The quest for an ADHD diagnosis in middle age
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When a body is discovered 10 miles out to sea, it sparks a mind-blowing police investigation. There's a man living in this address in the name of deceased. He's one of the most wanted men in the world. This isn't really happening. Officers finding large sums of money. It's a tale of murder, skullduggery and international intrigue. So who really is he?

I'm Sam Mullins, and this is Sea of Lies from CBC's Uncover. Available now. This is a CBC Podcast. I'm Dr. Brian Goldman. This is White Coat Blackheart.

Our show this week is a bit unusual because the guest is a colleague. My name is Adam Killick. I'm a producer at CBC and I have been so for 20 something years. Adam has worked at a lot of shows at CBC. I first met with him when he worked as a producer at Spark, which ended its run last season. I didn't know him then, but I am getting to know him now.

That tiny bit of self-disclosure is both unusual and an important clue about our story. Adam wants us to know what it's like to be him.

If you were a child just starting school these days, he might well be diagnosed with ADHD, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. But Adam is not a kid. He's 54 years old. And if he has adult ADHD, he'd be one of roughly 4 to 6 percent of adult Canadians with the disorder. Those figures from the Center for ADHD Awareness Canada. More may have it and not know it.

From his earliest recollections until now, what's wrong with Adam has been the mystery of his life, one that he's now determined to solve. Tell me why you suspect you might have ADHD. You know, I've struggled with a lot of issues in terms of impulsivity and just not being able to kind of finish things for decades. And I've just kind of felt that...

I'm lazy, you know, that I'm just kind of not a motivated person. But that kind of feeling doesn't quite square with the enthusiasm that I do get for some things and the ability that I have to really deeply focus on things.

It's a complicated thing to explain, but it's not like when I can't do something, it's not that I don't want to. It's not like I'm sitting watching TV or on my phone constantly. It's that I'm sitting there trying to focus, but it's just not coming. It's not won't, it's can't. It's can't. It's this nagging feeling that there's something wrong with me. How long have you felt that way?

All my life, I think. I especially began to notice it when I was at university. I nearly flunked out. You really noticed it in university, but did you notice anything else in high school or elementary school? Well, in elementary school, I was identified as gifted. But on the report cards that we got every year, I got the worst box ticked, which was disrupts the class.

And I used to get in trouble from my parents and they would say things like, you're smart. Why do you have to do that? And I'm like, I don't know, you know, and back in those days, which was like the late 70s, everybody wore corduroy pants. And my mom used to get so angry with me because she

the size of my pants would be scratched bare. Like all the cordura matura would be gone and they'd be bald. You wore them down? I just, I think in an attempt to kind of sit still, I would just scratch at my legs as a kind of a tick, I guess. Disruptive is a judgmental term that you got on the report card. It's a judgment. But what were you actually doing?

I think I had trouble, and I still have trouble, kind of most people when they're in a conversation or they're required to listen, they're able to focus on what someone is saying. And they're able to kind of hold a thought in their head while the other person finishes talking.

I really struggle with that. I have this habit of interrupting and of kind of blurting out the first thing that comes into my head. You said you really noticed it in university. Yeah. So in university, all the kind of academic guardrails come down, right? Woohoo, here we are. You know, it's like I'm living away from home. I have all these other distractions and

And then I ended up kind of just losing interest by fourth year. And so I didn't, I kind of just walked away from it. I didn't, I didn't graduate. That must've been a blow. Well, I didn't really see it as such at the time because I just ended up being not that interested in it. But my dad certainly saw it as a blow because I was the first person on his side of the family to go to university and, uh,

I don't think I ever fully admitted to him that I didn't graduate. He's gone now. But he would ask for a copy of my degree, and I would just kind of demur and just sort of say, oh, I don't know where it is. I'll look for it and get it sent to you. But yeah, it didn't happen. Wow.

The other thing that started to develop at around the same time was this kind of built-in effort to mask, which is something that I still know that I do. And you kind of come up with strategies to kind of, as an adult, to manage it better. Like when I come in the house from the car, if I don't immediately walk and put the car key in a specific spot before I've even taken my shoes off, then I'll forget to do it. And then I'll be running around looking for the car key

It's fatiguing to have to do all this extra organization in your life just to appear to be functioning, you know, normally. How do you think it's affected your work? I think when I've been interested in my work, I've excelled at it. I worked as a national reporter for a national newspaper. I managed to write a book, although I should say that I had two years to write the book and I wrote the book entirely in the last month of that two-year period.

I can work with a gun pointed to my head. I tend to go, I think, with really creative, good ideas. And then when it actually comes to the nuts and bolts of executing those ideas, that's when I really struggle. When you come up with a great idea, a brilliant idea, what do you do with that idea?

Immediately I'll dive into it and I tend to get super hyper-focused. I'll stay up until like three or four in the morning, you know, obsessed with things. And it's not just work things that are like that. I do that with hobbies.

You know, at one point I got into archery. It's a good example. And I went out and bought all the stuff. This was around the time of like the Hunger Games when archery was kind of really cool. I thought, well, we need to know how to use a bow and arrow. So I joined their course. I went out and bought like the best stuff.

I managed to somehow talk my way into training with the national archery team. I'm not kidding. Wow. And then six months into it, I just started to lose interest and stopped going. And the same thing tends to happen with work where you're

As soon as they have to sit down and actually do the thing, that's when I start to struggle. And have you gotten feedback at work about your performance? Yeah. Like, I mean, I've been at CBC for, I think, 22 years. I've been told that I'm a bit unreliable and that they're reluctant or they won't put me into a position of executive authority anymore.

And it's really embarrassing. It's humiliating. And, you know, it's just depressing to kind of be told that you're not fulfilling the basic responsibilities of your job. Must be hard to keep getting judgments like that. The thing is, you get to a point where you just start to believe what people think of you rather than how you think of yourself.

So that's your working life. How about your personal life?

I'm on my third serious relationship. I've been married twice. I think I've always struggled to kind of manage those same kind of mundane fundamentals of a relationship. And so what I've tended to do is when I've seen a relationship going in that direction, I just have had a habit in the past of sort of self-sabotaging it just to kind of make it easier. And I've just sabotaged them so much that they just end.

Are you in a relationship right now? Yeah. Yeah. And I'm very fortunate. I've been with the same partner now for eight years, I think. And we're very fortunate that she's understanding. And in fact, she's been very encouraging to help me get to the bottom of all this. You know, I should say that I've been in and out of therapy for years. I've been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder. I went through a period where I was taking clonazepam daily and

It took a long time to taper off what was a fairly high dose of benzodiazepine, which, as you know, is not something we really want to be taking for extended periods of time. I finally kicked it a year and a half ago with Kate's help. Kate sounds really amazing. Thank you. She is. Yeah. What would she say about you?

that I get wounded at a perceived misunderstanding. It can even be something as small as where something gets put. So she knows now that she kind of has to make sure that things go in the same places all the time and that

that she has to take a much more hands-on role in, for instance, the way that I manage money because I tend to be impulsive. You know, I just, I mentioned about the archery, how I kind of get really into these hobbies and spending commensurate amounts of money on the things is probably the number one stressor for her. We'll be right back.

I'm Katie Boland. And I'm Emily Hampshire, who didn't want to be here. On our new podcast, The Whisper Network, we want to speak out loud about all the stuff that we usually just whisper about, like our bodies, our cycles, our sex lives. Basically everything I text to you, Katie. So this is like your intimate group chat with your friends. And we can't wait to bring you into The Whisper Network. This journey is a nightmare for me. I'm doing it for all of us. So you're welcome.

As a child, Adam says he was fidgety and impulsive, identified as a gifted underachiever who disrupts the class. As a grown-up, his issues and frustrations became adult-sized. At work, called unreliable and passed over for promotion. At home, trouble managing money. The pattern seems obvious, but until now, an immensely frustrating enigma to him.

You're listening to White Coat Black Art. This week, CBC producer Adam Killick has always thought there was something wrong with him. It's only now, in his 50s, that Adam has wondered if he has ADHD. I got assigned to a show that was fantastically organized. All these kind of intermediate deadlines and frequent discussions about the status of stories or projects.

And it was so antithetical to the way that I tended to work, which is really hold on to these high concepts and try to come at them in weird ways and do everything at the last minute. That I really struggled, like more than I've ever struggled at any show at CBC in two decades. And I thought, am I just slowly going in reverse in my career? All that promise I showed in my 20s is just evaporated forever.

And around the same time, I do downhill mountain biking and there was a guy on YouTube that I followed and he came in on YouTube one day and announced that he was leaving his channel, that he had been diagnosed with ADHD and had realized that all he'd been doing all this time was trying to get a dopamine fix, which, you know, people with ADHD, I believe it's relatively proven that we suffer from a lack of dopamine.

I got diagnosed with ADHD. And after that diagnosis and starting medication for it, my life has been completely different. I mean, the easy thing to say is that I feel very much like a better person and a better version of myself. And I just think I got thinking, you know, maybe there's something else going on. And the funny thing is, my daughter, who's 21 now has ADHD. And it never occurred to me when

when she was going through that process when she was about 11, that I might have it too. It just didn't connect. Even though it runs in families. Exactly, right? And now when I look back, I suspect maybe even my father had it too. I didn't even know that ADHD was a thing that adults could have. I remember when doctors believed that most kids with ADHD grow out of it. Then came studies in the 90s showing that the condition can persist into adulthood.

If Adam has undiagnosed adult ADHD and doesn't know it, he's not alone. In 2024, the New York Times asked Truveta, a healthcare data and analytics company, to look at its database for patients who had received a new diagnosis of ADHD. Over a nearly three-year period ending in October 2024, there was a nearly two-thirds increase in people ages 45 to 64. There are other reasons why adult ADHD may be underdiagnosed.

Anxiety and depression can often coexist with adult ADHD. Experts say untreated ADHD leads to stress and frustration that in turn leads to anxiety and depression. Another reason may be that there's some overlap with what's seen as normal behavior. I think people still think it's something that is fixable with a bit of willpower and maybe some mindfulness and patience.

You know, all the kind of wellness trends that we have today. But the hard realization that I kind of made is that it's not.

It's hard to find the line between adult ADHD and what's normal. You know, I had a shift in the emergency department that starts at six in the morning and I was a bit tired and a bit sleep deprived. I was starting to read the backstory of the patient and a couple of nurses were having a kind of a pleasant social chat right beside me.

and their voices were distracting me. And there are times when it doesn't distract me, but when I'm tired, it does. I'm sure that there are times when Kate or someone else might ask you, why do you need a label for something that I experienced, a lot of other people experience? You're right. All of these things that I've talked about are things that everybody deals with. Everybody's had that experience of walking into a room and then thinking, why did I come into this room?

But I think the difference with me is that it happens so frequently that it is damaging and interrupting the kind of functional enjoyment of my life in a way that is really toxic or harmful. I'm speaking to you the day before you're having a diagnostic assessment, and I'm thinking there's a lot riding on that.

Yeah, I'm pretty anxious about it. If you're diagnosed with adult ADHD, what would it mean to you? Well, I think it'll answer a lot of questions about the things that we've been talking about. I hope it offers some kind of a pathway, whether it's through medication or a more specialized therapy that kind of enables me to manage it as a disability rather than kind of a character flaw. Yeah. Why do you want to take us along on this journey?

Because it's really hard to get a diagnosis. I am so lucky and so fortunate that I have access privately to the kind of therapy and the assessment that I can get. It's extremely difficult even for a child to get an ADHD diagnosis through the public system because the waiting lists are so long and there's a limited number of professionals who can diagnose it.

I've been trying for a year or so to get a diagnosis. That's a long time. Yeah. Have you thought about how you'll feel, what you'll do if you aren't diagnosed with adult ADHD? Hmm. Yes.

I'm kind of afraid that I've been self-identifying as having this, and it's going to force me to recalibrate. And it's going to be super sad because I really hope, in a sense, that this is what it is so that I can kind of put to bed that whole side of my life that has been kind of wondering what's wrong with me. So it'll be back to the drawing board. I hope you get the clarity that you're looking for. Thanks, Brian.

Finally, the day when Adam gets the results of his assessment. So I'm just leaving the subway now. It's only a few minutes walk to the office where I'm doing this assessment. I'm pretty anxious, mainly because I just don't want to forget important things. And there's so many little things that I've tried to write down. I remember them. But I guess the biggest thing is that this could be like an entirely life-changing day for me. And I'm just going to turn my head around now. Wish me luck. Here we go.

Adam sounds nervous as he approaches the clinic where his psychologist will do an assessment to see if he has ADHD. For a formal diagnosis, the psychologist must determine if Adam's symptoms were present before the age of 12. It's been five weeks since I first spoke with Adam. He's had his diagnostic assessment and he just got the results. So Adam, what's the verdict?

I have ADHD. Wow. Take a moment. Tell me what that feels like. It's a weird thing. I went to my appointment. I did all the diagnostic stuff. I got the results. And I kind of felt a way that I didn't expect to feel, which was kind of numb. And I think it's because I feel like it's such an inflection point in my life that I

The organizational flow chart-y things that come from that diagnosis looking forward and backwards in time are almost too much to kind of take in. So I think I'm going to have to let it seep in in bits and pieces over time.

Because I think the other thing that I'm really struggling with is, that I didn't anticipate, is it's been decades where I have thought of myself as being lazy, as being a procrastinator, as having these various character flaws. And it's to hear that maybe they're not character flaws after all, but in fact, a disability.

It's great on paper, but psychologically, I don't feel like I'm ready or yet capable of letting go of this very entrenched self-identification as a flawed person. It's disorientating, yeah.

When you went back and had the debrief with the person who did the assessment, I want to know what were the deciding points in your assessment that said, yes, you do have ADHD? In my case, I was diagnosed with primarily inattentive presentation symptoms.

which means poor listening skills, misplacing items, getting sidetracked by external stimuli, forgets daily activities, diminishing attention span, lacking ability to complete work and other assignments, certain follow instructions, disinclined to begin activities requiring concentration, and fails to focus on details and makes thoughtless mistakes in schoolwork or assignments or work.

And so I believe I had to hit five or six of those, and I did. So where are you right now in terms of treatment? So a week ago or so, I started taking a drug called Vyvanse on a low dose, and

And it sadly didn't really do that much. I felt a bit calmer. But from my understanding, there had to be more to it than that. So today, actually, talking to you, is my first day on Adderall, which is another amphetamine-based medication to treat ADHD. And it takes effect a little sooner and doesn't last quite as long. And it's a little less smooth than the Vyvanse's.

But I haven't noticed a lot on that either, but I'm not noticing any side effects. I think the way it works with dosing for ADHD is that you just keep going up as a matter of course until you find that you aren't getting any significant improvement in your symptoms, like you reach a plateau, and then they just back it off and keep you at that spot.

It's obviously way too early to know how you're going to respond to treatment and how that treatment might change your ability to function, concentrate, be more attentive, stay focused on things. But I want to ask you,

You know, I think that it's understandable to to be where you are right now. I mean, you're 54 years old. If you'd found out this was a part of your of who you are when you were under the age of 10, even if you found out at the age of 24, the whole trajectory of your life might have been completely different.

Yeah, I could have gone to medical school. Yeah. Or been able to sustain programs that could have lasted for years. You might have gotten a PhD, you might have become an engineer, or you might have done something else. Yeah, and you're right. And it's a hard thing to think about. And it's even harder when you think about, you know, failures in personal relationships and things like that.

And it's hard. But then on the other hand, I have to think, well, maybe some of the very good things that I do have in my life wouldn't exist either if I had been diagnosed. You know, my children might not exist. So it's a tricky balance. And I think that's where the other side of it, and of course, in treatment for ADHD, there's the pharmaceutical intervention, but then there's also the CBT and the kind of therapy stuff that kind of thing is probably more helpful in getting my head around this and kind of trying to find a place of balance.

You've just been newly diagnosed. You know, you've been living with the symptoms, but you've not been living with the structure of being an adult with ADHD. Do you have any idea of what accommodations might be desirable for you? Yeah, I'm in a position where I can work from home, whereas if I was working, you know, in a store or a restaurant, I wouldn't be able to do that.

So I'll kind of keep trying to do that as much as possible. Typically, I tend to be fairly productive in the late evening. Like I joke from like 10 p.m. to midnight is really when I work very efficiently. So I think I can go to the bosses and say, look, I'm not very effective first thing in the morning, but I am effective later in the evening. So I'd rather if I can break my day up.

But I don't want to kind of barge in and say, okay, I want this, this, and this because I've got ADHD. I kind of want to sit with it for a bit to see what I really need rather than go in and start asking for things now. What did Kate think when you told her you have been formally diagnosed with ADHD? I don't think she was terribly surprised. And I think she was somewhat relieved, probably mostly because she's been watching me struggle with this for the last, you know, however long. So it's...

I think she's hoping that some of the struggles that we have with me will be eased a bit. It also provides her with a pathway as well, right? Because there are lots of resources out there for the partners of people with ADHD and how to kind of help. You've been incredibly forthcoming in talking to us. I would describe the way you've been as vulnerable, which is a strength. What do you want people to take from your quest to

for an answer as you said what's wrong with me what's wrong with Adam now you have an answer I hope people are willing to kind of open their minds to that possibility if they're feeling the same kind of things about themselves because I know for me it took way too long it was way too long and I just didn't ask the right questions and so if you know one or two people hear this and ask those important questions and maybe set themselves on the path to finding this out and

hopefully they're a bit younger than me, you know, then it's kind of, it's worth it because there are solutions. More broadly, I would like it to be easier, especially for adults to get a diagnosis. It's not easy in the public system. I was waiting a long time and it was just because I had this kind of fortunate privilege where I was able to get it done and because we have benefits at CBC because it's also very expensive. I just wish it was more accessible.

I think the biggest thing is, you know, what I've been talking about, about not being able to let go of this notion that I'm lazy. I still think we have so far to go to kind of connect mental health issues to see them in the same way that we see physical health issues.

You know, you wouldn't tell somebody who is in a wheelchair to get angry because they haven't gone out and shoveled the driveway or the sidewalk, right? But we still allow ourselves to get annoyed with people's kind of mental health issues. And it would be nice if we could get a little bit closer to seeing mental health issues in the same way that we see physical health issues as kind of something that is beyond the control of the person who is suffering from it.

Eloquently put. Adam Killick, I want to thank you for speaking with us. And I have a feeling we're going to want to come back to you to see how you're doing. Would you do that? Sure. Yeah. Thanks, Brian. I appreciate your concern and I appreciate you taking the time to dig into this a bit.

At age 54, Adam finally has the answer to his lifelong question. He hopes the treatment he just started will help address a lifetime of what he sees as underachievement. And maybe stories like Adam's will inspire other adults to embark on a similar quest. That's our show this week. If you'd like to comment, our email address is whitecoat at cbc.ca.

And check out a previous episode of The Dose where we ask, how do I know if I have undiagnosed adult ADHD? We bumped it to the top of our feed. White Coat Blackheart was produced this week by senior producer Colleen Ross with help from Jennifer Warren, Stephanie Dubois, and Samir Chhabra. Our digital producer is Ruby Buiza. Special thanks to producer Adam Killick as well as social producer Emma Smith and digital art director Ben Shannon. That's medicine from my side of the gurney. I'm Brian Goldman. See you next week.

For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.