I meant to watch The Great ADHD Myth?, Channel 4’s new provocative documentary, as soon as I woke up, but instead I felt I had to go for a little walk. I schlepped down to McDonald’s and ate my egg and cheese McMuffin then returned to my flat. I meant to watch The Great ADHD Myth the moment I got in, but instead I suddenly, intensely felt like I needed to have a bath, and I couldn’t think about anything else, so that’s what I did.
I pleasantly sat in my tub for around seven or eight minutes – I rarely see the point in staying in it any longer – then after that, I finally sat down and watched The Great ADHD Myth? I turned the 47-minute show on at 12pm on the dot and I finished it just after 1pm, because I kept pausing it to look something up, watch another video, look at a work email I’d been meaning to respond to, or just because I realised that I wasn’t paying attention anyway, and needed to snap back into it.
I wonder what Max Pemberton would have made of my morning. The NHS psychiatrist is a well-known figure in the press, and fronts the documentary. He opens it by asking if ADHD really is “a neurodevelopmental disorder”, and wondering if it is a “myth that people have brains that are wired differently”. He finishes it by concluding that the condition is not a neurodevelopmental disorder, but is instead a social construct.
In between those two statements lie Mason, the 10-year-old boy the programme mostly revolves around. Diagnosed with ADHD and put on medication aged eight, Mason and his mother agree to a trial, where the child will spend six weeks off his meds, but changing his lifestyle in order to try and mitigate his symptoms.
What he is asked to do and not to do made me laugh, both sincerely and with a hint of bitterness. Mason is told, by a professional who has studied him, to quit gaming, do some exercise, do some yoga, spend more time outside, remove processed food from his diet, and avoid sugar and sugary snacks as much as possible.
These are all things I, Marie, 34-and-a-half, long diagnosed with ADHD but unmedicated, have been doing. Well, I do like video games, but aside from that: I exercise like a madwoman multiple times a week, finish every day with some stretches, try to go out for walks as often as I humanly can, rarely eat processed food, and thankfully do not have even a bit of a sweet tooth. I also start or finish most of my home-cooked meal with a soft-boiled egg, as a way to add protein to my diet – something Mason is also told to do.
Somehow I have, without even realising it, been living the perfect ADHD life this whole time, at least as far as this documentary is concerned. I watched what happened next with interest, and was entirely unsurprised by the results. While unmedicated, little Mason was fun and funny, restless but a delight to be around. His grades, however, ended up dipping at school, and his behaviour in the classroom became poor enough that, several weeks after the end of the experiment, he was put back on his meds.
To Pemberton, this doesn’t mean that his premise was flawed, and ADHD really is a proper condition that ought to be taken seriously. Instead, he argues that “it’s not a problem with his brain, it’s the school environment”. It may seem like a deep and nuanced conclusion but is instead a disappointing cop-out.
Of course, school is tough for a lot of kids. I hated being in education so much that I only did a degree resentfully, attended as few lectures I could get away with, then graduated and told myself I’d never step foot in any kind of classroom again. The one issue is that, well – my problems didn’t stop there.
I just couldn’t stand to sit and listen to someone talk for hours on end but I also can’t be expected to sit at a desk doing my job for eight hours a day. I’m able to work to a deadline but only if I have as much agency as possible in setting it, and though I will always try my best, I sometimes find it genuinely impossible to work on something I find uninteresting. The idea of having more than maybe one or two meetings a month fills me with a sense of primordial horror.
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Sure, I have managed to build myself a successful life as a person with ADHD who has decided not to get medicated but it has taken me an enormous amount of work and luck and privilege, and my methods just aren’t that scaleable. Pemberton built a documentary around the belief that ADHD just isn’t that real anyway and, in any case, shouldn’t be treated with medication, but he failed to offer any kind of plan B for people suffering.
In one particularly poignant moment, the partner of Mason’s mother joyfully explains that the kid, now off his meds, is proving to be “a real character”. It’s intended as a sweet comment, and proof that people with ADHD should merely be themselves, but I struggled to see it as such. I’ve been a “real character” all my life and it’s often been a tough and alienating experience.
Instead of prodding us, judging us, and treating us with suspicion, medical professionals and documentary commissioners alike really ought to just let us try and live our lives as best we can, with all the crutches we can find. I don’t believe it should be too much to ask.
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