Untreated or late diagnosed ADHD people are ridiculously overrepresented in drug & alcohol recovery programs. It's honestly chilling and it prevents me from taking this in the probably more lighthearted spirit that was intended.
Current thinking is ADHD is caused (at least in significant part) by a lack of dopamine or an insensitivity to dopamine. They’ve found links between genes that cause dopamine resistance and ADHD.
Many current ADHD medications cause increased levels of dopamine. This is a leading theory on why they work.
Wanna guess what a lot of other drugs, including alcohol, do in your brain?
It’s been amazing since I got diagnosed relatively late in life exactly how many other things suddenly made so much more sense and clicked into place. And amazing how quickly decades old substance abuse habits started to taper off once my brain chemistry was less fucked.
It wasn't meant to be lighthearted at all. It was just meant to be honest. I've been to the depths of the things, and I wish I knew how to help others not go there.
Adhd is a particular personality configuration, mostly being high in Big Five trait Openness and low in Conscientiousness. High openness is correlated with impulsivity
