Alcohol and ADHD

The vicious cycle of drinking to soothe the anguish of misunderstood neurodiversity

Author photograph

I don't write much about attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), though I self-diagnosed it long before autism came on my radar, and received official diagnosis soon after. I'm not sure why I don’t write so much about it. The connection between ADHD and addiction are strong, and ADHD likely played a crucial part in my path towards heavy drinking. I remember finding this comforting along the way of better understanding my unhelpful booze habit.

“ADHD drives risky behavior and negative experiences throughout the lifespan that subsequently enhance a genetically increased risk for Alcohol Use Disorders (AUD)”

And:

“Impulsive decisions and a maladaptive reward system make individuals with ADHD vulnerable for alcohol use and up to 43 % develop an AUD; in adults with AUD, ADHD occurs in about 20 %, but is vastly under-recognized and under-treated.”

These are both quotes from the abstract of an article titled: Alcohol use disorders and ADHD. Read the full paper in Science Direct, if you’re interested.

My point, for this post, is that the link between ADHD and risky drinking/substance use is clear.

Perhaps I don’t write so much about it because of this well-established connection. Or because learning I have ADHD wasn't as shocking and unexpected as discovering I am autistic. I’d suspected ADHD a while. And, importantly, I’d known people with ADHD. It was less mysterious, so possibly there was less thinking and processing (this writing) for me to do about it.

Today I was sent an article from a magazine I subscribe to, titled 9 Mean Teacher Comments Every Student with ADHD Knows Too Well and reading it brought back so much of my experience at school. I was struck for the hundredth time by how obvious my neurodiversity always was, and how ill-equipped teachers and adults, generally, were, back then, to deal with it.

As early as Primary School I began to get the sense that I was disappointing and frustrating my teachers, just by being myself. I was frequently told to try harder, and that I had such potential, if only I would stop fiddling, daydreaming, forgetting, chatting, fidgeting, laughing… In other words, being myself.

I was too talkative, distracting the pupils near me, too easily distracted because I couldn’t stay focused on lessons. I forgot my weekly dinner money for months at a time, and lost folders of work or half-made Christmas cards we were supposed to finish at home, and library books. Once - devastatingly - I lost my most treasured, half-completed cross-stitch. I somehow put it down in the corn field I had been running around in, and could never find it again. I still remember the agony of this loss!

All of these misdemeanours were taken personally, especially by one grumpy teacher, who I will call Mrs Gremlin. (That may have been our childish nickname for her back then, actually.) She was endlessly rolling her eyes at my behaviour, or smiling sarcastically. Often just plainly criticising my flaws. I was ten years old, unbelievably eager to be good and do the right thing, and she made me feel terrible about myself.

Mainly by criticising me for errors or behaviours that I could not help.

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Believe me when I tell you that nobody on earth knows more about how annoying a person with ADHD is than a person with ADHD. Back then, I had no idea I had ADHD, but I knew I was infuriating.

How could I not? I endlessly infuriated myself. I forgot my PE kit in spite of knowing the dread consequences that would follow: being made to do the lesson in my pants and vest. 🫠🫥😥😧

I lost my friends' favourite pens and absent-mindedly chewed their pencils. I couldn’t keep track of what was in my hands, and I accidentally lost or broke many, many things that didn’t belong to me.

These mistakes continued into secondary school, where somehow I was now expected to remember the correct items for five different lessons every day, in spite of having been entirely unable to manage the simpler daily administration of primary school.

At least here the consequences of forgetting your PE kit were less dire now there were boobs n pubes to contend with. But it was still humiliating. I frequently had to scrabble in the stinky, stale lost property bin for an outfit, including shoes, to attempt sports in.

I soon learned how to clown my way through the frequent embarrassments of my disorganisation, highlighting my mistakes with funny walks and expressions. Showing disdain and offering cheeky comebacks to the teachers who were scolding me in order to save face.

Eventually, I was thrown off the netball team for forgetting my kit, yet again, on match day, and worse still, having an attitude about it. I developed the attitude around Year 8, after many years as an extremely good girl, and looking back, it seems likely it stemmed from a total sickness of being blamed and belittled for mistakes I couldn’t help making.

“How many times do I have to tell you…?” people said to me, again and again, and I felt so unbelievably stupid, and eventually began to kind of hate them, and kind of hate myself, because I just didn’t seem able to learn.

And yet still everyone wanged on about my potential.

How do they know I have it? I wondered.

And how would I ever arrive at it, if I was already trying my very best, and just not measuring up?

It’s no surprise that my self-esteem was low when you consider the messages I was consistently getting about myself. And it’s easy to see why I found and loved booze and recreational drugs so quickly.

I loved to escape, from the very first time I discovered it as an option. All week, my friends and I whispered about how we would get that weekend’s supply of ‘ice cream’ and ‘Coca-Cola’ our code words for cigarettes and alcohol.

We met at the bus stop where one of us could get served cigarettes and at the corner shop where another could sometimes manage to get White Lightning cider. And if that didn’t work, we waited in the jitty for one of the slightly creepy older boys who could drive and asked them to go buy us Maddog 20:20 or some of the supercharged lagers.

Yuck. I can still remember the taste of those horrendous drinks, and how I used to hold my breath to drink them. I would force them back, hating the experience of drinking, but eager for the effects.

Those boozy teen years never made much sense until I contextualised them against my struggles at school, and the feelings of failure and inadequacy I developed due to the frequent messages I got about my under achievement.

I was not meeting my potential, and at some point this got translated into an unconscious belief that I never would.

What else can you believe when you are trying as hard as you can, and yet, somehow, not getting to where, apparently, you should be? To the teenage brain, there is a clear and hopeless logic encoded in the frequent criticism. And alcohol offers an easy respite.

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It’s only a few years since I’ve had the diagnosis of ADHD.k I received it in the summer of 2021. The executive functioning required to attain the diagnosis was ki a barrier to my getting it. But the lure of a medication that could make me less ‘dizzy’ and absent-minded drove me forwards. A friend on a similar path helped me by sharing her journey and checking in about mine.

Since then, a couple more of my friends have recognised they have ADHD. My mum relates enough to enjoy listening to inspiring podcasts about finding workarounds for the traits.

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I’m still forgetful. Before I realised it was ADHD, I genuinely feared I had early on set dementia. Procrastination is a daily struggle, as is time management and keeping track of what is in my hands. I don’t even want to know how many hours I lose a week traipsing from room to room, trying to remember what it is I am looking for. How many hours are lost returning back to the house for my keys/phone/bag/water bottle/maternity book/whatever the fuck.

But knowing there is a reason why things take me So Long helps me not to treat myself the way that Mrs. Gremlin treated ten-year-old me. And if I don’t manage self-compassion immediately, my diagnosis and education about impact of ADHD helps me course correct towards it more quickly.

Today I can stop beating myself up (mostly) and switch to offering the self-soothing words and encouragement I so badly need to hear when I am in the midst of mistake-making.

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Alcohol helped me forget the stress of being unable to trust myself or remember important things and consistently run my own life efficiently. It gave me freedom from the fear/belief that I was messing my one precious life up, because I was innately incapable of managing it adequately.

It also made me even more likely to make ‘silly mistakes’.

Cue vicious cycle.

Removing booze from my life was difficult, not because I was physically addicted, but because it helped to cover up so much of the anguish that came as a result of executive functioning issues related to ADHD and autism.

And because I believed I loved it.

And because everyone in my family loved it.

And because it tastes delicious!

And because there are always people who are eager to have a drink with you.

And because of the mother fucking billboards with giant, sweating glasses of lager.

And because my friends were convinced I didn’t have a problem.

And because life is hard.

And can be boring.

And painful.

And because alcohol is a social lubricant.

And because alcohol makes you more attractive.

Because, because, because…

There are so many reasons why some of us drink too much. Undiagnosed ADHD, it turns out, was a crucial one of mine. I wonder how many readers relate?

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Question of the week: did you use alcohol to self-medicate? And what do you use instead, when you are managing to make healthier choices?

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If you’re ready to try something different, try Smart, AA or Soberistas.

Listen to Recovery Elevator and SHAIR podcasts. Read This Naked Mind. Try Moderation Management.

There is a whole community of people waiting to help you. Reach out. Something better is waiting.

Read more about my experience of getting sober in the beautiful hangover archives ❤

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Chelsey Flood is the author of award-winning novels Infinite Sky and Nightwanderers, and a senior lecturer in creative writing at UWE. She is currently working on a literary memoir about getting sober and then finding out she’s aut-dhd - Beautiful Hangover: how late neurodiversity discovery helped me make peace with a drunken past, and a new YA novel.