What Joe Rogan (and Most of the World) Needs to Understand Better About ADHD
Meet Denise Dorman, Founder, The Next-Shoe-to-Drop Club
My Traditional Chinese Medicine doctor is a 45-minute drive away. I see her once a week, and I treasure that drive. First off, it’s beautiful. I drive over two separate bridges above the sweeping Escambia Bay that feeds into the Gulf and I literally pray as I’m driving (Thank you, God, for this beautiful view). That drive is my "me time." It’s when I podcast binge. Today’s podcast binge was Libertarian bestselling author and comedienne Kat Timpf’s recent interview on Joe Rogan. It was an eye opener. If you have ADHD, or if you are an ADHD specialist…
You’ll. Be. Surprised.
I just assumed Joe Rogan had done the deep dive on ADHD like he has every other topic under the sun. He references the hunter-gatherer thing regularly, but he’s missing a lot of context.
As the interview goes, fellow ADHDer Kat Timpf is pregnant and openly discusses how she gave up her vices — nicotine gum, patches, and vaping — to ensure her healthy pregnancy. This is the first time in her life, since age 5, that she has been off of a stimulant. She takes what I do — Vyvanse. Or what I did take. I’m in a similar situation. (Not the pregnant part.) I’ve been off of Vyvanse since last March when I moved to Florida.
Relevant Back Story: I tried to get a regular medical doctor down here (the kind you need to get your Vyvanse prescriptions refilled because the Teladoc cannot prescribe Vyvanse over the phone because it’s Schedule C or Schedule 3 or some other boring category that is illegal to prescribe over the phone) and I’ve failed spectacularly in securing a new doctor. Oh, wait. The new term for doctor is “healthcare provider,” right? I need a scorecard anymore to remember these ever-evolving, unnecessarily fancified terms that add more syllables and less meaning. But I digress. Which I also do spectacularly — digressing, that is — because I haven’t had Vyvanse since last March.
Anywho…there’s such a patient backlog, I had to wait until June for my first appointment. This “provider” has three locations and I went to the wrong one. I scrambled to show up on time for the other location, which was way across town. I stepped up to the front desk, sweaty and flushed from running, and that’s when the receptionist said the four words you never want to hear from your healthcare provider: “We don’t take your insurance.” I went home. I went to my insurer’s website. I saw they listed the provider as one who did take my insurance. And then I lost my energy to fight the bureaucratic bullshit any further. Why should I be the one to suffer for the apparent miscommunication between two corporate bureaucrats? Hence, the Traditional Chinese Medicine doctor. She’s so much easier and more effective.
During the Joe Rogan interview, Kat Timpf lamented how much more difficult it is for her to write without her stimulants. I feel her pain.
Kat Timpf likes nicotine to write. It’s something I’ve never tried. Joe Rogan recommended a couple of nootropics, which I wrote down when I wasn’t driving, since, of course, I’m going add these to my growing apothecary cabinet. One product he shared was called “Onnit Alpha Brain,” which contains L-Theanine and caffeine. He believed it specifically helped him with remembering words. That sounded like just what I need. He also recommended “neuro-gum.” I’ve been trying Saffron, L-Theanine, and multi-mushroom supplements. So far…nothing. Maybe it’s because they’re supplement gummies. Gummies are like Flintstone Kids supplements. As my Gen-Z son Jack says, “Sus.”
When I start taking the Rogan-recommended supplements, I’ll spill the tea for you ADHDers following me as to whether they move the needle at all on my brain fog, word recall, or vitality.
I’ll try anything at this point. I feel like my brain is shrinking and getting dumber by the day. There is nothing more infuriating than being a writer unable to pluck the perfect word from my daydreamy, fog-addled brain. It’s word impotence. And Vyvanse was always my word-plucking Viagra.
This word-memory glitch causes many unforced errors in my household. I get so pissed when I cannot name some everyday object. I launch into a lengthy diatribe describing the vaporized word as my husband and son stand there looking bewildered, trying to guess what in the wide, wide world of sports I’m talking about. Creating a simple shopping list has become the charades game from hell:
Me: “I know you know what I talking about! The thing! It’s white. It’s absorbent. It’s tubular and stands upright.”
My husband: “Paper towels?”
Me: “Think shorter!”
My husband: “Toilet paper?
Me: “THAT’s the one!”
See? I’m digressing again.
However, I do wish Joe Rogan, and anyone else who thinks “we’re all a little ADHD at times…” and dismisses ADHD as this faux malady would PUH-LEEZE watch Dr. Russell Barkley’s 30 Essential Ideas You Should Know About ADHD before they weigh in with a single comment. Or better yet, watch every single video from the adorable tattooed British couple Roxanne Emery and Rich Pink. Their collaboration, ADHD Love, documents every quirk — and our quirks are endless — that ADHDers, and their partners, by extension, endure. Here’s a link to their hilarious, true-to-life videos. They even developed Dubbii: The Body Doubling App because “body doubling,” (having someone stand by you as you do a task you’re avoiding), truly combats ADHD procrastination.
Kat Timpf is a high-functioning ADHDer. As am I. But our public faces diverge from our off-camera faces. We mask. We aspire to be “normal” people. But we are just pretending. We’re using massive coping mechanisms, post-it notes, and mental energy just to get through the day, get dopamined up, and seem surfacy normal.
I get the sense that like me, Kat Timpf gets her dopamine fix by surrounding herself with fellow creatives. There’s nothing more fun for me than bouncing ideas off of comedic creatives in a brainstorming session and making each other laugh. But that camaraderie cannot make up for the dopamine deprivation hitting our brains when we’re home alone…bored…flipping channels, doom scrolling, spelunking down new research rabbit holes…exploring hobbies we’ll abandon in a week after we’ve spent a fortune on Amazon buying up all the gear. The number of half-finished paintings I’ve created is embarrassing.
For ADHDers, low dopamine time is when the risky behaviors kick in — joining the “Mile-High Club,” over-shopping, over-eating, gambling, getting drunk, getting high, etc. But Kat Timpf is clever. She found a healthier way to engage in dopamine-inducing, risky behavior: standup comedy. (Truth be told, it’s something I’ve often fantasized about. While my friends fantasize about Jason Momoa, I fantasize about giving the Kill Tony/Mothership’s crowd the biggest belly laughs of their entire lives.)
From the comments Joe Rogan made to Kat, insisting that she seemed “smart” and “just fine without stimulants,” I could tell he had no idea that…
ADHDers struggle to do everyday tasks. Like, really struggle. I’m wearing underwear for the second day in a row because I waited too long to do my laundry and I’m fresh out. I’d rather just buy more. If my used undies can’t enjoy a second career as smelling salts, I figure hey, they’re still wearable.
I guarantee you the way Kat Timpf presented herself to Joe Rogan for a few hours is nothing like how she is when away from the spotlight. She admitted so. And this struggle to do everyday tasks makes the costly ADHD Tax kick in:
Taxes not done on time
Always running late and driving too fast, or driving too daydreamy (ADHDers have a 60% greater chance of getting into a car accident)
Filling our fridge with convenience foods because we NEVER have the energy to cook (e.g., yogurt, cheese sticks, or deli sandwich spreads)
Holiday shopping a few hours beforehand, spending way too much to prove our love because the only items left are either too crappy or too pricey
Forgetting or delaying sending out invoices (for the freelancers reading this) because there’s no instant gratification*
*This latter one has been a major issue for me, because my Canva account wanted to raise my rate by 300% (those bastards!) for having the “Teams” version of their software. I said no thanks, and the next thing I knew, my three years’ worth of content, branding, my friends’ resumes, and my invoices all disappeared. So…I have to go back into Canva and redesign a whole new invoice template just to get paid by anyone… and I dread doing it. I just don’t have the motivation, as crazily counter-intuitive as that sounds.
ADHDers have, on average, a 9% smaller prefrontal lobe. This area of the brain impacts our executive functioning. How we sense time. All of those people who tell you being totally in the present moment is so Zen don’t realize the flip side: losing the ability to anticipate and be ready for what’s ahead.
Our smaller frontal lobe also impacts our ability to organize ourselves, do sequential tasks, remember appointments, know what day it is, and recall people’s names. Joe Rogan has no idea of the humiliation we feel unable to remember things, forever showing up late because what feels like five minutes of getting ready to us is really an hour and now we’re late again.
ADHDers have rejection sensitivity disorder (RSD)— that nagging feeling we’re always in trouble with someone…the boss, a friend, or our significant other. It’s awful to live like you’re always about to be sent to the principal’s office. I think that’s why we’re also incessant people pleasers. I’m the founder of the waiting-for-the-next-shoe-to-drop club, pre-sorry for any upsets I will never commit.
ADHDers struggle to rein in our lack of impulse control. (However, this can be a great feature of ADHD for comedians like Kat Timpf while performing live.)
ADHDers struggle to not talk over someone, but we always do because we’ll completely forget our important comment if we don’t blurt it out as we’re thinking it.
Eighty-plus percent of ADHDers have other comorbidities like autism, auditory processing, dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysphonia, Tourette’s Syndrome, dysgraphia, anxiety, or low-grade constant depression. I’m a little on the spectrum, I realized, because of my weakness for taking everything too literally. I also have auditory processing delays and anxiety over every. little. thing. It’s a small miracle I graduated college. I’m in the “lost generation” diagnosed late in life. That puts me in the minority for ADHDers.
Whether you want to believe ADHD is a super power, a hunter-gatherer thing, or some neurodivergent disability, may I ask of you this one teeny-tiny favor?
PLEASE BELIEVE IT IS REAL.
