My ADHD diagnosis at 34 was ‘clear as hell’ – here’s how I’ve silenced the caffeinated squirrels rioting in my brain

TO the outside world, he was the mega successful founder of two multi-million pound companies.

But secretly, Alex Partridge was battling crippling anxiety, using alcohol to "press his brain's brake pedal", and pouring up to £14,000 down the drain every year. It wasn't until a shock diagnosis aged 34 that his life started to make sense and he turned things around.

Here, he shares his story.

I’VE always known, deep down, that I was different.

This began during my school days, when I’d copy my classmates’ mannerisms and tone of voice just to fit in.

I altered who I was to appear likeable to others, because I didn’t understand who I was.

This carried on into secondary school where, as a fellow student so sensitively put it, I “could have been one of the cool kids if I wasn’t so weird”.

I have vivid memories from this period of when teachers would ask me questions that I didn’t know the answer to, and the stress would lead to full-blown anxiety attacks.

My palms would get all sweaty, my face would go bright red and my heart rate would shoot right up. In a panic, I would rush out of the classroom.

I remember one day I found someone in the corridor and told them to call an ambulance because I thought I was having a heart attack.

At the time, aged 15, I was misdiagnosed with generalised anxiety disorder (excessive, uncontrollable worry about everyday situations).

I now know this not to be the case, but I was put on beta blockers (to slow my heart by blocking hormones like adrenaline) and antidepressants.

They didn’t help - in fact, they actually made me feel worse - so I stopped taking them after six weeks.

Following a tumultuous young adulthood, which included founding the websites LADBible and UNILAD in quick succession – and a protracted legal battle over their ownership that turned my life upside down – I was finally diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) two years ago, aged 34.

Like so many others across society, I had thought ADHD was just something hyperactive little boys had, so I never even considered that I might have it.

But when I hired a director to help me set up a podcast, before losing interest in the project three days later, he asked me: “When did you get your ADHD diagnosis?”

This casual question changed my life forever.

So much of my life up until that point – the anxiety attacks, the constant picking up and dropping of new hobbies, identities and business ideas – began to make sense.

I had an assessment, and a psychiatrist told me that my ADHD was “clear as hell” – and it’s a day that I’ll never forget.

When I began to learn more about the condition and the different ways it can present, it was the first of many ‘lightbulb moments’.

The 'ADHD tax' cost me up to £14,000 a year at my worst

Alex Partridge

I’m not physically hyperactive like the naughty schoolboys I had previously imagined; my brain is a different story entirely.

Describing how it feels to anybody who hasn’t spent time inside it is tricky, but my ADHD means that all my energy can be concentrated in my head.

The closest approximation I can give is that it’s like 10 highly caffeinated squirrels running about at once!

Hyperactivity associated with ADHD can be internalised and, after realising this, so many of my previous life experiences suddenly made sense.

For me, ADHD means that:

• I possess the creativity and hyperfocus to create two global social media brands, but if a task doesn’t interest me, it simply will not get done.
• I’ve always been entrepreneurial, but I had poor financial skills and often lost interest in projects once the novelty waned.
• I own an impressive list of domains, and enjoy buying things, but this often results in overspending and financial difficulties.
• I love meeting new people, but I’ve always struggled to maintain friendships.

One way it presents is impulse purchasing, which I’ve always struggled with.

It would cost me hundreds – sometimes thousands – of pounds a year. I estimate about £14,000 annually at my worst.

I now know this to be a little-known (and costly) consequence of ADHD known as the 'ADHD tax', referring to the higher living expenses that so many of us with ADHD (and other neurodivergences) can incur due to challenges with impulse control and executive functioning.

The ADHD tax might show up in the expensive hobbies we’ve signed up for (and then lost interest in), the impulse purchases we buy and forget about, or the dreaded monthly subscriptions that we sign up for, never use but never cancel – a classic example of how knowing how my brain worked would have been extremely helpful earlier in my life.

I used to buy so much food that I would then forget to eat.

I impulsively signed up for an online sewing course on a Monday, then had lost all interest in it the following day.

My electricity bills increased as I was having to wash my clothes multiple times because I’d forgotten to empty the washing machine.

When I thought I’d found my new calling in life as a master candle maker, I bought a 2kg box of paraffin wax from Hobbycraft, only for it to sit there unused for months.

I bought a trumpet thinking I’d learn to play, but again, it stayed firmly in its box.

I even bought new socks when all of mine were dirty, and decided to buy a new rug when my dog went to the toilet on the original as the thought of cleaning it was too overwhelming.

Hundreds of pounds splashed on unused gym memberships, vitamins, app subscriptions… the list goes on.

ADHD has long been associated with naughty schoolkids who cannot sit still in class.

And that is part of it. Fidgeting, daydreaming and getting easily distracted are all symptoms of the behavioural condition, which is why it is often spotted in children.

However, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is far more complex than simply having trouble focusing.

Henry Shelford, CEO and co-founder of ADHD UK, says: “If it isn’t debilitating, it isn’t ADHD.”

In recent years, social media has given rise to trends which conflate specific personality traits or single behaviours with ADHD.

You might be thinking, ‘I’m always losing my keys, forgetting birthdays and I can never concentrate at work — I must have ADHD’. But it’s not as simple as that.

Though these may all point to the condition, Dr Elena Touroni, a consultant psychologist and co-founder of The Chelsea Psychology Clinic, says: “The key distinction lies in how much a behaviour impacts a person’s daily life.

“Genuine ADHD symptoms affect multiple areas of life - work, relationships and emotional wellbeing - whereas personality traits are typically context-dependent and less disruptive.”

ADHD UK’s Henry, who has the condition himself, adds: “Having ADHD is hard. One in ten men with ADHD and one in four women with ADHD will at some point try to take their own lives.”

So how can ADHD manifest in someone’s life? While hyperactivity is a common indicator, here are nine other subtle signs:

1. Time blindness - losing track of time, underestimating how long tasks will take, regularly being late or excessively early
2. Lack of organisation - a messy home, frequently misplacing items, forgetting deadlines
3. Hyperfocus - becoming deeply engrossed in activities for hours
4. Procrastination - feeling overwhelmed by to-do lists and struggling to determine what needs your attention first so focusing on less important tasks
5. Heightened emotions - emotional struggles can manifest in angry outbursts, feeling flooded with joy or shutting down because you feel too much at once
6. Being a 'yes man' - agreeing to new projects at work or dinner dates with friends when you're already busy (a desire to please)
7. Impatience - interrupting people mid-conversation, finding it painful to stand in a queue, being overly-chatty
8. Restlessness - tapping, pacing, fidgeting or feeling restless on the inside
9. Easily distracted - by external things, like noises, or internal things like thoughts

Among the most challenging periods of my life, however, came in 2017, before my diagnosis, during a long-running legal battle that pushed me to the brink.

“Two members of the public found you staggering in an alleyway. It was 2am. You were alone and clutching a bottle of vodka. As they approached you, you slipped and hit your head on the wall. They called an ambulance.”

These were the first words spoken to me by the nurse next to my hospital bed when I woke up.

Upon hearing them, I was hit by an overwhelming wave of shame and anxiety, and the immediate need to self-medicate.

Unfortunately, it was alcohol - my medication of choice at the time - that had landed me here in the first place. So how did this all come about?

I was 18 when I discovered booze, and quickly figured out it turned down the volume in my head.

As I’ve often been a pleasure-seeker with low impulse control, it wasn’t a shock when I discovered the strong link between ADHD and addiction. And alcohol became an addiction that would temporarily run my life.

It was being effectively ousted from UNILAD, the business I founded alongside two others, that really kick-started my alcoholism in 2013.

I still remember staring at my computer screen, suddenly unable to access the site because they had changed the password, paralysed with overwhelm and crippled by anxiety.

I stood up, went and bought a bottle of wine, drove home and drank the whole thing in five minutes.

Suddenly, it was like I had pressed my brain’s brake pedal.

My thoughts instantly slowed down, and the caffeinated squirrels stopped running around. My anxiety had, temporarily, disappeared.

For various reasons, such as rejection sensitive dysphoria (RSD) – an extreme emotional reaction I feel to real or perceived rejection - that accompanies my ADHD, I’ve always been terrified of confrontation.

So much so, that my coping mechanism for effectively having my life’s work snatched from me was not to confront those responsible, but rather to bury my head in the sand and drink myself to sleep every night.

After my mum found 23 empty bottles of wine concealed under my bed, we finally arranged to speak to a lawyer, who told me: “You will win this case over ownership of the company if you choose to fight it in court. You will, however, have to give evidence in the witness box.”

My mind immediately flashed to the opposing lawyer saying: “Alex, do you know the answer to this question?” And I panicked, remembering the little version of me sitting in the classroom all those years ago.

I abruptly stood up and left the lawyer’s office, bought a bottle of vodka, and woke up in hospital 12 hours later with a nurse looking over me, saying the sobering words you see above.

Much of the next year was characterised by the court battle, which was an unbelievably stressful time.

During the trial, I was cross-examined in the witness box for five days, during which I had to excuse myself several times to “use the loo” – when in reality, I was doing breathing exercises to divert a panic attack.

A further three months passed before my lawyer phoned me. He said: “Alex, are you on your own?”

“Yes,” I said. There was a pause. “You’ve won everything.”

I broke down crying – one of the biggest legal, and mental health, or battles of my life, and I’d come through it. I won my 33 per cent stake in the company back.

UNILAD went into administration in 2018, then was bought by the same company that had earlier bought LADBible for an undisclosed amount. Reports suggest the brand was valued at up to £40million.

My celebrations included a trip to Las Vegas, a new tattoo (that I had no memory of getting in the first place) becoming infected, and another hospital visit.

But in 2018, I managed to kick the alcohol habit for good.

I attended my first Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meeting where I said the most important sentence I’d ever uttered. “My name is Alex and I’m an alcoholic.”

I’ve been sober ever since, which is among the best decisions I’ve ever made.

I’m now 36, living in Brighton, and I can confidently say that quitting booze has enabled me to take back control of my ADHD, suffocate the negatives - and allow the positives to thrive.

Alex Partridge is the founder of LADbible and UNILAD and the host of the ADHD Chatter podcast. His book Now It All Makes Sense: How An ADHD Diagnosis Brought Clarity To My Life (Sheldon Press, £16.99) is out now.