Colman Noctor

But it was a genuine reading them thinking this might be someone else's.

That's not how I experienced adolescence in that way.

Yeah, so I was working in that area and I had, like everybody else, and when you were working in the 90s and early 2000s, ADHD was seen as a little boy, typically around seven or eight years of age, who would come into your office and just like a Tasmanian devil would tear it apart and they'd be in the presses and out of the presses.

They're like on a motor and you're trying to kind of catch this kid's attention for two minutes to just ask a simple question.

And there's a mother there pulling her hair out and there's this exacerbation.

And that was what I understood ADHD to be and I wasn't like that.

I never had that sort of...

level of overactivity that I can remember.

And I certainly wouldn't have been troublesome in any way.

I was kind of a risk averse kid, you know, from the point of view of if there was lads jumping over a river on stepping stones, I'd be the one that going, I'll just go down and find a narrow point and I'll jump at the end.

I was kind of that kid.

which wouldn't kind of fit the impulsiveness or the, you know, that sort of what we would, the caricature of ADHD certainly wasn't that.

But someone came into my life who has spent a lot of time with me, and I spent a lot of time with them, and they were...

their specialist area was ADHD.

And they said to me, I think you have ADHD.

And I remember thinking, what are you talking, like not a chance.

And they were kind of saying, no, I genuinely think you do.

And I think you should get it.

looked at and I was kind of saying no.

I reluctantly agreed to go for this assessment thinking that this would reveal that I didn't.