but I was encouraged that someone who is the same age as me could still get answers to long standing issues. While reading about Mel I stumbled on an article about another UK TV personality, Richard Bacon, and how his ADHD diagnosis in his 40s had impacted him. Suddenly the alarm bells went off in my head.

Could ADHD be the root of my issues?

Related blogs:

ADHD and Asperger’s in adults

My ADHD diagnosis