I’ve said it once, I’ll say it a million times: there’s a damn good reason so many of you think you have ADHD. Or autism. Or whatever it is that’s in fashion at the moment.
It might seem “normal” to us, having grown up with it, but the current idea of what constitutes “work” is completely alien to 99% of human existence. The idea of time as something that can be bought and sold and paid for is brand-fucking-new. Hard deadlines and product quotas, signatures and approvals and timetables and KPI’s… it’s endless, and it will drive us all collectively insane. I don’t feel like this is an exaggeration, and I’m tired of pretending like it’s normal.
This is what’s wrong with you, too. It’s a reaction to the feeling that you can’t possibly meet the expectations set by 19th century industrialists - the same people who were happy to keep kids in the coal mines for 20 hours a day. Human brains are meant to work in bursts, and yet somehow we’ve all ended up in a situation where we treat the 9-5 as sacrosanct. And when that inevitably starts to drive us crazy, we shift the blame onto ourselves. “Something must be up with us,” we say. “Something must be wrong with our brains.” And then we get medicated.
I want to make it exceptionally clear that something should feel wrong. It’s just that the problem isn’t with you, it’s with the broader system that you’re being forced to work in and told is completely normal, because it isn’t. It’s toxic. There was a study where they put rats in isolation and offered them drugs or food – most turned into addicts. Then they put rats in a massive cage with lots of friends and activities, and offered them the same choice. No addicts. What kind of cage are you in, right now?
Even if you back the cage of industrial capitalism, let’s just look at it this way: what seems more reasonable, that millions of young people have suddenly developed a clinical attention disorder all at the same time, or that the one thing they’re all meant to be paying attention to, modern work, is itself the problem?
So, yes, you should feel like you don’t belong here. That it’s impossible to meet your study and work expectations. That your mind wanders and switches off. That you procrastinate for ages and then cram it all in at once. This is all completely, 100%, normal behaviour - it’s just that our modern world is built to treat this as abnormal. This is insane. We are forcing people to work under these conditions and then insisting that any resulting problems must be their fault. This amounts to nothing less than a worldwide bout of organised psychological terrorism. Slow, steady torture whose consequences are blamed on you and labelled as symptoms of “neurodivergence” that must be fixed with drugs. Of course, these disorders are real. Totally real. But isn’t it just a bit weird that “mild” cases (and prescriptions), the ones that whose concerns are about work, have skyrocketed in line with the rise of industrial capitalism?
If this sounds like you, then you are being gaslit. Stuck like a caged animal, pacing in circles, spiralling into depression, all while being told that if you can’t live laugh love in these conditions then it’s your fault. That’s what this feeling is. Unless you’re one of the very few whose disorder impedes your daily ability to function – not just your daily ability to work – it’s probably not ADHD. It’s the feeling of denying yourself the right to a perfectly wild soul. It should make you feel sick, and no amount of drugs will help you.
Have a great 4/20.