I Had Retrained My Brain to ADHD.

I feel like screaming.

The desperation to break free from my mind tears my insides apart. The demands of the world – to sit down and remain still and continue to focus – take their toll on me. As my brain itches to jump from topic to topic and activity to activity, my body remains unmoving. I cannot move. I need to stay focused. I need to stay on task.

My homework is boring, and I have a slew of projects to start, tasks to finish, places to go, people to talk to, and things to think about. Maybe I’ll re organize my closet, or no, I’ll going to go for run. But wait, I should make bracelets or pumpkin bread. I could call my family and go for a drive. Or…I could sit here. Bored, reading. I’ll read five more pages and then take a break.

I feel like screaming.

It’s somehow already eleven o’clock at night and I have at least one hundred pages of reading left. I don’t even know where the time went. Time to focus again…after this super quick break.

It’s now three in the morning and I lie awake in bed, unable to sleep. I should be able to, but I cannot seem to turn my brain off. I need to sleep. The hours left before my alarm is set to go off quickly tick away. Six hours of sleep quickly fades to five then four.

At eight o’clock in the morning, my alarm blares its fateful tune. It is time for the process to start again.

Since a young age, I struggled to get my work done efficiently. I just thought I was a chronic procrastinator with an affinity for multitasking. I could never complete one task in one sitting. Instead, I would start one assignment, take a break, start a different assignment, take another break, and so on and so forth until I had started all of my homework assignments, taken numerous breaks, and failed to complete any of them. But because this all started when I was in middle school, my work load was not heavy, and I did not have to try hard in order to do well in school.

However, sophomore year of high school hit, and I suddenly realized that this work style would not be feasible anymore. My procrastination and habit of jumping from assignment to assignment began to affect my grades and my already-poor sleep schedule. I failed tests and fell behind on assignments. But I was determined to fix it. I began to stay up however late was necessary in order to finish all of my work. A vicious cycle, however, my insomnia on top of my new work habits meant I failed to get more than three to five hours of sleep a night.

By the time I reached senior year, my mom and I came to conclusion that these issues I had – an inability to focus, insomnia, and a tendency to talk incessantly – might be the manifestations of something else. Soon after, I began seeing a neurologist and got tested for ADHD.

I will never forget the neurologist sitting down with us, showing me the results, and telling us that he had never seen scores like mine before. My impulsivity scores were incredulously high, especially when looked at in comparison with the amount of questions I answered correctly. My fidgeting and movements decreased over the course of the task – something highly unusual for people with ADHD. I was diagnosed with ADHD but prescribed no medication. The perplexing results suggested that I had naturally retrained my brain over time.

While this diagnosis was helpful in taking personal blame off of my failures and helping me to cope better with my stress, it has also left me in a weird place. I still struggle to get my tasks done. I still suffer from insomnia. I still fight to keep myself organized. My detrimental behaviors have been difficult to change. It is a constant internal fight nearly every day to do what I am aware is needed to be done and to do what my mind wants me to do.

However, I refuse to let my ADHD hinder me from achieving my goals. It may seem absurd, but at times I am even grateful for my impulsivity linked to my ADHD, for it has led me to amazing opportunities such as cliff diving in Nicaragua or concerts with great friends. While, my diagnosis did not necessarily give me a simple solution, it gave a name to my problems and a starting point for how to keep going forward and persevering.

By Lilly Delehanty

Duke Student, pink purveyor and resident expert on surviving and thriving.