ADHD: Why Am I Like This?Part 16: Living Intentionally

By this point in my investigation, I had spent years asking one question.

Why am I like this?

The answers changed the way I understood my brain.

But they also created a new question.

Now that I understand myself better... how will I live more intentionally?

Recovery Taught Me More Than Sobriety

My lifetime identity crisis led to an unhealthy habit so I entered recovery.

I thought I was there to learn how to stop drinking.

I wasn't expecting to learn how to live.

Mental Therapy was part of the recovery curriculum.

This was something I had needed but neglected because of focusing on the needs of everyone else around me.

One of the first exercises challenged me to identify my highest values.

The kind of man I wanted to become.

The life I wanted to build.

Not the life other people expected me to live.

The life that would be meaningful to me.

That exercise changed something deep inside me.

For perhaps the first time in my adult life, I wasn't reacting to circumstances.

I was choosing a direction.

Looking Back

Looking back, I don't think alcohol was helping my ADHD.

It was quieting it.

It dulled the constant stream of thoughts.

The restlessness.

The curiosity.

The intensity.

It slowed my mind down just enough that I could pretend to be the person I believed everyone else needed me to be.

For a while, it worked.

Until it didn't.

In the end, alcohol cost me almost everything.

My reputation.

My peace.

My confidence.

My future as I imagined it.

Ironically, losing those things forced me to begin asking the questions that eventually led me here.

Meeting My Brain Again

When I finally became sober, something unexpected happened.

My brain came back.

Completely.

For the first time in nearly twenty years, I experienced my own mind without alcohol standing between us.

It was overwhelming.

Ideas came rapidly.

My curiosity returned.

My energy returned.

So did all the ADHD traits I had unknowingly been suppressing.

At first, I wondered whether something was wrong with me.

Now I realize something far different was happening.

For the first time in decades...

I was meeting myself again.

Negotiating Instead of Fighting

For most of my life, I had treated my brain like an opponent.

Something to overcome.

Something to discipline.

Something to force into behaving the way I thought it should.

Recovery taught me something different.

Acceptance is not surrender.

It's honesty.

Understanding ADHD taught me something equally important.

I didn't need to defeat my brain.

I needed to understand it.

So I stopped fighting it.

I started negotiating with it.

I learned what motivated it.

What exhausted it.

What distracted it.

What inspired it.

Instead of demanding that it become someone else's brain...

I began asking how we could work together.

That changed everything.

An Intentional Life

As I continued this investigation, I realized that understanding my brain wasn't the destination.

It was the foundation.

The systems I'd built.

The reminders.

The routines.

The small daily steps.

None of them were the goal.

They were tools that allowed me to move toward a life that reflected my values.

Writing.

Comedy.

Building businesses.

Being present for my children.

Serving my spiritual needs.

Helping other people understand themselves a little better than I once understood myself.

For years, my decisions had been driven by urgency.

Fear.

Expectations.

Survival.

Now they're increasingly guided by purpose.

Not perfectly.

But intentionally.

What I've Learned

One sentence keeps coming back to me.

Recovery taught me to identify the life I wanted.

Understanding ADHD taught me how to build a brain that could actually get there.

Those two journeys didn't compete with each other.

They completed each other.

Recovery clarified my direction.

Understanding ADHD gave me a map.

Looking back, I no longer believe success means becoming the person I thought everyone wanted me to be.

Success means becoming the person my values are leading me to become.

That has required systems.

Patience.

Grace.

And more self-understanding than self-criticism.

For years, I believed the goal was to become normal.

Now I think the goal is something much better.

To become fully myself.

Intentionally.

That realization changed more than the way I think about ADHD.

It changed the direction of my life.

It is my hope that, somewhere in these pages, you've found a little more understanding of yourself than you had when you began.

If my investigation has illuminated even part of the path ahead, then sharing it has been worthwhile.

The Next Clue

As my investigation drew closer to its conclusion, one question remained.

After everything ADHD has made more difficult...

Has it also given me something I would never want to lose?

That became another clue.

Next

Part 17: What ADHD Gave Me

References

Barkley, R. A. (2015). Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: A Handbook for Diagnosis and Treatment (4th ed.). Guilford Press.

Brown, T. E. (2013). A New Understanding of ADHD in Children and Adults: Executive Function Impairments.Routledge.

Faraone, S. V., Banaschewski, T., Coghill, D., et al. (2021). The World Federation of ADHD International Consensus Statement: 208 Evidence-Based Conclusions About the Disorder. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 128, 789-818.

Miller, W. R., & Rollnick, S. (2013). Motivational Interviewing: Helping People Change (3rd ed.). Guilford Press.

Covey, S. R. (1989). The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Free Press.