He is sitting next door to me. There's the studio shot. There he is. We're sharing my We we hope it'll stay working.

I'm gonna put my jacket on. He's got a jacket on. You're all alive now, so they've noticed It doesn't matter. I'm gonna go I'm gonna there we go. I've just got a rollicking from my wife for looking a mess on camera. So I won't look as smart as you, but there we go. You look beautiful. Thank you very much. That's just yeah.

He wears back shirts predominantly. T shirts, certainly. Yeah. I think he has some white and some black. Like, I'm almost always only wear a white shirt. I just can't be asked with a hassle. And where do you sit on this?

Simplicity of clothing, please. I I can go both ways on that. I can You can have a t shirt. Yeah. Yeah. I can but I might standardize on one thing. Interestingly, I get obsessed with socks. Well, I need to have the right pairs of socks, and I seem to have a load of similarly colored socks. And I just thought of this absolute liberation would be just to why do I need a pair of socks? All the hours of my life I've spent sorting them into pairs. Just pick two socks out and put them on. If they don't exactly match, literally nobody's gonna notice unless one's pink or something.

There's a company called the odd sock company that literally sells people completely different. Well.

I'll be I'll be in a very ADHD way on the bus home, I'll be ordering something like 300 pairs or not pairs as soon as possible.

I have gone the other way on this. So I bought multiple pairs of the exact same black sock so that I never have to pair socks again. And then I bought the exact and then white, and I was sort of basically I was done here. And then at a certain point, like you you try know, you you they know, they who knows where they go, but they start to decline. And bought a few more, it's not the same. So now I operate a policy of they all go or they all stay. I'm gonna gonna I'll throw in the Guardian today, meeting you is.

Is fantastic, terrifying and unsettling as well. It's like meeting myself. I mean I've got a similar system with my boxer shorts and pants where I put them in a tube with a hole at the bottom and so there's a perfect rotation So when I've warmed them, I've been washing them and iron them, put them in the top so it comes out of the bottom so I don't wear one pair more than another.

That is wonderful. So did you by where did you get your I got my mom to make it for me. Yeah. Again, wait. Wait. So the reason I know when we met in Chiswick was because there was an article saying you took your laundry to your mom. Yeah. Who's cooking dinner?

My mom's cooking. A lot I got for her last time. So I don't think she's, you know And then she she made your extraordinary Yeah. Ordering. Well, she made a similar one to put, you know, to put plastic bags in. So when you've used them, you can take one out the bottom, you know, shopping bags and stuff. So I thought I want one of those. I want one of those for my pants and she and she delivered as she always does. And actually didn't question. Didn't question me on that and nor did my wife. I must say this is what Heston talk about. I thought was a brilliant line about what, you know, what people call tidying up, I call hiding things. I mean, I know exactly what he means. However.

I must say that my wife, who's a tower of strength, she does put things away, but she always knows where things are. I say, Cath, where is it? She will she will know. Even if she hadn't tied it away herself, she would have remembered where it was. Oh, yeah. That's under there or on top of there. Yes. I saw that there. So, you know, I've got a I've got I've got a perfect wing woman there. Well, that's why my wife is equally equally wonderful.

I persuaded the children that my wife's power skill is finding things. So dad's good for fixing things. Mom's good for finding things. She's not happy about this at all, but it does relieve me Yes. Of the obligation to go find things of which I am absolutely terrible. So Yeah. So I was supposed to do an introduction. I didn't. I'm gonna try and attempt to wind back time and actually do that. Heston, you're Heston? Adrian. Adrian.

It's only going downhill from here. Can I just tell you something funny? I've just been on ITV London on the local news talking about my book. I've written a book. This isn't a book club, but I've written a book called The Good Drinker about moderating alcohol. Anyway, I had a long briefing talk with them and talked about we're gonna talk about so you got three minutes. Fine. So it went live and it says, Adrian Chiles joined us. He's just written a book called The Big Drinker. I went, no. It's not. It's The Good Drinker. I mean, The Big Drinker would probably sell more copies, but, anyway, the devil's often in the detail of these things.

You also did a whole documentary specifically about that topic, I think. So look. What I think you're extraordinary man. You've done an enormous amount. Like, I'm a secret well, not so secret. I'm, like, fan having like, in your working lunch days and Yeah. And and and then and then on. And it is a real privilege, you know, loving me to you.

I don't cope with compliments very well. I don't know what face to put.

I got I got two options. I want a camera on you. Okay. But just keep it. No more compliments. I can't take anymore. Well, it's fair enough. I think with like, I my the intro was very short. We're we're straight into questions. The key aspect of being here is talking about ADHD. Yeah. Actually, I can do one more compliment. It's got your face to face. The the article that you wrote yesterday in the garden was something completely special. Was Oh, good. Thank very much. Like, it was beautiful. If people haven't read it, do read it. It's a beautiful, insightful, and it's I just I particularly loved the the your the way you just say one, it was very, very beautiful. Beautiful. The the way you talked to just you're like, learnt and.

The learning you talked about, the evolution of your understanding of ADHD, how to say matter of fact, like, there's some things I you you said there's some things you you thought you now no longer think. Yeah. And just being so evolving in your thinking. It was just I thought it was wonderful.

Yeah. Well, it's just I sort of think I see ADHD. We see everything really through the prism of your own experience and your own class, I suppose. And I just yeah. So I mean, I'm just seeing so many lives sort of obliterated by, you know, by ADHD. And I don't know. I just there's a there's there's a few of us sort of clever dicks, I suppose, who manage to find ways of channeling it. We might drive ourselves to distraction and torment is probably a strong word, but it's really innovating and everything. But we sort of get there. There's there's plenty of ADHD people who don't get who don't get anywhere where they really wanna be, you know. So I'm just sort of more mindful of that and how.

You know, I mean I would literally stop my treatment, you know, it meant that five people got it, who would otherwise weren't going to get to see specialist, who weren't going to get medicated, who weren't going to get coached, who weren't going to go and get the diagnosis in the first place because actually, you know, they need it more than me probably.

Well, it's not a competition. We're No, I know, I understand The the and your support here, and, you know, we've obviously got this this joint goal that we want to change the difficulty of getting assessments in the well, in The UK and the world. Yeah. That people not being picked up, not getting the opportunity to understand what ADHD is, not getting the assessment to understand about themselves, and not getting the support and the options for them. So I think what would be great for people that don't know to learn your ADHD story. I have like from the first inkling of ADHD to to.

I mean, it's there's a slight sort of kink in the story. It's that I I I suffer from, I suppose, anxiety and depression and I had quite a lot of counselling. Then one day the counsellor said, oh I think you might want to be tested for ADHD. And he said he knew a specialist who did some private work, but also worked in the NHS. And he could see me. So I had one session with him, and I came back and had another session. And then as I remember it, psychiatrist said, well, I think you might have, you know, you might have ADHD, but you've got to be a bit careful.

With the medication. You've got to see you've got slightly elevated blood pressure, and it can impact upon your blood pressure, so come back and see me sometime. That's how I remember it. And then I got a bill the following day for £1,600 or something for the two sessions. I thought, oh, this is private medicine gone mad. And I forgot about it. And then three years later, I sort of cracked up for a number of reasons completely. And I had a brilliant CBT cognitive behavioral therapist who saved me really. She used to be a GP actually and she's become she got into got into CBT.

And she said have you ever been tested for ADHD? So I told her the story I just told you. She said, well can you get the notes from that clinic? Incredibly three years on they still have the notes and they sent her all the notes. Within those notes was a six page letter addressed to me three years before that I was never sent, that I just never got it by email or hard copy. And this letter was brilliant. It basically said I can see the root of all your problems are ADHD for this reason, this reason and the other reason. You need to come back and see me so we can work out how to treat it and if you want to know more you need to read a book called delivered from distraction I think it was called. This staggered me. So I got hold of this book.

And the minute I started reading this book, my life changed. Like every single bit down to the most absurd little detail was me. It was written by an American psychiatrist. And every every little if just every page I remember was just slack jawed. It's just the most bizarre thing. It's like a little something he said about he had this compunction when he was having a normal conversation, and there was a drink on the table just he had almost unbearable compunction to throw it in the face of the person he was talking to. And I'd had that, and it was the most bizarre thing ever. I had with a I had it with some people I really liked. Take his mouth, dress away. At a particular time, but it was just bizarre. And.

So I became more and more convinced, and then I thought I better check this out. I spoke to three people close to me. There's a TV producer friend from West Belfast. There was my then 16 year old daughter and also my PA who's lives in the Midlands woman a bit older than me and they all said, 'Dah rubbish!' and then I gave them a couple of pages from the book which was 20 symptoms of adult ADHD and all three of them had the same reaction. All read it. So my daughter, my PA and my TV colleague, they all read these two pages and said, Yeah, you've got it, on, off you go, go get yourself sorted out. So I went back to the psychiatrist, I got an ECG to test I was okay to take the meds and then you know things have improved markedly since. This.

Was three and a half years ago now I mean it absolutely did change my life. I mean it's you know the medication is just it's not an overnight cure. And you know it has to be coupled with some degree if you've got to really coach yourself to get yourself out of some hardwired habits and you've you've got to work at it and you've you've got to be you know you've you've got to be patient but you know just just the diagnosis, just making sense of yourself, just is such a relief. It's extraordinary.

You've talked obviously particularly, so it's something we see very, very often, is people having anxiety and depression and being diagnosed with that and the underlying is ADHD. There's some thought that the fact that people don't know they've got ADHD and are struggling. And I don't know if you heard earlier this sort of maze metaphor that you're in with undiagnosed ADHD, you're in a maze with the lights off, you're banging into walls, knocking things over, and you're unable to navigate your life, and you see others seemingly just swimming through. The diagnosis turns the lights up, and suddenly you can navigate, you can move forward. People talking about that having a huge impact on the anxiety and depression that they've developed.

How's the impact for you been on that? Well, think it's been profound.

I only think of it in those terms since the diagnosis. But the maze metaphor is apt for me. Although I wouldn't say the lights are off, I think with me it's just like too many options. I can see you're going to a maze where I'm going this way, this way, this way, and this way, and I go that way, and then I'm supposed be going that way. But then I go that way, and then I sort of get lost up that way and find my way back and then go the other way. Do I need to evolve it so you know the James Bond Hall of Mirrors? Yeah. Yeah. It's something like that, and I just think they're just just too many options, and you end up sort of taking them all and never.

You know, and and never getting to if you're not careful, never getting from a to b with whatever you're with with whatever you're supposed to be doing. And, you know, and I think I mean, it's it's it's just exhausting as much as anything else. Oh, I was fascinated during lockdown. When lockdown actually was incredibly good for me. And to some extent, I think lockdown I heard described by one sort of public health specialist, but a skeptic about lockdown in the sense that she said it was a middle class luxury. So I think to some extent, I I I understood what you meant, but for me it was perfect because it just took away my options. So that maze became a lot simpler.

There was loads of places I couldn't go, loads of people I couldn't see, loads of things I couldn't do. So I could just sit at home, I could be at home, I could just be. I couldn't, you know, couldn't even buy that many ingredients for cooking, so I couldn't cover complicated matters by cooking 17 different dishes on a Monday night. It was just the opportunities were limited. I found that insanely relaxing. I could just read, just sit still because I had to, almost by law I had to. I just it so interesting. I thought, know, when lockdown finishes, I'm gonna stay like this. I'm gonna learn from this. But while I'm in London, just don't think I can because options all come crowded in. Need to take myself away.

Where there's just there's just sort of less going on. A friend of mine's got a friend of mine, is blind. He's got a guide dog and he works for the Guide Dogs Association as well. And he was telling me how guide dogs tend to they just don't last as long in London. Their working lives are shorter in London, I suppose other big cities, than they are in in in smaller towns. And so they just get worn out. And I think I think it's it's that over stimulation. I think they're they're sort of over stimulated. And I think we all are in London, but I think particularly if you got ADHD, you you know, it's a modern life, modern city life, but modern life generally with social media is just a horrendously effective vector for ADHD where.

You know, you are advertising information. It's coming the options are there all the time. I mean, on every little mobile phone, a smart phone, on there is every bit of knowledge ever acquired by mankind in the the history of mankind's existence. Everything is on that one phone. Now if you've got, you know, and and sorting that out in your mind if you've got ADHD, there's just just just too much excitement there almost. There's too many options.

No. And do you have you retained any so post lockdown, have have you do you you talked about all the options swamping back in. Yeah. Have you managed to curtail some of the Yeah.

I've managed to I've managed to not enough. I've managed to carve out just carve out a bit of a bit of you know, just carve out a bit of space, you know, to keep still. But as, you know, I still in the end, I still generally find it sort of pretty impossible. I need to I need to find things which are called, you know, allow me to enter the paradise of complete absorption where and I found odd ways of doing this. Motorcycling is one, which is sort of counterintuitive because there you have to be hyper focused, and you can't multitask. You can't take phone calls. You can't start buying things on your mobile phone, you can't listen to anything. It's just you in your helmet with your raging thoughts, and then.

You know, you're ten, twenty, 30 miles into a journey, and you just get into a just get into a zone. Stacking logs is another one. It's a bizarre one, but stacking logs are finding incredibly soothing. Ironing. Ironing is fantastic. Just that that that sort of where I find it. So I'm just completely absorbed. Yeah. Well, it's coming apart a bit, but it's just just finding those you know, I'm never gonna be I'm never gonna be completely still. I don't I don't think. And that word's heavily weighted for me because I became I became a Catholic at the age of 39 because I'm I'm I'm not from a religious family, but I was always quite believer. And I went to see this priest about it, and.

At the time, I didn't really know what I was doing. My friend said, go and see this priest. So I met this priest, the late father Ben O'Rourke, and I said, oh, I'm learning the I'm learning the sacraments. I'm learning, you know, when to stand up and sit down in mass. He said, I forget all that. He said most of them 98% of that is just superstition. I went to the priest talk. And then he said, look. This is just the Holy Spirit moving with you in its own way. And I'm sort of thinking, weirdo. Then I'm thinking, alright then. I'll have a bit of that. Why not? And he said, look, the answer to it is just be still. Just promise me to be still and all the answers will come to you. And do you know.

It really it was a massive moment in my life. At that moment, I've had the wrong priest and there are plenty of bad ones could have just turned me off at complete, but that, you know, I was in there. But I've never managed to comply with the central thing he said to me, or you know, fifteen years ago now, just be still. But the difference but my alternative to that look, to be still if I'm just trying to meditate, it's traumatic. It's nothing less than trauma. Just can't do it. But if I can find something motorcycling, ironing, stacking logs, you know, random as it might seem, then that is the next best that is the next best thing.

Talking about religion, so Heston and I in that interview, he talked about it a little. He talked about whether or not we're all in heaven right now, but just mucking it up. And my response it's always occurred to me that people are living in their own health, and particularly mental health, and notably depression, meaning people are living in a hell, and importance mental health care and giving people support. I suppose I what your view was on people, are they walking around at their own, Is this heaven and we're mucking it up?

Like Well, I think this is like any said you're religious. I mean, I think, you know, look, it feels like I think hell's a bit strong, but you do get sort of tormented by it and exhausted by it, and you can't get anything done. And then, I don't know, you can your own hyper focus your hyper focus can be on your own shortcomings if you're not not careful, and then you can really go down into some very deep holes in some very deep holes indeed. But I think I think we we still have free will, you know, it's not, you know, we it's not we've got a predisposition to this thing called ADHD, and there are bits of it that can be channeled, and there's bits of it that can be dealt with, and.

You know, it's it's you can't just give in to I mean, sometimes I accuse my wife of being a bit too kind and understanding to me. So you've got to draw a line here. I mean, sometimes I'm just behaving badly and being a know a sulky miserable grump. You know and she said alright it's your neurodivergent. Oh come on. Know and you know and that I mean, that in a way it has the dire's effect because then I'll be I feel a bit ashamed. So you've still, you know, you've you've you've you've still got to try and channel it and still try and to try and do your best to just break you break your day off. I mean, there's just just there's just one little thing I saw somewhere. I can't use this some life coaching tweet or something. It just said.

If you, you know, divide the day off into the morning, the afternoon, and the evening, now you've had a bad morning, you know, then alright. You've lost the morning. Draw a line. Just try and win the afternoon. It's like crickets played in three sessions. The morning session and then the after after lunch between after between lunch and tea and then between tea and clothes and play. It's like, you know, just win one or two of those sessions. That's how I I kind of feel about my day now. If it one bit doesn't go well, clean line, let's get organized, really try and figure out what want to achieve in the next couple of hours. If that was straightforward to do, then we wouldn't have a.

Problem in the first place, because we like making the list and doing everything on the list, which you and I and best everyone else knows. You know, it's difficult to explain to other people, but it it just doesn't work for reasons, you know, I can't explain, but just small wins.

Something you've been open about talking is about medication. It actually makes you you're already special, but like makes you extra special because essentially nobody does. And it's incredibly important because we have people who feel the stigma of taking medication so much they don't consider it when you want people to have an open consideration just on the basis of does this help you or not, like as you would surgery or other medical interventions.

So I suppose I wanted to ask the specifics of how does medication impact you? The simplest way I can put it is it gives me a feeling pretty similar if anyone's got addicted to caffeine. You know what I mean? Where you're in the morning, you're groggy, you're useless, and then you have a cup of strung coffee and suddenly the world seems a better place. It's slightly like that, but on a more on a more sustained level. It it it sort of lasts for it lasts for hours and the way it just I mean, I don't I don't really I don't fully understand how as it work. It just makes me feel a lot better. I'll get things done, I think, but similarly to to drinking a lot of caffeine, it can just, you know.

Energize you to just give you a million different ideas, which you can start doing all at the same time. So again, you've got to be careful. You've got to channel I mean, like ADHD itself, you've to channel the good bits as best you can, but generally, it's just a wholly good thing, which just makes me more able to deal, you know, to deal with myself and deal with the world. It almost feels like a cheat that I've got this, you know, magic pill. You know, I've also taken citalopram in the past, you could you you know, do a standard sort of antidepressant, and there's a lot of evidence it doesn't really have any great effect on you, and I never knew whether it did or not or.

Or or whatever. But with this, there is not a scintilla of that. It this I'm a different person from, like, half an hour after I've taken it onwards. It just was it's quite frightening in itself. But Yeah. I I wouldn't be without it. And, you know, I don't want to squeamish about talking. I don't know why I'm not. Perhaps I'm perhaps I'm just naive. I thought that's the truth, and the truth sets you free. But as we discussed, I mentioned in that Guardian article, I'm not in the kind of business where anybody really cares in a good way. I'll say they don't mind, you know, as a freelance writer or broadcaster, you know, whatever I'm taking, whatever I'm suffering from, if I can deliver a.

TV or radio programme or I can deliver an article if I can do it, then that's fine. Know, they've got no although, you know, I work for some very kind people at the BBC and the Guardian and and other places, but, you know, they've got no long term duty of care to me in a way that's gonna make an HR department jumpy. So it's not like I'm going for an interview at merchant bank or, you know, know, some great big responsible corporate ish type job where my ADHD nurse or the medication I take is going to be held against me. And I understand through you, bluntly, just how much more of a change that is for people.

No. Well, thank you. It was it was I really enjoyed talking to you. On the cheating, it's such an interesting different perspective. I know people who listen to you and say it feels like you're cheating. And then I know other people who talk about saying like, gosh, this is how everyone else is just normally.

Yeah. Like, this is their world. Then being quite angry about the fact that and the fact they've been deprived of it and and deprived of and so they've taken a completely different perspective where they're they're they're angry. That's just my that's my Catholic guilt kicking in there, I think. And the psychiatrist put that to me very forcefully when I last told him when I come up with this self flagellating cheek business. He said, look. It's just getting you up to the level everyone else have. For goodness sake, just sort of, you know, forgive yourself. But then I read cynic saying, well, you know, of of.

Course, you're feeling good in the morning. You you you're dropping an amphetamine, you know, before you've had your breakfast every day. It wouldn't feel good. And maybe you're right. But, you know, I look I, you know, I shouldn't take any notice on over. I just I look. It comes from guilt about being privileged. I feel it it it feels the more I learn about it, the more I feel it's a privilege to be able to afford the treatment. It was all private, know. The CBT was a £100 a shot. The seeing the psychiatrist was twice that. You know, this is serious money, you know, way beyond the means of most people, and those people are going to wait forever for treatment.

It's a big reason why we're fighting to change the resourcing so that people do get assessments and treatments and the opportunity for that understanding and that support if they choose it. Yeah. Because I definitely don't think of it as cheating. Just wanted to sort of convey that very strongly because No. Absolutely. It's an issue. The only part where I well, in particular, that point on privilege. And again, there are people in yours and my situation, as adult diagnosed ADHD, who are very angry that they weren't picked up earlier, for the life that could have been, the different life path, how less difficult it would be. And I suppose I feel disgrateful that I come in a time when it can be picked up and that there are medication options.

And it's been so life changing for me that if I hadn't, you happened. Mean, it Yeah. It would be.

I mean, I can see clearly difference it would have made if I'd, you know, if I'd had the diagnosis earlier as a kid and after they'd been treated properly. But I can you know, it wasn't a life or death matter, and I can hardly say I haven't been successful in life. It just would have made things a lot easier. And I just suppose instead of talking about feeling guilty about it, I suppose then your your duty is to to, you know, find find ways of those less fortunate ourselves of getting access to this treatment. Know, because I think for them it is existential. Now not necessarily in terms of taking their own lives, but in terms of the quality of their lives and being able to put food on their own tables and, you know, the and not.

You know, running into running into bad behavior and so on and blighting their own lives, then, you know, they need help, You know? They need they need they need should should we just need some kind of infrastructure to talk to them and treat them?

Yeah. We need like, as we've talked about, like, the wait list across The UK is absolutely outrageous. We have areas of the country where there's no adult ADHD service at all. We know an area in Scotland where the child service is only seeing children who are in crisis, where crisis means that they are are suicidal. We know that for the research tells us that one in ten men or boys with ADHD will at some point try and take their own life. That is one in four women or girls with ADHD at some point try and take their own life. And that shows how difficult living with ADHD is. And when you were talking earlier about about that difficulty, that's what I was thinking about, thinking about those people. And.

Something is we've talked about, the majority of the money that comes into this charity is come from parents of someone who's well, their their son took his own life and he had ADHD and it's and it's filed and and the impact resulted in that. Actually, why the story with Heston is so stark is that that that guy wanted to be a chef. He was trying to be a chef. And so we see two, you know, parallel but different parts. It's it is something else and and it's so important that we get have adults when they go to their GP saying, would like an ADHD assessment, they're not doing it because they're worried well. Right? They're doing it because they are in trouble and they need help. And the service says, we agree, you do need that assessment.

See you in two years. See you in three years. See you five years.

For the lack of psychiatrists or whatever structural issue there is there or wrong headed priorities or whatever. There's there's there should be something in the interim. I just wonder you know, there's some level of, you know, ahead of her a formal diagnosis, well, you know, just a book of words or some kind of group you can go to say, well, try this, try that, you know, just what you like coping strategies. If you have got ADHD.

This might help you, and you'll certainly do no harm if you haven't. We don't do coping strategies. Coping is not a good enough. Okay. Sorry. But we just do strategies. I haven't been through I haven't been through the formal indoctrination and the kissing of hands. Is that right? I don't know about all these do's and don'ts. No. You're fine. But I I quite like saying it, like, coping. Who wants to cope? Mhmm. Like, that's none of our goal. And so I I I make it a purpose constantly. Yeah. Chip away at that one. It's yeah. Look. And your support coming here to support this, to support us is a is a big deal. It's Yeah. And it's it is you saying that you're here to wanting to change what it means to have ADHD, help support on that pressure to.

Change diagnosis, help people get seen more quickly, and I really do thank you so much for that.

Okay. Well, it's at least up and down. We've very sadly got to wrap up now. I'd honestly like to just keep going. You know what? I think I'm looking forward to our wives getting together. You should record that meeting. And and then we'll watch it from behind the screen like a like a police interview or something and see them those two swap notes. But no, it's it's a pleasure. Anytime. I've seen some ADHD UK monks over there, and I want one. Can I have that? You can definitely have one, and we will also get you one with your name on. Cool. Beautiful. That's that's how much we celebrate.

Thank you so much. I didn't I I wanted, like I gotta go to the next thing. Like, I don't know what we do. No. We're haircuts. This is this is. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Alright. Thank you so much. Really wonderfully it's wonderful. Thank you so much. It's wonderful. Thank you very much. See you soon. Appreciate it.