On Taking Charge of Adult ADHD

Over the past few months my therapist has mentioned more than once that she thinks I may have ADHD, and it’s seeming increasingly clear that she’s right. I’ve met plenty of people with ADHD and carried a foggy sense of what it is, but I don’t think I really got it. Barkley’s book is a primer, designed for someone who knows nothing about the condition, and its tone is remarkably light. It’s divided into steps (diagnosis, medication, strategies), and Barkley’s view is that medication is the single most important tool for bringing ADHD under control, with everything else there to supplement it; somewhere near the start, if I remember right, he says the later strategies may not work at all without it. In his account, ADHD is essentially a disorder of two things, time blindness and executive function, and the chapter on the many facets of executive function was especially enlightening, because I have a genuinely hard time with it.

The end of the book covers how ADHD shows up across different parts of life and how it might be better managed. I think mine went invisible for years, since I’ve long been a hard worker and intelligent enough, though even so I had trouble turning in assignments in high school. Where I really see it is at work, where it’s the most unbearable, intolerable challenge of my existence, and I’ve seen it in my relationship too, especially early on, though there I managed to bring it under control in a way I haven’t elsewhere. All told, this is a good primer, but it sacrifices depth. For anyone wondering whether they have ADHD it might be a good first step, and it’s illuminating; I just wish it were more.