"I’m not addicted to Adderall… but I might be addicted to the ADHD label"
A tale of the filmmaker and the pillmill
Hi there!
Thanks for finding time to read this in the midst of the new hobbies you’ve all taken up since last week’s newsletter. Feel free to send us pics of all the lopsided cups you’ve sculpted (or rocks you’ve collected, us rockhounds love buddies 🫱🏻🫲🏽).
We landed on today’s topic following our hobby conversations, when my friend @meherwrites observed: “If you have ADHD, ~everything~ feels like a potential hobby and then suddenly you have every supply for sewing, crafting, baking, resin coasters, run clubs, and planting crammed into your shoe box sizes New York apartment.” And while, sure, this is anecdotal… we were convinced!
Shockingly the hobby angle did not come up in a widely circulated NYT article on ADHD that we shared a few weeks ago. But what did come up was a hearty debate (2.6K comments!) around the diagnosis, treatment, and societal response to ADHD. We knew that filmmaker and friend of Prism, Samm Hodges, had some things to say about his own experiences on the topic. Actually… he had a lot to say. So I’ll stop and let him take it from here.
Ok, time to concentrate,
Ciara
Samm was raised in an off-grid cabin in the backwoods of Washington state. He co-created ABC’s Downward Dog, his short Tender premiered at Sundance in 2023, and production on his debut feature Young Men starring David Duchovny begins this June. He lives in LA with his wife, kids and… hopefully soon… a dog.
One thing that makes Samm feel well: Meditations with The Waking Up app… especially the metta course.
On meth and meditation: Society misunderstands my ADHD. What if I do too?
Like millions of other Americans, I received my ADHD diagnosis in the Year of our Lord 2020, over Zoom, from a website named, appropriately enough, ADHDONLINE (take that SEO gods!).
My doctor (Doctor? Doctor… surely…) sported a thick Russian accent, an ill-fitting lab coat and a surprisingly credulous expression as I recited blood pressure numbers I had obtained five minutes earlier by googling “good blood pressure 35 yo male reddit.”
Two hours later, a bottle of sky-blue, off-brand amphetamine salts was rattling happily in my hand.
Experiences like mine no doubt prompted some of the recent consternation in certain major publications. Prescription numbers are off the charts, Adderall shortages are rolling across the country like brownouts on the Fourth of July and people of sound mind from many persuasions are Deeply Concerned.
Understandable! Is it disconcerting that I take a drug chemically extremely similar to meth on a daily basis? Sure. Can it be addicting? You betcha. Is that a big part of the reason I avoided a diagnosis for decades? Absolutely! But reader, here’s the sordid truth: I have a pretty boring relationship with amphetamines.
I find Adderall… mildly helpful. My personal battle with my prescription isn’t jonesing for more, it’s remembering to take it at all. Did my ADHD diagnosis change my life? Yes. But it wasn’t the drugs. No, what was transformative… what was revelatory… was having a word—a LABEL—for what the fuck was going on with my goddamn brain.
My brain that got me 30 hours of detention in 8th grade for not being able to bring a pencil, paper and (the correct) textbook to class. My brain that leaves orange juice nestled amongst the cooking pots. My brain that has held every single lyric to Nirvana’s Nevermind since 1995, but happily schedules three different appointments at the exact same time on the exact same day.
A label contains the chaos. It pins uncertainty to the wall. I’m not lazy, sloppy, unmotivated or immature, I have a disorder! ADHD. Type 0. Inattentive type. Look, it says it right here, in this PDF I got from ADHDONLINE.com!
I felt seen! I felt heard! There are others like me! The Algorithm—our eerie old friend—was quick to offer up a chorus of uniformly affirming voices, proclaiming:
ADHD is an identity and community I should never be ashamed of!
It’s actually the neurotypicals (hyper organized losers!) who should be ashamed! You know who else was hyper organized? Nazis!
Everything I ever disliked about myself and/or my behavior is explainable by this diagnosis and therefore nothing I did that was maybe bad or wrong was really my fault!
Take, for instance, the fact that people with ADHD have significantly higher rates of obesity and are five to ten times(!) more likely to abuse alcohol. Great. This made me feel better about my complicated journey with both weight and drinking. ADHD is associated with poor impulse control. Oh my god *I* have issues with impulse control. People with ADHD are more prone toward risk taking behavior? I knew there was a reason I had to keep buying motorcycles! Difficulty with planning!? Procrastination!?? Check and CHECK!
As someone who has truly paid his dues at the ADHD whipping post (I’ve come to refer to the fees I pay for absent-minded mistakes as my Samm-tax), this felt like I finally had my day in court. And so when an NYT article comes in finger wagging and naysaying about all these goddamn kids popping all their goddamn pills… I get why people got so pissed.
Because as much as I can admit that the way I was diagnosed is scary and dangerous and overall just very much not ok, what does it say that it took a fly-by-night website with all the decorum of a Venice-Beach-circa-2015 weed “doctor” to finally treat a condition that had been plaguing me since childhood?
Should we be concerned about these cavalier ADHD pill-mills? Sure. But it’s hard to see their newfound success as anything other than an indictment of a system that seems content to punish and dismiss people who have different (some would say more creative!) kinds of brains.
If it seems like I’m both-sides-ing here, guilty as charged! This is complicated stuff. ADHD intersects with seemingly every gnarly debate on the internet: mental health, obesity, addiction, gender, the dopamine economy, capitalist-centric health care, our broken education system, even scientology!
If that’s not complicated enough, what do we do with the fact that we don’t even really know what ADHD is on a neurological level? Is ADHD related to trauma? Maybe sometimes! Is it genetic? Probably yes! Could “ADHD” be an overgeneralized label for a huge collection of disparate brain phenomena whose only real commonality is that they are all helped by the pharmaceuticals we use to treat ADHD? Unfortunately possible!
Damn, here we are, deconstructing labels, back in the uncertainty again.
But in a way, that makes sense. My own journey with ADHD has felt like a journey into the unknown. It led me to a deeply transformative mindfulness practice. It’s forced me to deal with my sleep hygiene. Exercise. Scrolling addiction. I even built a distraction-free writing laptop that has done more for my productivity than any medication ever has (more on that below!).
My ADHD might not be like yours. The label ADHD itself might not be as helpful as I once hoped. But five years after that first diagnosis, I truly believe the messiness of the process has made me a better person. Fitter. Happier. More productive. Which is a far less depressing state than late 90s prog rock would have led me to believe!
Was it all thanks to Adderall? No. Not all. But if a Russian Zoom “doctor” in an ill-fitting lab coat turned out to be an essential part of my ADHD wellness journey? All I have to say is…
Za zda-ró-vye! To our health!
FIND SAMM ON
Our work at Prism requires heads-down focused time reading and writing (#humblebrag). This feels increasingly at odds with our tech, whose main goal seems to be to distract us every 32 seconds (approx). So we asked Samm how he wrangles his tech as a screenwriter with ADHD. He made us a handy (and slightly chaotic!) guide. It’s specific to screenwriting but can be easily adapted for anyone who needs to focus on a computer… so… all of us?
If anyone else has a similar guide for a different pursuit (focus for grading papers? distraction-free music composition?), send them our way! In the meantime, we’re spending the rest of our Sundays browsing for used iPads.
Buoyant 🌊
Free 🎶
Thanks for reading! Hope the rest of your Sunday is more mindfulness than chaos (unless it’s the good kind).
This was such a good read, I found myself jumping between all the perspectives on this and still don’t know which one applies the most to me today. Thanks for sharing ♥️