Why Do ADHDers Live Shorter Lives?
The Rumors of My Early Demise Are Greatly Un-Exaggerated
Hey friends,
Have you heard the latest? The British Journal of Psychiatry just spilled the tea on ADHD life expectancy. It’s no bueno, my friends. We ADHDers are sooo screwed.
Women with ADHD live 8.6 fewer years than women without ADHD.
Men with ADHD live seven fewer years than neurotypical men.
My favorite ADHD pundit, Dr. Russell Barkley, has broken it all down for us in this YouTube video below. I’ll bottom-line it for you: the culprit is impulsivity. It’s ADHDers’ Achilles’ Heel. Impulsivity causes the accidental injuries leading to our early demise. (I’ll share a personal story below to illustrate this point.)
So, what did Dr. Barkley’s studies indicate predicts the likelihood of an ADHDer’s early demise?
Lower education (Me: Not applicable — I’m in the 9.1% of ADHDers who graduate college)
Lower income (Me: Depends on the day/week/month since I, like many ADHDers, am self-employed)
Greater substance use (Me: I rarely drink because it just makes me tired and I don’t care for the taste of booze unless it’s masked by a fruity cocktail; I tried unsuccessfully to smoke pot. . . once . . . at a Depeche Mode concert in the 1990s)
Smoking (Me: Like Bill Clinton, I can’t inhale, so I don’t smoke)
Smoking more than 20 cigarettes a day (Me: Not applicable)
Not being in excellent health (Me: I’m generally healthy overall)
Not sleeping well (Me: I sleep like the dead . . . probably too much since I’ve been off of my Vyvanse)
Driving infractions (Me: I’m not proud of it, but I drive like a distracted Mr. Magoo, narrowly avoiding death and leaving pissed off drivers in my wake.)
I should point out, these behaviors above will also lead to the increased likelihood of incarceration. Some estimate as many as 50% of prisoners have ADHD.
Don’t mention this to my auto insurer, but ADHDers are up to 36% more likely to have a traffic accident. I grew up in Illinois, just 45 minutes from the Wisconsin border. As a teen in the 1980s in Illinois, the drinking age was 21, but in Wisconsin, it was 18. I’m sure you can imagine the Illinois roads headed north were packed with teens every weekend. (It might be how we Illinoisans earned the nickname “FIBS,” or “F*cking Illinois Bastards.”)
The mecca for all of us underaged Illinoisans (that is, those of us who didn’t want to stand outside of a 7-11 like something out of a Kevin Smith movie and bribe skeevy old men) was Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. This popular resort town was just over the border . . . our too-tempting siren, sort of like having the keys to your rich friend’s parents’ extensive liquor cabinet. We spent stupid money in Lake Geneva like I’d imagine 69-year-old Las Vegas Raiders owner Mark Davis’ 26-year-old girlfriend did once Davis shared his credit cards.
And I was no exception.
It was 1982. I was barely 18, driving my first car — my big-as-a-whale 1973 Cadillac Coupe de Ville — when I got in my first car accident. It was an unseasonably warm day in May. My girlfriend and I had just spent the day in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, sharing a late birthday celebration, lunching at the then-swanky restaurant of the A-framed Abbey Resort dining hall with its picture-perfect view of that azure, spring-fed lake.
We’d promised our many Illinois friends we’d hit the liquor store for them, which we did. Those 10 bottles were clinking together on the back seat floor every time I hit the brakes or turned for the next hour as I was driving back to Illinois. We were right on schedule to be back in time to start our jobs at the shady boilerroom telemarketing agency where we sold unsuspecting people worthless $19.95 cruise ship career directories.
We were five blocks from the office. I turned right on a residential side street, and noticed some high school friends facing me at the stop sign, waving wildly. In my failed effort to return a friendly wave, steer, and brake simultaneously, my brain short-circuited. I plowed right into the car stopped directly behind them. I was mortified. “Crash” became my new nickname until graduation.
These were pre-cell phone days. I begged the homeowner whose home I had crashed in front of to borrow her phone. My first muffled call was to my bestie, Christina Bouvier, who was also my co-worker: “Hey! You guys need to head down here and get this booze out of my back seat before the cops get here!” Bouvier did not agree with my plan. But, as I’ve mentioned to you before, we ADHDers are calm in a crisis. When the police inspected my car, I’d carefully cloaked the booze in my back seat with one of my large posterboard school art projects.
Once I turned 21, any thrill booze held for me was long gone. I had no big itch to drink alcohol. My rebellious reign of lawlessness had ended. I reverted back to satisfying that itch with prank phone calls. Once caller I.D. came online, I used *69 to block my identity. Once people stopped accepting “Caller Unknown” calls, I was reduced to watching episodes of Crank Yankers and Impractical Jokers.
But there was one exception. One last epic prank phone call.
My friend Annie did nails and beauty treatments. She called me one day and shared that she’d decided a mobile mani-pedi business was her next entrepreneurial move. She’d do wedding parties and pampered women’s parties. She had just attended the Midwest Beauty Show and made the mistake of telling me about this new beauty trend called “The Betty,” which is where middle-aged divorcees with gray pubes would get them dyed in obnoxiously bright clown colors, like the character Samantha Jones did on this one episode of Sex and the City.
I was over at my bestie Christina Bouvier’s house. Christina knew Annie a little, so I was telling her all about the The Betty and Annie’s new business idea. You may recall from my last article that I have this naughty angel who sits on my right shoulder, occasionally whispering in my ear. Well, this time she whispered to me that it would be big fun to prank Annie and book a mani-pedi party.
But this would be no ordinary mani-pedi party.
Christina Bouvier volunteered to make the call. She has the gift of deadpan humor. She can keep a poker face and say the most outlandish things to anyone, never leading on that she’s full of shit. So this was the script that we workshopped and Bouvier left on Annie’s voice mail:
“Hi Annie. I just got your name from Denise McDonald. I’d like to book a mani-pedi party, but one with a twist. You see, my sister just got out of prison — don’t worry, it was for shoplifting, nothing violent — and I guess it’s a prison tactic to sort of leave your crotch area wildly unkempt so the lesbians will leave you alone.*** Anyhow, my sister’s bush is now an outta control tumbleweed, several inches south of her labia, and I was thinking it would be a nice homecoming gesture to throw a mani-pedi-Betty party to sort of cheer her up. If you could give me a call back with your availability, I’d really appreciate it.” Bouvier ended with leaving her phone number.
***This was in the days before “Orange is the New Black,” so I knew nothing of women’s prison politics and was totally talking out of my ass. This was also before Bouvier “came out” and married a woman.
While Bouvier was reciting our script over the phone, I was sitting on the landing of her stairs holding my laugh in so hard, I literally had air trying to escape via my tear ducts. I worried a little that my eyeballs would pop out of my head. It was a lot of pressure, holding in my big laugh.
A week later, I called Annie to ’fess up. At the time, she had young kids, who just happened to be buckled into their little car seats in the back seat of her SUV as Annie was playing her voice mails aloud while driving. I still double over just remembering it. I spoke to her now-grown daughter Pru yesterday. I doubt she remembers any of this. She never seems too traumatized.
Anyhow, my point is, we ADHDers do have an impulsivity problem. It doesn’t shock me that it leads to an early demise. I think the key to extending our longevity is finding some way to silence that naughty angel on our right shoulders. If only she wasn’t so much more fun . . .